Eric F. Van de Velde

[Scott Stedman @ScottMStedman]

How Russian intelligence infiltrated Jeffrey Epstein’s inner circle. My 10-month investigation:

[Willie Ross Jr. Knee Deep @RossKneeDeep]

By David Abbruzzes:

This Australian's reply to Trump's rant about “NATO not being there for America” is perfect.
"Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
'NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your f----- mouth."

Very well stated.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

So now millions of football fans around the world view the US as cheaters who used political corruption to influence FIFA and we lose anyway. So much winning. When’s the next war?

[Mohammed Jammal @whitenigerian]

Red card vs Trump Card 😂

[Guy Verhofstadt @guyverhofstadt]

Dear US, may we borrow your constitution? 👇 https://t.co/VI7YhlCm11

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Unfortunately, there is a shortage of anti-ballistic capabilities – a shortage of Patriots – while Putin still intends to “vanquish” residential buildings rather than end his war.

We have been discussing licenses for the production of Patriots with the U.S. Administration for a long time already. I thank all the countries helping through the PURL program, which enables us to purchase interceptors for Patriots. However, to reliably protect lives, we need our own production.

European production here in Ukraine, or jointly with our partners, would also support the U.S. in operations whenever needed. We hope for a positive response from President Trump to protect lives. I also thank everyone who has expressed condolences to Ukraine today, everyone who has not remained silent and condemned Russian terror.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

A brand new bridge between Detroit and Canada is finished and ready to open. It would speed up traffic for millions of trucks, cut delays for American businesses, and help the auto industry that employs people in every state. There is just one problem.

Donald Trump won’t let it open.

Here is why.

The family that owns the old bridge stands to lose business when the new one opens. So in January, they gave one million dollars to a pro-Trump super PAC.

Weeks later they met with Trump’s Commerce Secretary.

He called Trump.

Hours after that, Trump announced he would block the new bridge. The opening was set for June 12. It got canceled the day before. The bridge sits there finished and empty.

Now here is the part that should make every taxpayer angry.

Canada paid for the entire bridge.

Every dollar. And the United States already owns half of it for free. Trump is holding up a bridge we got for nothing, to protect a donor who wrote him a check, while picking a fight with our closest ally and biggest trading partner.

This is corruption in plain sight.

A billionaire pays, and the President delivers. American workers and businesses pay the price.

Open the bridge. A government should work for the people, not for whoever writes the biggest check.
https://t.co/9o9Gz9UrBo

[Acyn @Acyn]

De Niro: I hate to say it, but loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser.

I can’t love a country that starts stupid and inhumane wars, killing thousands of innocents and indirectly causing the deaths and suffering of millions more.

I can’t love a country that takes healthcare away from millions of people and uses that money to enrich their pals in the Trump-Epstein class.

I can’t love a country that sends out masked militias to shoot citizens in the streets, torture our neighbors, and separate families.

I can’t love a country that’s led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant.

And let me just say it: I can’t love a country that’s led by Donald Trump and his sycophant Congress.

[The Saurus @TheSaurus831]

Y’all’s pedophile president really went on camera and said he loves inflation

You’re the dumbest cult of cousin fucking losers in human history and its not remotely close

[Morgan J. Freeman @mjfree]

😱😱😱 And just like that, it’s completely VANISHED from the media.

A sitting congressman, Ted Lieu, said on the record the Epstein files are being blocked because they show Trump raped and threatened to kill children.

Lets make this viral again 👇

[John Collins @Logically_JC]

This one hits hard.

[David Hogg 🟧 @davidhogg111]

MORE GREAT NEWS!! @Leaderswedeserv candidate @MaiForUs just beat 21-year incumbent and 81-year-old Congresswoman Doris Matsui. Vang and Matsui (a billionaire who took a max-out AIPAC check and $ from defense contractors) will face off again in November.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

Since the @WhiteHouse and @POTUS is mad about this, please don’t retweet or share

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

We raised it with the previous U.S. Administration, and we continue to discuss it with the current one – namely, providing Ukraine with licenses to produce such systems, Patriot systems. And it's not only about Ukraine – it's to all the Europeans who have such capabilities to start and to produce it massively.

Current Patriot production capacity is simply not enough to meet all the existing and potential threats around the world.

Ukraine has already shown, across many types of weapons and especially in drones, that we can move fast and produce modern systems at scale. So I ask for your support at the political level to help achieve positive decisions on these licenses as well.

From an address to the participants of the NATO–Ukraine Council meeting in Kyiv (5/5).

[Greta Berlin @Truegreta]

I stood at this pool, at both monuments and saw both reflections…
He’s a God damn idiot, as are the fools that support him. The “Reflection Pool” wasn’t designed by American architect Henry Bacon a hundred years ago to look like a swimming pool. It’s designed to have a darkened characteristics that has reflective qualities to reflect the monuments.
That way, the Washington Monument is reflective to you when at the Lincoln Memorial, and when at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial is reflective to you.
It’s designed to enhance the grandeur of monuments, create an illusion of reflection, and inclusion of expansive space of unity.
He’s a tacky vulgar person that vulgarizes everything he touches. America isn’t becoming great, it’s becoming vulgar.

Credit - Mathew Reed

[Dylan Byers @DylanByers]

New statement from Scott Pelley:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.

Scott Pelley

[RG | BEATS @DR_BEATS_KICK]

Can you rt this? Maybe we can make a difference

[Tom Santos @tommysantos14]

Listen, I’m not a cozy nice teddy bear with my rhetoric on this platform. But I do my best to ride a line between being respectful and being an asshole.

And mostly, I’ll give it like I get it.

But when it comes to January 6, all bets are off.

I’m not toning down my language when it comes to a traitorous attack on this country by a political cult that tried to overturn a presidential election.

MAGA lost the election.

MAGA attacked America.

MAGA tried to install Donald Trump after he lost.

Whoever participated in the January 6 attack on this country

IS A TRAITOR.

[David Hogg 🟧 @davidhogg111]

My initial thoughts on the DNC autopsy release