Georgia Governor Gets Harsh Fact-Check After Deadly School Shooting

After four people were shot and killed at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday, Governor Brian Kemp said he was “praying for the safety of those in our classrooms.”

But what has the Republican governor done to actually keep Georgia students safe from gun violence? Not a lot. And his critics were quick to point that out.

In 2022, Kemp signed a bill into law that expanded gun rights, allowing Georgians to carry handguns in public without a license or background check. A “lawful weapons carrier,” or any person who is eligible to purchase a firearm, can now concealed-carry a handgun. Long guns could already be carried in many places without a permit.

The governor has previously flagrantly defended his anti–gun control agenda to skeptics. After Georgia’s public media station in 2021 reported that the Giffords Law Center gave Georgia a failing grade on gun control, even before Kemp’s expansion of gun access, Kemp proudly delcared, “I’ll wear this ‘F’ as a badge of honor.”

When he campaigned for governor of Georgia, Kemp ran on expanding access to firearms. This included a nearly unbelievable ad where the then secretary of state sat with a shotgun in his lap, surrounded by even more guns, while speaking to a young boy about dating one of his daughters.

When he isn’t shilling for the gun lobby, Kemp has been keeping busy downplaying Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow Georgia’s election in 2020. Last week, he co-headlined a fundraiser for the former president and convicted felon.

Today’s shooting was the 218th shooting at a K-12 school this year.

Right-wing media have tried to create controversy over a series of Facebook posts from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s brother, but Jeff Walz threw cold water on that effort Tuesday.

In his Facebook posts last week, which were reported on by the New York Post, the older Walz declared he’s “100% opposed to all his ideology,” referring to his brother, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Jeff Walz also replied to another Facebook commentator who urged him to publicly endorse Trump.

“I’ve thought long and hard about doing something like that! I’m torn between that and just keeping my family out of it,” Walz, a 67-year-old Florida resident, said. “The stories I could tell. Not the type of character you want making decisions about your future.”

Jeff Walz donated to Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, and reportedly hasn’t spoken to his brother Tim in eight years, aside from one conversation through their mother last month. But despite his differences with his brother Tim, Walz decided not to dive further into politics, telling NewsNation that the stories were mostly of the embarrassing family nature. He mentioned that Tim was carsick as a child and was prone to throwing up in the car on family trips, with no one wanting to sit beside him. “There’s really nothing else hidden behind there,”  he added.

“I was getting a lot of feedback from my friends, old acquaintances, thinking that I was feeling the same way that my brother did on the issues, and I was trying to clarify that just to friends,” Jeff Walz said to NewsNation. “I used Facebook, which wasn’t the right platform to do that. But I will say, I don’t agree with his policies.”

“There is going to be no further statements to anybody, and we’re not campaigning or anything for him or against him or anything like that,” Walz added. 

The whole effort seems to be yet another flat GOP effort to smear the Harris-Walz ticket, much like their attacks on Tim Walz’s military service or the bizarre conspiracy theory that he faked his dog Scout’s identity. Perhaps Republicans should be more worried about their own vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, who was easily mocked by the Minnesota governor ordering donuts like a normal person.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social stock has reached a new low, highlighting just how bad things have gotten for the former president and his media company. 

The stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group dropped to $17.40 per share on Wednesday, its lowest rate since it hit the market after it merged with a publicly traded shell company in March, when it was valued at a high of $79.38 per share.

Since its stock market debut, the value has dropped more than 70 percent, The New York Times reported.  

Trump’s majority stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, which is roughly 115 million shares, or a 60 percent stake, was once worth a whopping $6 billion. Now it’s worth only $2 billion. 

Since spiking around July 15—the Republican National Convention—the value of Truth Social stock has steadily declined, following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Shares of Trump’s media stock have often corresponded with how well investors think Trump’s presidential campaign is going, according to the Times. 

Halfway through August, his stock took a dive after he posted on X, Truth Social’s competitor, hitting its lowest rate in months, around $24.60. Even a booming stock market couldn’t rescue Trump’s lame stock, which continued to sink in value. 

The stock’s prior low was set late last month, when it hit $19.38 per share. Now it seems things have gotten even more dire. 

Trump’s lowest rate ever comes a little more than two weeks away from September 19, when he and other major investors will finally be able to offload his volatile DJT stock at the end of their “lock-up” period. While Trump has not indicated that he will sell his risky shares, it’s more than likely that everyone else will, according to Forbes. 

After Republican vice presidential pick J.D. Vance went viral last week for being extraordinarily awkward at a donut shop in Georgia, Democrat Tim Walz had to poke fun at him during a snack stop in Pennsylvania.

Pursuing sweets like whoopie pies and donuts at Cherry Hill Orchards in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Walz slid in a joke while speaking to voters.

“Look at me, I have no problem picking out donuts.”

Walz and his daughter, Hope, talked with the manager about his business that has existed in the area for over 50 years, and took back whoopie pies and apple cider donuts for volunteers. Compare Walz’s pit stop to that of Vance and you can draw a representative picture of the candidates.

“I’m JD Vance, and I’m running for vice president,” the Republican candidate said to a worker as he walked into Holt’s Sweet Shop in Valdosta, Georgia, last week.

“OK,” she responded. Vance then ordered “a lot” of glazed doughnuts, “some sprinkle stuff,” cinnamon rolls, and “whatever makes sense” before he was asked to stop filming.

Though certainly being able to order dessert isn’t the most important pressing political skill, being able to speak to others like a human being sure doesn’t hurt.

A website called KBSF-San Francisco News painted a horrible picture: According to the site, then–California Attorney General Kamala Harris hit a 13-year-old girl with her car in 2011, fleeing the scene before she could be caught or identified. The site included a video, credited to KBSF-TV, of a young woman in a wheelchair—the alleged victim, Alicia Brown—recalling the harrowing moments after their vehicles collided.

Except none of it appears to be real.

There is no KBSF-TV in San Francisco, and, according to a BBC Verify investigation, the original website that published the story was registered less than two weeks ago. The photograph attached to the article, which supposedly depicted the crash itself, was actually snapped in Guam in 2018. And the video of Brown—whom the article and video misname several times—also appears to be a deepfake. The x-ray images of Brown’s spine, allegedly taken after the accident, can be traced back to medical journals that have no relation to the supposed crash.

Strangely, it’s not the only recent instance of a wildly fabricated story taking root against Democrats. Behind the operation is John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop who has since relocated to Moscow to work full-time inventing fake news sites in an effort to spread misinformation among American voters ahead of the 2024 election, according to the BBC.

Another site launched by Dougan, The Houston Post, accused the FBI of illegally wiretapping Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Other sites bore equally American names, including the Chicago Crier, Boston Times, and DC Weekly. According to the BBC, most of the stories posted on the sites were not necessarily fake, but rather poor copies of actual news items that had been reworked by A.I. engines. Some of the articles still sported the user’s instructions to the bot at the bottom of the text, at the time of the BBC’s investigation: “Please rewrite this article taking a conservative stance.”

“Russia will be involved in the U.S. 2024 election, as will others,” Chris Krebs, who oversaw election integrity during the 2020 presidential election as director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, warned the BBC.

“We’re already seeing them—from a broader information operations perspective on social media and elsewhere—enter the fray, pushing against already contentious points in U.S. politics,” he said.