Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who blocked the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and plans to overhaul its editorial board, says he will implement an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter” on the paper’s news articles to provide readers with “both sides” of a story.
Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who acquired the Times in 2018, told CNN political commentator Scott Jennings – who will join the Times’ editorial board – that he’s been “quietly building” an AI meter “behind the scenes.” The meter, slated to be released in January, is powered by the same augmented intelligence technology that he’s been building since 2010 for health care purposes, Soon-Shiong said.
“Somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias,” he said on Jennings’ “Flyover Country,” podcast. “And what we need to do is not have what we call confirmation bias and then that story automatically, the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story and then give comments.”
Soon-Shiong said major publishers have so far failed to adequately separate news and opinion, which he suggested “could be the downfall of what now people call mainstream media.”
The comments prompted a rebuke from the union representing hundreds of the Times’ newsroom staffers, which said Soon-Shiong had “publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples.”
“Our members – and all Times staffers – abide by a strict set of ethics guidelines, which call for fairness, precision, transparency, vigilance against bias, and an earnest search to understand all sides of an issue,” the Los Angeles Times Guild said in a statement Thursday. “Those longstanding principles will continue guiding our work.”
The contentious moves from the paper’s owner also led to the resignation of Harry Litman, a senior legal affairs columnist for the Times’ Opinion page.
“My resignation is a protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. Soon-Shiong has made several moves to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump,” Litman wrote Thursday. “Given the existential stakes for our democracy that I believe Trump’s second term poses, and the evidence that Soon-Shiong is currying favor with the President-elect, they are repugnant and dangerous.”
Litman’s resignation comes days after Kerry Cavanaugh, the Times’ assistant editorial page editor, also announced her exit, Status first reported. In addition to his sweeping changes to the editorial board, a person familiar with the matter said Soon-Shiong has begun reviewing the headlines of all opinion pieces before publication. A spokesperson for the Times did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The moves come as Soon-Shiong looks to restructure the newspaper’s editorial board, telling CNN last month that he plans to balance the paper’s opinion section with more conservative and centrist voices in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
“If we were honest with ourselves, our current board of opinion writers veered very left, which is fine, but I think in order to have balance, you also need to have somebody who would trend right, and more importantly, somebody that would trend in the middle,” Soon-Shiong told CNN in November.
The restructuring follows Soon-Shiong’s divisive decision to block a drafted endorsement of Vice President Harris two weeks before Election Day, which resulted in the resignation of several members of the paper’s editorial board, staff protests, and thousands of readers canceling their subscriptions. Just three of the editorial board’s eight members now remain, according to the Times website. On Wednesday, Soon-Shiong told Jennings that when the editorial board shared it had “pre-packaged” a presidential endorsement “without having met with any of the candidates,” he was “outraged.”
“I did not want our paper to be part of that method of providing information or misinformation or disinformation,” he said.
“Everybody has a right to an opinion, that’s fair,” Soon-Shiong said, underscoring that the paper needs to “actually create some level of balance when it comes to opinion and columnist, and then we need to actually let the reader know this is opinion.”
In his resignation Thursday, Litman called the owner’s decision to spike the presidential endorsement a “deep insult to the paper’s readership.”
“Trump has made it clear that he will make trouble for media outlets that cross him,” Litman wrote. “Rather than reacting with indignation at this challenge to his paper’s critical function in a democracy, Soon-Shiong threw the paper to the wolves. That was cowardly.”
I have been a contributor to the Los Angeles Times op-ed page in some fashion for more than 15 years. For the last three years, I have been the Senior Legal Columnist, writing regular weekly columns about Trump’s legal troubles, the Supreme Court, and a wide range of other topics. The Times also permitted me to cover Trump’s trial in New York and the 2024 Democratic convention.
My editors have been skilled, quick, and fair. I have been able to write whatever I like, including blistering criticism of Donald Trump.
I’ve been proud of my work and proud to be part of the Times, the most prominent and storied newspaper west of the Mississippi. It’s got gravitas—and 45 Pulitzers to show for it—combined with a California flair that complements the constant variety and zaniness of my adopted state.
But I have written my last op-ed for the Times. Yesterday, I resigned my position. I don’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons.
My resignation is a protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. Soon-Shiong has made several moves to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump. Those moves can’t be defended as the sort of policy adjustment papers undergo from time to time, and that an owner, within limits, is entitled to influence. Given the existential stakes for our democracy that I believe Trump’s second term poses, and the evidence that Soon-Shiong is currying favor with the President-elect, they are repugnant and dangerous.
Soon-Shiong’s most notorious action received national attention. The paper’s editorial department had drafted an endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Soon-Shiong ordered them to spike it and make no endorsement in the election. (Soon-Shiong later implied he had just ordered up a factual analysis of both candidates’ policies, but that’s at best a distortion: he plainly blocked an already drafted Harris endorsement.) It is hard to imagine a more brutal, humiliating, and unprofessional treatment of a paper’s professional staff. Three members of the editorial page resigned in protest and 2,000 readers canceled their subscriptions.
Owners participate in setting overall editorial direction. But it’s a grave insult to the independence and integrity of an editorial department for an owner to force it to withdraw a considered and drafted opinion. And of course, this was no ordinary opinion. The endorsement of a presidential candidate is an editorial department’s most important decision, so the slight was deep.
It was also a deep insult to the paper’s readership. Like any major paper, the Times has a coherent and consistent line of reasoning to its editorial decisions. That can include idiosyncratic departures on particular issues. Where Trump was concerned, the paper had presented to its readers a long series of opinions that set out, with force and nuance, the great dangers of his return to office. That line of analysis culminated logically in the endorsement of Harris. For the Times to lead its readers to the finish line only to step off the track was bizarre and disrespectful.
By far the most important problem with Soon-Shiong’s scrapping of the editorial was the apparent motivation. It is untenable to suggest that Soon-Shiong woke up with sudden misgivings over Harris’s criminal justice record or with newfound affection for Trump’s immigration proposals. The plain inference, and the one that readers and national observers have adopted, is that he wanted to hedge his bets in case Trump won—not even to protect the paper’s fortunes but rather his multi-billion-dollar holdings in other fields. It seems evident that he was currying favor with Trump and capitulating to the President-elect’s well-known pettiness and vengefulness.
Trump has made it clear that he will make trouble for media outlets that cross him. Rather than reacting with indignation at this challenge to his paper’s critical function in a democracy, Soon-Shiong threw the paper to the wolves. That was cowardly.
And his decision had a sort of force multiplier effect with the similar conduct by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who rammed a similar non-endorsement decision down the throat of his editorial staff. There as well, there was no argument that the intervention was based on sensible policy contrast between Trump and Harris. History will record it as a self-serving protection of other holdings, which, as in the case of Soon-Shiong’s, dwarf the newspaper itself.
Before joining the Times, I was a contributing commentator for the Post. We used to say there, tongue-in-cheek, that our billionaire was better than their billionaire, meaning Bezos was more aware of his public responsibility and more hands-off in his oversight. As it turns out, both billionaires flinched when the chips were down, choosing to appease, not oppose, a criminal President with patent authoritarian ambitions.
Before he has even taken office, Trump has faced down two of the country’s most prominent newspapers, inducing them to back off longstanding, well-reasoned editorial opposition. That is terrifying.
As a commentator, especially one dedicated to constitutional norms and the rule of law, I have spent much of the last couple of years arguing that Trump is a genuine menace to our constitutional system. November 5 showed that a narrow majority of Americans who voted disagree or don’t care.
Yet here in Southern California and in Washington, D.C., we have evidence of tangible erosion of social guardrails in real time. Trump is in the process of commandeering and corrupting institutions of government and civil society that we have always counted on to nurture our democracy.
Look closely at this already deeply eroded landscape: all the electoral branches are not only Republican but firmly within Trump’s fist and dedicated to loyalty to him over any principle of governance. The Supreme Court has assisted his authoritarian initiatives in ways that the legal profession and society as a whole have condemned. His current nomination process is seeking openly to cut the Senate, even its Republican members, out of their constitutional advice-and-consent role.
For the moment, the best hopes for desperately needed pushback lie with federal law enforcement, the lower federal courts, the military, and (an economically weakened) mainstream media. All this is material for another Substack, but Trump has taken dead aim at imposing loyalty to him as the defining feature of the first three, including a proposal to permit him to discharge generals who are not, as he put it, sufficiently like “Hitler’s generals.”
So the role and responsibility of the media have never been greater. And if major outlets can be bought off and made to cower, the impact on our liberty—and freedom of thought—is in grave jeopardy.
Thus far, I have analyzed only Soon-Shiong’s most notorious and visible action of scuttling the endorsement. That put him in lock step with Bezos. But he has combined it with a general program of cozying up to Trump, especially since the election. Soon-Shiong ordered the shelving of a multi-part series, intended to run with the endorsement but broader and of a piece with the editorial page’s opinion over the last several years, which had been entitled, “The Case Against Trump.” His spiking of the series was part of the explanation given by the editorial board members who resigned.
There is more: Soon-Shiong went on Fox News after the election to talk about the paper’s editorial direction. He advocated “diverse perspectives” in the editorial pages and voices from across the political spectrum to avoid creating an “echo chamber.” Most alarmingly, and escaping the notice of no one, he pandered to Fox and Trump by saying he wanted to make the Times more “fair and balanced.”
Soon-Shiong followed up by hiring a noted pro-Trump commentator, Scott Jennings, for some as yet ill-defined role of “balancing out” the views on the editorial page. Then most recently, during an interview on CNN in which he was asked about the Jennings hire, the normally mild-mannered Soon-Shiong went full Trump, labeling the CNN correspondent a “so-called reporter” before abruptly ending the interview.
Soon-Shiong’s argument for all these moves is to create “balance” on the editorial page, which still remains unstaffed and in chaos, and a neutral, “just the facts” approach to news. It sounds banal, but in fact, it is pernicious; and it goes to the heart of my reasons for leaving.
First, the idea of balance is fundamentally misplaced when on one side of the balance is a sociopathic liar like Donald Trump. The media has struggled for years to figure out how to call out Trump’s incessant lies while still covering the contentious issues of the day. There’s good reason to think that the propagation of those lies, some of which Trump simply picks up from fringe social media sites and Fox News, influenced the results of the election. The people who voted for Trump were fed a relentless false account of issue after issue, including Trump’s signature distortions about immigrants (eating pets, committing a disproportionate number of violent crimes), which Fox News and right-wing social media parroted relentlessly.
In that context, the bromide of just being balanced is a terrible dereliction of journalists’ first defining responsibility of reporting the truth. Soon-Shiong apparently would have the Times deliver an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand presentation to readers. But there is no “other hand.” Trump is an inveterate liar, and journalists have a defining responsibility to call that out.
These are not normal times. Look around. We are in the political, cultural, and legal fight of our lifetimes. Trump’s conduct since winning the election only reinforces his determination to replace constitutional rule with some form of authoritarian rule. That needn’t be 1933 Germany, an analogy that typically draws counter-charges of excessive drama (though the existence of certain overlapping features is inescapable). There are other models of democratic demise, ones that Trump obviously wants to emulate, such as Hungary’s slide toward authoritarianism over the last 20 years.
So the neutral posture that Soon-Shiong uses to justify his violence to the paper is exactly, fundamentally wrong. This is no time for neutrality and disinterest. It’s rather a time for choosing. And a choice for true facts and American values is necessarily a vigorous choice against Donald Trump.
I don’t pretend that my resignation is any kind of serious counter-blow to the damage of Soon-Shiong’s cozying up to Trump. And I see, and I thought about, the argument that my most constructive role would be to stay on and continue to use my one voice as forcefully as I could to explain to Times readers the grave dangers on the horizon.
But the cost of alliance with an important national institution that has such an important role to play in pushing back against authoritarian rule, but declines to do so for spurious and selfish reasons, feels too great. And Soon-Shiong’s conscious pattern of détente with Trump has in fact recast the paper’s core identity to one of appeasement with an authoritarian madman. I am loath to affiliate with that identity in any way.
My growing misgivings about the Times are one of the reasons I started this Substack two weeks ago. I’ve been blown away by the response and the number of followers and subscribers in just the first two weeks: thank you to everyone. Having this outlet for my thoughts about where Trump 2.0 is taking us makes it easier to leave.
I’m not going anywhere. I will continue to do my best to identify and analyze the dangers that might be hard to see, but for now, here on Substack. I may surface elsewhere, too. Stay tuned! I hope you will follow me here and think about becoming a subscriber.
I’ll close by quoting admiringly my former colleague and the former editorial editor at the Times, Mariel Garza: “I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Nine days before Election Day, Donald Trump delivered his closing argument at a Madison Square Garden rally that drew comparisons to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally in the same arena and characterized by similar anti-democratic themes: demonization of immigrants and political enemies, invocation of strongman leadership, threats of violent retribution, denunciations of the press.
Responding to criticism of this self-evident hate-fest, Trump characterized it as “a lovefest.” He wasn’t just lying. That’s too simple an explanation of how Trump behaves in general, and what he’s doing here. Lying is deceiving people about the state of the world, and Trump routinely does that too. But simply tallying up the lies gives no insight into their purpose. Bulls***ting is deceiving people about one’s motives — using true or false claims indiscriminately — and is a more accurate description of his routine behavior. But calling that rally calls a “lovefest,” is doing something more: That’s gaslighting, an effort to undermine people’s entire sense of reality and impose an invented reality in its place.
Trump was saying, in effect: The hate you saw was really love, and if you can’t see that, you’re the hateful one. It’s the kind of upside-down logic commonly found in abusive relationships, whenever the abuser is challenged. They may lie all the time, but when the chips are down, they gaslight.
“I’m not perfect” = Your expectations I behave like a human being are unreasonable
“I’ve never pretended to be someone I’m not” = You fell in love with me so it’s your fault
“This more than decade old video” = It was a long time ago, why the fuss? You’re so unreasonable.
“These words do not reflect who I am” = The reality you just experienced didn’t actually happen.
“I said it … I apologize” = Get over it already — I said I’m sorry, you’re being hysterical.
I had a nightmare last night where I dreamed that Donald Trump won the election. Then I woke up and found out and realized it was more than a dream. He won the election 277 to 224 electoral votes.
Trump was elected by the will of the people, and democracy demands we accept that.
The most troubling promise Trump has made is that he will immediately begin a massive deportation of undocumented people.
Even worse the GOP now will have control of both house of Congress. U.S. Senate 42 Democrats 52 Republicans. U.S. House 181 Democrat 201 Republicans
I anticipate that Donald Trump will implement all the things he promised during the campaign. That includes deportation of millions of undocumented people, outrageous tariffs, lowered taxes for corporations and the wealthy, withdrawal from NATO, refusal to aid Ukraine, refusal to aid South Korea, refusal to provide protection for Taiwan, national anti-abortion law, no LGBT protection.
The GESTAPO is coming after you if you resist his directions.
Fed up with U.S. politics, some Californians are making plans to move abroad was a headline in today’s print edition Los Angeles Times. I am in that category.
The owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times fear the retribution of a Trump presidency and refuse to endorse Kamala Harris. The NYT has no fear as it has been owned by the same family for more than 100 years.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States and beat Republican rival Donald Trump on Election Day, or so historian and election forecaster Allan Lichtman still predicts.
Known for correctly predicted the results of the last nine out of 10 presidential elections, Lichtman said on his YouTube channel Tuesday night that his prediction has not changed, despite Democratic nominee Harris’ leads in battleground states shrinking and polls being nail-bitingly close.
Lichtman has come under fire for his predictions, notably with political pollster Nate Silver last month calling the American University modern history professor’s keys “totally arbitrary” in a post on X.
He emphasized Tuesday the 13 keys he uses to make his predictions have not changed and criticized the prevalence of polling in the media, saying that governing, rather than campaigning, is indicative of who will win the 2024 race for the White House.
“I don’t have a crystal ball, I’m not Speaker Mike Johnson who thinks he has a pipeline to the Almighty, my system is based on history, it’s very robust, but it’s always possible, you can’t know it in advance that that there’d be something so cataclysmic and so unprecedented to break the pattern of history,” Lichtman said, but that “doesn’t mean my prediction is invalidated.”
Lichtman’s son Sam interviewed his father during the 90-minute live video, where the election prognosticator argued that democracy itself is at stake in this year’s White House race.
Before every election, Lichtman said he gets butterflies, but this year is different.
Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza in a conversation with Columbia University School of Journalism. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Terry Tang is Executive Editor, Los Angeles Times.
Terry,
Ever since Dr. Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president, I have been struggling with my feelings about the implications of our silence.
I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.
But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.
Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state—and one of the largest in the nation still—declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it.
It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?
The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner.
Seven years ago, the editorial board wrote this in its series about Donald Trump “Our Dishonest President”: “Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump’s erratic nature and his impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all.”
I still believe that’s true.
In these dangerous times, staying silent isn’t just indifference, it is complicity. I’m standing up by stepping down from the editorial board. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.
I hate to write this but JD Vance won the debate. Scott Jenings confirms what we all knew as the debate proceeded.
By Scott JenningsOct. 1, 2024 8:57 PM PT
As the candidates for vice president took the stage in New York on Tuesday night, the state of North Carolina was under water, Israel was under siege, the American supply chain was under threat of disruption by an East Coast port strike and the American people were under the impression that there was a leadership void in the White House.
In other words, the conditions existed for Ohio Senator JD Vance to stick it to the incumbent party, represented by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
And Vance delivered in spades. From the opening bell, Walz was nervous, overmatched and out of his depth, especially when dealing with foreign policy matters such as the ongoing attacks on Israel.
Walz simply wandered into the wrong bar. And as the night wore on it became evident that Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, made a lousy choice. Somewhere, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — perhaps the most talented young communicator in the Democratic Party and the running mate that Harris should have chosen — must’ve been laughing hysterically (or screaming into a pillow).
On issue after issue, Vance delivered smooth, well-constructed arguments while Walz often answered haltingly, like an online video struggling to buffer on a slow Wi-Fi connection. There hasn’t been a vice presidential candidate this out of his depth since Adm. James Stockdale delivered his famous “who am I and why am I here?” line in the 1992 campaign.
Vice presidential debates don’t often leave a lasting impression. The only thing anyone can remember from the 2020 version was that a fly landed on Trump running mate Mike Pence’s head. And 2016? I’ve yet to meet anyone in my travels this year who remembers that Tim Kaine was the Democratic nominee for vice president, let alone anything he said in a debate.
And before Tuesday night’s tilt, I wasn’t expecting the 2024 vice presidential debate to be much different. I know Vance is good on TV, and I know Walz has virtually no idea what he’s doing at this level of politics. But I was shocked — shocked — at just how ill-prepared Walz was for his one and only big ticket task in this campaign.
There isn’t much Vance or anyone else can do to change perceptions of Donald Trump at this point. He’s run for president three times, serving one term that’s now viewed as a success by most Americans, according to CNN’s latest polling. He’s been impeached twice. Shot in the ear once, and targeted by a second gunman. He’s been criminally indicted for numerous things and convicted in New York City, basically, for hooking up with a porn star 18 years ago.
And yet, Trump, by some measures, has never been more popular, mostly because Americans are remembering his term in office far more fondly than they are experiencing the Biden-Harris administration.
But Harris is a different story. She’s known, but people don’t know her as well as they know Trump. Opinions are still being formed about the vice president, and whether she’s earned a promotion to president. And one of the most consequential political decisions a presidential candidate makes is choosing a running mate.
The political media have run with the narrative, to date, that Trump made a terrible choice and Harris made an inspired pick. After this debate, there’s no way they can keep up this charade. Walz isn’t appealing to moderate Republicans. He’s not reassuring conservative white males that Harris isn’t a progressive in moderate’s clothing.
He was barely functional over the 90-minute show, having perfected a look of sheer terror and complete bafflement all at the same time.
Walz’s performance must have made everyone wonder how Harris came to choose him for the national ticket, and whether Harris herself possesses the executive decision-making capacity to serve as president. Walz’s meandering and mendacious answer to why he lied about the nature and timing of his trips to China would’ve gotten the former teacher kicked out of any high school debate club in Minnesota.
And for Vance, who has been pilloried for past comments made on old podcasts and before he became a believer in Trump’s leadership style, it was a night of redemption and validation. The 40-year-old Ohioan, a scant two years into his first term in the U.S. Senate, showed the Republican Party how to communicate calmly and with compassion. He admitted some shortcomings when he needed to and pressed attacks when it made sense.
Vance even won the exchange with Walz on abortion in a masterful pivot, admitting that his views have changed on the topic because of a referendum in his own home state. Walz, for his part, sidestepped questions about any restrictions that he and Harris would support.
After last night, it is hard to imagine Gov. Walz sitting in the Situation Room as some national or international emergency unfolds.
But Vance? He passed the test and proved that he belongs at this level of American politics.
Scott Jennings is a contributing writer to Opinion, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a senior CNN political commentator.
Donald Trump can’t help himself. He calls Kamala Harris names. Obviously he believes that name calling is the path to winning in November. It’s more fun than talking about the economy, immigration and other issues.
By COLLEEN LONG Updated 9:33 AM PDT, September 29, 2024Share
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans on Sunday sought to distance themselves from Donald Trump’s latest insults of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris during a rambling weekend rally in Wisconsin in which he called her “mentally disabled.”
Trump escalated his personal attacks on the vice president during what was billed as a speech on immigration following Harris’ trip to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said. “Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country. Anybody would know this.”
Trump has already falsely claimed Harris “turned Black” and regularly insults her as “stupid,” “weak,” “dumb as a rock” and “lazy.” With just over a month left before the presidential election, his allies pushed him publicly and privately to talk instead about the economy, immigration and other issues.
J.D. Vance warns calling a candidate a ‘fascist’ can lead to violence but doesn’t mention that’s what Trump calls Harris. Trump also called Harris a communist.
Presidential historian on Monday’s CNN NewsNight panelist Tim Naftali suggested in the aftermath of the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump that Trump made himself a bigger target by “using the rhetoric of the 30s.” Fortunately, New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan and CNN commentator Scott Jennings were also there to recall the violent rhetoric and “bunch of lies” directed towards Trump over the past several years.
Naftali declared, “I remember so well July 13th. And I remember the conversations in the days that followed. I remember President Biden’s speech about toning down the rhetoric, and I saw the rhetoric toned down on both sides and then 20 minutes into his acceptance speech, Donald Trump turned up the volume.”
Both Vance and the former president, who said Democrats calling him (Trump) a “threat to democracy” is “what is causing me to be shot at,” have been cited for the hypocrisy of their pleas to deescalate incendiary discourse.
Could someone get shot and killed? The answer is YES! There has already been two efforts to kill Donald Trump.
Coast Contact 