Brian NR

[Hey, Dave! @davegreenidge57]

When the law applies only to those not in power, then you’re not being governed. You’re being ruled.

[Brian Stelter @brianstelter]

"Do you have evidence?" "That's not evidence." "There is no evidence."

@kwelkernbc kept rebutting Trump's lies about January 6 and about election fraud, and he eventually wrapped up the interview, calling her "crooked." Here's the transcript of the astonishing final few minutes:

WELKER: Do you think anyone who attacked police officers on January 6th should get taxpayer money?
TRUMP: I wouldn't be inclined to say so, but I have to see it. I can tell you this: 97% of those people, you look at them, the FBI or whoever it was, cause you had a lot of crooked cops, you had dirty cops. Comey was a dirty cop.
WELKER: Well, there is no evidence to –
TRUMP: A guy like Bolton was a dirty cop –
WELKER: But there is no evidence that-- but there's no evidence that people who –
TRUMP: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Oh, you think Comey was a straight cop?
WELKER: We had 170 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers.
TRUMP: Comey was a dirty cop.
WELKER: No, no, but the people who assaulted police officers.
TRUMP: They had FBI – listen to me. They had FBI agents ushering them into the building. They had FBI "Go into the building." Those people are walking around, they're looking, "Oh, isn't this nice?" They weren't in-- they were being ushered into the building.
WELKER: There's no evidence of that, sir. There's no evidence of that.
TRUMP: You had a bunch of dirty cops, and frankly, what they did was weaponization of our government.
WELKER: But sir, there-- there's no evidence of that. More than a thousand people pleaded guilty to crimes –
TRUMP: No, well, yeah, no, there's none. You know what they do?
WELKER: Would you –
TRUMP: Try looking at the tapes one time.
WELKER: Would you take it off the table?
TRUMP: Look at the tapes one time.
WELKER: Okay, but 172 people did plead guilty to assaulting police officers.
TRUMP: You know why they pled guilty?
WELKER: Should they be exempt –
TRUMP: Because they told they were going to jail for 15 years –
WELKER: – from receiving funds?
TRUMP: – if they didn't.
WELKER: Should they –
TRUMP: They pled guilty because they were frightened. They went down. They were ushered into a building. Many of them were arrested without even going into the building.
WELKER: You'd be okay with them receiving taxpayer dollars?
TRUMP: The people were destroyed by dirty cops and by weaponization. Many of those people should be compensated. Now, with that being said, the, as I understand it, the weaponization fund was going to set up a group of people, people that could be picked by anybody, fair people, smart people, and they will go on an individual case basis.
WELKER: Okay.
TRUMP: Now, I don't know what's going to happen with the weaponization fund. I love the idea, because people like you, the fake dirty press, the crooked press, people like stupid Biden, he's not smart enough to know what's going on, but people that surrounded him, surrounded his beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, what they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong.
WELKER: All right, this is, just to be very clear, there's no evidence of what you're saying, but let me ask about Todd Blanche.
TRUMP: There's a lot of evidence.
WELKER: Let me ask about Todd Blanche.
TRUMP: Listen – listen to me – listen to me.
WELKER: Let's talk about Todd Blanche.
TRUMP: There's tremendous evidence. There's nothing but evidence.
WELKER: Well, it’s not been presented in a court of a law.
TRUMP: The election was rigged. It was a dirty election.
WELKER: Mr. President –
TRUMP: And it's happening again right now in California.
WELKER:  – you've never presented evidence –
TRUMP: It’s happening right now in California
WELKER: – that the 2020 election was rigged.
TRUMP: Right now, it's look at what's happening in California.
WELKER: Where's the evidence to that?
TRUMP: It's four days –
WELKER: The Republicans are doing well in California.
TRUMP: In California, it's, no they're not. They're dropping fast because it's a rigged election. Let me tell you, it's four days and they aren't even close to coming up with the –
WELKER: That's how they count the votes in California.
TRUMP: Do you know why they're doing that? Because they're cheating on the election.
WELKER: There's – What? Do you have evidence to support that?
TRUMP: It's-- all I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.
WELKER: But that's not evidence.
TRUMP: And I listen. And I listen to people. And let's see what happens.
WELKER: But sir, that's not evidence, and that's how they count the votes in California--
TRUMP: Do you think it's appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they're nowhere close to picking a winner?
WELKER: State and local officials acknowledge they are slow. They're urging–
TRUMP: No, they're crooked.
WELKER: – they're urging the votes to be counted quickly. That's how they vote in California.
TRUMP: They're crooked just like you're crooked, your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked.
WELKER: To be fair, I'm not crooked. But let's continue.
TRUMP: Really? Well, you play right into their hands then.
WELKER: Let's continue.
TRUMP: You're either crooked or you're stupid.
WELKER: Let's continue.
TRUMP: You play right into their hands with this stuff. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged. Do you know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94% bad press.
WELKER: But Mr. President –
TRUMP: You know why I got that?
WELKER: – you've never presented –
TRUMP: Because you have no credibility.
WELKER: -evidence. But you've never presented evidence it was rigged. Let's keep talking about, I want to talk about Todd Blanche.
TRUMP: You have more evidence, there's more evidence than ever presented.
WELKER: Let's talk about--
TRUMP: Your elections in this country –
WELKER: – you went to court.
TRUMP: We're like a third world country.
WELKER: But sir –
TRUMP: Your elections are crooked and you're crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked.
WELKER: But Mr. President–
TRUMP: And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.
WELKER: But Mr. President--
TRUMP: You're a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.
WELKER: Mr. President, let's – please, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin.
TRUMP: I've sat in the rain with you--
WELKER: I traveled all –  I know. I traveled all the way--
TRUMP: I sat in the rain with you for an hour.
WELKER: --to Wisconsin.
TRUMP: On and off in the rain, and I've given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press, because you know what?
WELKER: Mr. President--
TRUMP: A country can never be great with a dishonest press.
WELKER: – we traveled all – listen. We traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Florida paid a portable toilet company called Doodie Calls more than $92 million over six months to haul wastewater out of the Everglades. The state projected it would pay Doodie Calls $480 million over two years. For comparison, building a sewage treatment plant for a city of 10,000 people costs about $5 million.

That is one vendor. At one facility. Built in eight days on an Everglades airstrip using hurricane disaster funds because Ron DeSantis declared immigration a state of emergency in 2023 to access a $5 billion fund set aside for floods and hurricanes.

The facility costs between $1.2 million and $3 million per day to operate. A conservative estimate puts the annual per-capita cost at $500,000 per detainee. Florida spends $30,000 a year to house a convicted criminal in a state prison. The math on Alligator Alcatraz is not tougher than a prison. It is more than sixteen times more expensive.

Three quarters of the men held there have never been convicted of a crime. They are awaiting civil immigration proceedings. They are being held in kennels - cages with steel mesh sides, 16 bunks, three toilets, brightly lit 24 hours a day. Amnesty International documented what it called deliberate neglect designed to dehumanize, including credible allegations of men held in stress positions in direct sunlight without food or water for hours at a time.

Governor Braun opened the Speedway Slammer at an Indiana prison. The Cornhusker Clink in Nebraska. The Louisiana Lockup at Angola. The naming contest is ongoing. The cruelty is the point. The cost is someone else's problem. Florida's emergency fund has dwindled to $200 million. The facility cannot run to the end of the year.

The men in the cages are still there.

[FireFighterDev @fire_starter457]

Paying companies not to build windmill farms while paying coal companies because they can't remain profitable is just one example of how this country is being set back decades by this regime.

[Brian NR @brian_not_ryan]

@jackunheard You do not have it straight

[Brian NR @brian_not_ryan]

@mcuban @PeterDiamandis Sorry but AI in my experience is just plain wrong more than half the time when you ask it to digest a complex topic. It’s a useful tool but to be useful it actually needs to be operated by somebody who can think and has enough skill to know when AI is just full of shit

[GOP Ls @GOP__Ls]

🚨 Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted of smuggling more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

Trump gave him a full pardon.

[GOP Ls @GOP__Ls]

🚨 Adriana Camberos stole 10s of millions from American consumers.

Trump granted her a full pardon, allowing her to keep $48.8 million in stolen funds.

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

.@RepMcGovern: This administration promised to make America healthy again. Do you believe that glyphosate is safe?

Trump's Agriculture Secretary: Glyphosate has been proven safe

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

Dear Scott Pelley: pull the entire 60 Minutes team together and go to MSNow and offer a package deal to recreate the show for Sunday night and call it The Hour

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

Met a young person who can't find a job bc of AI. His mom is sick and needs home care. He drives Uber to pay rent, but is barely getting by. I told him the White House pool is going to be longer than skyscrapers and he burst out crying. "Thank you sir," he said, "I needed that."

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Ashley St. Clair on MAGA: “Your entire sense of self is MAGA and dicksucking Trump. They’re hyper fixating on non-issues here. You’re not unsafe and can’t afford groceries because of trans people and immigrants. It’s because your president and the capitalist class is fucking you”

[Brian NR @brian_not_ryan]

@BulwarkOnline I would like to vote the phrase “war of choice” off the island. Reckless war. Incompetent war. War run by fools. All perfectly good. “War of choice” only sounds good to the consultants who wonder why their clients lost to nutjobs

[Annie Grayer @AnnieGrayerCNN]

New: CNN spoke with more than a dozen current and former female staffers who say they’ve faced harassment from House members or senior congressional staff, nearly all of whom chose not to report the incidents and still fear publicly naming their harassers https://t.co/xcOUPotmyZ

[mariana Z @mariana057]

I want to thank the person who told my mom that WTF means "wow that's fantastic."

Her texts are so much more fun now.

[Judd Legum @JuddLegum]

1. Real Change PAC, a super PAC that purports to be "committed to progressive values," has spent millions of dollars in Democratic primaries.

It is actually a Republican front closely tied to House Republican leadership.

An email completely exposed the dirty tricks operation.

[Amber Woods @AmberWoods100]

Trump announces Ambassador to Türkiye is billionaire Tom Barrack (yes, the same Tom Barrack from the Epstein files)

[FireFighterDev @fire_starter457]

James Talarico: The guy walking you to your car because some dude won’t leave you alone.

Ken Paxton: The dude not leaving you alone.

[𝒢𝒾𝓁𝒷ℯ𝓇𝓉 @AbakpaJob]

Every pet owner has accidentally created a daily ritual and now lives under a tiny furry dictator.