Ed Morrissey:
The Republican presidential campaign isn’t the only one afflicted by fumbles and unforced errors. Seddique Mateen, the father of the terrorist who killed 49 people at an Orlando dance club in June, got a plum spot behind the podium for Hillary Clinton’s speech two days ago. After showing up in the video, media sources recognized the one-time fringe candidate for the presidency of Afghanistan, who gave Hillary his endorsement in on-air interviews.
For some reason, it took Team Hillary more than a few minutes to issue a complete disavowal,giving Donald Trump an opening to slam Hillary for his support. At first, all they would say was that it was an open event, taking hours to get around to the full IMF statement:
Earlier in the day, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump called on Clinton to denounce his presence at the campaign stop. “[S]he did not disavow,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “If that were me, this would be a headline all over the world about Trump. But she did not, as I understand it, disavow this man. He’s got some pretty harsh views.”
Clinton’s campaign spokesperson responded hours later, saying, “[S]he disagrees with his views and disavows his support.”
Clinton had previously put out a statement calling the rally an “open-door event for the public,” and adding that, “This individual wasn’t invited as a guest and the campaign was unaware of his attendance until after the event.”
I’m reminded of Casey Stengel’s lament as manager of the New York Mets during their first season as an expansion club: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Glenn Reynolds has another baseball analogy in mind, but reaches the same conclusion in his column at USA Today:
After the second game of the 1919 World Series, where the Chicago White Sox threw games in the infamous “Black Sox” scandal, sports writer Ring Lardner walked into the White Sox dressing room derisively singing, “I’m forever blowing ballgames.” Watching them give less than their all on the field, he had concluded that rumors about the series being fixed were true.
I’ve kind of felt the same way watching Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump run for president. Each campaign is making the kind of unforced errors that, if you saw a ballplayer making them on the field, would lead you to conclude that the fix is in. …
Well, it’s not like Seddique Mateen was the shooter. As Josh Marshall noted on Twitter, we don’t execute parents of terrorists. On the other hand, just imagine the media reaction if, say, Trump had spoken at a rally with the parents of white-supremacist shooter Dylann Roof seated behind him. Why should this be different?
And while Seddique Mateen didn’t kill anybody, he’s kind of a weird guy for a candidate to associate with. Though he has condemned what his son did as an act of a terrorist, he also has praised the Taliban and claimed to be president of Afghanistan, has condemned homosexuality and even said that Pulse, the gay nightclub where his son gunned down 49 people, was partly to blame for the shootings. And yet, there he was, sitting behind Clinton and clearly visible to TV cameras.
The truth is that neither one of these candidates would have stood a chance in a general election against anyone else but each other.
This man raised the killer with words like, ”God hates all homosexuals. They are all worthy of death. God will punish all homosexuals with death.”
So, after his son’s actions why is this parent of a dead man not bereft?
Because, for him, his faith is such that he really believes his son is not in a paradise for being pleasing to their god.
And in that paradise his son is enjoying gluttony, constant wine drinking, partying with tons of sex objects, some female, and as many boys as he desires.
Hillary couldn’t vet one out of her rally, but is going to vet 50 thousand of them…ya right. Have they found this POS daughter in law yet?
Those seats right behind the speaker, constantly in the camera shot, are not first come, first serve. They are carefully orchestrated for just the right combination of genders and ethnicity, not to mention enthusiasm.
It is impossible to believe Mateen was there by accident or unknown. Hillary must assume that, no matter what, she has the LGBT (XYZ123) vote, so she is pandering hard for the Muslim vote.
This SHOULD (though it probably doesn’t) insult both groups. First, the Democrats have chosen radical Muslims over the safety and security of gays. Second, Hillary assumes most Muslims will be impressed with the father of a radical Islamic homophobic terrorist murderer, who is pretty damned radical himself. If we believe what we are LED to believe, most peace-loving Muslims will find this repugnant.
Expect an event focused on love and unity with the gay community to follow shortly.
The media doesn’t have to create a premise to make THIS disgusting. But, they will bury it.
@Bill: Mark Foley sitting behind Trump—is Trump courting the NAMBLA vote?
See how that works Bill?
@Nanny G:
Nanny that anti gay stuff sounds a lot like the religious right who are supporting Trump. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/donald-trump-court-anti-lgbt-hate-groups-prophets-and-televangelists
Nanny and Bill any of your fav TV stars listed here????
Donald Trump To Court Anti-LGBT Hate Groups, ‘Prophets’ And Televangelists
SUBMITTED BY Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 5/24/2016 3:10 pm
Next month, Donald Trump will host a meeting with some of the country’s most radical anti-LGBT and anti-choice leaders in New York City.
Trump, who has already recruited a variety of far-right activists and conspiracy theorists to his campaign, is set to take part in a convening organized by Ben Carson, a former rival turned campaign surrogate, aimed at bringing reluctant Religious Right leaders to his side.
According to a copy of the invitation to the event obtained by the National Review, Trump will be joined by Religious Right activists including Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Penny Nance, Jim Garlow, Rick Scarborough, Phil Burress, Ken Cuccinelli, Lila Rose, E.W Jackson, Harry Jackson, Tim Wildmon, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and Cindy Jacobs.
The meeting will be cohosted by the Family Research Council, Vision America and AFA Action, the political arm of the American Family Association, three of the most vicious anti-LGBT hate groups in the country.
Trump has already pledged to use nominees to the Supreme Court to pave the way for the reversal of the landmark rulings on abortion rights and marriage equality and has vowed to defund Planned Parenthood, key priorities of right-wing activists.
Here is a brief introduction to some of the far-right extremists Trump will be meeting with next month.
Pat Robertson
Televangelist Pat Robertson has long track record of making derogatory and bizarre statements about LGBT people and others, including remarks that he would rather have the public not know about. For instance, Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network tried unsuccessfully to expunge the web of a video segment in which Robertson said that gay people secretly wear dangerous rings that cut the hands of the people they meet in order to spread HIV/AIDS:
Robertson also joined Jerry Falwell in blaming the 9/11 attacks on gay people, feminists and People For the American Way.
Cindy Jacobs
Self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs claims that she receives direct messages from God about assassination plots; terrorist cells and imminent attacks, such as 9/11; hurricanes; floods; wars; coups; and Native American-induced curses. She also claims to have the power of bringing the dead back to life.
But Jacobs may be best known for her claim that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell led to the mass death of birds in Arkansas.
Harry Jackson
During the fight over marriage equality in Maryland, Bishop Harry Jackson led a Religious Right rally by lambasting the demonic principalities that he claimed were bringing same-sex marriage into the state. “The Enemy wants it to be a legacy, or a seed that is planted in this generation that corrupts, perverts and pollutes generations to come,” he said of same-sex marriage.
It is no wonder that Jackson has also accused gay people of trying to “recruit your kids” and acting like Nazis.
He was also featured in an anti-gay film where he warned that the “homosexual agenda” is “one of those icebergs that if we don’t navigate around them correctly, will take us under.”
Rick Scarborough
Vision America head Rick Scarborough is an outspoken anti-LGBT activist who once suggested filing a “class action lawsuit” against homosexuality modeled after the successful litigation against tobacco companies.
While his lawsuit still hasn’t materialized, Scarborough continues to lambast LGBT people, declaring that HIV/AIDS is a form of divine punishment against gay people, whom he insists on calling “sodomites” and accusing LGBT people of leading their children “into an early grave called hell.” While railing against President Obama’s appointment of several gay ambassadors, he declared that it would be “perfectly just” if God allowed a nuclear attack to destroy America in response.
Scarborough is so passionate about his contempt for LGBT rights that he said that he is ready to burn to death, “if necessary,” to stop marriage equality:
Tony Perkins
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins likes to pass himself off as a mainstream conservative leader, but is in reality a far-right zealot who has attacked gay people as pawns of Satan and defended Uganda’s “kill-the-gays” legislation.
Prior to the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality ruling, Perkins frequently predicted that Americans would launch a revolution to block same-sex marriages, warning that advances in LGBT equality would lead to an anti-Christian holocaust and a rise in terrorism.
Perkins, like Trump, has engaged in all sorts of conspiracy theories, everything from birtherism to the belief that the government is behind “the promotion of same-sex relations” as a means of “population control.”
E.W. Jackson
Virginia-based pastor E.W. Jackson has compiled a long record of anti-LGBT and anti-Obama diatribes over the years.
Jackson, who in 2013 was the unsuccessful GOP nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, has said of gay people: “Their minds are perverted, they’re frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally and they see everything through the lens of homosexuality.” Gay people, Jackson said, are “spiritually darkened” and have caused God to stop blessing the U.S. military. It is no wonder that Jackson said at a press conference that he was ready to die to fight gay marriage.
Jackson has similarly attacked President Obama as a man “with an evil presence” who helped influence the Democratic Party to have “an agenda worthy of the Antichrist.”
Jim Garlow
California-based pastor Jim Garlow, as we’ve previously noted, has “claimed his prayers helped secure the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which ‘saved us from the bondage and enslavement that would come upon us if gay marriage actually passed in a state’; described the ‘radical homosexual agenda’ as a tool of Satan and ‘almost like an Antichrist spirit’; and warned that marriage equality will lead to America’s destruction, widespread persecution and even death.”
Lila Rose
Lila Rose of the anti-abortion group Live Action has gained widespread notoriety over her smear campaigns against Planned Parenthood, telling supporters that she wants to battle Satan and “take out Planned Parenthood,” while comparing herself to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malala Yousafzai.
Rose has said that abortions should be “done in the public square” until they can be banned.
James Dobson
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is one of the creators of the modern Religious Right movement. He has:
Threatened to leave the U.S. in protest of Obamacare.
Alleged that Obamacare will deprive the elderly of life-saving treatments.
Warned that the Harry Potter series is a hazard to children.
Predicted that gay marriage will destroy religious freedom, send pastors to prison, turn America into Nazi Germany and bring about God’s judgment.
Said that the U.S. could have a second civil war over gay marriage.
Insisted that bisexuality means “orgies.”
Claimed that the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Act would grant legal protections to pedophilia, necrophilia, incest and bestiality .
Blamed the Sandy Hook shooting on legal abortion and marriage equality.
@Bill:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/donald-trump-court-anti-lgbt-hate-groups-prophets-and-televangelists
And Bill still waiting for you to tell us of your most courageous life experiences, I gave mine when YOU asked, now let’s here about YOU
@Richard Wheeler: Was Foley sitting behind Trump? Is Foley a member of NAMBLA?
See how THAT works?
@john: You can wait as long as you want and sit on your thumb as you do; you don’t answer my questions, I don’t answer yours.
See how THAT works?
@Bill: Yes Bill, Foley was sitting directly behind Trump–like you he’s a proud Trumpeteer—Is he a member of NAMBLA? Don’t know, but he’s sure walked their walk.
well you DID sort of answer my question, but all you said was malarky about flying on the space shuttle.
The sad truth is you are an old embittered man who has done nothing in his life to make him happy
Your only enjoyment in life apparently comes from calling others silly names in an effort to promote your own self esteem
See how that works?
@Bill:
Bill seems to be thinking about me sitting on my thumb
Bill are you trying to make us think you are gay ?
I mean if you are I have no problem with that, but why try to make us think that ?
@Richard Wheeler: Coming to Hillary’s defense yet again. When you say you won’t vote for her, I am beginning to have flashbacks to, “I am not a crook.”
@another vet: I’m not defending HRC—Bill’s #3 was way over the top. Don’t you think?
I consider myself a Kennedy Dem and a Wordsmith FA’ ER. LOL.
@Richard Wheeler: Given Hillary’s truthfulness, if she claims they didn’t know anything about him being there, it is probably a lie.
@another vet: You think HRC ok’d his being there? To win Muslim votes? That’s crazy A.V.
Do you think Trump knew Foley was behind him? I certainly hope not.
@Richard Wheeler: He claims he was invited there because he is a member of the Democratic Party. Interesting bedfellows. Clinton claims he wasn’t specifically invited. He was rather close to her. I don’t know how they pick who gets to be close up to the VIP who’s speaking. I would assume there is some sort of vetting for security reasons but perhaps not. If he was vetted, then her campaign knew. If he wasn’t vetted, then they didn’t know. Again, I don’t trust anything that comes out of her mouth or that of her campaign.
http://www.wftv.com/news/local/clinton-campaign-father-of-pulse-shooter-wasnt-invited-to-kissimmee-rally/419979155
@Richard Wheeler: So, no NAMBLA supporter. Then I guess that’s set and match. Better luck next time.
@john: Yes, the answer is you are a verified liar and unless you provide supportive evidence, your statements are most likely (if history is any guide, and it is) lies.
@Richard Wheeler:
You think she WOULDN’T? THAT’S crazy. All the left tries to make us believe they think every Muslim but the one covered with a sheet on the floor is a peace loving victim of Republicans.
Or, is Hillary that stupid? Is her campaign staff that incompetent? Every person back there is thoroughly vetted, but they are more worried about someone holding up a Trump sign than a homophobic radical Muslim sitting back there.
@Bill: Foley might well be a supporter of NAMBLA–After all as a Republican Congressman he had a thing for young male pages. Did Trump vet him–why not?
The point here is why do we make a big deal about who attends Trump or Clinton rallies–it’s a free country and there are bad actors on both sides.
Like I said, I wouldn’t vote for either of these extremely flawed candidates–many millions feel as I do. What’s your excuse?
AV This is truly a PUSH
Do you hate HRC enough to vote for Trump? Why not write in someone you actually respect–novel idea.
@Richard Wheeler:
Richard, do you have any link to Foley actually having a sexual relationship with an underage page?
I recall (but it is a while back, so, perhaps you’ll re-educate me) that he asked young men out who were ages 18 and above.
(Or 16 and above, whatever was the legal age for consent.)
Anyway, everyone has the right to vote for whomsoever they wish, for whatever reason.
I knew Obama ’08 supporters who firmly believed that voting for him meant $100,000 in the pockets of EVERY black person in America!
Looks like Mr. Mateen is all in for Hillary.
And he HATES homosexuals with a passion!
On the other hand there are many new gay groups for Donald Trump.
Twinks for Trump has nice photos (if you’re interested.)
@Nanny G: As a Trumpeteer you continue to live in a fantasy world 270 66 MILLION How does he get there?
Twinks for Trump—precious
Exit ? Did you believe Trump when he said he didn’t know who David Duke was?
@Richard Wheeler: So, you feel Trump should ban gays fro his rallies? Do you hate all gays or just those that leave the liberal plantation?
@Bill: Ask RT if I hate gays–lol
My point was, let everyone of sane mind come to any Rally–doesn’t mean the candidate supports what they stand for. First Amendment
Did you believe Trump when he said he didn’t know who David Duke was?
@Richard Wheeler: So, you only hate gays that leave the liberal plantation. OK.
Yeah, probably Trump didn’t know who Duke is (he still IS, by the way). Duke has been out of the limelight for quite a while, as far as I know.
Do you believe Hillary didn’t know what “wiping” a hard drive meant? Or what sniper fire actually is? Or what a classified document looks like? Or the rules and regulations regarding the handling of State Department information? Or that one can have more than one email account on one device?
@Bill: You got the wrong guy–I’m not voting for Hillary.. What’s your excuse?
As mentioned, I’m voting for Humane Party candidate Clifton Roberts. He’s African American, gay, and would make a great POTUS.
Trump didn’t know Duke? Who you kidding Bill? Suppose you didn’t know him either? Out of the limelight you say. Funny.
@Richard Wheeler: You have some sort of proof Trump knew Duke? Now would be a great time to present it.
The accusation was that Duke endorsed Trump, which he didn’t. That alone should make you doubt the rest of the entire dialogue. The left lies about Trump because there is nothing good to say about Hillary. Do you think Hillary is a corrupt liar?
@Bill: @Bill: Anybody over 40 with a college education, and most with a grade school education know who David Duke is and what he has stood for over the years.
The Donald “I’m very smart you know. I went to Wharton.” would have had to live in a cave to not know Duke. Common sense Bill Actually Trump has mentioned Duke on many occasions. Never favorably. In 2000 he called him a “bigot, a racist, a problem.” I never said Duke endorsed Trump. He did say he was voting for Trump.
I think Hillary and Trump are both liars. What’s your excuse?
@Richard Wheeler: No, not necessarily. Trump’s a busy man and he may not have followed the Duke story. Or he forgot about his worthless soul.. not everyone obsesses on races to use it as a weapon at some point.
But, even Duke never advocated the murder of all gays… and certainly Foley hasn’t. But Mateen… he’s a different animal. And he was in Hillary’s sweet spot.
@Richard Wheeler:
Where did I say I was voting for Trump? The statement does however cast doubt on your claim that you won’t vote for her. I will give you eight more reasons why you claiming you won’t vote for her is hard to swallow:
1. You campaigned for Obama which makes you a Party loyalist and thus less likely to not back your party’s nominee than an ordinary voter.
2. You hate Trump.
3. You never had much to say about Trump until he threw in for the GOP nomination meaning you probably would have bashed the GOP nominee regardless of who it would have been.
4. You have failed to confront the Hillashrills who post here.
5. You have been a blind supporter, almost to the point of worship, of Obama and Hillary promises to be his third term. What more can you ask for?
6. Her positions on the issues are in lock step with yours.
7. Whenever there is a thread bashing Obama or Hillary, you try to change the subject usually, but not always, by focusing on Hillary’s opponent in this case it happens to be Trump.
8. You defend her by making excuses, this thread being but the latest example.
@another vet: I ask a simple question. You go off at me’ I NEVER said you were voting for Trump.
Let’s be clear. I am not voting for HRC though I believe she’ll beat Trump–don’t you?–I’ll write in Clifton Roberts whose positions are more in line with mine than HRC’S.
I’m a Dem and will support the down ticket–Trump candidacy will probably return The Senate to the Dems.–possibly The House as well
As I said I would have voted for Kasich or Rubio–easy winners over HRC.
Think you’d agree Trump is a self inflicted disaster for The Grand Old Party–see Dr John’s most recent post.
@Richard Wheeler:
You most certainly implied it with this:
She certainly has everyone on her side- the MSM, her machine, Obama’s machine, numerous billionaires, the DC elite, Hollywood, and numerous people who were pretending to be Republicans all these years only to endorse the antithesis of what the Republican Party is supposed to stand for in Hillary.
I think the biggest self inflicted disaster for the Republican Party is the Republican Party establishment. Trump never would have happened if they hadn’t turned their backs on their constituents. Trump could get creamed in this election and I would blame the party before him. First for getting in a position where someone like him could get the nod and second for them propping up Hillary. There is no reason why Trump can’t beat Hillary given the mood of the country but he seems hellbent on pissing it away. I am far more furious at the “Republicans” who endorsed her. Had they taken Cruz’s approach or endorsed Johnson it would be one thing. But not endorsing Hillary. They are on my permanent shitlist. Trump is but a blip on the radar screen and will be gone in four years if not sooner. The others will still be around however using the party as a venue for them to get rich and powerful all the while thumbing their noses at the rest of us. Unless of course Hillary fattens their pocket books with sweet deals in which case they will then become “Democrats”. Whores would be a better name.