RFK Jr. Goes on Authoritarian Rant Over Not Qualifying for Debate

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t qualify for CNN’s upcoming presidential debate, and he is not taking it well.

The debate, which will take place on June 27, is set to be a showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive nominees from each major party. Unfortunately for Kennedy, CNN said he does not qualify to join them onstage.

“Presidents Biden and Trump do not want me on the debate stage and CNN illegally agreed to their demand,” insisted Kennedy, in a statement released Thursday by his campaign. “My exclusion by Presidents Biden and Trump from the debate is undemocratic, un-American, and cowardly.”

CNN gave Kennedy’s campaign until 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, June 19, to demonstrate that the independent candidate is on enough statewide ballots to potentially earn the 270 electoral votes needed to actually win the election. Kennedy fell woefully short: His name is confirmed on the ballot in just five states, tallying up to only 42 electoral votes, according to The Washington Post.

CNN generously also counted California and Hawaii, where Kennedy is the presumptive nominee of minor parties but the states have not either confirmed him on the ballot or received ballot paperwork yet. But even including those states, that would only bring him to 100 electoral votes. The anti-vaxxer’s name was reportedly not on the ballot in some of the 13 states where he’d previously claimed to have successfully petitioned.

Meanwhile, as the presumptive nominees, both Biden and Trump should be allowed onto the ballot in every state without having to petition once they are formally nominated. The fact that this hasn’t actually happened yet seems to be what’s infuriating Kennedy.

In the statement, Kennedy’s team went on to accuse CNN of using a double standard against the widely unpopular candidate.

“CNN’s published debate criteria require that ‘a candidate’s name must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold.’ CNN is holding Kennedy to this requirement but is not requiring Presidents Biden and Trump to meet this requirement by claiming they are each the ‘presumptive nominee’ of a political party,” the statement said.

The statement also threatened legal action against CNN for supposedly violating Federal Election Commission guidelines.

“This means CNN, and every member of CNN who is participating in planning, executing, and holding this debate, is at risk of prosecution, as happened to Michael Cohen, for violating campaign finance laws. This risk is now acute given that any further violation would be knowing and willful, and thus could carry with it serious jail time,” the statement said.

The brain worm–haver has continued to delusionally insist that CNN, Biden, and Trump are locking him out of the debate because they are “afraid” he will win.

Kennedy’s statement included a quote from former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, who ran a long-shot presidential campaign in 2020 as a libertarian candidate.

“If the American people could hear what all three candidates had to say about the critical issues facing our country, the choice between these three men would be clear,” Chafee is quoted as saying in the statement. “Kennedy would become the 47th President of the United States.”

The reality that Chafee describes looks less and less likely every day.

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when U.S. health officials were trying to get the public to adopt safety measures, White House staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin tried to appeal to Donald Trump’s vanity in order to get him to wear a mask.

The co-host of ABC’s The View was catching up with Dr. Anthony Fauci Thursday, who was on the show to promote his new book, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service. Griffin mentioned what she told Trump to try to convince the then president.

“I remember telling him he looked cool in the mask,” Griffin said, drawing laughs from the studio audience.

“I remember, yeah!” Fauci replied.

“I thought he might be like, ‘OK, fine, I’ll wear it.’ It didn’t work,” Griffin said.

“Nice try, Alyssa,” Fauci said.

In an April 2020 press conference, Trump gave a conflicting message by announcing federal guidelines recommending people wear masks, but saying he was choosing not to do so. Fauci referenced that event, telling the show’s hosts that the now convicted felon and presumptive Republican presidential nominee could’ve gotten his many supporters to wear masks early in the pandemic, possibly saving more lives.

“He has millions and millions of followers who are very loyal to him. All he had to do was say, ‘The CDC is recommending masks, we know it’s going to save lives, do it,’” Fauci said. In the end, Trump’s refusal to wear a mask was due to it smearing his makeup, his aide Cassidy Hutchinson would later reveal.

Trump and his administration would go on to give a lot of mixed messages and ultimately handle the virus poorly, from Trump voicing outrageous recommendations like injecting bleach and using bright lights to fight the virus, as well as championing the unproven anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. In the end, Trump would contract Covid-19 himself.

Watch the segment here:

Loose Cannon alert: Judge Aileen Cannon was reportedly urged by senior federal judges to hand off Trump’s classified documents case when it was handed to her last year, according to sources who spoke to The New York Times. The new details add to what’s already a lengthy series of suspicious choices by Cannon that have benefited Trump.

According to The New York Times, two senior federal judges reached out to Cannon. The first unnamed judge contacted Cannon and argued she should hand the case off by citing the lack of a secure storage facility at the Fort Pierce courthouse where Cannon sits, a necessity for storing the classified documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Cannon refused, requiring the city (and taxpayers) to shell out to build a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility at the courthouse.

After Cannon’s refusal, Chief Justice Cecilia Altonaga got on the horn and told Cannon taking the case would be “bad optics,” according to The New York Times, due to Cannon’s intervention after Trump sued the government for seizing the classified documents, which Trump argued were his personal property. Cannon took over and decided the case in Trump’s favor. Prosecutors appealed her decision, and an appeals panel—including two Trump-appointed judges—overturned her order, ruling that she had no authority to intervene. Cannon rejected Altonaga’s assessment.

Since those calls, Cannon has routinely issued decisions in Trump’s favor: She’s slow-walked pretrial motions, thrown out portions of the case against Trump, and indefinitely postponed the trial. Cannon has shown a steep lack of aptitude and unusual willingness to cater to Trump’s most absurd lies.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s authoritarian deeds have resulted in a lawsuit from a former top employee in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who says he was forced to resign for whistleblowing.

Shane Desguin, the agency’s former chief of staff, said in his filing that he was forced to retire in November after he wouldn’t carry out illegal or inappropriate orders, such as violating the state’s public records laws, arresting protesters without probable cause, and obtaining the photos and personal information of migrants who were transported to Florida without legal justification.

Desguin “was subjected to disparate treatment, different terms and conditions of employment, and held to a different standard because he reported Defendants’ malfeasance, gross misconduct and unlawful employment activities and was subject to retaliation thereafter,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed against DeSantis and the FDLE.

Not long after Desguin’s retirement, his deputy, Patricia Carpenter, was also fired. The lawsuit claims that Desguin and Carpenter faced an internal investigation that was a “thinly veiled attempt at character assassination” because of their whistleblowing.

A spokesperson for DeSantis didn’t comment on the lawsuit, according to ABC News, but cited that investigation as well as comments from the FDLE’s communications director, Gretl Plessinger: “Shane Desguin and Patricia Carpenter created workplace chaos, endangered the safety of other employees, and acted dishonestly and unprofessionally.”

The lawsuit says in late 2021, Desguin had to deal with the arrival of migrants being flown by the federal government to Florida in his position with the FDLE’s Office of Statewide Intelligence.

In his lawsuit, Desguin says that he was ordered by DeSantis, through another official, to get “photographs, biometric data, and any other pertinent information by engaging with migrants at the airport. As these requests escalated, (Desguin) objected, and emphasized, on multiple occasions … FDLE could not legally conduct name checks, capture photographs, or compile intelligence files without a criminal predicate or reasonable suspicion, as those actions would be unlawful.”

Later, when Florida officials suggested that migrants should be transported by bus out of the state (which was later attempted), Desguin said he told his superiors that this could constitute “false imprisonment or kidnapping,” the lawsuit said.

Once, in September 2023, Desguin said he was told by a DeSantis aide to arrest neo-Nazi demonstrators at an Orlando event to benefit the governor politically. He said that he couldn’t arrest protesters simply for their views, to which the aide told him, “I don’t think you understand. If you look hard enough, you can find a way. The governor wants someone arrested today. He will stand by you in any arrest.”

DeSantis has recently been experiencing long-overdue pushback for his hard-line actions, whether it’s having his signature anti-trans law being struck down in court, a failed attempt to invoke executive privilege, or having to back away from his infamous book bans. His culture-war laws have cost Florida millions of dollars and made him unpopular in the state, and unsurprisingly, he’s now working with the more popular, if not more authoritarian, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene went ballistic Thursday over a new poll from Fox News that saw President Joe Biden take the lead from Donald Trump, even if by only a couple points.

Clearly confusing the poll’s agreeableness with its accuracy, the Georgia Republican found herself in lock-goose-step with the meme-loving fascist Charlie Kirk, who also took issue with the results.

“Okay, I’ve been studying this new FOX NEWS poll, and I have concluded it’s a complete outlier,” Kirk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “They have Joe Biden winning rural voters 50-48% over Trump. There is no way that’s possible. Zero.”

Kirk recently announced that his conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, would be partnering with the Trump campaign, and invited Trump to speak at its convention in Milwaukee last weekend.

Kirk didn’t provide any evidence for this claim, but Greene, who is no stranger to pushing conspiracy theories, reposted his so-called analysis in total agreement.

“100% correct!! This Fox News poll is WRONG!” she wrote. “My district is in rural northwest Georgia and it is SOLIDLY supporting Trump! Same with most of rural America! Smart people!”

Greene’s factless freak-out comes just hours after a tantrum from Trump himself, who went off about the poll on Truth Social, claiming that Fox News is regularly unreliable, even though the outlet pretty consistently backs the former president in its coverage.

Losing it over one poll is certainly not normal but goes to show the fealty Trump imagines conservative news networks should have for him. And wherever Trump goes, Greene is always sure to follow.