Movies & TV the Penguin The Penguin: Showrunner, Colin Farrell, and Deirdre O’Connell Talk About Oz’s Mommy Issues This Penguin has a different relationship to family than Tim Burton’s iteration. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on September 17, 2024 Credit: Macall Polay/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Macall Polay/HBO The Penguin, a limited series centered on the rise of Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb in Gotham’s crime world, is a character study. In it, we see Oz just a week after the events in Matt Reeves’ The Batman. One of the events in that film was the death of Carmine Falcone, leaving a power vacuum that Oz seeks to fill. Showrunner Lauren LeFranc wanted to delve into why Oz had such a thirst to become a kingpin. “I don’t think people seek power just to seek power,” she said in a press conference that Reactor attended. “I think they seek power because of a deeper want or a deeper void inside of them.” LeFranc decided to “build a mother figure” to give Oz that motivation. “I thought about this idea that Oz wants to make his mother proud, and he needs her love and affection, and she’s withholding,” she said. “And I started to ask myself why she would be withholding, and that’s something that we reveal deeper in the season. That felt like a personal connection to me. It felt like everyone can relate to some level of what it is to have a complicated family life, and root it in that.” The character LeFranc came up with is Francis Cobb, who was inspired by her own grandmother. Francis, according to LeFranc, is “a really complicated, bristly emotional, tough, broad.” She added later on that she “also wanted the relationship to be weird and twisted, a little bit verging on Oedipal, to understand Oz in a deeper way too, to have just some form of distorted relationship.” Credit: HBO Francis is played by Deirdre O’Connell, who had an instant connection with Farrell when she first saw him in full Penguin makeup. “The second I saw [Colin Farrell] in [his] full regalia, I felt like, ‘Oh, game on. Oh, there’s my boy,’” she said at the press conference. “It just dropped something in for me that I don’t think you can always expect will happen, and it often doesn’t happen, and you have to work on it, and then you have to find each other and create a kind of intimacy. But there was a weird magic that I felt hit by […] we just started having so much fun immediately, and it had partly to do with the fact that he was Oz.” Farrell also said later on that Oz’s mother “was the greatest influence in his life,” though he added that “there was no amount of love, I think, that he could receive, even from her, that would have ameliorated the pain that he didn’t know how to manage within himself. And that’s something that comes out later, and in this tale, over eight hours, comes out in all sorts of grotesquely consequential ways.” We can see Oz and his mom’s relationship unfold when The Penguin premieres on HBO and Max on September 19, 2024. [end-mark] The post <i>The Penguin</i>: Showrunner, Colin Farrell, and Deirdre O’Connell Talk About Oz’s Mommy Issues appeared first on Reactor.

House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Tuesday morning that the House will move forward with a vote on Wednesday on a continuing resolution to fund the government beyond the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. The continuing resolution would fund the government for six months and avert the looming government shutdown. Johnson has also attached the SAVE Act to the funding mechanism. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act attempts to add further measures to prevent illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from voting in federal elections. “Congress has an immediate obligation to do two things: responsibly fund the federal government, and ensure the security of our elections,” Johnson wrote in a post on X. “Because we owe this to our constituents, we will move forward on Wednesday with a vote on the 6-month [continuing resolution] with the SAVE Act attached. I urge all of my colleagues to do what the overwhelming majority of the people of this county rightfully demand and deserve—prevent non-American citizens from voting in American elections.” Congress has an immediate obligation to do two things: responsibly fund the federal government, and ensure the security of our elections.Because we owe this to our constituents, we will move forward on Wednesday with a vote on the 6-month CR with the SAVE Act attached. I urge…— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) September 17, 2024 Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has been a vocal opponent of the speaker’s strategy to fund the government. “Your bill does NOT responsibly fund government,” Massie wrote in a reply on X. “It’s 12 bills rolled into one bill that continues the profligate spending that’s ruining our country. The fact that you’ve added a 13th bill to it does not make it a serious solution.” Your bill does NOT responsibly fund government.It’s 12 bills rolled into one bill that continues the profligate spending that’s ruining our country.The fact that you’ve added a 13th bill to it does not make it a serious solution.Please quit insulting our constituents.— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 17, 2024 “Please quit insulting our constituents,” the Kentucky lawmaker concluded. Johnson previously planned to have the House vote on the six-month continuing resolution and SAVE Act last week. Amid Republican defections that would have resulted in a failed vote, however, Johnson pulled the bill and dispatched House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., to court more Republican support. While the continuing resolution has little chance of passing the Senate if it makes it through the House, the current plan to fund the government could help Republicans score two major wins before the Nov. 5 election. The first potential win, given the duration of the continuing resolution, is to turn the election into a referendum on government spending in a high-inflation environment. Many economists claim government spending has fueled inflation and caused it to persist. The second is getting Democrats on record voting against securing American elections from illegal immigrant voters, which ties together two major GOP issues—election integrity and border security. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is encouraging Johnson to back off. “The speaker’s [continuing resolution] is too unworkable,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday, according to Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News. “I urge him to drop his plan [and] work together to reach a bipartisan agreement with the other leaders … . We do not have time to spare.” Schumer just now on the Senate floor says Johnson’s plan “makes clear he’s running into a dead end.”“The speaker’s CR is too unworkable. I urge him to drop his plan [and] work together to reach a bipartisan agreement with the other leaders… We do not have time to spare.” https://t.co/bmpkGrQEnS— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) September 17, 2024 The post House to Vote on Stopgap Spending Bill With SAVE Act Wednesday appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Every September, world leaders travel to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. While the floor speeches garner the most attention, most often the real action happens in meetings between the leaders and high-level meetings where governments finalize and agree to various statements and agreements. This year, the Summit of the Future is on the agenda, and at the Sept. 22-23 meetings, governments are expected to endorse the Pact for the Future. The scope of this effort is extraordinary, calling for huge increases in foreign aid and funding to developing countries for climate change, endorsing government censorship of what they view as misinformation and disinformation, affirming human rights that the U.S. does not recognize, and chastising countries for not ratifying treaties on small arms, ammunition, and other matters. As envisioned by the U.N. secretary-general, this is a new global deal to “reinvigorate the structures and the trust necessary for effective global governance” with the United Nations at the center of it all. our-common-agenda-summit-of-the-future-what-would-it-deliverDownload History and recent events cast doubt on the ability of the U.N. to meet its current responsibilities, much less additional ones. The U.N. Charter identifies several purposes for the organization, including promoting international peace and security, self-determination, government cooperation toward common ends, and human rights and fundamental freedoms. Across the board, the U.N. is falling short. The U.N. Security Council is increasingly gridlocked due to the opposing interests of its veto-wielding members, which has prevented action on a host of critical issues, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it also has impeded efforts to address other matters, including applying tighter sanctions and international pressure on North Korea and Iran, which flout Security Council resolutions on nonproliferation. Ironically, the secretary-general’s solution is to expand the size of the Security Council, which would worsen this gridlock. Recent trends indicate that U.N. member states see diminishing value in U.N. peacekeeping operations and, increasingly, governments are asking U.N. peacekeeping operations to leave. Human rights violators hold sway in the Human Rights Council and General Assembly, resulting in bias toward Israel. In 2023, 14 of the 21 resolutions condemning countries for human rights violations passed by the General Assembly targeted Israel. The Human Rights Council similarly has focused more than one-third of its 301 condemnatory resolutions on Israel. Of course, it’s not just which countries are targeted that is telling, but which are not. For instance, China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia have not been condemned by those bodies in nearly two decades. Although self-determination is among the primary purposes and principles in the U.N. Charter, the majority of U.N. member states are not politically free, according to Freedom House. Is it shocking that the U.N. reflects their preferences? FIW_2024_DigitalBookletDownload Meanwhile, nations seem less cooperative, not more, with treaty negotiations on a variety of topics foundering on divergent interests and disagreements. The inept and politicized international response to COVID-19, led by the World Health Organization, has raised fundamental questions about the competence of the U.N. system to address critical issues. The U.N. also seems unable to police itself, with sexual exploitation and abuse occurring with disturbing regularity and, shockingly, U.N. staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees participating in terrorism. In short, the Pact for the Future is an overt effort by the secretary-general to claim more resources and authority for the United Nations. It’s obvious why the secretary-general would have an interest in bolstering the power and influence of the United Nations. It is far less clear why governments would be so inclined, given the organization’s failure to address the very responsibilities under its current purview. An honest assessment would not call for expansion of resources and authority for the United Nations, but for reassessment, retrenchment, and refocus on activities, such as humanitarian assistance, where it can provide unique, valuable contributions. The prudent path for the U.S. would be to refuse to join the consensus in support of the Pact for the Future in the upcoming summit. The post Given Its Past, Oppose the United Nations’ ‘Pact for the Future’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s movie “Am I a Racist” is a hybrid of mockumentary in the tradition of “Spinal Tap” and his signature ironic take on the inanities of our age. Walsh’s message in “Am I a Racist?” is simple: Although racism in America is a faint ghost of its historic self – as Professor Wilfred Reilly told Walsh, the demand for racism in America today greatly exceeds the supply – an industry of consultants make a living by pretending otherwise and stirring up interracial animosity. This leads some white people to feel bad for things they generally haven’t done. And it leads some blacks and other racial minorities to feel aggrieved for things they generally haven’t experienced. “Am I a Racist?” is a production of Walsh’s employer, The Daily Wire, an expanding media company built on the popular news and commentary of Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Walsh, and others. The Daily Wire team also has produced television shows and films, including the comedy “Lady Ballers”and Walsh’s first documentary “What Is a Woman?” Both films take on, and take apart, gender ideology. America’s race-industrial complex of workshops, training, and group atonement has been there for decades, but went supernova after the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a black man, in police custody. Since then, assisted by COVID-19 shut-ins, urban riots, and corporate virtue-signaling on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, most American media, politicians, and companies never shut up about race. The new film, directed and co-written by Justin Folk, documents Walsh’s journey—in which he is lightly disguised with a wig and tweed jacket—into the profitable world of professional DEI consulting. (Walsh is also a co-writer, along with Brian A. Hoffman and Dallas Sonnier.) The “anti-racism” industry arguably has improved the lives of no one but those it has enriched as practitioners. Few have done better than Robin DiAngelo, author of the bestseller “White Fragility” and a highly paid consultant to many large companies, and Ibram X. Kendi, a lightweight academic who got his own Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University with $55 million to spend. What has Kendi done with the money? If this “Research” page on his website is anything to go by, not much. Controversy about his center’s leadership, product, and spending have led to lower funding, so Kendi recently had to fire half the staff. Any criticism of Kendi, DiAngelo, or the industry they represent inevitably attracts accusations of racism from the media. Yet Walsh leads with one of Kendi’s quotes: “The only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination.” Because Walsh doesn’t care. The previous generation of conservative pundits were often persuasive on policy, but a bit angry. What makes Walsh so refreshing, along with his Daily Wire stablemates, is that this generation of conservative media personalities is funny, sarcastic, and at ease with the racial diversity of America. Many laugh-out-loud moments occur in “Am I a Racist?” I won’t spoil them, but a common theme is the chagrin of pathologically self-critical white liberals when their attempts to atone for their imagined sins fall short. The film’s participants—including DiAngelo, Race2Dinner hosts Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, and “anti-racist scholar” Kate Slater—unwittingly make Walsh’s point for him. These self-described scholars and teachers get rich by charging white people money to tell them how racist they are. Yet they seem to have few facts to back up their apocalyptic descriptions of America as a systemically racist, Nazi hellhole that must be burned down. DiAngelo takes $15,000 from Walsh’s fictitious film company. Rao and Jackson reportedly charge $5,000 to come to dinner with a group of white women, whom they berate at length. The women seem to enjoy it, which is another theme of the film and bizarre pathology of our era. Walsh also pays Sarra Tekola, Ph.D., $1,500 for a lesson in which she teaches him that the only thing “white” culture amounts to is selling stuff and stealing stuff. At the end of his tongue-in-cheek, “anti-racist” journey, Walsh’s conclusion is that the industry is a giant scam. His advice to Americans: Ignore the race grifters. White people need to stop apologizing and paying to be criticized by people for whom solving alleged “systemic racism” will mean losing their jobs. Black people need to take advantage of America—the best environment in human history for personal flourishing, one which has created the wealthiest population of African descent in the world. “Am I a Racist?” reaches nearly the same conclusion as “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” more than 40 years ago. As actor-comedian Michael Palin said in that movie: “Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with all creeds and nations.” Have things really changed since 1983? Well, it turned out that low-fat diets aren’t that good. And today, Palin never would get away with reading that bit in drag. But other than that, the sound advice of both films has been valid for millennia: Treat others as you would have them treat you. The radical Left lacks a sense of humor, tolerance of opposing views, and the ability to laugh at themselves, so few of the scolds who Walsh lampoons in this film are likely to watch it. But it’s their loss. “Am I a Racist?” is an amusing take on what one can only hope will be the peaking wave of a time of madness in our country. Go see it. The post Matt Walsh Exposes ‘Anti-Racist’ Grift Industry in Film ‘Am I a Racist?’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. YouTube’s recent decision to change platform rules around gun content has resulted in the sudden demonetization of channels, including Old Row Outdoors, which deals with hunting, fishing, and outdoor activities. The channel announced this on X, at the same time urging its more than 76,000 subscribers to switch to Rumble and follow them there. Old Row Outdoors attached a screenshot of a notice sent by YouTube, which states that a “team of policy specialists” went through the content of the channel and decided that a significant part of it deviates from the giant’s Partner Program policies. And the result of that is the demonetization of the channel. Rumble has received another “endorsement” from a popular channel, “Gunscom” – this one run by Guns.com site – who advised their 392,000 subscribers to follow their content on the free speech video platform instead of YouTube, and on X, after YouTube served the channel with a second strike. This means not only that during the time the strike is in place for alleged violation of community guidelines, Guns.com won’t be able to upload or livestream, but that the channel is now close to getting unpublished. In a video titled, “Farewell to YouTube,” the channel’s creators said that they will no longer be posting on that platform due to increased censorship. According to the host, the channel that is at this point one strike away from being removed consists of over 2,000 videos and has had 120 million views, costing its creators a lot of time and money to make. Several of those videos have been removed, and posting new ones was impossible on occasion because of what Guns.com calls “unclear policy changes at YouTube.” This has led to the channel moving to Rumble and X, social platforms that those behind Gunscom believes respect both the First and the Second Amendments. In June, media reports said that YouTube was changing its policy around firearms to prevent underage users from seeing content that is deemed to be “potentially dangerous.” That includes homemade guns, while tutorials about removing safety devices are now banned. Previously, YouTube banned videos selling guns and accessories, and tutorials about making guns. And – even if content doesn’t violate YouTube’s policies, the platform’s representatives were open about “sometimes” censoring it, when they decide that it is “not appropriate for viewers under 18.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Gun Channels Embrace Rumble After YouTube Censorship appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Diddy Do It? Feds Charge Rap Mogul with Racketeering, Sex Trafficking

A radical censorship-obsessed group financed by leftist billionaire George Soros is doubling down on efforts to interfere in the 2024 election by turning the screws on Big Tech to censor speech and by manipulating journalists. Free Press, fueled with at least $2 million by Soros between 2017 and 2021, announced that it was launching a new Orwellian scheme called “‘Democracy Is … .’” This so-called “new initiative” will deputize journalists through indoctrination by the Soros machine and engage the public on how to censor speech by supposedly “flagging disinformation” on social media platforms. In addition, Free Press pledged that the initiative would “provide other needed resources to influence media and technology platforms to better serve our communities and strengthen our democracy,” the press release boasted. [Emphasis added.] The new “Democracy Is …” website sensationalized how “In an era of misinformation and manipulation, the role of media and tech matter more than ever,” offering chilling insights into where the Soros empire is zeroing its focus ahead of the November elections.  The coalition is a hodgepodge of leftist and Soros-backed groups. These groups include the “digital brownshirts” at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, whose entire modus operandi is pressuring Big Tech to censor views that don’t comport with leftist narratives on climate change, COVID-19 and other things.  Other coalition members include Soros-backed groups like People for the American Way, UnidosUS, Common Cause, UltraViolet and United We Dream, which received an additional $12,085,000 at least collectively between them and/or their affiliated groups from the billionaire’s empire. Another group, Accountable Tech, became notorious for pressuring advertisers to pull their ads from Twitter (now X) after owner Elon Musk completed his multibillion-dollar acquisition.  MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider ripped the coalition in a statement. “Free Press’s view of saving Democracy is to take away the rights of half of Americans by silencing its political opponents who express different political points of view,” he rebuked. “Nothing can be more undemocratic than that.” The new “Democracy Is …” website excoriated Big Tech platforms for scaling back their 1984-like Ministry of Truth apparatus that censored speech like it was going out of style in the 2020 election: This retreat from content moderation, civil-society oversight and trust-and-safety measures means that tech companies are not prepared to protect users and democracy in 2024. In 2020, election disinformation disproportionately targeted people of color, women and non-English speakers — and this trend continues today. “Democracy Is …” laid out a litany of “demands” to Big Tech platforms, which are nothing short of disturbing. One demand was for Big Tech platforms to “expand critical moderation and enforcement teams,” which is a euphemism for making sure social media giants like Facebook, TikTok and X act as speech control officers.  But there’s more. Another demand was for Big Tech platforms to actively “Add technical interventions to limit virality,” an outright call for censorship that would target the reach of a post and not openly silencing the speech on the platform. Specifically, the coalition is calling for Big Tech to “Place greater friction to reduce the visibility and easy distribution of election-related content that has been flagged and is awaiting review.” No, you didn’t misread that.  Nora Benavidez,  Free Press Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights, openly boasted in the press release about the dystopian premises of the new Soros empire effort, masquerading it as some sort of noble display of heroics: Democracy Is … was founded on the premise that people power can disrupt institutional failings. We have brought together organizations with core recommendations that both media and tech companies should take to protect users and give people the information they need to participate fully in their communities and our democracy. The time to act is now. This new push immediately follows just after Free Press bellowed in May how it was leading another 200 member coalition of leftist groups around the world to pressure Big Tech to restrict speech by “reinstating” their so-called “election-integrity policies.” Forty-five members of the 200-member coalition were fueled with over $80 million from Soros between 2016 and 2022, including Free Press.   The Media Research Center and members of its Free Speech Alliance have already publicly warned Big Tech companies in August about not bowing to leftist pressure to censor speech before the 2024 election. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.  

On Tuesday, CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today continued to show disgust with how former President Trump’s reacted to the second assassination attempt on his life in as many months, calling on him (and not the left or themselves, for that matter) to ease “heightened tensions” and “calm things down” instead of espousing “growing anger”. In the latter’s case, they even lumped in Trump’s family and loved ones being angry at having nearly lost the former President with divisive rhetoric. NBC’s chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander huffed about Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris “return[ing[ to the road comes amid these heightened tensions in the political season with new calls today to calm things down.”     He then kvetched that Trump wasn’t “call[ing] for unity” but instead “blaming his political opponents” and specifically telling Marc Thiessen that “the rhetoric from the Democrats is making the bullets fly.” Alexander painted President Biden and Harris as the true angels in this story and above the fray: “In the wake of the apparent assassination attempt against former President Trump, President Biden and Vice President Harris are urging all Americans to lower the temperature, forcefully condemning political violence.” Alexander contrasted that propaganda with “Trump…not backing down from inflammatory rhetoric, telling Fox News that President Biden and Harris are ‘people that want to destroy our country. It's called the enemy from within. They are the real threat,’ he said.” The Saturday Today co-host also threw jabs at GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance and X owner Elon Musk as a way of suggesting the right is the side who has a rhetoric problem (click “expand”): ALEXNADER: Trump's running mate JD Vance blaming the left for provoking violence. VANCE: No one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months and two people now have tried to kill Doanld Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to take – tone down their rhetoric. ALEXANDER: And the White House quickly slammed Elon Musk's recent comments as irresponsible after his weekend post on X appearing to question why no one has even “tr[ied] to assassinate” President Biden or Harris. Musk later deleted the post and said it was a joke. A top Republican, Senator Mitt Romney, also calling for calm. SENATOR MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): Over the weekend, I saw that President Trump suggested he hated Taylor Swift. I think cooling down the rhetoric would be a good thing on both sides. ALEXANDER: That came after Trump Sunday morning, Trump declared “I hate Taylor Swift” on his social media site, just days after the superstar endorsed Harris in an Instagram post to her 284 million followers…Trump's voter registration pitch included an attack on the VP, accusing Harris, who is half black, of killing the legacy of black and Hispanic voters[.] CBS also showed zero shame. Immediately after anti-Trump correspondent and author Robert Costa shared that “Trump family members and friends and advisers – they’re angry and wonder if Trump is safe,” co-host and former NFL player Nate Burleson tied this genuine reaction anyone would have someone they cared about was nearly killed to a toxic political climate. “And that growing anger is already spilling out on the campaign trail including comments by Trump's running mate, JD Vance, where he appears to use what happened in Florida to fire up the supporters,” said Burleson.     Usually promoting abortion or Trump as a threat to democracy and poll workers, correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns told viewers Trump wasn’t “changing any plans, and he is continuing his campaign as usual, but he is adding to his messaging, blaming Vice President Kamala Harris for what happened on Sunday.” “On Monday, the former President said that Harris and President Biden's rhetoric is, ‘causing me to be shot at,’ and his running mate, JD Vance, echoed that sentiment while on the campaign trail in Georgia yesterday,” she added as a lead-in to an identical soundbite from NBC on Vance. She too painted Democrats as the adults in the room: “Now, Biden and Harris have denounced the violence, and Harris said, ‘everyone must do their part to make sure this incident doesn't lead to more violence.’” Following Huey-Burns, co-host Tony Dokoupil had a news brief about Springfield, touting Governor Mike DeWine (R-OH) “call[ing] in state troopers to protect schools” as a result of threats emanating from Trump’s “inflammatory claims about that city's migrant community” Dokoupil only tacked on the part about the threats having come from foreign countries: CBS's Tony Dokoupil: "Meanwhile, a Republican governor of Ohio is taking action after the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, made inflammatory claims about that city's migrant community. The Republican governor there, Mike DeWine has called in state troopers to… pic.twitter.com/OzRAkGMP9X — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 17, 2024 Apologies are really hard for the liberal media, so don’t expect them to concede Trump and Vance had nothing to do with these dialed-in fake threats. To see the relevant transcripts from September 17, click here (for CBS) and here (for NBC).

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler spun himself dizzy on Monday as he came to Kamala Harris’s defense as he gave former Minneapolis police officer Scott Creighton three Pinocchios for his characterization of her response to the 2020 riots. Creighton claimed in a Preserve America PAC ad that, “Four years ago, in this alley, rioters threw a brick at my face and knocked out my teeth. Why? Because I was a police officer. And what did Kamala Harris do? While America’s cities were burning, Kamala was defending peaceful protests. She raised millions to help bail rioters out of jail. And supported defunding our police, making us all less safe. Kamala Harris is dangerous.”  Kessler began his rebuttal by first attacking Creighton’s resume, “The ad also does not mention that he was the first defense witness to testify for police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering Floyd and sentenced to 22½ years in prison.” After six more paragraphs attacking Creighton’s credibility, Kessler finally got to his claims. After recalling that Harris’s position on peaceful protests was the same as Donald Trump's, “Robert O’Brien, Donald Trump’s national security adviser at the time, told CNN that Trump supported peaceful demonstrations, even as he pledged a crackdown on violence.” Be that as it may, Kessler then went downhill fast. On the second part of Creighton’s statement, Kessler simply wrote, “This cannot be verified.” Kessler then cited Harris’s tweet urging people to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund and didn’t notice how he contradicted himself, “Just weeks after Floyd’s death, it raised $35 million — in part because of tweets such as the one by Harris. The fund initially had only about $10,000 set aside to help out protesters, MFF said in a tweet.” By this point, Kessler was fully immersed in the process of twisting himself into a logical pretzel, “Harris herself never personally bailed out anyone or had any interaction with the fund... Justin Timberlake also tweeted his support. There’s no way to know how much money was raised because of Harris’s tweet.” Who cares? She promoted the cause; that’s all that matters. Still, Kessler didn’t see any problem in lax law enforcement, “all but three of the 170 people arrested during the protests between May 26 and June 2 were released from jail within a week. Of the 167 released, only 10 had to put up a monetary bond; in most cases, the amounts were nominal, such as $78 or $100.” People bailed out by the MFF have gone on to commit more violent crimes. As for the “defund the police” accusation, Kessler’s great defense was that Harris never explicitly supported the movement, she just paid lip service, “This is mostly false. Harris, a former prosecutor, never supported the ‘defund the police’ movement, though she called for ‘reimagining public safety’ in the United States. The ad cites an article in the New York Post reporting that Harris told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ that the movement posed legitimate questions about police budgets, but the Post acknowledged Harris ‘stopped short’ of backing defunding.” Here is that article in greater context, “Vice presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris on Tuesday applauded Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to slash police funding by $150 million but stopped short of saying she backed the “defund the police” movement.”     Kessler also claimed, ‘“Defund the police’ was often misunderstood. It did not call for the outright elimination of police departments... The idea was that low-income communities would become stronger — and less in need of policing tactics — if root problems were addressed. He then recalled Harris echoing such sentiments to The View, “We need to reimagine how we are achieving public safety in America… there is a dire need in those same cities for mental health resources, for resources going into public schools, for resources going into job training and job creation — come on. We have to be honest about this.” In his conclusion, Kessler returned to the issue and wrote, “Finally, he says she supported the ‘defund the police’ movement. She never embraced it, instead saying the movement raised good questions about how public safety could be best achieved.” She didn’t say she supported it, she just praised it and echoed its talking points. That’s some fact-check.

Exactly 50 days before the November election and 64 days after the previous assassination attempt, President Donald Trump was allegedly targeted for murder by a Democratic donor with an impotent interest in Ukraine's war effort. Unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks' July 13 assassination attempt, which left Trump bleeding, two individuals critically wounded, and heroic former firefighter Corey Comperatore dead in the stands, it appears there may be far more clarity around suspected would-be assassin Ryan Routh and his Sept. 15 plot. For starters, Routh is still alive to speak to his alleged crimes. There's also the matter of Routh's significant online footprint and his apparent affinity in recent years for doing interviews with virtually anyone who would stick a microphone in his face. What follows is a summary of the facts as they are presently understood. Incident and arrest According to the FBI's affidavit in support of the criminal complaint filed Monday, President Donald Trump was golfing at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday. Unbeknownst to him or his Secret Service detail, a deranged gunman lay ahead in ambush. Just after 1:30 p.m., a U.S. Secret Service agent on Trump's detail, who had been walking the perimeter of the course — one hole ahead of the president — spotted what appeared to be a rifle "poking out of the tree line" and through a chain-link fence, roughly 400 yards away from Trump. The USSS agent reportedly opened fire but failed to land a shot. The suspect apparently never got a shot off. 'Nothing will slow me down.' Suspected gunman Ryan Routh apparently fled the tree line, jumped into a Nissan SUV with license plates belonging to a stolen white 2012 Ford truck, then sped out of the area. The gunman left behind a GoPro digital camera, two bags including a backpack, a black plastic bag containing food, and an SKS-style 7.62x39 caliber rifle with a long-range scope and an "obliterated" serial number. Blaze News previously noted that geolocation data from Routh's T-Mobile cell phone apparently placed him along the fence line at 1:59 a.m. Sunday morning. He remained there until the Secret Service agent opened fire. The FBI affidavit indicated that after fleeing the scene, Routh traveled northbound on I-95 — where officers from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and Martin County Sheriff's Office made their move, afforded insights about the driver and vehicle by a witness who spotted Routh getting away. Roughly 45 minutes after the USSS agent opened fire and 40 miles away from the course, MCSO managed to stop Routh's vehicle and place him under arrest without incident. Routh is now facing charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession and receipt of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. If slapped with the maximum penalty for both charges, then Routh is looking at 20 years' imprisonment. He may face additional charges. 'The people deserve the truth about the would be assassin.' Shortly after the incident, President Trump stated, "There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL! Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER! I will always love you for supporting me. Unity. Peace. Make America Great Again." While the FBI announced it was leading the ongoing investigation, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced Sunday that the Sunshine State will be conducting its own investigation. "The people deserve the truth about the would be assassin and how he was able to get within 500 yards of the former president and current GOP nominee," wrote DeSantis. Who is Ryan Routh?Felon known to FBI Ryan Wesley Routh is a 58-year-old North Carolina native who has lived in Hawaii for at least six years, where he owns a small construction company. While still a Hawaii resident, Routh reportedly voted in North Carolina's Democratic primary this past March. According to his LinkedIn, he received a degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Routh was known to law enforcement prior to Sunday and has a significant criminal record, charged with at least 100 criminal counts in North Carolina alone. The suspected would-be assassin reportedly wielded a fully automatic machine gun in a three-hour standoff with police in North Carolina in 2002. According a decades-old Greensboro News & Record report, Routh was charged at the time with carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a weapon of mass destruction. He was also charged with resisting, delaying, and obstructing a law enforcement officer as well as driving with a revoked license and hit-and-run. The North Carolina Department of Adult Correction offender database indicates Routh was convicted in 2010 for possession of stolen goods. The corresponding police affidavit used to get a search warrant claimed Routh was selling stolen building supplies to buy crack cocaine, reported the Associated Press. Routh has also reportedly been in and out of court on numerous occasions for various civil suits, for several of which he was ultimately ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars to plaintiffs. Blaze News previously reported that Jeffrey Veltri, the FBI's special agent in charge of the Miami field office, revealed that the FBI received a complaint in 2019 that Routh had a firearm, despite being a convicted felon. According to Veltri, the FBI passed the information on to local law enforcement in Honolulu. It's unclear whether anything came of the referral. Trump critic, Democratic booster Sleuths online had ample time before Facebook and X scrubbed his profiles to screenshot and archive damning comments indicating his political views and possible motivations. It quickly became clear that he had thrown in his lot with the Democrats and bought into their rhetoric about Trump. Blaze News previously highlighted how Routh recycled a go-to Democratic slogan in this election cycle in an April 22 post on X, writing: @POTUS Your campaign should be called something like KADAF. Keep America democratic and free. Trumps should be MASA ... make Americans slave again master. DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose. We cannot afford to fail. The world is counting in us to show the way. His final two posts on X prior to the incident were messages to President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, recommending in mid-July that they should "visit the injured people in the hospital from the Trump rally and attend the funeral of the murdered fireman. Trump will never do anything for them....show the world what compassion and humanity is all about. 8084648342." Apart from his consistent fixation on committing civilians to the Ukrainian war effort, Routh's politics have been all over the place. He has indicated, for instance, that he voted for Trump in 2016 but that he deeply regrets it. Prior to throwing his support behind Biden, Routh also admitted to having a soft spot for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). It's clear from his social media posts that he also supported the Black Lives Matter movement and has adopted anti-Israel talking points, such as the suggestion that Israel has no claim to the land within its borders. In his self-published 2023 book, "Ukraine's Unwinnable War," Routh echoes various establishment Democrat talking points, including the suggestion that the Jan. 6 riot was a "catastrophe ... perpetrated by Donald Trump and his undemocratic posse." As was the case with Crooks, Routh has made political contributions to Democrats. In Routh's case, he made around 20 small donations to Democrats through ActBlue between 2019 and 2020. In his book, the suspected would-be assassin apologizes to Iranians for Trump dismantling the nuclear deal and noted, "You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment," reported the New York Post. The Democratic donor added, "No one here in the US seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection." Wannabe Ukraine mercenary Routh appears to be a zealous advocate for Ukraine and its defensive war against Russia. He appears to have run the website "Fight for Ukraine," where he figures prominently in the About section and provides links to his now-deleted webpages. The page states: We need thousands of fighters and humanitarian aid workers and supplies to win this war and no one should ever let paperwork or red tape hinder their desire to fight for freedom, humanity and basic human rights. It is the most honorable and dignified sacrifice anyone can make to support their fellowman. Please encourage every age and gender from around the world to come and join the fight. On the site, Routh details various ways — including unlawful ways — people could supposedly go to fight as mercenaries in Ukraine. For those who simply cross the border into Ukraine, he recommended they give him a call once in Kiev. The New York Times' Thomas Gibbons-Neff recalled an interview he had in 2023 with individuals who were "not qualified to be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a U.S.-led war and yet were fighting on the front against Russia, with access to weapons and military equipment." Gibbons-Neff indicated he heard of Routh through a former Afghan special operations soldier in Iran. "Like many foreign volunteers who showed up at Ukraine's border in the war's early months, he was eager to cast aside his former life for something far more exciting and make a name for himself," wrote the Times reporter. Routh, who told the Financial Times in 2022 that the Ukrainian Foreign Legion rejected him on account of his age, apparently spent some time in Ukraine attempting to recruit Afghans who had fled the Taliban. His X timeline was crowded with failed pleas to various defense officials and organizations to allow Afghan fighters into Ukraine. Ukraine's foreign legion has characterized Routh as a charlatan. The legion said in an official statement, "American citizen Ryan Routh has never served in the International Legion of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, has no relation to the unit. Rumors disseminated in certain media are not true." "There's a streak of zealotry in him," Evelyn Aschenbrenner, an American who was in the legion's administration until June, told the Washington Post. "In November of last year, I began sending out a [message] to all foreign soldiers saying, 'This guy is not a real recruiter. He's not legit. I don't know what he's up to. Just stay away from him — block and ignore and move on.'" "The cats and dogs on the military bases did more than he did," added Aschenbrenner. Despite begging others to do so and claiming he had in a December 2023 Facebook post, the New York Times indicated Routh never fought in Ukraine. Routh was, however, a cheerleader for the Ukrainian brigade associated with neo-Nazis since its inception. He appears at the 1:50-minute mark in a 2022 video of a Ukrainian demonstration in support of the Azov Brigade. He also tweeted to Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy on March 13, 2022, informing him "I am an American coming to fight with you in Ukraine; I am flying into Krokow and will take any transport to Kyiv to meet you and fight to the death. We must get every civilian in the world to come and join the fight; I will be the example. Attack moscow now." USA Today indicated it tried calling a number associated with Ryan and was greeted by a voicemail message identifying the number's owner as "Ryan in Hawaii," working with the "National Volunteer Center, sending soldiers to Ukraine, as well as Taiwan." The International Volunteer Center in Ukraine made clear it hasn't worked with Ryan. Routh told the Times that he had also been scheduled to meet with the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission) "for two hours" to increase support for Ukraine. It's unclear if they ever went through with the meeting. The Helsinki Commission is an independent commission of the federal government that has among its current commissioners Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y) and Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!