#god bless president Trump | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ausetkmt · 9 months

Text

At President Trump's rally in Tampa last week, a familiar face made it back in the national news. Maurice Symonette, also known as Michael the Black Man, was front and center in a crowd hurling invective at CNN reporter Jim Acosta, waving a "Blacks for Trump" sign.

Symonette has been a regular at Trump rallies all over Florida and as far away as Arizona. Just last month, he popped up at the U.S. border to appear in a video with disgraced sheriff-turned-pardoned-Senate-candidate Joe Arpaio.

All that national exposure raises an obvious question: Who is paying the bills for Symonette, a former member of Miami's murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, to represent "Blacks for Trump" at Trump rallies?

Since Blacks for Trump isn't a registered political organization with the Florida Division of Elections or the Federal Election Commission, there are no public records of any donations funding the group's operations.

It seems unlikely Symonette is fronting the cash for his travel himself because he filed for bankruptcy this past May. In federal court records, he reports that he's unemployed, generates no income, and has $0 in the bank. He also says four banks have staked claims on $2.9 million worth of property around Dade County.

So how is he getting to Arizona and Tampa to stand behind Trump on national TV? Reached on his cell phone, Symonette declined to discuss his group's financing. "You guys are horrible racists," he said. "You are lawbreakers and you're mean... God is going to punish you horribly."

Throughout the '80s, Symonette — then known as Maurice Woodside — was a devoted follower of Yahweh ben Yahweh, a charismatic preacher who wore white robes and called himself the Messiah.

Federal prosecutors later accused Yahweh, whose real name was Hulon Mitchell Jr., of ordering his followers to murder at least 14 people, including random white vagrants who were massacred as an initiation rite.

Symonette was charged in federal court along with Mitchell and 15 other followers in 1990; while the cult's leader was later convicted of 14 charges of murder conspiracy and served nearly two decades in prison, Symonette and six other cult members were acquitted.

In the decades since, Symonette has been charged with crimes including grand theft auto, carrying a weapon onto an airplane, and threatening a police officer, but has never been convicted. (He does have a pending case on a municipal ordinance charge in Hollywood after police showed up to a really loud party he threw.)

Since Trump's election, Symonette has carved out an unlikely new niche as one of President Trump's most visible African-American supporters. He has a knack for getting prime placement directly behind Trump and has handed out hundreds of his "Blacks for Trump" signs.

They advertise his website, which is full of conspiracy theories about Cherokees running the U.S. banking system. (Really.)

Symonette was even featured at a Miami Trump rally that prosecutors later alleged had been funded by Russian nationals looking to disrupt the election.

Symonette filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on May 16, listing Washington Mutual, Homecomings Financial, HSBC Bank, and Indymac Bank as his creditors; each institution laid claim to one of four houses. Three are in North Miami-Dade County, and one is near Kendall.

In court docs, his only listed assets are clothing, watches, various household items, and a pool table. He does say that his live-in girlfriend, whom he doesn't identify by name, provides him with $2,000 per month.

Could that money from his significant other cover Blacks for Trump's various trips around the country to support the president on TV? Symonette wouldn't discuss that with a New Times reporter.

Instead, he spoke at length about his belief that the banking system is corrupt. He added that "Trump being the president is the greatest blessing we have ever had."

In his bankruptcy case, he's repeated those allegations about the banking system being crooked to Judge Laurel M. Isicoff. He's also repeatedly sought to change hearings that overlapped with Trump events. Symonette suggested the scheduling conflicts are a sinister plot to keep him away from the spotlight at Trump rallies.

"Creditors know that I have a rally in Arizona on July 25 and deliberately set the hearing on that date to cause me and my musical band to miss the performance and the rally with the bus we rented," he wrote in a motion filed the same morning as the Phoenix rally. "The creditors overheard that at the house we are disputing... and set that hearing on the same date just to harm me."

That motion was denied, as was another he filed on July 30, just before Trump's Tampa rally. "As founder of Blacks for Trump, (I) have rented vans to go to Trump's rally. We need to make the country aware how the banks (FOREIGNERS FROM THE EAST) are illegally taking WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE'S houses away."

Maurice Symonette's story is baffling, to put it mildly. Symonette, who also goes by the name Michael the Black Man, somehow went from being part of the murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult to getting acquitted of murder charges himself to being a staple at Donald Trump's presidential rallies all over the country. Even among the rogue's gallery of rodeo clowns and Bond villains who make up Trump's core cadre of supporters, Symonette might legitimately be the weirdest person hovering around Trumpworld

After Michael the Black Man turned up at a Tampa-area Trump rally last week and led anti-press chants, it's worth taking note of all the bizarre places he's materialized since becoming a prominent Trump supporter:

1. At the original October 2016 Trump rally where he first popped up on TV:

Conservative Twitter is abuzz this afternoon with a trending hashtag: #BlacksForTrump. The spark is clear: Thousands have retweeted photos from Trump's rally in Lakeland, Florida, this afternoon showing a small group standing directly behind the Donald while enthusiastically waving "Blacks for Trump" signs. "Blacks are for Trump and the left can't stand it," writes @LawlessPirate, with another pic of the sign-waving man wearing a shirt reading "Trump & Republicans Are Not Racist." So who is this new face of Trump's elusive black support? He's none other than Michael the Black Man, also known as Maurice Woodside or Michael Symonette, who has made waves in Miami in recent years with protests against the Democratic Party and rallies for the GOP. He's also a former member of the murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, which was led by the charismatic preacher Hulon Mitchell Jr., who was charged by the feds in 1990 with conspiracy in killings that included a gruesome beheading in the Everglades. Michael, along with 15 other Yahweh followers, was charged for allegedly conspiring in two murders; his brother, who was also in the cult, told jurors that Michael had helped beat one man who was later killed and stuck a sharpened stick into another man's eyeball. But jurors found Michael (and six other Yahweh followers) innocent. They sent Mitchell away for 20 years in the federal pen. In the years that followed, Michael changed his last name to Symonette, made a career as a musician, started a radio station in Miami, and then reinvented himself as Michael the Black Man, an anti-gay, anti-liberal preacher with a golden instinct for getting on TV at GOP events. He's planned events with Rick Santorum and gotten cable news play for bashing Obama. Since 1997, he's been charged with grand theft auto, carrying a weapon onto an airplane and threatening a police officer, but never convicted in any of those cases.

2. At a Trump rally in Bayfront Park in Miami just before the election: 3. At a rally allegedly organized with the help of Russian agents:

A federal grand jury filed charges against 13 Russian nationals [in February 2018] for allegedly stealing identities, wiring money overseas, and staging a small series of flash mobs to help tip the 2016 election in Donald Trump's favor. It's unclear whether the social media campaign had any actual impact on voting, but the FBI alleges Russian money indeed affected one small group of Miamians who unknowingly used Russian cash to pay for supplies for an unnamed rally the September before the presidential election. There still seem to be online traces of that Moscow-funded rally. Only one publicized, pro-Trump rally appears to have taken place in the Miami area — #LatinosConTrump in Doral at 1 p.m. September 11, 2016. The event was pitched as an "anti-media" protest outside the town's Univision offices. The national group Latinos With Trump created flyers for the rally and noted that virtually all of Miami's most prominent pro-Trump groups — Cubans 4 Trump, Hispanas for Trump, Latinas for Trump, and the official Miami Trump Volunteers — would attend.

4. At a 2017 Trump rally in Phoenix, per the Washington Post:

And so it was Tuesday night before a crowd of Trump supporters in Phoenix who had come to watch another show. There was the president, whipping up the wildly cheering crowd, and then there was Michael the Black Man, chanting just beyond Trump’s right shoulder in that trademark T-shirt. The presence of Michael — variously known as Michael Symonette, Maurice Woodside and Mikael Israel — has inspired not only trending Twitter hashtags but a great deal of curiosity and Google searches. Internet sleuths find the man’s bizarre URL, an easily accessible gateway to his strange and checkered past. The radical fringe activist from Miami once belonged to a violent black supremacist religious cult, and he runs a handful of amateur, unintelligible conspiracy websites. He has called Barack Obama “The Beast” and Hillary Clinton a Ku Klux Klan member. Oprah Winfrey, he says, is the devil. Most curiously, in the 1990s, he was charged, then acquitted, with conspiracy to commit two murders.

5. With noted racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio at the U.S.-Mexico border just last week:

Via our sister paper Phoenix New Times:

Former sheriff Joe Arpaio filmed a video at the U.S.-Mexico border with a former Florida cult member who goes by the name Michael the Black Man. In the video posted on Thursday, Michael has his arm around Arpaio as the ousted former sheriff promotes his improbable race for Arizona's open Senate seat during a visit to the border fence in Naco, Arizona. Michael was a follower of the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, a black-supremacist religious sect in Florida. In 1990, the feds charged Michael and over a dozen fellow cult members with conspiracy related to brutal murders in Florida. Alongside Arpaio and Michael in the video is an independent Senate candidate in Massachusetts, Shiva Ayyadurai, who shared the live video on Twitter. Born in India, Ayyadurai is a scientist and MIT graduate who claims that he invented email. He began his Senate campaign as a Republican before switching to run as an independent. Ayyadurai’s campaign uses the slogan, “Defeat #FakeIndian Elizabeth Warren,” as a derogatory jab at his Democratic opponent. “First of all, I’m from Massachusetts, so of course I’m supporting this great guy,” Arpaio says of Ayyadurai in the video. “He’s gonna win.” Michael says, “We’re at the border right here, between Arizona and Mexico.” He turns to Arpaio to ask if he has anything to say to the camera. The aging former sheriff brings up his law enforcement background. “It’s great to see the border again; I haven’t seen it in a while,” Arpaio says.

If you've got any info on who's paying Symonette's travel bills to Trump rallies, email [email protected] or [email protected]

For a second, Donald Trump seemed to be backing off his vitriolic attacks on the free press. After five journalists were massacred at the Annapolis Capital Gazette, Trump briefly toned down his slurs. He even invited New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzburger to the White House to clear the air. But it didn't last.

Trump quickly returned to his Stalinist, enemies-of-the-people label for journalists and then lied about his meeting with Sulzburger to insist that truthful reporting is "fake news." Those insults have a real effect, and that fact was never frighteningly clearer than at Trump's rally last night in Tampa, where an unhinged-looking mob screamed insults and waved middle fingers at journalists, particularly CNN's chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta.

The scene left many political watchers deeply shaken, including Acosta:

Just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa. I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy. pic.twitter.com/IhSRw5Ui3R— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 1, 2018

But most national press watchers didn't notice who was right at the center of that mob hurling invective at Acosta and his colleagues: Yep, it was Michael the Black Man, AKA Maurice Symonette, a former member of Miami's murderous Yahweh ben Yawheh cult who once faced charges of conspiring in the group's murders.

That's him with his instantly recognizable "Blacks for Trump" sign:

.@Acosta is trying to do a stand-up at #trumptampa and the crowd is booing and chanting “CNN sucks” behind him. pic.twitter.com/XiULajB1Li— Emily L. Mahoney (@mahoneysthename) July 31, 2018

Symonette has been a mainstay at Florida Trump rallies and over the past year has popped up at other Trump-linked events around the nation. Just last week, he flew to Arizona to film a video at the border with disgraced former sheriff Joe Arpaio. Trump's staff regularly gives Symonette front-and-center seats where he waves his black-and-white sign on national television.

Here's some background on Symonette from New Times' earlier reporting on him:

He's also a former member of the murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, which was led by the charismatic preacher Hulon Mitchell Jr., who was charged by the feds in 1990 with conspiracy in killings that included a gruesome beheading in the Everglades. Michael, along with 15 other Yahweh followers, was charged for allegedly conspiring in two murders; his brother, who was also in the cult, told jurors that Michael had helped beat one man who was later killed and stuck a sharpened stick into another man's eyeball. But jurors found Michael (and six other Yahweh followers) innocent. They sent Mitchell away for 20 years in the federal pen. In the years that followed, he changed his last name to Symonette, made a career as a musician, started a radio station in Miami and then re-invented himself as Michael the Black Man, an anti-gay, anti-liberal preacher with a golden instinct for getting on TV at GOP events. He's planned events with Rick Santorum and gotten cable news play for bashing Obama. Since 1997, he's been charged with grand theft auto, carrying a weapon onto an airplane and threatening a police officer, but never convicted in any of those cases.

In other words, he's exactly the kind of guy you might not want to drive into a blind rage at journalists who are just trying to do their jobs. Yet there he was in Tampa, right in the middle of the crowd screaming at Acosta — who, incidentally, took time to talk to the crowds who were so angry with him:

After each live shot, @Acosta would walk down and politely talk to the people who just heckled him. He talked to one group for at least 15 minutes. pic.twitter.com/J26nlxfD6k— Christopher Heath (@CHeathWFTV) August 1, 2018

There are two safe bets on this topic going forward: Trump won't stop throwing insults at the media, and wherever the president is whipping up that anger, Michael the Black Man will probably be there with his signs, happily taking the bait.

#Ex-Cult Member Behind “Blacks for Trump” Is Bankrupt #So Who's Paying for His Trump Rally Trips?#blacks for trump cult #blacks for trump #lies #Black Lies Matter too #Black Lives Matter

114 notes · View notes

amaditalks · 1 month

Text

Heather Cox Richardson is a US based political historian, who connects facts from our history to current events to provide context. She writes daily on Substack, this is an excerpt from her March 17 post. It’s a longer read but very crucial toward understanding the American right’s plans for the future of this country, as illustrated by the close connections of The Heritage Foundation, a powerful right wing think tank, and Viktor Orbán, the autocratic prime minister of Hungary.

“The tight cooperation between Heritage and Orbán illuminates Project 2025, the plan Heritage has led, along with dozens of other right-wing organizations, to map out a future right-wing presidency. In Hungary, Orbán has undermined democracy, gutting the civil service and filling it with loyalists; attacking immigrants, women, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals; taking over businesses for friends and family, and moving the country away from the rules-based international order supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In the January interview, Roberts told Garcia-Navarro that Project 2025 was designed to jump-start a right-wing takeover of the government. “[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Roberts said. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country must embrace. In their vision, the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

In almost 1,000 pages, the document explains what these policies mean for ordinary Americans. Restoring the family and protecting children means making “family authority, formation, and cohesion” a top priority and using “government power…to restore the American family.” That, the document says, means eliminating any words associated with sexual orientation or gender identity, gender, abortion, reproductive health, or reproductive rights from any government rule, regulation, or law. Any reference to transgenderism is “pornography” and must be banned.

The overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the right to abortion must be gratefully celebrated, the document says, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision accomplishing that end “is just the beginning.””

#project 2025 #heritage foundation #fascism

26 notes · View notes

grits-galraisedinthesouth · 4 months

Text

"If we back down from this---there is nothing left"

Lara Logan (God bless her) interviewed Rep Clay Higgins who has a career in law enforcement. I hope Representative Clay Higgins is right. -GRITS

Lara Logan's Truthinmedia.com Episode 9

www.policestatefilm.net @Truth_InMedia

Police State Trailer:

youtube

Episode 9: Rep. Clay Higgins Speaks Out

Clay Higgins brought his investigative skills from the streets of Louisiana where he was a cop for years to the halls of congress, where he’s been investigating January 6th ever since it happened.

We sat down for a tough, far-reaching interview to explore what he’s learned…

Read the Episode Transcript:

Lara – studio intro

We’re breaking with our regular series to bring you a rare, in-depth interview with a man who is no stranger to controversy and doesn’t seem to give a damn what people think of him. Clay Higgins has gone from cop to congressman. And along the way, did things law enforcement officers don’t normally do, like the way he delivered his message in crime stopper videos that earned him the name the “Cajun John Wayne.”

If you look him up online, you’ll find no shortage of articles condemning Clay Higgins as a far-right conspiracy theorist, peddling in crazy, unfounded ideas about January 6th. Then again, these are the same people who told us Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation and President Donald Trump was a Russian spy. Simply put, they often lie and we don’t care what they think.

We know we’ve been deceived about January 6th because the narrative has shifted. For example, we now know from court cases and the FBI itself that the bureau did have undercover assets on the ground. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to speak to Representative Higgins. He’s one of the few in Congress who’s challenged the insurrection narrative from the start and as a former law enforcement officer himself knows a thing or two about investigations.

Powerful people who dominate the flow of information don’t want you to hear what he has to say or what he’s learned over the past two and a half years. That alone seems like a compelling reason for us to find out.

Lara

This is a letter from Bennie Thompson, who was chairman of the January 6th Select Committee, and he sent this to TSA, to the Honorable David Pekoske, who’s the administrator for TSA.

They want a briefing on “efforts to address the travel of white supremacists and other domestic terrorist groups. Options for quickly denying air carrier service to individuals posing a potential threat, and current status of efforts to identify and add to watchlists.” How far does this go?

Clay

That letter was the beginning of an executive action by the TSA to use its authority to instruct America’s air marshals to track and follow Trump supporters that have been charged with no crime. They were guilty only of – of arriving by air into D.C. on January 4th, fifth or sixth. And those – those manifest were turned over to the FBI.

The FBI went through those manifest. And every American that they identified, that the FBI identified as a Trump supporter, that was on those manifest was added to the FBI’s suspected domestic terrorist watch list. The FBI create the profile on those people – a suspected terrorist profile, and then the TSA administrator used his authority to instruct air the Marshals of America to track those Americans wherever they fly and

Lara

Still today?

Clay

It’s still happening. This is who our air marshals are following, the Trump supporters and that letter signed by Bennie Thompson, who was chair of the J6 Select Committee and signed by John Katko, who at the time was a ranking member.

Lara

A Republican.

Clay

He was the lead Republican of the Homeland Security Committee advising the- the Pekoske, the TSA senior guy to use all of that authority to track Trump supporters that have not been charged with a crime. They were guilty only of arriving in D.C. by air.

Lara

And every time they fly, they’re being tracked?

Clay

That’s right.

Lara

If they have never been convicted of terrorism, why are they on the terror watch list? It’s a violation of the First Amendment. They exercise their First Amendment rights. They’re being punished for it. It’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment. I mean, how many laws does this violate? How many rights does this violate? This is not a free country.

Lara

You’re not a free country where you’re tracked by air marshals, by the way, at taxpayer expense. And we’re not talking about an insignificant expense. Teams of three air marshals tracing people all over the country? You’re putting physical detail onto people.

Clay

That’s right

Lara

That’s the most expensive form of surveillance that exists.

Clay

Let me say – let me clarify. It’s very comforting to Americans to think that there’s, there might be an air marshal on your flight.

Lara

Not if they’re tracking you for your political beliefs.

Clay

Well, not if they’re being used for nefarious purposes. But the people that are complaining about this are the air marshals themselves, digital whistleblowers that are coming forward to tell a congressman that they felt would pay attention.

Lara

This has been going on since January ‘21 and you just found out about it. What else is going on, that we don’t know about?

Clay

We don’t know, but I’m telling you, we’re in uncharted waters as it relates to the weaponization of our government against the American people. I am not frightened of these people. I’ve spent my life serving others and and I love my country. This thing is not going to just slip away. They’re not going to take us without a fight.

Clay

And I’m going to fight legally and peacefully and within the parameters of the Constitution that I’ve sworn to serve, but they’re going down. These – these men, and their high perch in there, their position of power and authority and are walking upon our entire history, our deepest core principles. They’re not going to get away with it.

Lara

They have so far.

Clay

We’ll see.

Lara

Powerful people in this country. They want to make sure no one hears your voice. They want everyone to look at you like a far-right, crazy conspiracy theorist. Is that who you are?

Clay

No, m’am. I’m a regular American man. I’m an investigator – police officer by background. I’m going to continue to speak the truth, whether anybody likes it or not.

Lara

You’ve always been controversial. I mean, even when you were in law enforcement, you did those crimestopper videos that went viral. People loved them. You got a lot of heat for them, too.

The Gremlin Street gang is responsible for hundreds of violent crimes: Murders, armed robberies, witness intimidation, burglaries, drug trafficking, extortion, and brutal beatings.

We’ve arrested 10 of these thugs and have warrants on seven more. You will be hunted, you will be tracked, and if you raise your weapon to a man like me, we’ll return fire with superior firepower.

Darren Carter – you think men like these are afraid of an uneducated, 125-pound punk like you? That’s never won a fair fight in your life and hold your gun sideways? Young man, I’ll meet you on solid ground any time, anywhere. Light or heavy. Makes no difference to me. You won’t walk away. And for those who would use this message as a way to create false racial division in our country, take a close look behind me. Standing next to every cop is a leader of our black community. This is not about race. It’s about right versus wrong.

Lara

Was that your idea with you? Were you the reason behind that?

Clay

Those videos, those public service announcements were part of my job that the sheriff asked me to perform.

Lara

Because you were the press officer? Public affairs person?

Clay

Public service, but that was a late in my career. I didn’t ask for that position, I had been a swat cop for long time. In fact, when the sheriff asked me to to take that role, I first I thought he was joking. And I told the sheriff, “I don’t know how to do that.” and he said, “well there, it’s easy.”

Clay

And you show up where the TV people tell you to show up and you stand where they tell you to stand and somebody holds the script for you and you read it. I did that a couple of weeks. I read the script, but I was uncomfortable with that because it wasn’t real. It wasn’t reflective of what I had been telling actual suspects for many years.

Clay

In the dead of night. That direct conversation that a lone cop will have, whether a young man has taken a wrong turn in life and asked to be arrested. That’s a very special communication for a good cop.

Lara

How do you do that, Clay? How do you have that conversation?

Clay

Well, you speak candidly and honestly and from your heart with compassion, but discipline and confidence. I mean, if – if I show up in your life at 2:00 in the morning, it is not because you’ve had a good day. I don’t consider you to be a bad man. You’ve just done something that has crossed a line and – according to statute, and I’m ‘a help you through the booking process and hopefully lead you to a better day.

Clay

Their only path really to freedom was through my jail and – and real freedom. Spiritual freedom would – would be if they could break the bonds of darkness, you know. So the way I deliver the message when I began having to record video segments, I just communicated in that same honest manner. And – and what started happening is people started turning themselves in.

Lara

People responded. And even beyond your little sheriff’s department in Louisiana.

Clay

It was big.

Lara

Right?

Clay

Worldwide. Some of those videos, wh- they were translated in eight languages, I’m told. IT people told me they were viewed 150 million times across the world.

Lara

No one had seen anything like it.

Clay

It was just honesty. And that’s what I do in Congress.

Lara

Well, there is another video of you that went viral not so long ago, which is when you at that press conference on the Hill and that activist kept coming up and you leaned in and took your sunglasses down, you told him, “I’m going to give you an interview. I’ll give you what you want, but this is what you got to do.”

Lara

And then he came back.

Clay

You had a Freedom Caucus press conference immediately following a Bernie Sanders-like rally. So they had, you know, not necessarily a good mix. You – one could anticipate there might be some activists there that that would not necessarily agree with the kind of things we were saying in our in our press conference. And one of those little fellas figured out there was no police around.

Clay

So he wanted to be more aggressive than he should have been.

Man causing a scene: Can you talk about when your family did an ad all endorsing your opponent and…?

Clay

And he came on and saw the barriers, you know, into the press area. He was not a journalist.

Lara

He was walking right between the group of congressmen.

Clay

Yeah, he came – he was trying to get around to Lauren Boebert and I had already dressed him down a little bit and put him in a box.

Man causing a scene: You can’t answer the question that he has.

Clay: No I can answer the question.

Man: Okay, listen, What’s your name?

Clay: Clay Higgins. I represent South Louisiana. All I’m asking you is to just peacefully stand by with your camera. I promise ya – look at me – I’ll come talk to you straight up and answer all your questions. Fair enough?

Man: Do you know about his family and his endorsement? Yeah.

Clay: I’ll answer that when we talk.

Clay

That didn’t last but maybe a minute and he decided to get even more aggressive, so I just – I had to escort him out of the area. I turned him over to the police. That was the end of it.

Lara

I like the way you say “escort him out.” You basically picked him up and walked him over and put him down.

Clay

That was an escort.

Lara

That’s a Clay Higgins escort?

Clay

That’s a Clay Higgins escort, Yeah.

Lara

And you stayed very calm and said, “Calm yourself.”

Clay

Calm down, son.

Lara

It sounded like you’d said those words before.

Clay

Yeah, I’ve said them before. Kind of where we are as a nation right now. It calls for calm consideration and response to the oppression that we face from within. It’s – it’s quite nefarious.

Lara

Tell me what you mean. What do we face as a nation?

Clay

Generationally, we have allowed our federal law enforcement agencies to gradually become commanded by corrupted men, and they’ve been corrupted not so much by money, but by power. And that power really began manifesting itself insidiously with The FBI and DOJ and our intelligence services since 9/11, since the Patriot Act. We gave them great authorities and power.

Clay

Those powers are no longer being – being used to thwart terrorists. They’re being used to oppress the individual rights and freedoms of regular Americans like me and like the citizens I’ve sworn to serve. So I have a problem with that.

Lara

The counter to that would be these are not ordinary citizens. These are domestic terrorists. Because that’s, I mean, it’s very clear from Christopher Wray, the letter that he wrote about parents going to school board meetings that need to be investigated as terrorists. You speak at a Moms for Liberty event today, you get targeted by the Anti-Defamation League or the Southern Poverty Law Center or someone like that as a domestic terrorist. And these organizations are working very closely with not just social media companies, but with law enforcement.

Clay

Regular patriotic American men and women are not terrorists. Let me say the factions within our highest levels of federal law enforcement – And I and I and I – FBI and DOJ and intelligence services, these corrupted men we’re discussing, they could be more readily identified and more accurately described as domestic terrorists than – than me. They’re the ones treading upon my individual rights and freedoms. They’re the ones that’s spying on – on Americans. They’re the ones traveling uh great distances to, to insert themselves into the lives of Americans that are just communicating freely, as is our right online or anywhere else, at meetings as we congregate and gather.

Lara

What about those who say your, your right to gather and uh have a conversation doesn’t give you a right to assault police officers and disrupt Congress and so on?

Clay

I don’t support battery on police officers or, uh, nor – nor violent disruption of – of government operations, but I will remind everyone that a free American has a right to resist an unlawful arrest.

Lara

At the last hearing where you addressed Christopher Wray, you produced a photograph of what you called “ghost buses.”

These two buses in the middle here, they were the first to arrive at Union Station on January 6th. Zero 5-hundred. I have all this evidence. I’m showing you the tip of this iceberg.

Lara

Your point really was that they’re unmarked vehicles full of individuals that have not been explained. Is that right?

Clay

A “ghost vehicle” in law enforcement is not an uncommon reference. It’s vehicle has been purposefully concealed to – to whereby it’s not easy to identify. So no license plate. It’s been painted over its original cover. In this case, these two buses were totally painted white, like a cheap, vast overspray over all of the markings. So when you have two charter buses show up, the very first buses to show up in Union Station on January 6th…

Lara

Around 5 a.m.?

Clay

Around 5 a.m. The initial witness, another charter bus owner, arrived at – at 5:20. He thought he would be the first to arrive because he knew the schedule of all the other charter buses and he knew that most the buses would begin arriving around 6. So this charter bus operator was very experienced man. Very squared away. When he arrived with his couple of buses, these two white buses were – were to his surprise already there, and he immediately noticed that these buses were odd because they were totally painted over. It was a bad paint job. There was no markings, no phone numbers, no company name, totally outside the parameters of the way charter buses are required to operate and by law. So he said, “these buses are weird” and no one was getting out.

Clay

So something else that happens within that charter bus driver community is the drivers know each other. The passengers may stay on a bus if they’re especially in a parking lot, and not ready to disembark yet.

Lara

Sure.

Clay

The passengers might stay on a bus, but the bus drivers get off and they talk to each other.

Clay

They talk to the other bus drivers. So there are things that happen normally that the absence of that happening was odd. So he was suspicious enough of these buses as a professional, that he collected some digital evidence of those buses and then estimated with him and – and other eyewitnesses between 40 and 50 guys that they described as “Trump supporters.”

Clay

They all disembarked from the bus and they gathered in front of – of the two buses and they had like some kind of discussion, a briefing like the way a military leader would address his troops.

Lara

Yeah, they call it a huddle.

Clay

And then they together went to the escalators and up into Union Station and were gone.

Lara

And they were all men?

Clay

They were all men in all the Trump regalia. These men were in really good shape. They made comments like, “Wow, these are real serious Trump supporters. These guys” and they said they all had elbow pads and knee pads. And least they appeared like they had common equipment, but they were not in uniform, but they – they behaved in a uniform manner. 0

Clay

And we intend to get all of that video evidence from Union Station, from the escalators, from the parking lot. We have other eyewitnesses, much to the chagrin of everybody that was in those buses and everyone who commanded them to be there. We’ve identified one of those buses. And you know what that means? That means that’s their ass, because a bus is a serial numbered vehicle.

Clay

And in America, the change of ownership of a serial numbered vehicle…

Lara

Is recorded.

Clay

Is documented. So that means we can begin to trace from the original owner of that bus where it was sold and who bought it, and then who it was leased to and where it disappeared. And then eventually those buses were removed from the Union Station and we’re going to document all of that.

Lara

So you believe that those buses held undercover officers, not informants? Correct?

Clay

I feel very, very confident that – that everybody that was on those two buses were FBI assets.

And I have a high degree of belief there were actual FBI agents. And – and I’m, I’m sorry to say, ma’am, my objective conclusion is that – that senior officials at the at the FBI were deeply involved there.

Clay

You had a combination of FBI confidential informants either registered, unregistered �� or a volunteer informant, or actual FBI agents depending upon a group and how significant a group was. Like the agents inserted in say the Proud Boys groups that we’re going to come to D.C. Those are most probably actual FBI agents. Whereas some, you know, random Facebook group of patriots from Arizona or something were most likely an informant.

Clay

So it would still fall under the umbrella of an “FBI asset” if they were communicating with the FBI – data that they were harvesting and information that they were recording and delivering it to the FBI, screenshots of text chats or actual recordings of phone calls, things like that – that they were delivering to the FBI, all part of the web of surveillance of the American people.

Lara

What have you seen? What can you tell us about? I know you can’t get ahead of everything. I know there’s limitations on some of this, but can you tell us anything?

Clay

I can tell you that, that the FBI had, had established a formula in 2020 that, that they pursued with all their – their power and authority to infiltrate groups across the country of Americans that were essential discussing online. They’d formed online groups.

Lara

Like chat rooms?

Clay

Yeah, like chat rooms.

Lara

Discord and Telegram.

Clay

Etc. to discuss their frustrations with COVID oppression and so the FBI identified groups and and – and infiltrated them with undercover operations that were very effective and they began planting seeds of discord. If you track the – the text threads, which I’ve – I’ve seen some of again, through evidence that I’ve been able to witness, but I cannot, I cannot share publicly because it would be in violation of – of court orders.

Lara

But to be clear, this is video you’ve seen with your own eyes?

Clay

Yes, ma’am. The evidence that was in criminal cases.

Lara

Is this what it’s based on? It’s based on the digital evidence, what you have on camera and supporting evidence for that and other kinds?

Clay

Yeah, eyewitness testimony, sworn testimony, affidavits, text messages, emails, and digital – digital footage. Yes, ma’am.

Lara

A lot of people would say “Clay, you’re lawman, right? That’s what we do. We infiltrate groups where we perceive there to be a threat or potential of crime being committed. We have undercover officers. We have undercover assets like informants. This is the bread and butter of law enforcement. What are you complaining about?”

Clay

They were the criminals. They were the threat.

Lara

Based on what?

Clay

We were just Americans. We were Americans that were that were angry and – and we were enraged that our freedoms were being oppressed and that FBI and the powers that had become corrupted, the those – those bad actors within the federal government that had this authority, they said “these Americans, how dare those Americans challenge the oppression that we’re putting upon them.”

Lara

Can you share any of the messages yet that you have said you traced back to FBI undercovers inside these groups and these chats?

Clay

No m’am.

Lara

Will you share it when you can?

The moment that I’m able to reveal that – that stuff, I will.

Lara

You said specifically that you saw that there were undercover police officers who were inside the Capitol before any of the protesters came in.

Clay

That’s right.

Lara

How do you know that? And can you give us any sense of what that means?

Clay

I mean, if you clearly have men dressed as Trump supporters walking around inside the Capitol on the other side of police officers who are, to one extent or another, not engaged with them, like they’re not concerned about them.

Lara

Right.

Clay

Then you have a set of closed doors like exterior doors and interior doors closed, and you have police officers positioned outside and then in between the two doors and then on the inside of the second set of doors –

Clay

Doors weren’t open yet.

Lara

What time was this?

Clay

This was – a couple of videos that Trump was still speaking and then on the inside, it looked like Trump supporters walking around in groups of five or six, so these were clearly separated physically and by doors and by police officers from the guys on the outside.

Any reasonable man would come to the conclusion– When you have videos of the doors being opened and police officers allowing Trump supporters that had gathered at the door to now enter, no violence, just walking in. “Just come on in, some fist bumps, and come in.” A second set of doors open, then there’s a group of Trump supporters on the steps, interior steps saying, “Come on this way, this way.”

Lara

What does that tell you?

Clay

Any reasonable man would look at that and say this was a coordinated effort by a law enforcement to have these people come in to. So who was that? They had to be, you know, I think as nefarious forces and part of the whole agenda of the – of the FBI with their involvement of this whole thing. We have other evidence, specific observations of police officers, Capitol police or metro, both entering rooms and here in the Capitol in uniform and coming out as Trump supporters and construction workers.

Lara

You’ve seen that?

Clay

Yeah, so…

Lara

Why has that video not been released yet?

Clay

One would say that’s a pretty good clue.

Lara

Yeah.

Clay

The other reason that we believe it’s just practical to have someone who knows how to get around, I mean, you know yourself, you can’t walk around his place. You have to be here for years and years.

Lara

The capitol is a maze.

Clay

That’s right. And it’s incredibly difficult to get around. You have to know where you’re going.

Clay

You had to have people that were very familiar with the the capital itself in order to lead to random groups of citizens that have come from every corner of the country in many cases, never been to D.C. before, much less walked around in the capital. So it – it just makes sense that the Trump supporters that were leading the way and were clearly already inside the capital before the doors were open, were working in coordination with the FBI agents and assets that were embedded into the crowd.

Clay

In some cases in these groups had been embedded for months. This is ugly stuff we’re discussing, but the American people deserve to know the truth and I intend to see that it happens.

Lara

A lot of people just won’t believe it without – they have to see the evidence or they just don’t believe you.

Clay

I don’t want to believe these things. I’ve been a cop for a long time, since I was a little boy. The FBI shield was – that was the baddest ass badge a cop could ever earn. It was an honored achievement to become an FBI agent so it’s with great pain I describe the corruption that has taken hold within our FBI, and we intend to clean it up because these rank-and-file FBI agents, let me tell you that a lot of these men and women are quite disturbed about what has happened to their beloved FBI. Same thing inside the DOJ. We have an obligation as Americans to embrace truth, whether it’s ugly or not, so that we can take corrective action.

Lara

Okay so you have the floor now, but you don’t know how much longer you have it for, right? And you don’t have forever.

Clay

We don’t.

Lara

And it’s been how long?

Clay

10 months.

Lara

10 months?

Clay

Some things have not happened that – that – that the conservatives within the people’s house would like to happen. We’ve had some disagreements internally regarding who shall be our speaker. We just had to go through what we went through in order to arrive at that particular junction of American history where a man like Mike Johnson became our speaker. Mike gets it, that all the digital evidence of for instance J6 has to be released to the American people, talking about altogether between 40 and 50,000 hours of digital evidence.

Clay

No one has a staff large enough to go through that evidence. So it has to be crowdsourced, have to give this stuff to the American people. And then the truth will be revealed, clip by clip.

Lara

Mike Johnson has released precisely 12 and a half thousand hours of that 40,000, and he’s not releasing 5%, which is 2,000 hours. Whether it’s for a good reason or a bad reason, it provides opportunity to hide whatever you want in those 2,000 hours. I’m not saying he’s hiding something because I don’t know.

Lara

But I’m just saying is when you’re withholding 2,000 hours, you can put whatever you want in that 2,000 hours. There are American citizens who are sitting in jail, some of them for three years without a trial. People have gone to solitary confinement for misdemeanor charges, nonviolent misdemeanor charges.

Lara

They’re still arresting people. You expect people to go to an election and vote when they don’t even have answers on their questions on the last election. And over time, more and more and more evidence is coming out in court cases. Right? Judges that wouldn’t take those cases when the light was on them. Now they’re not able to avoid them anymore. So what are you waiting for?

Lara

The people who don’t want the truth out have complete information dominance.

Lara

Right? You come out with something, you have a committee hearing? Dismissed. Conspiracy theories. “Ah Higgins. He’s a far right lunatic. Now, you know, don’t listen to him.” And so there are millions of people in this country that read The New York Times every day. Some of them were in this room, right? They hear you saying this and they think you’re just a nut.

Lara

You’re just a nut. And where’s the evidence or Mike Johnson’s going to release it? What is he waiting for?

Clay

The truth of what happened on those days, J 4 or 5 and 6 is in the digital evidence that Speaker Johnson has control of. And thank God we have a speaker who has stated that he is committed to release all of that data. Now he’s restrained to the extent that he’s restrained by attorneys, but he’s an attorney himself.

Clay

And, and we’ll see. When you when you say not going to release at all, I say, let’s see.

Lara

Well, those were his words, not mine.

Clay

Well, I know the man’s heart and it is pure and he knows that American needs full truth. I believe, I speak on behalf of “we the people” when I say we demand full release. The whole thing. Not just from the Capitol grounds and within the Capitol proper by the way. We want it all. We want all the DC Metro digital evidence. We need evidence from Union Station and and some other spots that we’ve identified.

Lara

Can you tell me any of those spots that you’ve identified, Union Station being one. What other the spots?

Clay

The parking areas and, and areas for dismemberment.

Lara

What do you mean by that?

Clay

The escalator areas where you can connect the dots from agents disembarking from vehicles and going either on foot to their stations and their teams of three and four and five, or getting in other vehicles that were dispersed and where some actions were noted that were born of of those vehicles, where some actions were taken, nefarious stuff.

Lara

What can potentially happen there? If you were a J6 defendant who’s in prison or was convicted of a crime, but you find out later that – that Brady material was withheld from you in violation of the law, is there legal redress for you here?

Clay

Yeah, that would flip the case. The bottom line is that if we are successful, if Mike Johnson is successful at getting all the digital evidence from J4, 5, and 6 released entirely to the American people, including the body cam footage of – of – of every police officer that was either operating in uniform or not in uniform, shall we say, then all these J6 I call “persecutions”, these political prisoners, those cases will be flipped because it’s exculpatory evidence that’s been withheld and the prosecution has a legal responsibility to provide exculpatory evidence that they’re in possession of to the defense. In this case, in every one of these J6 cases that have been prosecuted, the FBI and the DOJ has most certainly been in possession of all the digital evidence that we’re describing right now. If we’re successful at getting that evidence released to the American people, the American people are going to be stunned into acceptance of the reality that our FBI and our DOJ, and in some cases, head people in our intelligence services, have been corrupted by power.

Lara

Have you seen all the video? I know it’s a lot.

Clay

it’s a lot.

Lara

Have you seen the key parts?

Clay: I’ve seen many segments of video that most Americans have not seen, that is incredibly condemning. They’re so desperate to keep this digital evidence away from Americans, just regular citizen’s review, that they’re going through quite complex legal maneuvers to stop Americans from viewing this evidence. Every American that’s watching this should ask themselves why. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, ask yourself why.

Lara

Why do you think?

Clay

Why are you concealing that evidence from me? Why can’t I see that? It’s video from my own capital. People have a tendency to forget, especially my liberal brothers and sisters across the country. This is your country. This is your capital. You have the right to know what actually happened in 2020 in the months preceding J4, 5, and 6. You have the right to see the digital evidence of what truly happened in your capital on January 4th, 5th, and 6th. This is my position.

https://shop.salemnow.com/product/police-state/

youtube

Lara Logan spoke to Steve Bannon's War Room:

https://rumble.com/v41yu2q-bannons-war-room-rep.-clay-higgins-speaks-out-.html

For every martyr: Please forgive us & know your suffering is temporary. 💔

youtube

#police state film #Colour Revolution #lara logan #clay higgins #january 6 #Demand the truth #Banana Republic #clinton crime family #Bush Crime Family #biden crime family #Cheney Crime Family #Obama Crime Family #Brookings Institute #susan rice #Norm Eisen #C.R.E.W.#Todd Agnew

33 notes · View notes

1americanconservative · 7 months

Text

James Bradley

Garland, Mayorkas, Blinken, and Eric Adams are heading to Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia to discuss the problem of the border. Why? The problem didn’t start in any of those countries.

The problem started in Washington DC on January 21, 2021 - when Joe Biden DELIBERATELY stopped construction on our border wall. Doesn’t take a fact-finding mission. Doesn’t take a multimillion dollar report from “experts.” Doesn’t take a “conversation between leaders.” It’s OBVIOUS why America has 18-40,000,000 more illegals than we had when Donald Trump was president: Trump built the wall. Biden took it down.

And they’re only PRETENDING to care now…because it’s an election year. I won’t be fooled.

To me, Joe Biden became impeachable the minute he opened us up to this invasion.

This is the only HIGH CRIME I needed to see to make that determination. Because by letting criminals and terrorists and cartel members and gang-bangers enter freely, what Biden has done will damage this country for generations to come.

If that’s not impeachable, what else ever could be?

God bless America

23 notes · View notes

antidrumpfs · 29 days

Text

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is now selling Bibles as he runs to return to the White House.

“Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible,” Trump wrote, directing his supporters to a website selling the book for $59.99.

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in the video posted on Truth Social. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”

Billing itself as “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” the new venture’s website calls it “Easy-to-read” with “large print” and a “slim design” that “invites you to explore God’s Word anywhere, any time.”

#orangejesus #orangeplague #orangemafia #liarinchief #traitorinchief #traitortrump #donthecon

9 notes · View notes

taramysweetlove · 2 months

Text

God Bless all Truckers. #Boycott NYC.

7 notes · View notes

defenderoftruth · 10 months

Text

President Trump, through his Supreme Court picks, saved millions of babies' lives and now has given those same children a shot at attending university based on their merit rather than arbitrary racial guidelines. God bless President Donald Trump!

20 notes · View notes

12angrypears · 4 months

Text

Obama, Trump, and Biden play SBURB:

i can’t believe this is my first attempt at homestuck fanfiction:

—————————————

Obama: Alright guys, let’s be careful with our kernelsprite. We don’t know what it’s for yet and—

Trump: Barack, everyone knows what we do with a kernelsprite. We prototype it and get a guide. [tosses American flag]

USprite: [chitters patriotically]

Trump: Now that’s a good, honest hard-working American sprite. thats what this game needs.

Obama: Donald what the hell did you do.

Trump: I prototyped the kernelsprite.

Biden: hey guys there’s some weird looking African Americans out here waving American flags.

Trump: Look Barack, I told you I was popular with minorities. Even Sleepy Joe thinks so.

Obama: I don’t— Joe what are you doing? Not everything with black skin is African American. I don’t think those are even human.

Trump: Oh, so when I say I don’t see color—

Obama: Shut the fuck up or I’ll prototype you in the damn kernelsprite.

USprite: [chitters patriotically]

Biden: Hey I think they’re doing something—

Trump: Maybe you should prototype me! Can you imagine how amazing—and I’ve seen a lot of amazing things in my life other than myself—how incredible of a sprite I would be?

Obama: Oh my god.

Trump: No, no, hear me out. What this session needs is some good old Uncle Sam, and I can’t hardly—you probably can’t either—hardly imagine anyone better for it than the president of the United States of America.

Obama: Former president.

Trump: Former this and former that. Why don’t we focus on—

Obama: I can’t believe we destroyed the White House for this.

Biden: [muffled thud] Oh my god.

Trump: There goes Sleepy Joe falling down the stairs. You’d rather prototype him for our Uncle Sam project?

Obama: I don’t want to prototype anyone until we know what—

Biden: these African Americans are full of grist

Obama: Imps, Joe, just call them imps.

Trump: You want a president with grist? If you—when you put me in that kernelsprite, you’ll never believe how much grist I can bring to the citizens of this great country.

Obama: Grift, you’re a grifter Donald. What the hell is grist?

Biden: Holy shit!

[Bathtub crashes through the ceiling onto USprite]

Biden: Sorry guys, I guess I ran out.

AMERITUBSPRITE: God bless the US— [flushing noises]

#homestuck #us presidents #I can’t believe this is my first homestuck fanfiction #not asking for validation but ooooh I hope you guys like it #Obama #trump #Biden #sburb #heheh

8 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 24 days

Text

[Clay Jones]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 30, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 31, 2024

On Tuesday morning, on his social media outlet, former president Trump encouraged his supporters to buy a “God Bless The USA” Bible for $59.99. The Bible is my “favorite book,” he said in a promotional video, and said he owns “many.” This Bible includes the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance. It also includes the chorus of country music singer Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA,” likely because it is a retread of a 2021 Bible Greenwood pushed to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of 9-11.

That story meant less coverage for the news from last Monday, March 25, in which Trump shared on his social media platform a message comparing him to Jesus Christ, with a reference to Psalm 109, which calls on God to destroy one’s enemies.

This jumped out to me because Trump is not the first president to compare himself to Jesus Christ. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson famously did, too. While there is a financial component to Trump’s comparison that was not there for Johnson, the two presidents had similar political reasons for claiming a link to divine power.

Johnson was born into poverty in North Carolina, then became a tailor in Tennessee, where he rose through politics to the U.S. House of Representatives and then the Senate. In 1861, when Tennessee left the Union, Johnson was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who remained loyal to the United States. This stand threw him into prominence. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln named him the military governor of Tennessee.

Then, in 1864, the Republican Party renamed itself the Union Party to attract northern Democrats to its standard. To help that effort, party leaders chose a different vice president, replacing a staunch Republican—Hannibal Hamlin of Maine—with the Democrat Johnson.

Although he was elected on what was essentially a Republican ticket, Johnson was a Democrat at heart. He loathed the elite southern enslavers he thought had become oligarchs in the years before the Civil War, shutting out poorer men like him from prosperity, but he was a fervent racist who enslaved people himself until 1863. Johnson opposed the new active government the Republicans had built during the war, and he certainly didn’t want it to enforce racial equality. He expected that the end of the war would mean a return to the United States of 1860, minus the system of enslavement that concentrated wealth upward.

Johnson was badly out of step with the Republicans, but a quirk of timing gave him exclusive control of the reconstruction of the United States from April 15, 1865, when he took the oath of office less than three hours after Lincoln breathed his last, until early December. Congress had adjourned for the summer on March 4, expecting that Lincoln would call the members back together if there were an emergency, as he had in summer 1861. It was not due to reconvene until early December. Members of Congress rushed back to Washington, D.C., after Lincoln’s assassination, but Johnson insisted on acting alone.

Over the course of summer 1865, Johnson set out to resuscitate the prewar system dominated by the Democratic Party, with himself at its head. He pardoned all but about 1,500 former Confederates, either by proclamation or by presidential pardon, putting them back into power in southern society. He did not object when southern state legislatures developed a series of state laws, called Black Codes, remanding Black Americans into subservience.

When Congress returned to work on December 4, 1865, Johnson greeted the members with the happy news that he had “restored” the Union. Leaving soldiers in the South would have cost tax money, he said, and would have “envenomed hatred” among southerners. His exclusion of Black southerners from his calculus, although they were the most firmly loyal population in the South, showed how determined he was to restore prewar white supremacy, made possible by keeping power in the states. All Republican congressmen had to do, he said, was to swear in the southern senators and representatives now back in Washington, D.C., and the country would be “restored.”

Republicans wanted no part of his “restoration.” Not only did it return to power the same men who had been shooting at Republicans’ constituents eight months before and push northerners’ Black fellow soldiers to a form of quasi-enslavement, but also the 1870 census would count Black Americans as whole people rather than three fifths of a person, giving former Confederates more national political power after the war than they had had before it. Victory on the battlefields would be overturned by control of Congress.

Congressional Republicans rejected Johnson’s plan for reconstruction. Instead, they passed the Fourteenth Amendment in June 1866 and required the former Confederate states to ratify it before they could be readmitted to the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment put the strength of the national government behind the idea that Black Americans would be considered citizens—as the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision had denied. Then it declared that states could neither discriminate against citizens nor take away a citizen’s rights without due process of the law. To make sure that the 1870 census would not increase the power of former Confederates, it declared that if any state kept men over 21 from voting, its representation in Congress would be reduced proportionally.

Johnson hated the Fourteenth Amendment. He hated its broad definition of citizenship; he hated its move toward racial equality; he hated its undermining of the southern leaders he backed; he hated its assertion of national power; he hated that it offered a moderate route to reunification that most Americans would support. If states ratified it, he wouldn’t be able to rebuild the Democratic Party with himself at its head.

So he told southern politicians to ignore Congress’s order to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, calling Congress an illegal body because it had not seated representatives from the southern states. He promised white southerners that the Democrats would win the 1866 midterm elections. Once back in power, he said, Democrats would repudiate the Republicans’ “radicalism” and put his plan back into place.

As he asserted his vision for the country, Johnson egged on white supremacist violence. In July, white mobs attacked a Unionist convention in New Orleans where delegates had called for taking the vote away from ex-Confederates and giving it to loyal Black men. The rioters killed 37 Black people and 3 white delegates to the convention.

By then, Johnson had become as unpopular as his policies. Increasingly isolated, he defended his plan for the nation as the only true course. In late August he broke tradition to campaign in person, an act at the time considered beneath the dignity of a president. He set off on a railroad tour, known as the “Swing Around the Circle,” to whip up support for the Democrats before the election.

Speaking from the same set of notes as the train stopped at different towns and cities from Washington, D.C., to New York, to Chicago, to St. Louis, and back to Washington, D.C., Johnson complained bitterly about the opposition to his reconstruction policies, attacked specific members of Congress as traitors and called for them to be hanged, and described himself as a martyr like Lincoln. And, noting the mercy of his reconstruction policies, he compared himself to Jesus.

It was all too much for voters. The white supremacist violence across the South horrified them, returning power to southern whites infuriated them, the reduction of Black soldiers to quasi-slaves enraged them, and Johnson’s attacks on Congress alarmed them. Johnson seemed determined to hand the country over to its former enemies to recreate the antebellum world that northerners had just poured more than 350,000 lives and $5 billion into destroying, no matter what voters wanted.

Johnson’s extremism and his supporters’ violence created a backlash. Northerners were not willing to hand the country back to the Democrats who were rioting in the South and to a president who compared himself to Jesus. Rather than turning against the Republicans in the 1866 elections, voters repudiated Johnson. They gave Republicans a two-thirds majority of Congress, enabling them to override any policy Johnson proposed.

And, in 1868, the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, launching a new era in the history of the United States.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#history #Andrew Johnson #Civil War #political #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #Fourteenth Amendment

4 notes · View notes