"Real Time" host Bill Maher doubled down Friday on his desire for the U.S. economy to fall into recession in hopes of blocking a second term for President Trump -- telling his panel of guests any hardship that results would be "very worth" it.
"I've
been saying for about two years that I hope we have a recession and
people get mad at me," said Maher, a multimillionaire who would likely
be well insulated from a financial downturn.
“I’m just saying we
can survive a recession," he continued. "We've had 47 of them. We've had
one every time there's a Republican president! They don’t last
forever, You know what lasts forever? Wiping out species!”
The
HBO star then pointed to a U.N. report warning how many species of
plants and animals are at the risk of extinction and went on to blast
the Trump administration for rolling back regulations from the Nixon-era Endangered Species Act "like any evil villain would do."
"So
yes, a recession would be very worth getting rid of Donald Trump and
these kinds of policies," Maher reiterated. "A recession would
definitely knock him out of office."
Earlier this month, Maher revived his argument in favor of a recession and last week found an ally in NBC News correspondent Richard Engel during a panel discussion.
Gaffe-prone Democratic 2020 frontrunner Joe Biden reportedly added another factual blunder to his list Friday.
During a campaign fundraiser in his home state of Delaware,
the former vice president was referencing a speech he had made to a
group of 275 people, in which he accused President Trump of "fueling a
literal carnage” in the country through his rhetoric.
But Biden mistakenly recalled the location of the speech as Burlington, Vt., instead of Burlington, Iowa, according to The Washington Examiner. Whether Biden had Democratic rival Bernie Sanders -- a former mayor of Burlington, Vt. -- on his mind was not immediately known.
The
mistake was the latest in a series of gaffes the 76-year-old Biden has
made that have caused concern among some Democrats that's he's too old
and prompted President Trump to say he isn’t “playing with a full deck.”
Last
week in Iowa, Biden said “poor kids” are just as smart as “white kids,”
and last weekend he mistakenly said he met with survivors of the
February 2018 Parkland, Fla., school shooting while vice president --
even though he had left office more than a year before the attack.
He has also confused former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for Theresa May twice since May.
Biden’s press secretary told CNN the focus on Biden's blunders is a “press narrative, not a voter narrative."
The candidate himself, however, appears to take his verbal slip-ups in stride.
“I am a gaffe machine, but, my God, what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can’t tell the truth," according to The Washington Post.
Some Biden allies have suggested limiting his appearances due to the mistakes, the Examiner reported.
Patriot Prayer founder and rally organizer Joey Gibson speaks to
his followers at a rally in Portland, Ore., Aug. 4, 2018. (Associated
Press)
Idiot
The leader of a conservative group was arrested Friday in Portland, Ore., one day before planned protests involving supporters of the far-left Antifa movement and supporters of several conservative groups.
Joey Gibson, leader of Portland-based Patriot Prayer, turned himself in to authorities in connection with an arrest warrant for rioting,
stemming from a violent clash in the city on May 1, according to the
Associated Press. He was later released after posting bail, with further
legal action pending.
In a video posted on Facebook, Gibson
accused police of targeting conservative groups for arrests but not
members of Antifa, even though masked Antifa supporters have been seen
on videos engaging in violence during past protests.
Gibson asserted that authorities were trying to intimidate conservatives who planned to protest Saturday.
“They want you to not show up in Portland, they want to put fear in your hearts,” Gibson said.
“They want you to not show up in Portland, they want to put fear in your hearts.” — Joey Gibson, Patriot Prayer
He also asked conservative protesters to refrain from violence Saturday.
"Force them to arrest you for being peaceful," he said.
"Force them to arrest you for being peaceful." — Joey Gibson, Patriot Prayer
Gibson,
35, was not connected to the events planned for Saturday but had
organized Portland rallies that turned violent in 2017 and 2018, the
report said.
Separately, a conservative group called the Oath
Keepers has decided it will not participate Saturday, saying it did not
believe organizers had done enough to discourage white supremacists from
showing up.
Portland authorities have been taking steps intended
to minimize the chances that Saturday’s demonstrations repeat the
violence of past events. Personnel from more than two-dozen law
enforcement agencies – representing local, state and federal government –
are involved in trying to maintain order during the demonstrations, the
AP reported.
“I'm confident that from a law enforcement
perspective, we're going to have all the tools and the resources and
personnel we need,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said Friday on Fox News’ “Outnumbered Overtime.” The mayor, a Democrat, has drawn criticism over the city’s handling of past protests.
In June, conservative writer Andy Ngo was hospitalized after being attacked by Antifa supporters at a Portland demonstration.
On Friday, Ngo told “Fox & Friends” that he feared Saturday’s event “has the potential to be a powder keg.”
Precautions being taken in Portland for Saturday include plans by many downtown businesses to close for the day,
as well as the planned closure of the Hawthorne Bridge, which connects
eastern Portland to the downtown area, across the Willamette River, OregonLive reported. The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s
decision Friday to refuse to visit her grandmother on the West Bank
unless she could use the trip to campaign for the anti-Israel Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement proves that the goal of her trip
was to generate anti-Israel propaganda.
Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri tweeted that he granted the Michigan Democratic congresswoman permission to visit “her 90 year old grandmother” as a “gesture of goodwill on a humanitarian basis.”
But
when Tlaib retracted her pledge to refrain from promoting the BDS
movement while visiting her grandmother, Deri said on Twitter:
“Apparently her hate for Israel overcomes her love for her grandmother.”
President
Trump – who had urged Israel not to permit Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar,
D-Minn., to visit the Jewish state this weekend – agreed with Deri.
The
president tweeted: “Rep. Tlaib wrote a letter to Israeli officials
desperately wanting to visit her grandmother. Permission was quickly
granted, whereupon Tlaib obnoxiously turned the approval down, a
complete setup. The only real winner here is Tlaib’s grandmother. She
doesn’t have to see her now!”
It’s important to understand that
BDS is not just anti-Israel – it is anti-Semitic. It seeks to cut off
the only Jewish state in the world from all international trade,
diplomatic and military relations, cultural and academic programs,
tourism and all other ties with every nation on Earth. If fully
implemented, BDS would destroy Israel’s economy and lead to the collapse
of the Jewish state – a goal the founders of BDS proudly embrace.
Israel
has been getting plenty of criticism for barring the entry of Tlaib and
Omar, including from many individuals and groups who are normally
strong supporters. Few of these people are defending Tlaib and Omar for
their repeated anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments, but instead have
expressed concern that Israel looks bad for refusing entry to members of
the U.S. Congress.
After all, a democratic nation should never
bar elected representatives of a close ally from visiting, critics of
the Israeli decision argue. What kind of nation would take such an
action?
Well, one nation that did the exact same thing
in 2012 was the United States of America, in an action by the
administration of Democratic President Barack Obama. The U.S. government
refused to give a visa to a member of the Israeli Knesset (the nation’s
parliament), because it said the political party he belonged to was a
“terrorist organization.”
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin protested the exclusion of Knesset Member Michael Ben Ari, a member of the National Union Party.
"National
Union," Rivlin wrote in his letter of protest to the U.S.,"is a
completely legitimate faction of the Israeli parliament, and Ben Ari an
elected representative of the State of Israel, a close American ally. To
impugn him as belonging to a terrorist organization and bar him from
visiting the country is unacceptable.”
So much for the
“unprecedented” action Israel is being criticized for in barring Tlaib
and Omar from entering. Every nation on Earth has the sovereign right to
determine who can and cannot enter – including Israel.
Barring Tlaib and Omar from entering Israel was a tough call, but I believe Israel made the right decision.
Importantly,
Tlaib and Omar turned down an invitation to be part of a bipartisan
group of 72 U.S. House members who visited Israel last week. There is no
indication that Israel would have barred the pair from being part of
that large group of U.S. lawmakers.
The Democratic House members
on the trip met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas – who has strongly denounced President Trump for moving the U.S.
Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and for other actions – refused to meet
with the Republican House members, just as he refuses to negotiate peace
with the Israelis.
Instead of joining their colleagues, Tlaib
and Omar chose to work with a blatantly anti-Semitic group called Miftah
to set up a trip that would have avoided any meetings with Israeli
government officials and turned into a hate-filled media circus
attacking Israel and the Jewish people.
Miftah, which would have been the tour guide for Tlaib and Omar, has published an article
that said Jews celebrate Passover by killing Christian children and
using their blood to bake matzoh (unleavened bread). This is an ancient
anti-Semitic lie that has been used for 2,000 years to justify the
murder of Jews, and was heavily promoted by the Nazis, who slaughtered 6
million Jews in the Holocaust.
In 2006, Miftah published
an article that praised female suicide bombers. The group has also
expressed support for naming public squares after Palestinian terrorists
who murder innocent Jewish civilians in Israel.
Instead
of joining their colleagues, Tlaib and Omar chose to work with a
blatantly anti-Semitic group called Miftah to set up a trip that would
have avoided any meetings with Israeli government officials and turned
into a hate-filled media circus attacking Israel and the Jewish people.
Miftah
refuses to recognize the existence of Israel and opposes joint
Arab-Israeli peace programs. The group also denies the existence of the
ancient Jewish temples in Jerusalem, an absurd claim that rejects
historical reality and undermines a central pillar of Islam as much as
it undercuts Judaism and Christianity.
If that weren’t enough, Miftah also posted a neo-Nazi article that compares Jews to poison
and derides “Jewish media control” as an evil that must be combated. To
be clear, this isn’t just anti-Israel; it is basic anti-Semitism.
Likewise,
the BDS movement, which Tlaib and Omar actively support, isn’t about
registering dissatisfaction with Israeli policies. It is about applying a
double-standard to Israel.
BDS is designed to demonize and
delegitimize the Jewish state and replace it with a Palestinian state –
something the BDS movement’s co-founder proudly proclaimed in 2013.
BDS
does not simply object to Israel’s administration of land it captured
after Arab armies invaded the Jewish state in 1967 in an effort to
destroy it. BDS opposes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state within
its pre-1967 borders, according to the movement’s official documents.
Instead, the BDS lobby calls for a series of steps that would dismantle
the Jewish state.
It
is no wonder, then, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
decided not to allow Tlaib and Omar into Israel on a Miftah-orchestrated
anti-Israel trip.
Netanyahu explained that while Israel is open
to critics and criticism, “Israeli law prohibits the entry into Israel
of those who call for and work to impose boycotts on Israel, as do other
democracies that prohibit the entry of people who seek to harm the
country.”
Given the long track record of anti-Israel comments by
Tlaib and Omar, there was plenty of reason for Israel to be skeptical
about the purpose of their trip. The red flags dramatically increased as
their supposed arrival date approached.
Because the Israelis were
kept in the dark about the plans by the two congresswomen, Israel was
compelled to prepare for the uncomfortable possibility that the two
would try to visit the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City – the
complex where the two Jewish temples once stood and where the Islamic
holy sites of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque are located.
Such
a visit would stir controversy after weekend riots erupted on the
Temple Mount and could have sparked a new outbreak of potentially deadly
violence by Palestinians. President Trump and Prime Minister
Netanyahu appear to realize that the bipartisan pro-Israel congressional
consensus that existed in the past is vanishing. That is a sad reality
for Israel and American Jews.
While House Democratic leaders may
believe the trend in their own chamber is reversible, they nevertheless
rushed to defend Tlaib and Omar when the two were barred from entering
Israel, instead demonizing Netanyahu. This is unfortunate.
The
fact is that anti-Semitism (cloaked as opposition to Israel since the
creation of the modern Jewish state) in one of the oldest and vilest
forms of prejudice around, and has been used to justify mass murder on a
nightmarish scale.
Just as all men and women of good conscience
must denounce racism and other forms of prejudice against particular
groups, we must denounce the evil of anti-Semitism. Reps. Tlaib and Omar
do not deserve our sympathy or support after being barred from entering
Israel. They only deserve our condemnation for their actions promoting
hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
A state judge in New Jersey issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday blocking the state's right-to-die law from being implemented two weeks after it took effect. The
move came after Dr. Yosef Glassman, a Bergen County physician, filed a
lawsuit, saying he refused to participate in assisted suicides,
including referring patients to another doctor if he decides to opt-out
of prescribing life-ending medication, which is a stipulation in the
law. Glassman said in the lawsuit that the law conflicts with his
religious beliefs as an Orthodox Jew as well as his obligations as a
doctor to heal people. Glassman
said that being required to transfer medical records under the law is
"not only a violation of the rights to practice medicine without
breaching the fiduciary duties owing to those patients ... but also
violations of their First Amendment
rights under the United States Constitution to freely practice their
religions in which human life is sacred and must not be taken." Gov.
Phil Murphy, a first-term Democrat who signed the Aid in Dying for the
Terminally Ill Act into law April 12, said he would fight back
against Mercer County Superior Court Judge Paul Innes's decision. Murphy also asked Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to release guidance for New Jersey residents in light of the judge's order. “It
is really hard for me, particularly given growing up as a Catholic,”
Murphy said Thursday at a news conference. “This one was not an easy one
to get to, but I got convinced that it shouldn’t be the law that
dictates how things end. But it should be you and your loved ones.”
“It
is really hard for me, particularly given growing up as a Catholic.
This one was not an easy one to get to, but I got convinced that it
shouldn’t be the law that dictates how things end. But it should be you
and your loved ones.” — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy
The law, which took effect at the beginning of August but required a two-week wait period before doctors could administer prescriptions, permits
adult patients with six months or less to live to obtain and
self-administer life-ending medication. Patients must be diagnosed by
two medical doctors and must also sign a written declaration with two
witnesses present who can attest that the patient is acting voluntarily.
The patient must also take the medication themselves. “New
Jersey’s assisted suicide law is a bad public policy that leaves many
New Jersey residents at risk of abuse and coercion," Kristen Hanson, a
community advocate for the Patients Rights Action Fund said in a
statement to Fox News on Thursday. "The temporary restraining order
issued, which prevents the policy from going into effect, is a welcome
reassessment of a law that threatens the lives of the poor, older
people, the terminally ill, and people with disabilities. New Jersey
deserves better end-of-life-care, not assisted suicide.”
“New
Jersey’s assisted suicide law is a bad public policy that leaves many
New Jersey residents at risk of abuse and coercion. ... New Jersey
deserves better end-of-life-care, not assisted suicide.” — Kristen Hanson, community advocate, Patients Rights Action Fund
The next court date is scheduled for Oct. 23. Seven states -- California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, Vermont and Washington -- and Washington, D.C., all have similar legislation for medically assisted suicide, according to the Death With Dignity National Center and the Death With Dignity Political Fund. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Alert tones used in a "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" episode earlier this year to poke fun at a presidential alert test that occurred last year cost ABC $395,000 in fines, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in a Thursday statement announcing a handful of settlements with TV networks. The
FCC said it had settled with the networks for the misuse of
the emergency alert system (EAS) tone. The tone is broadcast via TV,
radio and other devices to warn of emergencies such as hurricanes and
other national disasters. “We remain concerned about the misuse of
the EAS codes and EAS and WEA Attention Signals, or simulations
thereof, to capture audience attention during advertisements; dramatic,
entertainment and educational programs, and at any other time that there
is no genuine alert,” the agency said in a statement. “The FCC may issue sanctions for such violations, including, but not limited to, monetary forfeitures.” The
comedian's late-night show used a tone three times during an Oct. 3,
2018, sketch. Earlier that day, roughly 225 million electronic devices
across the U.S. received the "Presidential Alert" that read "THIS IS A
TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is
needed." The network said the tones were improperly used in the
episode. ABC signed a consent decree with the FCC, in which it admitted
using the tones. The network said Thursday, "ABC takes regulatory compliance seriously and we are pleased to have resolved this issue." Other networks also reached a settlement for similar violations. AMC Networks agreed to pay $104,000 in civil fines for using an alert tone in a February episode of "The Walking Dead." Discovery's Animal Planet
and Meruelo Radio Holdings were also fined. Discovery agreed to pay
$68,000 for using an actual wireless emergency alert tone in an episode
of Animal Planet's "Lone Star Law." Crew members received the tone on their phones during filming Texas game wardens following Hurricane Harvey. And Meruelo paid $67,000 for broadcasting a signal during a promotion for Southern California-based radio stations.
