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November 2020 US Election

Facebook removes Trump post over false Covid-19 claim for first time

Video in which Trump wrongly said kids were ‘almost immune’ from illness also prompted Twitter to ban president’s re-election campaign account

Aug 6, 2020

Facebook has removed a post from Donald Trump’s page for spreading false information about the coronavirus, a first for the social media company that has been harshly criticized for repeatedly allowing the president to break its content rules.

The post included video of Trump falsely asserting that children were “almost immune from Covid-19” during an appearance on Fox News. There is evidence to suggest that children who contract Covid-19 generally experience milder symptoms than adults do. However, they are not immune, and some children have become severely ill or died from the disease.

“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from Covid-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful Covid misinformation,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

The Twitter account for Trump’s re-election campaign, @TeamTrump, also posted the video, which Twitter said violated its rules. “The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again,” a company spokesperson said of @TeamTrump.

During a press briefing on Wednesday afternoon, Trump repeated his false claims about children and the disease.

www.theguardian.com

Facebook removes Trump post over false Covid-19 claim for first time

Video in which Trump wrongly said kids were ‘almost immune’ from illness also prompted Twitter to ban president’s re-election campaign account
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
...and yet, Trump has plans to ban TikTok if Microsoft (or any other major "patriotic" tech company like Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Twitter; Apple declined) doesn't purchase the North American and Oceanian rights to TikTok by September 15, 2020, for patriotic reasons.

Trump should know that censorship is a two-way street.
 
New York Attorney General Moves To Dissolve The NRA After Fraud Investigation

From link.

The attorney general of New York took action Thursday to dissolve the National Rifle Association following an 18-month investigation that found evidence the powerful gun rights group is "fraught with fraud and abuse."

Attorney General Letitia James claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that she found financial misconduct in the millions of dollars and that it contributed to a loss of more than $64 million over a three-year period.

The suit alleges that top NRA executives misused charitable funds for personal gain, awarded contracts to friends and family members, and provided contracts to former employees to ensure loyalty.

Seeking to dissolve the NRA is the most aggressive sanction James could have sought against the not-for-profit organization, which James has jurisdiction over because it is registered in New York. James has a wide range of authorities relating to nonprofits in the state, including the authority to force organizations to cease operations or dissolve. The NRA is all but certain to contest it.

The NRA said in a statement that the legal action was political, calling it a "baseless premeditated attack on our organization and the Second Amendment freedoms it fights to defend... we not only will not shrink from this fight – we will confront it and prevail."

"The NRA's influence has been so powerful that the organization went unchecked for decades while top executives funneled millions into their own pockets," James said in a statement. "The NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse, which is why, today, we seek to dissolve the NRA, because no organization is above the law."

James' complaint names the National Rifle Association as a whole but also names four current and former NRA executives: Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, general counsel John Frazer, former Chief Financial Officer Woody Phillips and former chief of staff Joshua Powell.

It lists dozens of examples of alleged financial malfeasance, including the use of NRA funds for vacations, private jets and expensive meals. In a statement, James' office said that the charitable organization's executives "instituted a culture of self-dealing, mismanagement and negligent oversight" that contributed to "the waste and loss of millions in assets."

The lawsuit seeks to dissolve the NRA in its entirety and asks the court to order LaPierre and other current and former executives to pay back unlawful profits. It also seeks to remove LaPierre and Frazer from the organization's leadership and prevent the four named individuals from ever serving again on the board of a charity in New York.
Click to expand...

Allegations against CEO Wayne LaPierre

LaPierre, who also serves as CEO, has held the top position at the organization for nearly 30 years. In the attorney general's lawsuit he is accused of using charitable funds for personal gain, including a post-employment contract valued at more than $17 million that was not approved by the NRA's board of directors.

The lawsuit also claims that LaPierre received more than $1.2 million in expense reimbursements over four years, including gifts for friends, travel expenses and memberships at golf clubs and hotels.

And it alleges that he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private plane trips, including for extended family when he was not present; traveled to Africa with his wife on a safari gifted by an NRA vendor; and spent more than $3.6 million on luxury black car services and travel consultants in the past two years.

Those who attempted to blow the whistle on this behavior, the suit claims, were retaliated against by LaPierre.
Click to expand...

The NRA's other legal and financial challenges

Separate from the New York Attorney General's actions Thursday, the District of Columbia attorney general also sued: this time targeting the NRA Foundation, an independent group incorporated in D.C.

Attorney General Karl A. Racine alleged that the foundation violated local laws by placing the NRA's interests ahead of its own charitable purposes.

"Charitable organizations function as public trusts — and District law requires them to use their funds to benefit the public, not to support political campaigns, lobbying, or private interests," Racine said. "With this lawsuit, we aim to recover donated funds that the NRA Foundation wasted. District nonprofits should be on notice that the Office of the Attorney General will file suit if we find evidence of illegal behavior."

Even before today's developments, the NRA was in dire financial straits. A secret recording of an NRA board meeting obtained by NPR in April showed LaPierre telling the audience that the NRA's legal troubles have cost the organization $100 million.

"The cost that we bore was probably about a hundred-million-dollar hit in lost revenue and real cost to this association in 2018 and 2019," LaPierre said, according to a recording by a source in the room. "I mean, that's huge."

Much of this has to do with its legal troubles. Facing congressional inquiries and investigations by multiple state attorneys general, as well as internal whistleblower complaints, the NRA's finances have sagged under the burden of legal costs. In the ongoing litigation between the NRA and Ackerman McQueen, its former public relations firm, a brief filed by the firm on April 15 indicates its belief that the NRA has paid its outside legal counsel "over $54 million" in the past two years.

The turmoil at the NRA also could have political ramifications ahead of the 2020 elections. The NRA spent tens of millions of dollars in 2016 to support then-candidate Donald Trump — a role it appears it will be unlikely to be able to repeat given its current financial condition.
Click to expand...

 
Trailing in election polls, Trump says rival Biden opposes God and guns

Aug 6, 2020

U.S. Republican President Donald Trump asserted on Thursday that his Democratic opponent in November’s election, Joe Biden, is “against God,” even though Biden himself frequently discusses how his Catholic faith has guided his actions as a public official.

With Trump trailing Biden in four recent polls in Ohio, the president was fighting to win voters in the traditional swing state as the coronavirus pandemic threatens his chances of a second term. After addressing a small crowd at a Cleveland airport on Thursday, Trump went on to deliver a campaign-style speech at a Whirlpool plant in Clyde, Ohio.

“He’s following the radical-left agenda: take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God,” Trump said about Biden in his Cleveland speech. “He’s against God.”

www.reuters.com

Trailing in election polls, Trump says rival Biden opposes God and guns

U.S. Republican President Donald Trump asserted on Thursday that his Democratic opponent in November's election, Joe Biden, is "against God," even though Biden frequently discusses how his Catholic faith has guided his actions as a public official.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
Richard White said:
I hate to say it but Wayne Lapierre could take an AR-15 and start letting bullets fly in the House of Representatives only to be let off the hook. The NRA is so ingrained in american culture that they can do no wrong if it is justified.

The NRA will never be dissolved until the US rewrites their constitution.
Click to expand...
AlbertC said:
Trailing in election polls, Trump says rival Biden opposes God and guns

Aug 6, 2020

U.S. Republican President Donald Trump asserted on Thursday that his Democratic opponent in November’s election, Joe Biden, is “against God,” even though Biden himself frequently discusses how his Catholic faith has guided his actions as a public official.

With Trump trailing Biden in four recent polls in Ohio, the president was fighting to win voters in the traditional swing state as the coronavirus pandemic threatens his chances of a second term. After addressing a small crowd at a Cleveland airport on Thursday, Trump went on to deliver a campaign-style speech at a Whirlpool plant in Clyde, Ohio.

“He’s following the radical-left agenda: take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God,” Trump said about Biden in his Cleveland speech. “He’s against God.”

www.reuters.com

Trailing in election polls, Trump says rival Biden opposes God and guns

U.S. Republican President Donald Trump asserted on Thursday that his Democratic opponent in November's election, Joe Biden, is "against God," even though Biden frequently discusses how his Catholic faith has guided his actions as a public official.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
Click to expand...
The only way the NRA can get away with fraud and nepotism is for the United States to become a theocracy.

Margaret Atwood wrote something like that (it's called the Handmaid's Tale and has the United States become a theocracy called Gilead).
 
Johnny Au said:
The only way the NRA can get away with fraud and nepotism is for the United States to become a theocracy.

Margaret Atwood wrote something like that (it's called the Handmaid's Tale and has the United States become a theocracy called Gilead).
Click to expand...

Gotta pander to and rile up the "God, Guns and Trump" crowd out there though, which is now part of the new 'Murican evangelical trinity:

god-guns-and-trump.JPG




https://twitter.com/x/status/1190851702280212480
 
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Johnny Au said:
It's funny that the right-most shirt has stripes that resemble the Thai flag.

Apparently, Thailand is the favourite non-American country among "patriotic" Americans.

View attachment 262025

Make Thailand Great Again!
Click to expand...

If you still don't get it, here's the Thailand flag on a flagpole...
 
And on these recent tangents:

Trump evangelical supporter takes leave of absence after posting racy photo

www.ctvnews.ca

Trump evangelical supporter takes leave of absence after posting racy photo

Jerry Falwell Jr. took an indefinite leave of absence Friday as the leader of Liberty University, one of the nation's top evangelical Christian colleges, days after apologizing for a social media post that caused an uproar even among fellow conservatives.
www.ctvnews.ca
 
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