MTG Hit With Brutal Fact-Check After Sharing Dangerous Conspiracy

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene took a break from spreading lies about Hurricane Helene to dip her toe into a new conspiracy theory.

“Raw Milk does a body good,” wrote the Georgia representative on X Sunday afternoon, posting a photo of a large glass of milk. “Make America Healthy Again!”

The far-right has long touted their devotion to only drinking unpasteurized milk, which skips the process of killing off harmful bacteria and does not in fact do a body good. Greene’s post was hit was a massive fact-check in the community notes section of X, clarifying that “raw milk consumption is linked to a number of foodborne illnesses (e.g., Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, Listeria, Brucella, and Salmonella) that can result in serious complications and death.” X users added a long list of links with evidence of how dangerous drinking raw milk can be.

As Melody Schreiber reported for The New Republic in July, drinking unpasteurized milk can also put the consumer at an unnecessary risk for H5N1, or the bird flu. In states where it is legal to sell raw milk, there were 3.2 times more outbreaks of illness linked to the milk over a span of 20 years.

Dairy was a hot topic this weekend for Republicans, who only seem to be getting weirder, as Trump invited a QAnon conspiracy theorist to speak at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally alongside Elon Musk on Saturday.

“We will protect your raw milk,” said Scott Presler of Gays for Trump, in attempt to court the Amish vote in the swing state.

In recent years, the deregulation of the dairy industry and shift away from pasteurization has turned into a new culture war for the right. How long until Trump tells his followers to drink it, like he told them to drink bleach?

This post has been updated.

House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to dodge a question from George Stephanopoulos about who won the 2020 election, a worrying sign for November’s coming election.

On Sunday morning, Johnson was asked on ABC if he could “unequivocally” say that Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost in 2020. His answer was less than forthcoming.

“See, this is the game that is always played by mainstream media with leading Republicans. It’s a gotcha game,” Johnson said. “You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future. We’re not gonna talk about what happened in 2020, we’re gonna talk about 2024 and how we’re gonna solve the problems for the American people.

“I think this thing, this game that’s played all the time, I’m not gonna engage in it,” Johnson added.

Johnson is echoing every Republican who wants to curry favor with Trump. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, refused to answer a similar question during last week’s vice presidential debate and was called out by Tim Walz, who called it a “damning nonanswer.” (After being hounded by a comedian later in the week, Vance confessed that he believes Trump won the election.) Trump’s campaign staff refuses to answer the question too, as do many Republicans such as Senator Tom Cotton, who dodged it on Sunday’s Meet the Press. 

These signals from leading Republicans don’t bode well for next month and could signal more serious efforts to undermine unfavorable results, just like in 2020. In a worrying sign, pro-Trump election deniers are working as election officials in key swing states and are already disrupting the voting process in places like Georgia. They could cause further problems if they don’t get the results they like.

President Joe Biden isn’t convinced that there’ll be a fair and free election in November given Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric, and his violent political history.

Making his first appearance in the White House briefing room since he took office in 2021, Biden pointed to the Republican ticket’s avoidance of committing to a peaceful transfer of power as the reason for his concern.

“The things that Trump has said, and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election, were very dangerous,” Biden said, adding that JD Vance has made similar statements in recent days. “So I’m concerned about what they’re going to do.”

Earlier Friday, Vance refused to answer whether he agreed with Trump that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.” The day before, he was caught by comedian Jason Selvig admitting that he believed Trump won that election. The caught-on-tape confession emerged days after the Ohio politico refused to answer a direct line of questioning from vice presidential debate moderators about whether he would challenge this year’s election results.

“Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully, in the public square, and that’s all I’ve said, and that’s all that Donald Trump has said,” Vance said, without making mention of any of the multiple instances in which Trump has publicly defended his supporters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Later in the debate, Vance still refused to yield, even during a heated back and forth with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who noted that former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to certify the election results was the reason why Vance was on the stage instead of the Indiana politician.

“Where is the firewall if he knows he can do anything, including taking an election, and his vice president’s not going to stand to it?” Walz asked on Tuesday. “That’s what we’re asking you, America. Will you stand up? Will you keep your oath of office, even if the president doesn’t?”

“So, America, I think you’ve got a really clear choice on this election of who is gonna honor that democracy and who is gonna honor Donald Trump,” Walz said.

In a leaked recording, Donald Trump joked about the death of a man at one of his rallies, during a dinner with donors in August.

The Guardian reports that Trump flew to Aspen on a jet once owned by Jeffrey Epstein (his usual jet had engine trouble) for the dinner on August 10, which guests had to donate between $25,000 and $500,000 per couple to attend. The publication obtained a 12-minute recording of Trump’s speech at the dinner. 

At one point, Trump spoke about surviving an assassination attempt at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July, where a gunman killed firefighter Corey Comperatore and injured two other Trump supporters while trying to shoot the former president. He said that members of his Mar-a-Lago club sought to make a contribution to Comperatore’s widow. 

“I said absolutely, and they gave me a check for a million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Maybe even more impressively, we put out a GoFundMe, and we raised more than $6 million for the group that got hurt, which is essentially three people,” Trump said.

Then he described meeting Comperatore’s wife, Helen, and decided to make a joke about the whole thing.

“So they’re going to get millions of dollars, but the woman, the wife, this beautiful woman, I handed her the check—we handed her the check—and she said, ‘This is so nice, and I appreciate it, but I’d much rather have my husband.’ Now, I know some of the women in this room wouldn’t say the same,” Trump said.

The roomful of guests, who included casino owner Steve Wynn, businessman Thomas Peterffy, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Representative Byron Donalds, Representative Lauren Boebert, and former Senator Cory Gardner, broke out in laughter. Trump wasn’t done, though.

“I know at least four couples,” Trump said. “There are four couples, Governor [Abbott], that I know, and you’re not one of them. At least four couples here would have been thrilled, actually.”

It wasn’t the first time he had made that joke, as he had used it at least once before at an August 1 rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. But it definitely sounds more callous when one realizes that Comperatore was a working-class firefighter and Trump was joking at a private event full of wealthy donors and politicians. 

Trump also used disparaging and profane language to describe immigrants, at the dinner, even making up a false story about 22 people who supposedly were released from prison in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and came to the U.S.

“We said, ‘Where do you come from?’ They said, ‘Prison’. ‘What did you do?’ ‘None of your fucking business what we did.’ You know why? Because they’re murderers,” Trump said, adding, “I hate to use that foul language.”  

President Joe Biden gave a startling answer when confronted with concerns that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might be trying to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

Earlier this week, Senator Chris Murphy said there was a possibility that Netanyahu would not be willing to sign a cease-fire deal before our presidential election, potentially to try to “influence” the results.

During a White House press briefing Friday, Biden was directly asked about those concerns.

“Do you agree, do you have any worries that Netanyahu may be trying to influence the election, and that is why he has not agreed to a diplomatic solution?” asked CBS’s senior White House correspondent Weija Jiang.

“No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none. And I think Bibi should remember that,” Biden replied.

“And uh, whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know,” Biden said. “But I’m not counting on that.”

The vague nonanswer follows previous reporting that Biden is well aware of Netanyahu’s possible angle to help Trump.

Biden has reportedly told confidants that he believed that Netanyahu never wanted a cease-fire deal and was hoping to prolong Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza, not only to save his own political career but to give Trump a hand in November’s election.

Biden’s inability to secure a cease-fire between Israeli and Palestinian leaders has become a political liability for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, particularly in the battleground state of Michigan, which is home to the largest populations of Palestinian and Lebanese Americans in the country.

Despite concerns that the prolonged war could be giving Trump a boost, Biden and his administration have been unwilling to use any kind of leverage—including the billions of dollars in U.S. weapons sales or the billions in foreign aid—to compel Netanyahu to curtail Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have killed more than 41,000 Palestinians. Israel has expanded its military actions to Lebanon, where it has killed hundreds of people in the last week alone.