Kamala Harris: Her life and career before she was VP | Watch (msn.com)
In the days leading up to the Jan. 20, 2021, inauguration of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, a piece of copypasta went viral on social media containing a frequent smear from the right against Democratic political figures. The piece accused Harris of having “Close Ties with Marxists, Communists, Maoists, and Socialists.”
One example of the copypasta began as follows (you can read the full text of the post at the end of this article):
As it floated around Facebook, copy and pasted from profile to profile, the piece and its origins became more convoluted. Different postings attributed it to various authors, some crediting a writer for the conservative blog RedState and others crediting a retired Marine Corps major general.
The post basically draws on “guilt by association,” a logical fallacy that ascribes a perceived negative behavior to a person simply by associating them with others. In this case, the piece lists a number of Kamala Harris’ personal and professional associations and claims those associations have “ties” to communism, with the unstated assumption that Harris herself must be a communist, since all those other people are.
This assumption isn’t true — Harris is a Democrat, an American political party that is left-of-center but overall more conservative than many left-wing parties abroad. She is not viewed by American progressives as being as far to the left as they are, and in fact was disparagingly called a “cop” by some on the left who found her career as a prosecutor disagreeable.
In November 2020, Harris posted a tweet about equality versus equity that some Republicans claimed was “Marxist” in its message. The tweet contained a video in which Harris acknowledged that inequality built into the system causes some people to start out at a disadvantage, and cites the need to level the playing field.
In all, Harris has sometimes been seen as not far left enough by progressives and too far left by those on the right. As a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, however, Harris wasn’t viewed as being among the more progressive candidates, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts.
Despite its origins and text being muddled by repeatedly being copied and pasted around Facebook, it appears the source of the text was Trevor Loudon, a contributor for the Epoch Times. As we reported in the past:
“The Epoch Times was founded by Chinese-American adherents to a spiritual movement and meditation practice known as Falun Gong. That news outlet has in recent years, as reported by BuzzFeed News and NBC News, transformed into a misinformation-laden, pro-Trump mouthpiece.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit organization that tracks extremist ideology, described Loudon as a “far right conspiracy theorist” who is “known for seeing communist infiltrators everywhere and claims the political left are working with so-called Islamists to overthrow the United States.”
This copypasta doubtlessly circulated on social media because of the upcoming inauguration, but Loudon’s piece was originally published on Oct. 14, 2020. It was reposted about two weeks later to the website of the political action committee Combat Veterans for Congress.
The copypasta covers (in the most sensational of terms) various known facts about Harris’ parents. They met while students at University of California, Berkeley, and they were involved in the Afro American Association, a student group whose members founded the Black Panther movement.
It also alleges that Harris’ father Donald Harris, a Stanford economics professor from whom Kamala Harris is estranged, is a Marxist, which appears to be spun up from a 1976 entry in the Stanford Daily student newspaper. It also draws on the fact that Harris dated San Francisco Mayor and California State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in the 1990s, making the unfounded claim that Brown is “widely regarded as one of the Chinese Communist Party’s best friends in the San Francisco Bay area.”
The copypasta meme also makes winding suppositions about the “Marxist ties” of other people in Harris’ circle, such as a community activist she worked with as San Francisco’s district attorney and her sister Maya, but offers no proof beyond vague statements and assumptions about friends of friends. For example, the copypasta states Maya Harris went to college with someone who was a campus “Marxist-Leninist” affiliated with a group that was “pro-Chinese Communist.”
Since the claim about him has been made by various publications, we sent Donald Harris an email to ask how he would describe his political ideology, but didn’t receive a response in time for publication. We also found no evidence for the assertion that Brown, who is retired, has a relationship of any sort with the Chinese government.
Nevertheless, we note that despite Joseph McCarthy-like rhetoric, Marxism is an economic and political ideology that some farther left on the political spectrum ascribe to. We also note that the political beliefs of people in Vice President-elect Harris’ circle don’t automatically constitute hers.
For reference, the full text of the copypasta read as follows in one example:
Here is a timely editorial that exposes the hidden background of Kamala Harris from the Combat Veterans for Congress Political Action Committee that is posted here with permission of the author. CVFC PAC supports the election of US military combat veterans to the US Senate and House of Representatives. The editorial begins:
Kamala Harris’ father was an avowed Marxist professor in the Economics Department at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. Both of Harris’ parents were active in the Berkeley based Afro- American Association; Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were the heroes of the Afro-American Association.
The group’s leader, Donald Warden (aka Khalid al-Mansour), mentored two young Afro-American Association members, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale; they created the Maoist inspired Black Panther Party which gained strong support from Communist China; the Black Panther Party served as the model for creation of the Black Lives Matter Marxist organization Khalid al-Mansour subsequently went on to arrange financing and facilitated for Barack Hussein Obama to be accepted as a student to matriculate at Harvard Law School.
Following her graduation from college, Harris returned to California and subsequently became the mistress of the 60-year-old married Speaker of the California Assembly, Willie Brown, Jr. Brown’s political campaigns were supported and funded by Dr. Carlton Goodlett, the owner of The Sun Reporter and several other pro-Communist newspapers. Brown was elected as Mayor of San Francisco, and strongly endorsed Harris’ Marxist political philosophy; he guided Harris’ political rise in California politics, leading to her election as California’s Attorney General. Willie Brown, Jr. was a well-known long-time Communist sympathizer. Willie Brown, Jr. was initially elected to public office with the substantial help of the Communist Party USA. Today, Willie Brown is widely regarded as one of the Chinese Communist Party’s best friends in the San Francisco Bay Area.
While serving as San Francisco District Attorney, Kamala Harris mentored a young San Francisco Radical Maoist activist, Lateefah Simon, who was a member of the STORM Revolutionary Movement; Simon currently chairs the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board. Simon has always been close friends with the founder of Black Lives Matter Marxist Domestic Terrorists, Alicia Garza, as well as STORM member and avowed Communist, Van Jones. Harris has been openly and aggressively supporting Black Lives Matter Marxists; Kamala Harris is still closely associated with Maoist Lateefah Simon and Marxist Alicia Garza.
Kamala Harris’s sister Maya Harris was a student activist at Stanford University. She was a closely associated with Steve Phillips, one of the leading Marxist-Leninists on campus and a long-time affiliate with the League of Revolutionary Struggle, a pro-Chinese Communist group. Phillips came out of the Left, and in college he studied Marx, Mao, and Lenin, and maintained close associations with fellow Communists. Phillips married into the multi billion dollar Sandler family of the Golden West Savings and Loan fortune. He funded many leftist political campaigns, and the voter registration drives in the Southern and South Western states in order to help his friend, Barack Hussein Obama, defeat Hillary Clinton. Phillips has been a major financial sponsor for Kamala Harris’s political campaigns for various California elective offices.
Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff works for the law firm DLA Piper, which “boasts nearly 30 years of experience in Communist China with over 140 lawyers dedicated to its ‘Communist China Investment Services’ branch. He was just appointed to Professor at Yale to school future lawyers in the fine points of Communism. When she was elected to the US Senate, Kamala Harris appointed a Pro-Communist Senate Chief of Staff, Karine Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre was active with the New York-based Haiti Support Network. The organization worked closely with the pro-Communist China/Communist North Korea Workers World Party and supported Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the far-left Communist former president of Haiti and the radical Lavalas movement.
Fortunately for Harris, but potentially disastrous for the Republic, elected office holders are not subject to the security clearance process. If the FBI did a Background Investigation on Kamala Harris, she never would have passed, because of her 40-year close ties with Marxists, Communists, Maoists, and Communist China. Harris would never have been approved for acceptance to any of the 5 Military Service Academies, been appointed to a US Government Sub-Cabinet position, or would have been approved to fill a sensitive position for a high security defense contractor. Yet, since Joe Biden was elected, Harris could be a heartbeat away from being President.
The US constitutional Republic is being threatened by the People’s Republic of Communist China (PPC) externally, and by of their very active espionage operations within the United States. The People’s Republic of Communist China (PPC), with 1.4 billion people, is governed by the 90 million member Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that has been working with Russia to destroy the US Constitutional Republic for over 70 years.
The CCP operates a massive global intelligence network through its Ministry of State Security. The CCP operates a vast intelligence network in the U.S as well. It is made up, not merely of intelligence operatives working for the Ministry of State Security, but it is also made up of a myriad of business and industry officials, Chinese scholar associations, and 370,000 Chinese students currently attending American universities. It also operates the Confucius Institute indoctrination and intelligence gathering centers in the US on 67 University campuses and in seventeen K-12 Public School Districts. The Confucius Centers are staffed by Communist Chinese intelligence operatives. Refer to this.
Kamala Harris is now involved with the Biden Family Business, and is supporting Joe Biden, who has worked closely with Communist China for 12 years. Joe’s son, Hunter Biden, is the point of contact for developing the off-shore Biden Family Businesses in Ukraine, Russia, Communist China, Iraq, Iran, etc. Hunter was provided with a $5 million non-recourse loan for the Biden Family Business to form a partnership with the PPC; that loan was subsequently forgiven by Communist China for one dollar.
Hunter Biden was given $1.5 billion for the Biden Family Business, to strategically purchase interests in companies in the US Military Industrial Complex, whose technologies would enhance and improve Communist China’s defense industry. Hunter Biden was also instructed to try to take control of US companies involved in sourcing rare earth minerals in the United States. Hunter also received $3.5 Million from the wife of the Mayor of Moscow for some carefully hidden reason.
The Peoples Republic of Communist China has a military of two million men, including the world’s largest Navy. The United States does not have enough ships and munitions to defeat China’s Navy, absent the use of nuclear weapons. There is a famous book, Unrestricted Warfare, written in 1999 by two People’s Liberation Army colonels. It argues that war between the PRC and the U.S. is inevitable, and that when it occurs China must be prepared to use whatever means are necessary to achieve victory Refer to this. If the American voters read the background information (in Trevor Loudon’s article) on Kamala Harris, they would never support her election as Vice President of the United States. Joe Biden is suffering from the early onset of dementia and will continue to decline in cerebral awareness; he will never be able to fill out a four-year term of office. Since Biden was elected, the Socialists, Marxists, and Communist who control Kamala Harris, are planning to enact provisions of the 25th Amendment, in order to remove Joe Biden from office, so Harris can become the first Communist President of the United States.
Since Biden was elected, because Biden would not be up to it, Kamala Harris would lead the effort to appoint very dangerous anti-American Leftist, Communist, Socialists, and Marxists to fill highly sensitive positions in the Washington Deep State Bureaucracy. She would fill all appointive positions in the US Intelligence Agencies, in the Department of Homeland Security, in the Department of Defense, in The Justice Department, the Department of State, the FBI, the CIA, most cabinet positions, the National Security Council, and in the White House Staff.
American voters must be alert their fellow Americans that Kamala Harris is a very serious National Security threat to the very survival of the US Constitutional Republic; she has been a fellow traveler of Marxists, Communists, Maoists, Socialists, Progressives, and Chinese Communists for over 35 years. President Trump had much more background information on Kamala Harris than we presented here, and he was correct, when he accused Kamala Harris of being a Communist subverter.
President Obama’s Marxist-Leninist Economics: Fact And Fiction (forbes.com)
BUT you’ve known about Billionaire GEORGE SOROS FUNDING the MARXIST Biden Regime… So please don’t tell me no one saw this Commie Bitch coming, and “planted” her in Senile Joe’s place, illegally planted I might add. The Voters elected Joe in the Primary, not Commie-Kam as she didn’t win one primary. If this ditz is the best the Dems have to offer, they need to shut down their party!
Because They are absolutely retarded.
Reading the Constitution Stephen Breyer – Search Videos (bing.com)
WeThePeople
Humanity
OurFreedoms
Peace 
Truth 
TheConstitution 
WeDeserveBetter!!!
Obama Lacks Understanding of the Constitution – Search (bing.com)
The First Amendment (1A) of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the freedoms of speech and the press. It protects your right to express ideas and opinions freely without government interference12.
The Second Amendment (2A) of the United States Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights1.
While the Second Amendment itself does not explicitly protect the First Amendment (1A) rights, some argue that an armed populace can serve as a check against government tyranny, thereby indirectly supporting the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, such as freedom of speech, religion, and assembly2.
KAMALA SAID HER VALUES HAVE NOT CHANGED AND ALL THESE ITEMS SHE HAS BEEN FOR ALL ALONG ARE STILL THE SAME. SO EVIDENTLY BIDENS DEMENTIA MUST HAD BEEN CONTAGIOUS!
She absolutely should be disqualified. Anyone that wants to be a Marxist Rep should get the hell out of the country and go where they have Marxism. Our Constitution won’t stand for it. Our system did not anticipate the current situation, including the degree of corruption of individuals, nor the number of billionaires who are capable of corrupting individuals, nor the circumstances, where corrupting individuals would not be caught and stopped by consequences.
She hasn’t been a “fit’ for America for as long as she’s been VP; she will definitely not be a fit for President. Our enemies will laugh at us harder than they do with Biden. She supports Marxism. People come here to escape the tyranny and lack freedoms she proposes. She will cackle at us louder than enemies will,
Don’t forget her unrealized capital gains tax ( if your home has increased in value, even if you’re not selling, will be taxed on the increase) and also her plan to take your intellectual property i.e. your patents, should she feel the need. She’s horrible. I could go on….. Vote for Restoration of Our Nation in Decline; for the Man for this season of American history. Vote for Donald J. Trump! He will seal the border, deport in order of our needs, Drill, Baby, Drill, Keystone, Anwar, restore the Trump Taco Cuts.Things Kamala Harris supports: -Abolishing ICE -Decriminalizing illegal crossings -Defunding the police -Mandatory gun buybacks (confiscations) -Nationalizing energy -Banning fracking -Banning offshore drilling -Abolishing the filibuster -Supporting the GND -Ending private health insurance -Free healthcare for all including illegals -Mass amnesty for illegals -Ending the death penalty -Abolishing prisons -Ending cash bail -Ending mandatory minimum sentences -Imposing carbon tax -Child gender reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy
Things Trump supports: rape victims forced to carry the child to term, women dying from ectopic pregnancies, tracking women’s pregnancies and their periods, taking money from regular folks and handing it to the rich, and elimination of birth control, the VA, and Social Security
What do all these things have in common?
Biden’s Complete and Utter Destruction of America.
There are certainly a variety of perspectives on his presidency. Some critics argue that his policies have negatively impacted the economy, increased national debt, and mishandled issues like the border crisis12. Others believe that his administration has faced significant challenges and has made efforts to address issues such as climate change and healthcare3.
Learn more: 1heritage.org 2scalise.house.gov 3conventionofstates.com
4whitehouse.gov 5salon.com 6nbcnews.com
Some of the criticisms of President Biden’s foreign policy include the handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which many felt was chaotic and left the region unstable. There have also been concerns about his approach to China and Russia, with some arguing that it has been either too aggressive or not assertive enough.
On the other hand, supporters argue that his administration has worked to rebuild alliances and re-engage with international organizations, which they believe is crucial for global cooperation on issues like climate change and security.
The Arab American Dilemma: Is Harris Really The Lesser Of Two Evils? (msn.com)
What specific concerns do you have about Biden’s presidency?
Of course, you have video evidence & articles from reliable sources to prove your accusations, right? 
President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 into law on Aug. 16.
Bidens Inflation Reduction Act – Search Videos (bing.com)
The bill is a major accomplishment for Democrats who have been struggling for months to pass Biden’s ambitious social and climate policies, as well as his vision to raise taxes on the rich. The legislation includes large investments in making health care and prescription drugs more affordable, fighting climate change and taxing wealthy corporations.
Americans can expect to see the continuation of Affordable Care Act premium subsidies that lower the cost of health insurance from now until 2024 (they were due to expire at the end of 2022).
But savings from other provisions in the bill won’t kick in until the future. For example, efforts to lower drug prices, including caps on their costs for seniors, won’t take effect until 2025.
While its name claims it will tame soaring inflation, estimates show that the bill likely won’t do much to pull down the inflation rate. But it remains a significant piece of legislation that accomplishes some initiatives that have been mired in congressional debate for decades.
What’s in the Inflation Reduction Act
The Inflation Reduction Act is a slimmed-down version of the Build Back Better bill, which aimed to make historic investments in the nation’s social safety net. The new bill makes the largest investment in combating climate change in U.S. history, lowers the cost of prescription drugs and raises taxes on corporations.
Here are the big provisions:
- Creation of a 15% corporate minimum tax rate: Corporations with at least $1 billion in income will have a new tax rate of 15%. Taxes on individuals and households won’t be increased. Stock buybacks by corporations will face a 1% excise tax.
- Prescription drug price reform: One of the most significant provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act will allow Medicare to negotiate the price of certain prescription drugs, bringing down the price beneficiaries will pay for their medications. Medicare recipients will have a $2,000 cap on annual out-of-pocket prescription drug costs, starting in 2025.
- IRS tax enforcement: The IRS has been sounding the alarm for years about being underfunded and being unable to deliver on its duties. The bill invests $80 billion in the nation’s tax agency over the next 10 years.
- Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidy extension: Currently, medical insurance premiums under the ACA are subsidized by the federal government to lower premiums. These subsidies, which were scheduled to expire at the end of this year, will be extended through 2025. Approximately 3 million Americans could lose their health insurance if these subsidies weren’t extended, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
- Energy security and climate change investments: The bill includes numerous investments in climate protection, including tax credits for households to offset energy costs, investments in clean energy production and tax credits aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
The bill passed with all 50 Democratic votes in the Senate on Aug. 7. Democrats were able to secure two key votes, from Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), after the pair opposed earlier versions of the bill. Sinema, the last party holdout, expressed support for the bill after the carried-interest loophole provision was dropped.
The bill was passed in the Senate without Republican support under the reconciliation process. The House passed the bill 220-207 on Aug. 12.
Study Shows Bill Will Likely Have No Impact on Inflation
In a statement released after the Senate’s passage of the bill, Biden asserted that the legislation would bring inflation relief to Americans. But one early study shows that in reality, the Inflation Reduction Act likely won’t reduce prices at all.
According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), there’s low confidence the legislation will have any impact on inflation. PWBM is a nonpartisan, research-based organization at the University of Pennsylvania that creates economic analysis of public policy’s fiscal impact.
During an interview with CNN, Manchin said he “respectfully disagrees” with the study.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a federal agency that provides budget and economic information to Congress, the bill will barely make a dent on inflation in the near term—and could even nudge it upward.
The CBO estimates it will have a “negligible effect on inflation” in 2022, and in 2023 it will change inflation somewhere between 0.1 percentage point lower and 0.1 percentage point higher than it is currently.
Even if it won’t move the needle on inflation, the CBO also estimates the bill will decrease the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade. The federal government ran a deficit of $2.8 trillion in 2021, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center; the bill’s estimated deficit reduction will wipe out about 4% of that.
Though the bill may fall short of bringing immediate price relief to consumers, it’s monumental in other ways. According to The Wilderness Society, a nonprofit land conservation organization established in 1935, the Inflation Reduction Act is described as a “breakthrough” on climate policy.
Editors’ note: In the first version of this story, we said that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was senator for Nevada. She is senator for Arizona. We apologize for the error.
Why are those controlling President Biden using him to advance so much of a destructive agenda that it will likely end America as we know it?
If someone wished to destroy America, could he do anything more catastrophic than what we currently see and hear each day?
What would an existential enemy do that we have not already done to ourselves?
Here are 11 now familiar steps to civilizational destruction:
1. Wipe out a 2,000-mile border.
Allow 10 million foreign nationals to enter unlawfully. Have no audit of any; nullify all federal immigration laws. Let in toxic drugs that kill 100,000 Americans a year. Give free support to those millions who broke the law. Smear any objectors as racists and xenophobes.
2. Run up $35 trillion in national debt.
Keep adding $1 trillion to it each 100 days. Defame anyone wishing to cut wild spending as cruel and inhumane.
3. Appease or subsidize enemies like Iran and China.
Demonize allies like Israel. Allow terrorists to attack Americans without adequate response. See Islam as either similar or superior to Christianity. Make amends to leftist governments for supposedly past toxic American international behavior. Follow the lead of international agencies like the U.N., ICC and WHO to atone for past American neo colonial and imperialist behavior. Recede to second-tier international status, befitting American decline.
4. In a multiracial democracy, redefine identity only as one’s tribal affiliation.
Ensure each identity group rivals the other for victimhood and the state spoils it confers. Reboot all political issues by race and sex oppressors and oppressed. Destroy all meritocratic standards of admission, retention, promotion and commendation.
5. Recalibrate violent crime as understandable, cry-of-the-heart expressions of social justice.
Ensure no bail and same-day release for arrested, repeat violent felons. Empathize with the violent killer and rapist; ignore their victims, especially if they are slain police officers.
6. Emasculate the military by using non-meritocratic standards of race, gender, and sexual orientation to determine promotion and commendation.
Deliberately impugn as racists and insurrectionists the largest demographic in the military who in recent wars died at twice their numbers in the population — so that they leave or never join the military. Encourage retired high officers to slander their commander-in-chief. Cut the defense budget. Stop producing sufficient weapons, but leave billions of dollars’ worth of arms to terrorists.
7. Reinvent the justice system to indict, bankrupt, convict, jail and eliminate political opponents.
Use ballot removal, impeachment, civil suits, and state and federal indictments rather than elections to defeat an opponent. Mob the homes of non-compliant Supreme Court justices, and attack them personally by name.
8. Encourage the fusion of the bureaucratic state with the electronic media to form a powerful force for political audit, surveillance, censorship and coercion.
Marry the FBI to Silicon Valley and hire its contractors to warp the news and hound supposed enemies of the people.
9. Make war on affordable gasoline and natural gas.
Substitute inefficient, unreliable and expensive wind and solar power, even as energy prices nearly bankrupt the middle class.
10. Marry late, but preferably not at all.
Consider males toxic, especially boys. Have no children, or as few as possible. Otherwise, assure children they are entitled, and must be sheltered. Raise them to have grievances against past generations and current norms.
11. Turn world-class universities into indoctrination centers.
Suspend the Bill of Rights on campuses. Train youth to graduate despising their own culture and civilization. Recruit foreign students from hostile nations to subsidize campus commissar bloat. Replace the curriculum with therapeutic propaganda. Ban the SAT/ACT and do not evaluate comparative high school GPAs. Ensure merit does not select the student body. Charge tuition higher than the rate of inflation. Bill the government when students default on their loans.
Donald Trump v Kamala Harris: who’s ahead in the polls? | The Economist
12. We left out capital gains tax on unrealized income, which would destroy Wall Street
A US Soldier points his gun toward an Afghan passenger at the Kabul airport on August 16, 2021, after a swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war. © Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images/File
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
Foreign policy may not be most voters’ top issue, but it is top of mind on the presidential campaign trail this week.
A new behind-the-scenes account of Donald Trump’s White House raised serious questions about his prior approach to the job of commander in chief, the latest critique in a long line of warnings from former generals who served under Trump.
Trump, meanwhile, has honed his own criticism of the Biden administration — and of Vice President Kamala Harris in particular — for the chaotic end to the decades long US war in Afghanistan, even though that plan was initially hatched during Trump’s administration.
Across the U.S. hundreds of Americans are independently trying to help Afghans in the years after the United States pulled out in 2021. They have helped many Afghans, but the efforts have taken a toll on their lives as well. The war in Afghanistan officially ended in August 2021 when the last U.S. plane departed the country’s capital city. What remains is a dedicated array of Americans — often working in isolation, or in small grassroots networks — who became committed to helping the Afghan allies the United States left behind. For them, the war didn’t end that day.
When the US left Kabul, these vets tried to help Afghans left behind (armytimes.com)
The United States’ war in Afghanistan is over. But not for everyone | AP News
How U.S. scrambled Kabul withdrawal three years ago | Watch (msn.com)
https://prospect.org/politics/trumps-40-biggest-broken-promises/…
‘Competitive sycophancy’
The new account of Trump’s time as commander in chief comes from Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who served as Trump’s national security adviser. McMaster, unlike other generals who served under Trump, had previously held back from sharing direct criticism of his former boss after leaving the White House.
Appearing on “Anderson Cooper 360,” McMaster argued that Trump bears some responsibility for the Afghanistan withdrawal for his negotiations with the Taliban, including pressure on Afghanistan’s former government to release thousands of Taliban fighters from prison.
“What happened in these series of negotiations and concessions to the Taliban is we threw the Afghans under the bus on the way out,” he said.
CNN’s Peter Bergen writes about McMaster’s new memoir, “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House.”
A long line of generals warning about Trump,
Add this account to the well-documented warnings of other generals who described their time inside the Trump White House, including retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff; retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, who served as Trump’s defense secretary; and Gen. Mark Milley, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
And adding onto the pile Monday, more than 200 Republicans who previously worked for former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, former Sen. John McCain or Sen. Mitt Romney signed a letter urging their fellow party members to back Harris for president.
Among those who signed the letter are former George H.W. Bush chief of staff Jean Becker; former McCain chiefs of staff Mark Salter and Christopher Koch; and Olivia Troye, the former homeland security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. But Trump is pointing to a failure in the Biden administration as he makes his case for another White House term.
Afghanistan haunts Biden and Harris
Politics were not overtly mentioned at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Monday when Trump commemorated the three-year anniversary of the deaths of 13 American service members in Afghanistan, but those deaths are frequently cited on the campaign trail.
Family members of some of the fallen service members appeared onstage at the Republican National Convention in July and condemned Biden.
Speaking on CNN on Monday from Fort Liberty, North Carolina, Paula Knauss Selph, the mother of Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Christian Knauss, who was killed in the attack, had strong words criticizing Biden.
“This administration has tried to sweep it under the rug, and that’s absolutely not going to work for this nation,” she said, adding that Harris holds “the same accountability as President Biden.”
The service members, along with more than 100 Afghans, died in 2021 in a suicide bombing outside the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul at the tail end of two decades of direct American military involvement in Afghanistan.
The Taliban now controls Afghanistan.
Finally withdrawing US service members was Biden’s call, and it occurred on his watch. Republicans, including Trump, have turned the chaotic and deadly withdrawal into a domestic political argument against Biden and, by extension, Harris, who has stepped into Biden’s place to run against Trump in November.
At a stop in Virginia, after his appearance at the cemetery, Trump said the people who died “were killed, in the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, Afghanistan, because we had an incompetent president with incompetent people leading it, and every one of those people should have been fired.”
Another purge
Speaking later at a National Guard conference in Detroit, Trump repeated his pledge to purge the Pentagon of every senior military official involved with the withdrawal.
Meanwhile, in a statement commemorating the 13 American deaths, Harris said, “I mourn and honor them.” She also praised Biden for making “the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war.”
The truth is a little more complicated.
Trump actually promised to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan during his presidency. His administration set the final withdrawal in motion by negotiating and signing a deal with the Taliban in 2020 that stipulated the drawdown of US service members in Afghanistan.
After Trump lost the presidential election, he fired his defense secretary at the time, Mark Esper, purged many top officials at the Pentagon and tried to further accelerate US drawdowns, both in Afghanistan and in Europe.
Biden reversed the drawdown of service members in Europe but delayed by only a few months Trump’s plans to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan despite worsening conditions on the ground and rapid gains by the Taliban.
Promising to end wars
While Trump criticizes Harris and Biden for pulling out of Afghanistan, he has also promised to be the president who will end all wars.
At the National Guard conference, Trump said Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, want “endless wars.”
He also received the endorsement of Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat congresswoman from Hawaii who deployed to Iraq as a member of the Army National Guard and who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020. Gabbard, who is now an independent, picked Trump, she said, because he did not start new wars during his term in office – language that echoes a 2023 endorsement of the former president in The Wall Street Journal by Sen. JD Vance, who argued that Trump’s foreign policy was his top achievement.
Vance is now Trump’s running mate, and the selection signaled a shift by Republicans in general away from helping to promote democracy in other countries.
There is no doubt the Afghanistan withdrawal was a failure. An official After Action Review report from the State Department identified issues in both the Biden and Trump administrations that contributed.
Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee have launched their own review, which will undoubtedly cast a harsher eye on the Biden administration – although an investigator recently resigned from that effort, alleging Republicans on the committee were not willing to place any blame with the US military, including Milley.
So many people are in so entitled and want freebies or cheap and don’t realize the work they make people do for them
One of the best lessons you can learn in life is to master how to remain calm
Praise the Lord all ye nations, praise Him all ye people, for His merciful kindness is great towards us and the truth of the Lord endureth forever. Psalm 117
“Reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential, command.” -G. Orwell, 1984
Tulsi Gabbard warns Trump not to ‘underestimate’ Kamala in a debate (msn.com)
Rasmussen Poll Trump Vs Harris – Search News (bing.com)
- Pennsylvania: Vice President Kamala Harris is leading by a narrow margin, with 48% support compared to Donald Trump’s 46%.
- Michigan: Harris has a slight edge here as well, polling at 47% to Trump’s 45%.
- Wisconsin: This state is showing a very tight race, with both candidates nearly tied at 47% each.
- Arizona: Harris is leading with 49% support, while Trump has 44%.
- Georgia: Another close contest, with Harris at 48% and Trump at 46%.
These numbers indicate a highly competitive race in these crucial states. Is there a specific state or aspect of the election you’re particularly interested in?
In addition to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, other key swing states to watch in the 2024 election include:
- Florida: Known for its large and diverse electorate, Florida is always a critical battleground.
- North Carolina: This state has been closely contested in recent elections.
- Nevada: With its growing population and changing demographics, Nevada is increasingly important.
- Ohio: Traditionally a bellwether state, Ohio remains a significant swing state.
- New Hampshire: Though small, its independent voters make it a key state to watch.
These states often play a decisive role in determining the outcome of the presidential election. Is there a particular state or trend you’re curious about?
Learn more 1 morningstar.com 2 270towin.com 3 270towin.com
4 270towin.com 5 realclearpolling.com 6 projects.fivethirtyeight.com
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