By Michael Woyton
There’s no time to prosecute the federal agents who gunned down Renée Good and Alex Pretti.
But sure, the United States Department of Justice, owned and operated by a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, has more than enough time to round up and arrest four journalists who did nothing except commit journalism by covering a protest during a church service being led by a member of ICE.
The four journalists are former CNN anchor, now independent journalist Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort and Jamael Lydell Lundy, NBC News reported.
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According to CNN, Abbe Lowell, who is Lemon’s attorney, said Lemon was charged with conspiring to violate someone’s constitutional rights and violating the FACE Act, which prohibits the use of force or threats to interfere with someone’s exercising freedom of religion. Both are federal charges.
However, previously, a federal magistrate judge had rejected a criminal complaint against Lemon, which “enraged” Attorney General Pam Bondi, NBC said.
Lemon and the three others were at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Jan. 18 when a demonstration by protesters took place because the church’s pastor David Easterwood allegedly is the acting director of an ICE field office in the city.
There’s a lot of chatter that these charges will not hold up and the journalists will be able to go back and continue their reporting.
I hope that is true.
But we continue to see an escalation of this administration not giving a damn about what is legal and what is not and what is constitutional and what is not.
Just merely making the accusation against one high profile journalist — even if subsequently a judge dismisses it — is enough send a message that reporters need to be careful what they say or there will be a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
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The grifter-in-chief’s poll numbers don’t seem to be coming out in his favor lately.
Maybe he will sue the Pew Research Center for $10 billion.
Oh sorry, he is already suing the IRS for that amount for failing to prevent the release of his tax records and expects the American public to pay him.
Seems only fair. The New York Times reported that the elderly golfer/Epstein files headliner has used his office to “make at least $1.4 billion,” adding that the number is “an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view.”
But back to his poll numbers, which are way lower than 1.4 billion.
PEW’s survey of U.S. adults, conducted Jan. 20-26, found that a year into his administration “Americans’ view of President Donald Trump — already more negative than positive — have continued to slip.”
His approval rating stands at 37 percent, which is down from 40 percent in the fall.
The number of respondents who believe Trump’s administration’s actions since taking office the second time have been worse than expected is 50 percent, as opposed to 21 percent who said they thought it was “better than” expected and 28 percent who thought it was “about as” expected.
Only a hair above a quarter of Americans — 27 percent — said they support all or most of Trump’s policies and plans. That’s down from 35 percent when he came back into office. Pew points out that change “has come entirely among Republicans.”
When asked about a range of qualities and abilities as president, Americans said “nope” on all of them, including having leadership skills and mental and physical fitness, picking good advisers and respecting the country’s democratic values.
While confidence that Trumps acts ethically in office was already low in February — 29 percent — it has dropped 8 percentage points since then.
“And nearly all of that drop has come among Republicans,” Pew said. At the beginning of his second term 55 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they thought Trump acts ethically in office. That share now stands at 42 percent.
There is more not-so-good Pew poll news to dive into through this link.
The American Trends Panel survey from the Pew Research Center surveyed 8,512 U.S. adults. The margin of error is ±1.4 percentage points.
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Lead art: Screen grab from NBC News via YouTube.
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