Republicans: continued

[Tero]

Hannity/tucker/Fox on vaccines
https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status ... 1858300939

[Seabass]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epnq84/ ... all-a-hoax

I’m a Parkland Shooting Survivor. QAnon Convinced My Dad It Was All a Hoax.

Bill’s final semester at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was already difficult enough.

He was part of the final graduating class of survivors of the 2018 shooting, and they all had just marked the third anniversary of the day 17 people were killed, nine of whom were Bill’s classmates.

But Bill also had to deal with his father’s daily accusations that the shooting was a hoax and that the shooter, Bill, and all his classmates were paid pawns in a grand conspiracy orchestrated by some shadowy force.

Bill had worked hard to get over his survivor’s guilt after the shooting, but for the past five months, his own father has been triggering it all over again.

“He'll say stuff like this straight to my face whenever he's drinking: ‘You're a real piece of work to be able to sit here and act like nothing ever happened if it wasn't a hoax. Shame on you for being part of it and putting your family through it too,” Bill said in an anonymous post on Reddit last week.’

Bill first posted his story on QAnon Casualties, a Reddit thread dedicated to helping family members and friends of QAnon believers.

VICE News spoke to the poster and confirmed the author’s claims about being a survivor of the school shooting. Bill is not the student’s real name as they only spoke to VICE News on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about attacks from members of QAnon forums if his identity was revealed.

As is true for many who fell down the QAnon rabbit hole in recent years, Bill’s dad’s descent coincided with the pandemic.

“It started a couple months into the pandemic with the whole anti-lockdown protests,” Bill said. “His feelings were so strong it turned into facts for him. So if he didn't like having to wear masks it wouldn't matter what doctors or scientists said. Anything that contradicted his feelings was wrong. So he turned to the internet to find like-minded people which led him to QAnon.”

But until January, that was as far as it went. Then Bill’s father saw a video of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg in 2018, while he was visiting Washington to advocate for stricter gun control. Greene has repeatedly voiced support for QAnon and claimed the Parkland shooting was a hoax.

“He is a coward,” Greene told her followers.

Ever since then, Bill’s father has become convinced the shooting his son survived was a so-called “false flag” event and that the shooter was “​​a radical commie actor.”

“From there it snowballed into what he is today, believing that if the government is able to overthrow an election, then everything else is probably a lie too,” Bill added.

Bill is 18, and now that he’s graduated high school he’s looking to get out of the toxic situation he finds himself in.

“I do have options that can have me out before August, which as of now I'm planning to do,” Bill said. “I've been delaying it because I've felt stuck trying to ‘fix’ my dad.”

But Bill said that after he posted his story on Reddit, members of the QAnon Casualties community have been able to help him “push through that obligation I felt and leave before I completely lose my mind, because I'm already halfway there.”

Over the course of the last four years, but in particular since the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, the QAnon conspiracy cult has been tearing families apart, and many family members say their loved ones have transformed into different people in front of their eyes.

“Burgundy-colored T-shirts [the color shirt worn by the shooter] make me uncomfortable and he used to be so understanding he stopped wearing it around me. That person is completely gone and I miss him so fucking much,” Bill said in his Reddit post.

Bill says his relationship with his mother has also suffered.

“The relationship with my mom is dependent on whether my dad is there or not, ’cause then it's pretty much all about conspiracy theories,” Bill told VICE News. “[The relationship] used to be fine but deteriorating quickly, [especially] after telling her that if she doesn't start putting her foot down, I'm leaving with no interest in seeing my dad again.”

But despite the threats to leave home, Bill’s mother has not stood up to his dad.

“It's not really going anywhere because she's too naive to think he'll magically get over wanting to constantly retraumatize me and I'm not waiting around for that,” Bill told VICE News.

Bill also says he’s been unable to talk to any of his fellow survivors about what he has been going through with this father.

“I never talked about it with them,” Bill told VICE News. “As far as I know he's only held that belief—at least so strongly—since January. Our last semester was difficult enough with Feb. 14 marking 3 years since the shooting, along with emotions leading up to us being the last class of survivors to graduate.”

“It wasn't—and still isn't—easy to bottle up, but telling them my dad thinks the absolute hell we went through, where nine of the victims were in our class, is a hoax is not a pain I want to put on them. It's difficult enough knowing that belief even exists at all.”

At this point, Bill has little hope in ever seeing his father return to the person he was before he became obsessed with QAnon conspiracy theories, and even if he did, too much has happened to ever repair their relationship.

“He'll never stop on his own, because there are always new theories and goalposts being moved,” Bill said. “I don't know how to help someone that far gone. My guess is restricted access to the internet and lots of therapy. But even if there was hope he'd eventually snap out of it, it wouldn't change my mind on never wanting to see him again. So it doesn't really matter anymore.”

[JimC]

A lot in common with the wackier religious cults...

[Tero]

Republicans control states

Even in states where people elected Democratsxfor governors.

[Seabass]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/matt-gaet ... ting-creep

Matt Gaetz’s Future Sister-in-Law Says He’s a Gaslighting ‘Creep’

Rep. Matt Gaetz’s future sister-in-law appears to have had more than enough with the Florida congressman, posting three TikTok videos in the last two days slamming him as “weird and creepy” and “a literal pedophile.”

Roxanne Luckey—the sister of Gaetz’s fiancée, Ginger Luckey—was sharply critical of the congressman and his treatment of young women, saying she “unfortunately was not surprised” to have learned Gaetz was under federal investigation for sex crimes.

In one video Monday night, Roxanne Luckey told a story about Gaetz pressuring an older man to court her when she was 19. Roxanne Luckey called the move “weird and creepy”—and she claims Gaetz yelled at her and her mother and went “full lawyer” when she confronted him.

“I saw the character and type of person he is, and when everything came out about him, I honestly, unfortunately, was not surprised,” Luckey said in one video.

“As someone who has personally experienced a ton of creepy old politician men hitting on me when I was underage, and experiencing sexual assault at that age by people of power, it’s very disheartening and I have zero tolerance of people like [Gaetz],” said Roxanne, who in 2020 worked briefly as a White House intern. She added that she is “tired of them getting away with this type of stuff.”

After the videos were posted, Ginger Luckey hit back at her sister, telling The Daily Beast she had a history of “destructive behavior.”

Roxanne, who is 20 now, said she was sharing her experiences in part because of her interactions with powerful men and her belief that it is important to “hold people accountable to whatever extent we can.”

“There is so much more to the story and about what I know about Matt Gaetz,” she added. “It is definitely a serious situation.”

The first of the videos, posted on Sunday, features Luckey dancing and lip-synching to Lana Del Ray’s “Jealous Girl” with a New York Times headline in the background, reading “Matt Gaetz Is Said to Face Justice Dept. Inquiry Over Sex With an Underage Girl.” She added her own text, writing, “When a creepy old man tries to hit on you at the bar but your sisters engaged to a literal pedophile.”

In a follow-up video Monday night, Luckey apologized for using the term “pedophile” and shifted to “ephebophile”—someone primarily attracted to mid- to late-adolescents—which she reasoned felt more appropriate for Gaetz.

While The Daily Beast couldn’t reach Roxanne Luckey, the woman in the TikTok video appears to be the same person seen in a family photo on Ginger Luckey’s Facebook page, and the two women have multiple overlapping social media contacts. Ginger Luckey’s mother also appears to like posts on Roxanne’s Facebook. The TikTok account also shares two videos showing the person working in the White House as an intern. The Daily Beast was able to verify with a former Trump official that Roxanne Luckey did work as an intern during the summer of 2020, as the TikTok account claims.

Reached for comment Monday evening, Ginger Luckey claimed she and Roxanne had been estranged. (A video posted by Roxanne Luckey suggests she was close with her sister and Gaetz as recently as November.)

“Matt and I are enjoying our engagement and are deeply in love. My estranged sister is mentally unwell,” Ginger Luckey said in a text message. “She has been in therapy for years and our family hopes that after receiving in-patient mental health treatment, she will overcome the tendency she has repeatedly shown to engage in destructive behavior.”

Roxanne Luckey did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment. A Gaetz spokesperson said the congressman supports his fiancée and her statement.

Roxanne Luckey, who in one video came out as a victim of sexual assault by “people of power,” recounted an episode last summer when Gaetz, shortly after he began dating her sister, tried to set Roxanne Luckey up with a friend of his. She said she was a 19-year-old intern at the Trump White House at the time, when Gaetz tried to connect her with a peer of his, who was divorced with a child.

According to Luckey’s account, the older man was “creepy” and repeatedly made her feel uncomfortable, even after she rejected his advances and told him she had a boyfriend. She noted that when the man later apologized, he passed the blame for his aggressive overtures onto Gaetz.

“Sorry about what I said, I just wanted to get Matt off my back,” Luckey claimed the unnamed man said.

Luckey said when she confronted Gaetz about the incident at a family gathering that Thanksgiving, the 39-year-old attorney and third-term congressman tried to gaslight her.

“He just immediately got so defensive and started yelling at me and my mom,” Roxanne Luckey said. “He called me a narcissist, just was a thousand percent gaslighting me—went full lawyer, ‘I don’t have to listen to you, I don’t have to answer your questions.’”

“Whatever,” Luckey added.

She said Gaetz’s anger and quick temper over the matter led her to believe that he knew he bore responsibility. “Someone who is innocent shouldn’t be getting so defensive, and literally being a grown man and yelling at a 20-year-old girl is just beyond me,” she said.

Luckey posted a TIkTok video at the time about the encounter, captioned, “It’s the sisters congressman boyfriend calling me a narcissist for calling him out for me ”

Luckey emphasized that the experiences informing her opinion “wasn’t just this encounter with Matt.” When she was interning in D.C. at the White House, she said she heard “through the grapevine” that Gaetz “had a reputation of prowling after college girls when he’s a grown man, and to me that’s just kind of weird.”

She did add the caveat to this claim that, “Everything is hearsay.”

“There’s two sides to every story and I acknowledge that,” she said. “But this is what I experienced.”

Luckey seems to have sided quickly against Gaetz. After news of the investigation broke, she liked numerous tweets blasting him as a “pervert”—even as her older sister joined him for an event at Trump National Doral where he called himself a “champion of women.” She also posted a mash-up TikTok video in early April of young women, possibly friends, alleging the congressman was guilty and should be thrown out of Congress. She added the hashtags “#mattgaetzhumantrafficking” and “#mattgaetzisatool.”

Gaetz and Ginger Luckey got engaged on New Year’s Eve at Mar-a-Lago after dating for less than a year. Ginger and Roxanne are sisters of tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, who in 2014 sold his virtual reality company Oculus Rift to Facebook for $2.3 billion. The couple tried to buy a $155,000 yacht in Florida in late May, but the owner pulled the sale, citing as his reason the fact that they painted over the boat’s name before the deal closed, without his permission.

On Monday, Roxanne Luckey replied to a TikTok user who posted a comment to one of the videos imploring her to “get your sister out” of the relationship.

“He’s a narcissist and a master manipulator,” Luckey replied. “She believes everything he tells her.”

Meanwhile, prosecutors have been interviewing a number of Gaetz associates in the wake of his former “wingman” Joel Greenberg’s May 14 guilty plea. Last week, Politico reported that a defense attorney representing a person in the case had seen evidence that Gaetz had sex with an underage girl.

[Brian Peacock]

That's going to make for an awkward Christmas.

[Tero]

DeSantis fundrasing site:

While many Republicans walked away from President Trump at the first sign of a fight, I NEVER wavered.
I stood by the President’s side throughout his toughest battles:
Two baseless impeachment trials
The Russia witch hunt
Exposing the Biden Family’s corruption
Uncovering election fraud


You see, we were on a mission to drain the swamp and put the American people first. We knew that the Deep State forces would try to destroy us.
But we didn’t care. The fight to save America was a fight worth waging.
Unfortunately, now that Biden and Kamala have seized control of the White House and have weaponized the FBI and DOJ, the swamp is REVOLTING by placing a bull’s eye on the backs of every Trump loyalist who had the guts to challenge the Deep State.
I’m hoping you’ll stand up for me now that the Deep State has placed a bull’s eye on my back.
CONTRIBUTE TO DEFEND RUDY

As Alan Dershowitz wisely pointed out, “In banana republics, in … many parts of the world, when a candidate loses for president, they go after the candidate, they go after his lawyers, they go after his friends… That’s happening in America now. They’re going after Rudy Giuliani.” *
That’s why this is so important, Friend.
This battle is not just about me or any of President Trump’s other allies who are being ruthlessly targeted by the Deep State.
We need to face the uncomfortable fact that if the Deep State can do this to a former president’s confidante who did nothing wrong, then one day, they could do it to you.
My fate will determine if America still is a Republic governed by We The People, or if the swamp has finally amassed total control of our great country.

His opponent 2022
Declared (Democrat)
Charlie Crist, U.S. representative for Florida's 13th congressional district and former Republican governor of Florida
On December 7, 2012, Crist joined the Democratic Party, having endorsed President Barack Obama for reelection in 2012.

[Sean Hayden]

Christ he's disgusting.

[NineBerry]

There's a live stream from the capitol storm committee. And there's one of the republican members of committee who is so obviously faking being emotional

[Tero]

I hope so:
Marjorie Taylor Greene freaks out as Jan. 6 committee kicks off: 'They want members of Congress in jail!'

[Seabass]

[Tero]

Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Thee Names event scrapped
https://mobile.twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz ... 6259096583
woman follows Matt asking if he is a pedophile

[Seabass]

BOOM. Hit the nail on the head.

DC police officer Michael Fanone slammed congressional Republicans who have downplayed the Jan. 6 Capitol attack during a select committee hearing on July 27.

[Tero]

Palmer Report
@PalmerReport
Speaker Nancy Pelosi just called Kevin McCarthy a “moron.”

Fact check: true.

[Joe]

McCarthy was the guy caught on tape in 2016 saying, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” now he's a big Trump supporter.

Moron fits.