7/12/19: It turns out that Carla Provost, who President Trump appointed to head the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in 2018, was a member of a secret Facebook group (recently revealed by ProPublica.).
When the secret group – and it’s often vulgar, racist, sexist
posts – was first revealed, Provost responded forcefully. “These posts are completely
inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see – and expect – from our agents day in and day out. Any employees found to have
violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.”
It turns out that top officials with the Border Patrol are members of the Facebook group. So is Provost.
Seeing the humor in “floaters.”
As The Intercept explains,
ProPublica was first to report the existence of the
secret Border Patrol group on July 1, revealing that members used the page to joke
about migrant deaths and share sexually violent and threatening posts
[emphasis added] about several Democratic lawmakers, including, in particular,
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y. Politico followed up
by reporting that senior officials in the Border Patrol, as well as
CBP public affairs officials, had known about the group for years and used it as
an “intelligence” stream to monitor the sentiment of the workforce.
The
Intercept then reported that the public
revelations sparked an internal purging of the Facebook group’s content, but
not before we archived hundreds of posts shared over multiple weeks.
Agents in the group found humor in describing immigrants who died trying to cross the Rio Grande as “floaters,” joked about the violent rape of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, and touted their love for Donald J. Trump. One popular meme showed the president using a hand at the back of her head to force Ocasio-Cortez’s face into his crotch.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee, failed to see the humor. He called for an investigation. Cummings also called on Facebook to “preserve all documents, communications, and other data related to the ‘I’m 10-15’ group” including “log files and metadata.”
This demand pisses off the president – whereas depictions of rape – hey, no big deal. (See: 7/27/19.)
This blogger is not seeing the humor.
*
ON THIS FINE DAY in July, Putin’s favorite presidential puppet lashes out at former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan has been critical of Trump in a soon-to-be-released book, American Carnage by Tim Alberta.
Trump deals with the situation in a patented Twitter tantrum. For the sake of brevity, we will sum up. According to the president, Ryan’s record of achievement “was atrocious (except during my first two years as President).” He “quit Congress because he didn’t know how to Win.”
Politico highlights some of the most damning assessments in the Ryan book:
“I told myself I gotta have a
relationship with this guy [Trump] to help him get his mind right,” Ryan told
Alberta in another excerpt released by The Washington
Post. “Because, I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about
government [emphasis added]. ... I wanted to scold him all the time.”
Ryan also said he saw his
retirement from the House in 2018 as an escape hatch after working with the
president for two years.
Too bad Speaker Ryan lacked the courage to say all of this
(and more) before he left the building.
*
IRONICALLY, on this same day, President Trump speaks to a gathering of like-minded conservatives, met for a Social Media Summit. Dictator Don railed against Facebook, Google, and Twitter, for “discriminating against conservatives.”
Then he tried to redefine the “free speech” portion of the First Amendment. As Politico notes:
Rather than defining free speech in positive terms, Trump
explained what free speech isn’t. “To me free speech is not when you see
something good and then you purposefully write bad,” Trump said. “To me that’s very
dangerous speech and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech.”
Fox News, praising Trump?
Free speech.
Saturday Night Live performing skits mocking the president? That makes Donald J. Trump angry.
Not free speech.
This SNL skit is from later in the year.
POSTSCRIPT: The U.S. Coast Guard releases
dramatic footage of crewman leaping aboard a narco-submarine, busting open the
hatch, and intercepting a shipment of 17,000 pounds of cocaine.
The cargo has an estimated street value of $232 million. This brings to 14 the
number of drug-smuggling subs stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard along the coasts
of Mexico, Central America, and South America, from May to July of this year,
carrying a combined 39,000 pounds of cocaine.
Clearly, the drug cartels are not going to be daunted by the
Great Wall of Trump. (See: 7/10/19.)
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