Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he personally killed a “ridiculous” plan from White House adviser Stephen Miller to deploy 250,000 troops to the southern border as a migrant caravan approached. Esper, who writes about the moment in his upcoming book, “A Sacred Oath,” says he initially thought Miller was joking when he asked for the troops while waiting in the Oval Office.
“We’re in a meeting, waiting for the president to come out,” Esper tells Norah O’Donnell for an interview airing this Sunday on “60 Minutes,” “We’re standing around the Resolute Desk. And he’s behind me. And this voice just starts talking about caravans are coming. And, ‘We need to get troops to the border.’ And, ‘We need a quarter-million troops.’ And I think he’s joking. And then I turn around and I look at him and these– and these deadpan eyes. Clearly, he is not joking.”
Mark Esper
Esper, who served as President Trump’s second secretary of defense, says he told Miller the Department of Homeland Security could handle any caravans, as they had done in the past.
“He repeats, ‘No, we need a quarter-million troops,'” Esper says. “And I just turn squarely around to him, face him, and say, ‘I don’t have a quarter million troops to send on some ridiculous mission to the border.'”
But Esper says the plan that Miller had been pushing was already in motion.
“I told this story to General Milley and my chief of staff,” Esper says. “I said, ‘Let’s be safe. Let’s just check and make sure that this isn’t being worked somewhere in the building.’ And Milley comes back days later and the door opens up and he’s waving a document that’s in hand.”
“And he says something like, ‘secretary, you’re not gonna believe this.’ And that’s when he explains to me that, yes, they were working. That we had developed a plan, initial concept of how this might happen,” Esper tells O’Donnell. “And I was just flabbergasted that, not only was the idea proposed, but that people– people in my department were working on it.”
Esper still laughs at the idea.
“It’s just so absurd,” Esper says. “I can’t even consider it. I mean, again, we don’t have 250,000 troops to send to the border. And to do what? It’s just ridiculous.”
Miller declined to comment when reached by CBS News.
“Whatever happened to that plan to deploy a quarter million troops to the border with Mexico?” O’Donnell asks Esper.
“Well, it died,” Esper says. “I gave General Milley specific instruction to tell NORTHCOM, Northern Command, to stop working on it, to cease and desist. And that if anybody had any questions, you tell them they should call me direct. I never got a phone call.”
“It was dead and it died, as it should,” Esper says.
O’Donnell’s interview with Esper will air Sunday night on “60 Minutes.”
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he personally killed a "ridiculous" plan from White House adviser Stephen Miller to deploy 250,000 troops to the southern border as a migrant caravan approached. https://t.co/aJOCstSjhx
"We had developed a plan, initial concept of how [sending 250,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border] might happen. And I was just flabbergasted," former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper tells @NorahODonnell.
President Donald J. Trump in 2020 asked Mark T. Esper, his defense secretary, about the possibility of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs” and wipe out the cartels, maintaining that the United States’ involvement in a strike against its southern neighbor could be kept secret, Mr. Esper recounts in his upcoming memoir.
Those remarkable discussions were among several moments that Mr. Esper described in the book, “A Sacred Oath,” as leaving him all but speechless when he served the 45th president.
Mr. Esper, the last Senate-confirmed defense secretary under Mr. Trump, also had concerns about speculation that the president might misuse the military around Election Day by, for instance, having soldiers seize ballot boxes. He warned subordinates to be on alert for unusual calls from the White House in the lead-up to the election.
Donald Trump asked his then-defense secretary, Mark Esper, about the possibility of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs” and wipe out the cartels, Esper said in his upcoming memoir. https://t.co/HsaD7M1GQX
And Trump’s not at all good at keeping secrets. Y’all know he would repeatedly hint at being responsible, especially if the operation was deemed a success via public opinion. Eventually, he would strut and take credit for it.
On the other hand, if it was a disaster and innocents were killed, the orange POS would still hint that these were still “very bad people.”
How we managed to survive this dim maniac is astounding. But thx for saving this for your book Esper. Dammed you too. https://t.co/MFuqnBoYsd
The fact that TFG even asked the question (among other equally insane suggestions) is proof of his utter incompetence. The fact that Esper kept this to himself until he could drop it for a pre-publish tease to sell a book is contemptible.
A Lebanon man accused of killing his wife in March and dumping her body in a creek is among the candidates to advance in a local election after Indiana’s primaries Tuesday.
Andrew Wilhoite, who’s suspected of fatally striking his wife with a gallon-sized concrete flower pot, secured a spot Tuesday as one of three Republican candidates in the race for a seat on the Clinton Township Board.
The 40-year-old has been incarcerated in the Boone County Jail since March after police said he told investigators he threw a concrete flower pot at his wife, Nikki Wilhoite, the night before and dropped her body over the side of a bridge.
Prosecutors charged Andrew Wilhoite with murder in his wife’s killing. His next court hearing is scheduled for May 27.
How can a candidate run for office while facing felony charges?
State election officials said it’s legal for people facing felony charges, such as Andrew Wilhoite, to run for local office. A person is only ineligible if they are convicted.
“Under our legal system, every person is innocent until proven guilty,” said Brad King, co-director of the Indiana Election Division. “If a candidate is ultimately convicted, then depending upon the timing of that conviction, the person can be replaced on the ballot by the political party that has a vacancy.”
Township boards consist of three members, state officials said. The local Republican primary race has only drawn the three candidates. No one filed on the Democratic primary ticket.
Boone County election results show Andrew Wilhoite earned 60 votes, just over 21%, to his competitors’ 110 and 106 votes. Clinton Township has a population of 906, according to data from STATS Indiana.
If a person facing felony charges is elected in a township race and they are convicted after being sworn in, King said the vacancy will be filled by someone affiliated with the political party of the last person to have the seat.
King further noted that there’s no law prohibiting a person who’s incarcerated before trial from “exercising the duties of their office,” should they get elected.
“How that practically gets executed will depend on the facts,” King said.
Wife’s death investigation
The Boone County Clerk’s office said election filings occurred at the beginning of January through the first week of February, before Andrew Wilhoite was taken into custody on his murder charge.
IndyStar has reached out to Andrew Wilhoite’s attorney for comment.
Nikki Wilhoite was reported missing March 25 after her friend noticed she didn’t show up for work that day.
Investigators in a probable cause affidavit said Andrew Wilhoite initially told police he last saw his wife sleeping on the couch after the couple had an argument. When police spoke further with him, he asked for an attorney.
Police said Andrew Wilhoite called again shortly after and said he’d take them to his wife’s body.
Andrew Wilhoite was charged in March after a detective said he threw a cement flower pot at his wife and dumped her body in a nearby creek in Boone County. https://t.co/UPKfhfYUGm
I keep telling people they are not going to stop until the LGBTQ+ are gone. They don’t want us to exist. They don’t see us as human people. But what they really want is to codify their god into the laws of our country to force everyone to live by their church doctrines. The thing is right now they are coming for the LGBTQ but the next targets will be those religions they say are wrong and offend their god also. As more and more people leave the religion in the US the Christian religions want to force people to live according to the dictates of their religion.
A group of Republican senators want a new TV rating created so parents can block their children from watching shows with LGBTQ characters. The five senators from North Dakota, Kansas, Utah, Indiana and Montana sent a letter Wednesday to the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board asking for the new rating.
The two-page letter signed by Sens. Roger Marshall, Mike Lee, Mike Braun, Kevin Cramer and Steve Daines “strongly urged” the TV group’s chairman, Charles Rivkin, to update its guidelines to ensure parents are aware of the “disturbing” content.
The letter also cited Disney’s ongoing opposition to a recently enacted state law – dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” measure.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 enabled greater parental choice in television programming. In establishing this law, Congress found that “studies indicate that children are affected by the pervasiveness and casual treatment of sexual material on television, eroding the ability of parents to develop responsible attitudes and behavior in their children.”
The law requires TV manufacturers to establish a technology that would allow blocking of programs based on category ratings in its set receivers.
In order for the technology, known as the V-Chip,to fulfill its purpose, Congress also incentivized the creation of TV parental guidelines as well as the creation of the Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board.
The law was fully implemented allowing parents to easily block violent, sexual, or other programming that they believe may irrevocably interfere with their child’s emotional and psychological development.
I posted earlier on another topic where lately I’ve seen more and more biblical verses being shown during commercial breaks lately. I guess we’re slowly becoming the “Christian Iran” .
Anti-LGBTQ extremist Ethan Schmidt (left) and Michael Meritt Graham (right) use bullhorns to shout at abortion rights protesters at a rally at the state Capitol on May 3, 2022. Graham was arrested after punching abortion rights protesters; Schmidt was detained by state troopers but was later released without being charged Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror
A group of far-right extremists with ties to white nationalists tried to counter-protest an abortion rights rally held at the Arizona Capitol Tuesday night, where they were vastly outnumbered and one was arrested for violently attacking a demonstrator.
Michael Merritt Graham, 34, was arrested by the Arizona Department of Public Safety and booked for suspicion of assault and disorderly conduct after state troopers witnessed him punch another person at the rally.
Graham, who was wearing a shirt with the slogan “Baby Lives Matter” from the disinformation website InfoWars, was carrying a .45 caliber Glock 36 pistol when he was arrested, according to a police report obtained by the Arizona Mirror. Graham was not the only counter-protester who was armed: The Mirror observed other counter-protesters openly carrying firearms. Graham had his handgun tucked into his waistband out of view, according to the police report.
Graham was among roughly 20 counter-protesters who showed up to the event where over one thousand protesters marched in support of abortion rights in the wake of a leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the landmark court decision of Roe v. Wade and strip the right of women to seek an abortion that was established nearly 50 years ago.
Graham was joined by Ethan Schmidt, an anti-LGBTQ extremist and provocateur, known mostly for stunts challenging mask mandates and for “hunting” what he deems “LGBT pedophiles.” Hours before Graham was arrested, Schmidt walked straight into the crowd of protesters as he was recording video in an apparent attempt to spark a confrontation.
Near the end of the evening, Schmidt and Graham confronted protesters with bullhorns.
According to the police report, Graham got into a physical altercation with a protester. The incident began when Graham ripped the protester’s sign out of his hands and threw it to the ground. The victim then stepped in front of his girlfriend and grabbed Graham’s bullhorn before leaning down to pick up the sign.
Graham responded by hitting the man in his face, bloodying him.
Graham then started to leave the crowd and encountered Jace Robert Denis, 20, another protester. Troopers wrote that they saw Graham hit Denis, who described it as a “sucker punch.”
Denis began running after Graham “in an aggressive manner” and DPS arrested him, booking him for suspicion of disorderly conduct.
Denis told troopers that Graham had punched “another male” twice and “started walking towards a black female.” Denis ran towards Graham to get in between him and the woman yelling “don’t” before Graham threw the punch, Denis told troopers.
But DPS didn’t just put Graham and Denis in cuffs that night.
Schmidt was also detained by state troopers; he was later released without being charged.
Schmidt, who is currently awaiting sentencing on an extreme DUI in Chandler, was far from the only far-right extremist present among the counter-protesters.
In attendance were also members of the group American Populist Union, which is closely aligned with groypers, a group of white nationalists who strive for their ideas to become a part of the Republican mainstream and are largely followers of 23-year-old white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
And Kyle Clifton, a Fuentes acolyte with ties to APU, was also among the counter-protesters.
Clifton was behind an account on Instagram called “afu.arizona” which posted white nationalist messaging, touted the “great replacement” theory and antisemitic images.
Antisemitism was present among the counter protesters with some spewing rants about “freemasonry” when debating with abortion rights activists. Many of the Freemason conspiracy theories are rooted in antisemitism and can be traced back to an antisemitic hoax from more than a century ago.
“The Lake campaign did not organize the counter-protest,” Sam Stone, the policy director for Lake’s campaign, told the Mirror. “Everyone was kind of showing up at the same time.”
Stone said that no one associated with the campaign was aware of who Clifton was. He added that the counter-protest falls within the realm of “field activity,” and that many conservatives consider Lake to be the “candidate for them” when asked about the signs at the event.
DPS may also be getting a call from the Lake campaign, Stone said: One of the Lake staffers allegedly was spit on by an abortion rights activist.
“I tend to believe that you settle these things at the ballot box, but I tend to believe that fits the description of assault,” Stone said, adding that they may send the video they have to DPS.
Oh cry me a river, a politician who is a well known Christian nationalist, has staff that are involved with a group that assaults and threatens pro-choice demonstrators and wants the police instead to arrest someone who spit on one of the staff members. The white Christian nationalist racists who assaulted, threatened, punched, and bloodied the protestors is not a problem, she but wants the feelings of her staff defended. Give me a break.
One extremist bloodied a protester, before running away and "sucker-punching" another man.
Neo-Nazi/anti-LGBTQ+ extremist Ethan Schmidt-Crockett posted a video calling for Ukrainian president Zelenskyy to be assassinated. He praises Putin's oppression of LGBTQ+ people and says the U.S. should follow Putin's example. He finishes with a Nazi salute and says "Heil Putin!" https://t.co/5sm1jARbkopic.twitter.com/oQEdvQl1uL
— Vishal P. Singh 🏳️⚧️ (they/he) (@VPS_Reports) April 28, 2022
Several states have passed laws banning transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming healthcare, but Missouri Republicans are now trying to ban many transgender adults from getting access to life-saving care, even while the state still allows children to get married.
H.B. 2649 would ban doctors from providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth until they reach the age of 18. Like many such laws, they do not ban gender-affirming care for cisgender youth and carve out an exemption for doctors and parents who want to force surgery on intersex youth.
During a hearing for H.B. 2649 last week, a psychologist testified that people under the age of 25 don’t have brains that are developed enough to make big decisions, citing some research about how the prefrontal cortex continues to develop into a person’s 20s. which led to some Republicans suggesting that the bill should ban gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 25.
“The brains of especially males are still developing into their twenties and I don’t understand why that’s not part of the discussion here,” state Rep. Nick Schroer (R) said.
Missouri, though, allows young adults to make a number of life-changing decisions and prosecutes people as young as age 12 as adults in criminal cases.
Moreover, the state allows minors ages 16 and up to get married with parental consent, a practice that opponents call a form of abuse. Children as young as 14 can get married in Missouri with a court order, and that’s the result of a state law passed in 2018 creating a minimum marriage age in the state for the first time, a law that 50 Missouri House members voted against it and almost all of them were Republicans.
“There’s no typical profile,” said Donna Pollard, the founder of Survivors’ Corner. “It could very well be correlated to poverty, it could also be correlated to parents that are trafficking their children to get money for drugs. And then in some cases, parents really have good intentions and they don’t realize that they are also being groomed by pedophiles that have horrible intentions for their child.”
While opponents of transgender equality say that trans youth should wait until they’re much older to transition, many treatment options are effectively taken off the table the older a person gets. Puberty blockers, for example, are prescribed at the beginning of puberty to prevent the permanent effects of puberty, making them useless for a 25-year-old.
Bill Hwang, founder of the more than $10 billion Archegos Capital Management investment firm who was once revered as one of the Evangelical world’s biggest benefactors, could spend the rest of his life in prison after he was arrested and charged Wednesday with racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud offenses.
The charges stem from a number of interrelated schemes to unlawfully manipulate the prices of publicly traded securities in Archegos’ portfolio, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Prosecutors say those schemes caused billions of dollars in losses to leading global investment banks, brokerages and investors.
In recent years, Hwang, who co-founded the Grace and Mercy Foundation, has been a contributor to Focus on the Family and a trustee of the Fuller Theology Seminary.
“We allege that these defendants and their co-conspirators lied to banks to obtain billions of dollars that they then used to inflate the stock price of a number of publicly-traded companies,” said U.S. Attorney Williams.
“The lies fed the inflation, and the inflation led to more lies. Round and round it went. In one year, Hwang allegedly turned a $1.5 billion portfolio and pumped it up into a $35 billion portfolio. But last year, the music stopped. The bubble burst. The prices dropped. And when they did, billions of dollars of capital evaporated nearly overnight.”
“As alleged, Hwang and his co-conspirators convinced major financial institutions to enter into agreements with them based on lies, the result of which ultimately led to a massive market manipulation scheme,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Michael J. Driscoll.
“We allege the defendants caused harm to U.S. financial markets and ordinary investors alike, causing significant losses to banks, market participants and Archegos employees. Today’s charges highlight our commitment to making sure the investment arena remains free from fraudulent activity of all kinds.”
Market participants who purchased the relevant stocks at artificial prices lost the value they believed their investments held, the banks lost billions of dollars, and Archegos employees, many of whom were required to invest 25% or more of their bonuses with Archegos as deferred compensation, lost millions of dollars.
When Ravi Zacharias filed a RICO lawsuit against @LoriAnneThomps2 whom he sexually abused, Ravi said he had a “donor with deep pockets who’ll fund it as long as it takes to silence the Thompsons.” That donor was Bill Hwang, who was just arrested by DOJ for fraud and racketeering. https://t.co/ifATk6C7qKpic.twitter.com/0JzkyygRkd
U.S. authorities charged Archegos Capital Management owner Bill Hwang with racketeering, fraud and market manipulation as regulators said their manipulation of stock prices cost banks billions of dollars https://t.co/3mG3SZfF4mpic.twitter.com/y7yPs7MqW0
So Focus on the Family gets bankrolled by a crook? And that’s all Biblical, right? Rob Peter to pay Paul and then we can fuck over all the homos. Now I get it.
The authorities don’t care about his employees who lost millions of dollars because they were forced to invest 25% or more of their bonuses with Archegos as deferred compensation. But the banks and other rich people lost billions. That’s the real crime. Stealing money from rich people and banks.
At a time when Texas is poised to outlaw the vast majority of abortions if the nation’s highest court overturns constitutional protections for the procedure, a recent University of Texas at Austin poll shows most Texan voters think access to abortion should be allowed in some form. Texas would make performing most abortions a felony if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
The survey found that 78% of respondents believe abortion should be allowed in some form while only 15% said it should be never permitted. Around 39% of poll respondents said Texans should always be able to obtain abortions as a matter of personal choice, and 11% of respondents thought abortions should be available for other reasons in addition to pregnancy resulting from rape.
Only 15% of respondents to a recent University of Texas at Austin poll said access to the procedure should be completely outlawed. https://t.co/c2V3OQoKF9
“Let’s talk about this, something new that kind of got sprung on us last week. For the last few months, we have had a disinformation czar and a unit within the Homeland Security Department.
“And even Mayorkas said on Sunday, yeah, I probably could have rolled that out a little bit better. Then, we find out who is in charge of it, and this woman that’s in charge of it, Nina Jankowicz, who’s about eight-and-a-half-months pregnant.
“I’m not sure how you get a job and then you just – you can’t do a job for three months. I’m not faulting her, but I don’t know why you would give someone a job that you think is so important.” – Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade.
Iran once had full gender equality. A theocratic revolution ended that and implemented a system of no rights for women. That’s the role model that the Republican Party is emulating.
Yes, that too. They really hate rape laws. I forgot that. They also hate child rape laws and marriage laws that require women to be adults. It all fits together.
Well, you know… women driving isn’t “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition”. Women didn’t drive cars for several hundred years of this country’s history.
But you know what is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition”? Slavery.
Both the Senate and the Electoral College exist just to give power to rural states which tended to be the major centers of slavery. For years we had to add states in pairs so that one could be a free state and the other a slave state just to keep parity in the Senate.
And when women are forbidden to have abortions (and eventually birth control), the argument changes from “why hire pregnant women,” to “why hire any woman, who could become pregnant?”
In truth, it will return to that being legal, as it once was. And in point of fact, is often still tolerated today.
Ask any woman and if it hasn’t happened to her, she’ll know someone personally who was refused a job, denied a promotion, or fired specifically because she got pregnant or was deemed to “might get preggers.”
I do. Not me, but someone I know. Lawyer told her the chances of winning a discrimination lawsuit was thin because her former employer claimed she was fired for poor job performance and being chronically late to work.
And the unceasing reich-wing theocratic authoritarian effort to reduce and return women to explicitly 2nd-class status in our society and under the law continues…
The fact a tiny highly-radical minority of authoritarian Repugs are going ahead with all this deeply unpopular shit anyway is still more evidence showing just how far down the road to fascist Hell America’s democratic republic has gone.
Because they know they’ve rigged and corrupted elections well enough never to lose. Voter suppression. Extreme gerrymandering. And now they’re simply going to declare themselves the winners regardless of election outcomes.
Yep. It is the only way the Republicans can hold onto power with the facade of being elected. America is by and large rejecting Republican policies, but they’ve juiced the game so much to hold enough minority power to prevent D’s from fixing the system and sometimes slim majorities to further advance their anti-democratic ideas. The problem for them is the facade of it being democratic in any shape or form is fading, so they are now moving hard to convince voters we don’t need democracy.
The other side of the coin is that when Dem voters do manage to turn out massive numbers to give the party nominal control, even though it requires us to win by ~10% just to secure a slim majority, the ones we elect end up being too fucking chickenshit to do really bold things. Or 1-2 of them will decide they will be the roadblock to accomplishing anything significant or vital.
And thus we have our current status quo: Rethugs don’t give a shit how unpopular their policies are. And elected Dems far too often refuse to consider passing stuff that would be incredibly popular because (1) they’re too timid and (2) too many of them are in the pockets of wealthy donors.
The Party of Trump and Putin (formerly known as “the Republican Party”) has been totally hijacked by the religious right. The religious right controls them.
If 100% of their constituents were for abortion rights, today’s Republican congressperson would vote against those rights.
The treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is abortion.
The treatment for a septic uterus is abortion.
The treatment for a miscarriage that your body won’t release is abortion.
Chief Justice, John Roberts will be investigating the “leak”… … But won’t investigate Clarence and Ginni Thomas affairs with Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to overthrow our Democratic Republic.
One is about a lack of ethics of the USSC. The other is about protecting our Democratic Republic.
Scottie's Playtime 