Trump slams ‘corrupt’ media, Big Tech

Democratic strategist Robert Patillo and Republican strategist Amanda Makki react.

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  • Trump said world leaders complained to him about the election results — but most of them have already congratulated Biden

    Even world leaders who have previously allied with Trump — including UK's Boris Johnson and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu — have congratulated Biden.

  • Body of missing Instagram influencer Alexis Sharkey found on Texas road

    There were no visible wounds to the body and a cause of death hadn't yet been determined for the 26-year-old, police said.

  • Chuck Grassley returns to Senate after COVID-19 infection, calls for 'long overdue relief legislation'

    Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has returned to his Washington office two weeks after he tested positive for COVID-19, his team announced Monday.While Grassley wasn't the first lawmaker to contract the virus, many people were concerned about the diagnosis because the senator is 87. It turned out, however, that he remained asymptomatic throughout the course of his infection and was able to keep working remotely.Still, Grassley didn't let his fortunate situation reshape his stance on the severity of the pandemic. In a statement, he noted that the disease "affects people differently" and "more than a thousand Americans are dying every day and many more are hospitalized." So, Grassley said, he'll "continue to wear a mask and practice social distancing."He also repeated his previous calls for Congress to pass a "long overdue," bipartisan relief bill to "help families, businesses, and communities get through this crisis." Tim O'Donnell> Grassley, 87, is back at the Senate today after testing positive for Covid-19. His office says he was asymptomatic the entire time. pic.twitter.com/qJImIJl8ZC> > -- Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) November 30, 2020More stories from theweek.com Americans are choosing death over deprivation How camp explains Trump Biden's favorability rating jumped 6 points since the election, is already higher than Trump ever hit

  • Thousands flee erupting Indonesian volcano

    Indonesia has nearly 130 active volcanoes, more than any other country, and while many show high levels of activity it can be weeks or even months before an eruption. Raditya Jati, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement that the eruption from the Mt. Ile Lewotolok volcano had caused panic among those living nearby. Muhammad Ilham, a 17-year-old who witnessed the eruption, told Reuters that resident nearby were "panicked and they're still looking for refuge and in need of money right now". Indonesia's Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Centre said on its website that the area near the volcano is likely to be inundated with "hot clouds, lava stream, lava avalanche, and poisonous gas".

  • More than 100 civilians dead in 'gruesome' Nigeria attack blamed on Islamic jihadists

    A weekend attack on farm workers in northeast Nigeria blamed on jihadists left at least 110 dead, the UN humanitarian coordinator in the country said on Sunday, the deadliest attack on civilians this year. The attack, in a state gripped by a jihadist insurgency for more than 10 years, took place the same day as long-delayed local elections in the state. "I am outraged and horrified by the gruesome attack against civilians carried out by non-state armed groups in villages near Borno State capital Maiduguri," Edward Kallon said in a statement. "At least 110 civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded in this attack," he added. Some locals blamed the attack on Boko Haram fighters, but Bulama Bukarti, an analyst with the Tony Blair Institute, said rival group the IS-affiliated Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) were more active in the area. "ISWAP is the likely culprit," he tweeted. Kallon, in his statement, said: "The incident is the most violent direct attack against innocent civilians this year. "I call for the perpetrators of this heinous and senseless act to be brought to justice," he added. The violence centred on the village of Koshobe near the Borno state capital Maiduguri, with assailants targeting farm workers harvesting rice fields. One pro-government anti-jihadist militia said the assailants tied up the labourers and slit their throats. Kallon said the assailants - "armed men on motorcycles" - also targeted other communities in the area. "Rural communities in Borno State are facing untold hardships," he added, calling for more to be done to protect them and to head off what he said was a looming food crisis there. Borno Governor Babaganan Umara Zulum attended the burial Sunday in the nearby village of Zabarmari of 43 bodies recovered on Saturday, saying the toll could rise after search operations resumed. The victims included dozens of labourers from Sokoto state in northwestern Nigeria, roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away, who had travelled to the northeast to find work, it said. Six were wounded in the attack and eight remained missing as of Saturday. Kallon, citing "reports that several women may have been kidnapped", called for their immediate release. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attack on Saturday, saying: "The entire country has been wounded by these senseless killings." Neither the president's statement nor Sunday's from the UN mentioned either Boko Haram or rival group ISWAP by name. But both groups have been active in Borno State, their attacks having forced the postponement of locations in Borno State, which finally took place Saturday.

  • Merkel: Challenge with China is finding right balance between values and interests

    Europe must stand up for its values in its dealings with China, but given the country's sheer population and economic importance, there will always be a trade-off between the EU's values and its interests, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. "We must define our own European interests, and this also includes common ground (with China) on foreign policy, on economic policy and digital policy and many more," she said.

  • Trump Lawyer Says Krebs Should Be ‘Taken Out at Dawn and Shot’ for Defending Election

    Trump campaign lawyer Joe diGenova declared Monday that the Trump administration's former cybersecurity chief deserves to be put to death for claiming that the presidential election was the “most secure” in the country's history.President Trump fired Chris Krebs, his head of cybersecurity, earlier this month after Krebs disputed Trump's claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him. Krebs found himself at odds with the president after he called the election the “most secure in United States history.”“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,” diGenova, who is also a former U.S. Attorney, said during an appearance on the Howie Carr show, broadcast on Newsmax, in comments first reported by The Bulwark.Before he was fired by Trump in a tweet, Krebs had served as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security since November, 2018.In his tweet announcing Krebs's termination, Trump called his former cybersecurity chief's assessment of the election's security "highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud - including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, 'glitches' in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more."Krebs appeared on CBS News' "60 Minutes" on Sunday and doubled down on his defense of the election's integrity."There is no foreign power that is flipping votes. There's no domestic actor flipping votes. I did it right. We did it right. This was a secure election," Krebs said in the interview.The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on diGenova's remarks.The Trump legal team has failed to produce evidence of fraud widespread enough to change the election outcome despite claiming such fraud occurred, and many of the campaign's legal challenges to the election results in swing states won by Joe Biden have already fallen flat. Nevertheless, DiGenova claimed as recently as last week that the level of election fraud and deception that took place in Pennsylvania is “truly staggering.”

  • Kremlin-Funded TV Airs Mind-Numbingly Racist Blackface Attack on Obama

    The news that former Vice President Joe Biden would become the next president of the United States was met in Russia with grim resignation, bordering on despair. Experts on Russian state television have described Biden’s presidency as “Obama’s third term” and predicted a slew of new sanctions dreaded by the Kremlin. This anticipation revived the wave of racist attacks against former President Barack Obama, which were commonplace during his administration.Overt racism in Russian state media is far from uncommon but nonetheless continues to be shocking. Tigran Keosayan—the husband of Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-funded RT and Sputnik—took racist mockery to new lows on his program Mezhdunarodnaya Pilorama (“International Sawmill”). Keosayan described Barack Obama as “the dark page of American history,” while introducing a highly offensive sketch by an actress in blackface impersonating the former president, which was first reported by the Moscow Times.The purported portrayal of Obama was tasteless and crude, with the actress in a bandana gesticulating as a rapper and describing the former president as a “chocolate bunny.” The show, which aired on NTV—a network funded by state-owned gas company Gazprom, mocked “Black Lives Matter” and claimed that none of Obama’s relatives know how to write. The sketch concluded with a recommendation that rather than read Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, viewers should opt for “reading the label on the bathroom air freshener.”Facing worldwide condemnation for the latest racist episode, Margarita Simonyan—heralded as one of the most influential women in news media—attempted to backpedal, using her husband’s Armenian ethnicity as some kind of an excuse for his indefensible racism. She described the offensive sketch as a “parody of Obama” and disingenuously claimed, “As someone who is part of an ethnic minority in Russia, Tigran regularly makes fun, on the air, of his large 'ethnic' nose and his belonging to a 'Black' community (look it up if you don't know which ethnicities are referred to as 'Black' in Russia).”Despite Simonyan’s clumsy excuses, her husband is not the only one who considers himself somehow entitled to mock Black Americans. In June, RT’s editor-in-chief shared a despicably racist article from the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which made references to “muscular criminal Negroes,” described “twerking” as the “national Negro dance,” recommended the use of amphetamines, and encouraged violence and death.Russian state media outlets have long expressed their desire for civil unrest in the United States. The author of the article, Dmitry Steshin, urged, “Beat the whites until they turn Black.” Simonyan shared the article, describing it as a piece of “good advice from an international journalist to the negroes of Minnesota and the United States.”Simonyan’s husband followed up the obscene sketch on his program with a ludicrous assertion: “There is no racism in Russia.” It was no more believable than the notorious Soviet claim, “There is no sex in the USSR.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • California governor warns new stay-at-home order likely as COVID-19 hospitalizations rise

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) warned on Monday that if the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations continues to quickly rise, projections show the state's intensive care units could reach capacity by mid-December.Because of the risk of overwhelming parts of the state's health care system, Newsom said, he may soon have to impose a "more dramatic" and "arguably drastic" stay-at-home order for certain areas, so California can get its coronavirus numbers back down. The state, he said, will not "just sit back" and plans to "improve upon our existing efforts."There are 7,733 ICU beds in California, and 75 percent of them are now occupied. Newsom said 1,812 of the ICU beds are filled by coronavirus patients, the Los Angeles Times reports. As of Sunday, there were 7,787 coronavirus patients hospitalized in California, an increase of about 89 percent from two weeks ago. Over the last week, California has averaged 13,937 new cases per day, nearly a 75 percent increase from two weeks ago. More than 19,100 Californians have died from the coronavirus.Los Angeles County has placed new capacity limits at stores and banned most gatherings of people not from the same household, and this had to be done because "we are at the most difficult moment in the pandemic," L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. "We don't really have any choice but to use all the tools at hand to stop the surge. Until there is a vaccine, each of us needs to protect all of those around us — both those we know and those we don't. The virus is running rampant through almost every part of our county."More stories from theweek.com Americans are choosing death over deprivation How camp explains Trump Biden's favorability rating jumped 6 points since the election, is already higher than Trump ever hit

  • 'I don't see any way around it': Former Navy SEAL McRaven says retaliation for assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist all but certain

    "The Iranians are going to be in a position where they have to retaliate. I don't see any way around it," retired Adm. William McRaven said.

  • Leaked documents show China lied about Covid-19 case totals and mishandled pandemic

    In some instances, the number of deaths reported internally were more than double the figures released to the public

  • Trump headed to Georgia as turnout driver, but also a threat

    Some establishment Republicans are sounding alarms that President Donald Trump’s conspiratorial denials of his own defeat could threaten the party’s ability to win a Senate majority and counter President-elect Joe Biden’s administration. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who face strong Democratic challengers in Jan. 5 runoffs that will determine which party controls the Senate at the outset of Biden’s presidency. Republicans acknowledge Trump as the GOP’s biggest turnout driver, including in Georgia, where Biden won by fewer than 13,000 votes out of about 5 million cast.

  • Nike, Coca-Cola, Apple among Companies Lobbying against Uyghur Forced Labor Bill

    Multinational corporations including Nike and Coca-Cola are lobbying to water down legislation that would ban products made with forced labor in China's Xinjiang province, the New York Times reported on Sunday.China has attempted to cement state power over millions of Muslim citizens in Xinjiang, mostly Uyghur Muslims along with Kazakhs and other minorities. The ruling Communist Party has placed Uyghurs in so-called reeducation camps that attempt to erase their attachment to Islam, and has also embarked on a campaign of forced sterilization of Uyghur women.Numerous global supply chains are based in Xinjiang, including for cotton and coal, and China has employed forced Uyghur labor for various factories. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the House 406-3 in September and is currently under consideration in the Senate, would ban imports of good from Xinjiang unless U.S. customs officials could verify that the goods were not produced using forced labor.However, multinational companies are lobbying against the legislation, saying that while they do not support use of forced labor, the bill could have a detrimental impact on their supply chains. Along with Nike and Coca-Cola, tech giant Apple is also pushing to weaken some restrictions, the Washington Post reported last week.Coca-Cola "strictly prohibits any type of forced labor in our supply chain" and employs third-party auditors to enforce the policy, the company said in a statement to the Times. Nike said it "did not lobby against" the legislation but had "constructive discussions" with congressional aides on keeping its supply chain free of forced labor.Pro-business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have also joined the lobbying efforts.A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in March of this year concluded that at least 80,000 Uyghurs have been sent away from their homes to labor in factories in other parts of China.

  • ‘They’ll freeze them out’: Democrats fear Senate Republicans will block Biden’s judges

    McConnell could stymie the president-elect's ability to get his judicial nominations confirmed.

  • North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have already received an unapproved coronavirus vaccine

    Japanese intelligence officials told a US expert that Kim Jong Un received a trial COVID-19 vaccine from China within the last few weeks.

  • Report: Trump has raised more than $150 million since Election Day

    Since Election Day, President Trump's political operation has raised more than $150 million, with much of the money coming from small-time donors who tend to get fired up when they believe Trump is under attack, people with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post. In the wake of the election, the Trump campaign has sent roughly 500 pitches to donors, the Post reports, with the messages including demands to end voter fraud and a plea from Vice President Mike Pence to join the "Election Defense Task Force." The Trump campaign's website states that the Official Election Defense Fund is soliciting the money, but this account doesn't exist, the Post says, and the fundraising requests are actually coming from the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee benefiting the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee.As of Nov. 18, a third entity is also receiving money from the joint fundraising committee: Save America, Trump's new leadership PAC. In the fine print of the most recent fundraising letters, it says 75 percent of every contribution will go to Save America, with the remaining 25 percent going to help with the RNC's operating expenses. Trump set up Save America in early November, and will be able to tap into its funds when he is out of office, the Post reports. There aren't many limitations as to how leadership PAC money can be spent, and Trump could use it for events at his properties or to pay for travel and personal expenses, the Post says.The Trump machine is raising more money now than ever before — the Trump Make America Great Again Committee's previous best month was September, when it brought in $81 million — and that's too much for some GOP donors, like Dan Eberhart. "Trump is making hay while the sun is shining," Eberhart told the Post. "He's taking advantage of all the free media coverage to pay off his campaign debt and fill his coffers for whatever comes next. I would rather give to Romney 2012 than Trump 2020 at this point."More stories from theweek.com Americans are choosing death over deprivation How camp explains Trump Biden's favorability rating jumped 6 points since the election, is already higher than Trump ever hit

  • Switzerland halves new infections without national lockdown as pubs and restaurants stay open

    Switzerland is emerging as a model for how the coronavirus can be contained without a national lockdown, after daily new infections halved since the start of November despite pubs, restaurants, gyms and sports remaining open in much of the country. The figures were hailed as a triumph for the “Swiss special way” by Swiss government doctors last week, and will be seen as evidence that regional tiers can work in the UK. Rather than ordering a general lockdown, Switzerland allowed regions to decide their own measures and only the worst-hit imposed tough restrictions. But critics have charged that the success came at too high a price, after the country experienced some of the highest death rates in Europe. Switzerland has been described as the “new Sweden” after it refused to follow the UK and other countries into a second lockdown this month. The Swiss government imposed only minimal restrictions at a national level, including a limit of ten on private gatherings, an 11pm curfew for restaurants and the compulsory use of facemasks in crowded areas.

  • Thai pro-democracy protesters rally outside army base

    Thailand’s indefatigable pro-democracy activists took to Bangkok's streets again Sunday, this time to protest the army as they push forward with their campaign for sweeping reforms, including to the nation's monarchy. Around 800 protesters marched to the base of the 11th Infantry Regiment, which is closely associated with the country’s royal palace. An advance group of protesters had already pulled away two decrepit buses that had been used to block the entrance to the base and removed strands of razor wire.

  • South Dakota's governor encouraged people to go shopping the same day the state reported its highest single-day COVID-19 death total

    Noem, a Republican, has refused calls to issue a mask mandate, disputing their effectiveness even as cases in South Dakota surge.

  • Biden names top economic advisers as Arizona, Wisconsin certify vote results

    U.S. President-elect Joe Biden named several women to his top economic policy team on Monday, including former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen as Treasury secretary nominee, setting the stage for diversity and a focus on recovery from the pandemic. The advisers, several of whom would need to be approved by the U.S. Senate, come from liberal research organizations and worked in previous Democratic administrations. "This team looks like America and brings seriousness of purpose, the highest degree of competency, and unwavering belief in the promise of America," Biden said in a statement.