Tensions between Cortes and the MAGA cable network had long been simmering, sources suggested, but it was the Trump loyalist’s vehement disagreement—which he wasn’t shy about publicly voicing—with Newsmax’s company-wide vaccine rules that was the final straw…
Earlier this month, Newsmax instituted a rule that all employees must either be vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID testing. The news of such a policy, which was in compliance with the Biden administration’s policy for businesses with more than 100 employees, pushed Cortes to unequivocally declare on Twitter that he wouldn’t have any part of it.
“I will not comply w/ any organization’s attempt to enforce Biden’s capricious & unscientific Medical Apartheid mandate,” he blared in one tweet. “I will not be forced into the injection, nor will I disclose my vaccination status. No one should be pressured to choose between medical privacy & their job.”
He’s gone but you never really know the reasons someone gets fired. So, how about this?
"The question is, is this one going to act a bit differently and all the early evidence suggests that this might be a real problem."@ashishkjha on the Omicron variant on Friday's 'Wake Up America.' pic.twitter.com/ceSkti6tWe
I truly hope this is a trend. Newsmax doesn’t get the audience that monsters like Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson get, but they do get some and it’s all wingnuts. Every little bit helps.
We still don’t know a lot about Omicron but whatever happens it has had one positive effect:
Saturday just in:+2.17M doses reported administered over yesterday’s total, including 554K newly vaccinated and 1.25M boosters. Total doses administered increasing as we approach winter and with Omicron spreading. Need to keep this up!
Studies show that higher rates of household gun ownership and availability of guns are associated with higher rates of unintentional firearm deaths.There is an association between unsafely stored firearms and unintentional gun deaths — one study found that states with higher rates of unsafely stored guns have higher rates of unintentional gun deaths.
Children ages 5-14 were more likely to die from unintentional gun injuries if they lived in states where guns are more prevalent. This trend holds for adults, too. A 2013 survey found that in New York, 10.3% of the adult population owns guns while 48.9% of Alabama’s adult population owns guns. Alabama’s unintentional firearm death rate is 48 times that of New York.
Fox News stopped using that slogan a while back and let’s be honest, it was always a bit of troll by Roger Ailes. But the rest of the media believes it about themselves and have spent years enabling the right with their insistence of “both sides” journalism. And it’s killing us:
This piece by Dana Milbank is a must read. It’s nothing you don’t know already but it’s an important piece because it’s done by, a Washington Post columnist and he brings receipts. It’s also important because of the reaction from big foot reporters which I’ll post below the article:
A sampling of headlines atop the influential Politico Playbook newsletter over the past month:
“Let the Democratic freakout begin.”
“Dems start to face the hard questions.”
“Does the WH owe Larry Summers an apology?”
“The other big intra-Democratic fight.”
“No BIF bump for Biden.”
“White House braces for a bad CBO score.”
“ … Biden dithers …”
“Biden tries to calm nerves about 2024.”
“The case for why Biden is screwed.”
Even the extraordinary news that jobless claims had dropped to the lowest level in 52 years came with a qualifier: “BUT, BUT, BUT…don’t expect [the numbers] to immediately change Americans’ negative perceptions of the economy.”
It isn’t just Politico. My impression of other outlets’ coverage of President Biden had been much the same: unrelentingly negative. Was it my imagination?
No, it wasn’t.
Artificial intelligence can now measure the negativity with precision. At my request, Forge.ai, a data analytics unit of the information company FiscalNote, combed through more than 200,000 articles — tens of millions of words — from 65 news websites (newspapers, network and cable news, political publications, news wires and more) to do a “sentiment analysis” of coverage. Using algorithms that give weight to certain adjectives based on their placement in the story, it rated the coverage Biden received in the first 11 months of 2021 and the coverage President Donald Trump got in the first 11 months of 2020.
The findings, painstakingly assembled by FiscalNote vice president Bill Frischling, confirmed my fear: My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.
After a honeymoon of slightly positive coverage in the first three months of the year, Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as — and for a time worse than — the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020.
Think about that. In 2020, Trump presided over a worst-in-world pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths; held a superspreader event at the White House and got covid–19 himself; praised QAnon adherents; embraced violent white supremacists; waged a racist campaign against Black Lives Matter demonstrators; attempted to discredit mail-in voting; and refused to accept his defeat in a free and fair election, leading eventually to the violence of Jan. 6 and causing tens of millions to accept the “big lie,” the worst of more than 30,000 he told in office.
And yet Trump got press coverage as favorable as, or better than, Biden is getting today. Sure, Biden has had his troubles, with the delta variant, Afghanistan and inflation. But the economy is rebounding impressively, he has signed major legislation, and he has restored some measure of decency, calm and respect for democratic institutions.
We need a skeptical, independent press. But how about being partisans for democracy? The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians.
Sentiment analysis ranks coverage from entirely negative (-1.0) to entirely positive (1.0), and most outlets are in a relatively tight band between -0.1 and 0.1. Overall, Biden was slightly positive or neutral for seven months, ranging from 0.02 to -0.01. That plummeted to -0.07 in August — a lower number than Trump hit in all of 2020 (or 2019) — and has been between -0.04 and -0.03 ever since. Trump never left a narrow range of -0.03 to -0.04. (The data set doesn’t go far enough back to make a comparison to Trump’s first year in office.)
Also noteworthy: Trump got roughly twice as much coverage in 2020 as Biden has received in 2021. And the coverage of Biden is noticeably more negative than the tone of news coverage overall. Predictably, Breitbart and the New York Post are among the most negative outlets, but even liberal ones such as HuffPost and Salon have been negative. (The Post was the closest to neutral, at 0.0006.)
How to explain why Biden would be treated more harshly than a president who actively subverted democracy? Perhaps journalists, pressured by Trump’s complaints about the press, pulled punches. Perhaps media outlets, after losing the readership and viewership Trump brought, think tough coverage will generate interest.
I suspect my peers across the media have fallen victim to our asymmetric politics. Biden governs under traditional norms, while Republicans run a shocking campaign to delegitimize him with one fabricated charge after another. This week, Republicans threatened a government shutdown to block Biden’s vaccine mandates, after a year of efforts to discourage vaccination. Yet, incredibly, they’re simultaneously blaming Biden for coronavirus deaths — deaths occurring almost entirely among the unvaccinated. “More people have died of covid under President Biden than did in all of 2020,” proclaimed Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), GOP conference chairman.
As Biden might say: C’mon, man.
Too many journalists are caught in a mindless neutrality between democracy and its saboteurs, between fact and fiction. It’s time to take a stand.
You go Dana … maybe it’s time to have your collegaue Eric Wemple push for another “reckoning.”
The NY Times’ Maggie Haberman didn’t like this one bit:
What is the definition of “positive” coverage and “negative” coverage here? Is this a seen as a metric journalists are supposed to be using? https://t.co/0ggubw6IE8
There are legitimate discussions to have, no doubt, about coverage. But the presentations of these kinds of models generally are often as if they’re more scientific than they are.
Right. I’m not saying there isn’t a legitimate conversation to have about coverage. But these frames are totally subjective based on what’s being inputted into the algorithm
Could there have been context around the predictions for the job reports in each of those months that impacted these statements? Or is it just that everything is flat and the same and looking like you’re responding to certain reporters increases followers?
Lol. Right. Journalism should always present the news as positive or negative depending on the predictions of whether it is positive or negative. That’s the best way to determine the truth. And yes, they do that in politics too.
Haberman is one of the most combative and this-skinned reporters on twitter so it’s not surprising. But I would guess that she’s not alone in this knee-jerk reaction.
And for some reason they were all willing to don the hair shirt over the Steele Dossier a couple of weeks ago but being called out for unfair coverage of Joe Biden has them rising up in self-righteous horror.
This video’s BS about “Blue State authoritarian governors” is more projection, of course. But the infighting is a pleasure to behold. The ultra-right turning on the right is something I’m looking forward to watching::
Dan Crenshaw fired off a statement after Greene, Boebert and Cawthorn and others called for the 70 Republicans (including him) who voted for the federal vaccine database to be primaried as RINOs. Sounds like getting attacked weekly by MAGAs is starting to wear on him. pic.twitter.com/f77DRlpFZ6
Attorney Lin Wood has named a number of right-wing figures who he claimed made false allegations against him and said that he is “exposing the enemy within.”
During an interview that aired recently on Conservative Daily Podcast, Wood said that such allegations have targeted him “over the course of the last two years” from media personalities Tucker Carlson and Dan Bongino, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, former intelligence analyst Sebastian Gorka, and conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“Half of our people were going to be behind us shooting us in the back. I’ve been exposing the enemy within. And you’ve got to do that before you go to battle,” he added
The Donald Trump-allied lawyer Lin Wood claims that the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, have a “buddy-buddy” relationship. On Thursday, Wood posted what he claims is a conversation between the two as proof.
While it’s unclear who originally posted the email exchange between Biden and Carlson, Wood uploaded the unredacted and unverified screenshot to his Telegram channel on Thursday night. It appears to show three emails between Biden and Carlson from November 2014.
Neither Carlson nor Biden has confirmed the authenticity of the messages.
In the exchange, Carlson appears to thank Biden for writing a reference letter to Georgetown University — which Biden attended — for his son, Buckley.
“Hunter! I can’t thank you enough for writing that letter to Georgetown on Buckley’s behalf. So nice of you. I know it’ll help,” read a message that, according to the screenshot, appeared to be sent from Carlson’s personal Gmail account on November 12, 2014.
“Hope you’re great and we can all get dinner soon. Tucker,” the email continued.
Wood’s screenshot of the email chain also shows what appears to be a response from Biden a day later, which read: “Hey buddy — I need Buckley’s CV if you have one handy. Thanks.”
To that message, Carlson appears to respond: “Of course. Getting on a plane now but I’ll ask Susie to send it right away. Thanks again. It’s really nice of you to do this.”
Via CNN: The parents of Ethan Crumbley are now being arraigned after they did not turn themselves in Friday. A manhunt ended in their arrests early this morning.
James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of Oxford High School shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley, were found on the first floor of an industrial or commercial building after someone tipped police Friday night that their vehicle was nearby, police officials said.
“They appeared to be hiding in the building,” some 40 miles south of the Oxford area where they live, Detroit Police Chief James White said during a news conference early Saturday. They were “very distressed” after they were detained, the chief said.
Defense attorneys claim the parents were not reallyfleeing the area:
The attorneys maintain their clients’ innocence.
“They are absolutely taking this case seriously. They are devastated by the events in the Oxford incident. This is not something that’s being taken lightly by them or us,” Lehman said during the arraignment.
“Mr. Crumbley, as with Mrs. Crumbley, is not a flight risk, he is not a danger to the community. There’s no risk that they’re going to flee prosecution. They were never fleeing prosecution,” she added.
Somebody’s not telling the truth. The Crumbleys now claim the gun their kid used was locked away.
Per the prosecutor, the Crumblys, after having withdrawn $4,000 from the bank, were found by the state’s fugitive apprehension team who searched an abandoned building and found them hiding in a locked room. How do the defense attorneys explain that??
A shot from the deck of the farmhouse. In the distance, sheep.
Steve Bullock, the former Democratic governor of Montana, would like a word with you (New York Times):
The warning signs were already there in 2020 when Democrats fell short in congressional and state races despite electing Joe Biden president. I know because I was on the ballot for U.S. Senate and lost. In the last decade and a half, we’ve seen Senate seats flip red in Arkansas, Indiana, North Dakota, and more. Democrats have lost more than 900 state legislative seats around the country since 2008. And in this year’s governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, we saw the Democratic vote in rural areas plummet, costing the party one seat and nearly losing us the other. It was even worse for Democrats down ballot, as Democrats lost state legislative, county, and municipal seats.
The electoral and women’s rights mischief in the states is occurring because Republicans dominate the legislatures.
“In North Carolina, we already have an infrastructure that is ready for this money. We need an upgrade. This money comes to us at exactly the right time.” Gov. Cooper spoke with @Lawrence about the bipartisan infrastructure bill and what it'll do for our economy & infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/GXge3ADH4r
Sure, Democrats can still win governor’s races in states like North Carolina, as incumbent Roy Cooper did in 2020 on the strength of the Democratic vote in its larger population centers. Then he has to face down a Republican legislature bent on putting voters through another 10 years of gerrymandering lawsuits and culture-war-based legislative insanity.
The map tells the tale. The northeast part of the state is as heavily Black as it is rural. The unlabeled blue counties west of there include the cities of Durham (Duke Univ), Chapel Hill (UNC), Winston-Salem, Boone (Appalachian State), and Asheville:
2020 race for NC governor (New York Times)
Bullock takes Democrats to task for their Capitol Hill infighting this year. “You had Democrats fighting Democrats, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and desperately needed progress was delayed,” Bullock writes. “It’s no wonder rural voters think Democrats are not focused on helping them.” Democrats, Bullock alleges, are “out of touch with the needs of the ordinary voter. “
That’s standard-issue, rural-state politician rhetoric. I don’t know what Bullock considers an ordinary voter, but polling suggests that the programs Democrats are fighting amonsgst themeslves to deliver are damned popular with half or more of ordinary voters. What’s not popular with rural voters in states like Bullock’s (and mine) are Democrats.
It’s never easy for Democrats to get elected in Montana, because Democrats here are running against not only the opponent on the ballot, but also against conservative media’s (and at times our own) typecast of the national Democratic brand: coastal, overly educated, elitist, judgmental, socialist — a bundle of identity groups and interests lacking any shared principles. The problem isn’t the candidates we nominate. It’s the perception of the party we belong to.
As I just said, it’s not the policies. It’s the perception.
Bullock at least offers a few suggestions:
To overcome these obstacles, Democrats need to show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. Eliminating student loans isn’t a top-of-mind matter for the two-thirds of Americans lacking a college degree. Being told that climate change is the most critical issue our nation faces rings hollow if you’re struggling to make it to the end of the month. And the most insulting thing is being told what your self-interest should be.
Regular readers will recognize that last line as a regular complaint of mine.
Democrats’ policies have to be reframed, Bullock suggests, to how “real people” think about their lives. Exccept, Democratic policies are connecting just fine with real people in urban centers.
Bullock wants the Build Back Better plan passed, and quick, so rural America can see that Democrats have their backs.
But as he just admitted, it’s not their policies, it’s the negative brand Democrats have in rural America.
Bullock continues with sounder advice:
It’s time for Democrats to get uncomfortable and go beyond friendly urban and suburban settings to hear directly from folks in small towns who are trying to run a business, pay the bills, and maintain access to health care. They have stories to tell and ideas to share, and we should listen. When then-candidate Barack Obama spent the Fourth of July 2008 in Butte, Mont., he didn’t go there because Butte was suddenly key to winning in November, but showing up there sent a loud and clear message to places like Butte all across our country that he gives a damn about us.
Butte and Scranton may be a long way from each other geographically, but they’re not that far apart in terms of working-class roots, values and attitudes. President Biden can help rural Americans know and believe Democrats are tackling the challenges they face. Democrats need to get off the polling and consultant calls, get into the community and engage voters directly: Do you have a decent job that covers the bills and leaves a little left over? Can you afford your home and pay for health care? Do you feel safe? Do you believe we are doing right for your kids, educationally, environmentally and economically? Do you see a path forward toward a better life for you and your family?
Get out of the city more. Show up and listen first. Deep canvassing groups are doing that, but it takes time to change perceptions, time the country doesn’t have. But Democrats have to start somewhere. Smaller races in rural places matter. They’re not sexy. They’re not stepping-stones to that White House gig budding politicos dream of. But remember, the U.S. helped the South Vietnamese hold the cities while the North Vietnamese controlled the countryside. It didn’t work out too well.
Taronga Western Plains Zoo’s eight Ring-tailed Lemur babies are now approximately two months of age and becoming very active as they continue to grow and develop.
The babies have started trying solid foods and are becoming very playful. They can often be spotted jumping from one climbing structure to another or playing in the trees together on their island home.
“The babies are starting to eat branches and leaves as well as trying vegetable pieces more and more now. They are still suckling from their mums which is to be expected as most of their nutrition is coming from their mother’s milk,” said Primate keeper, Sasha Brook.
Over the next couple of months, the Ring-tailed Lemur babies will get better at climbing and will also start to sort out their own hierarchy.
“For Ring-tailed Lemurs it is the females that are in charge in the group, so some of the male babies are still yet to work this out,” said Sasha.
All of the mothers are being very attentive to all of the babies, not just their own. This is known as alloparenting, although this behaviour is being observed less now that the babies are getting older.
“A great time to see the Ring-tailed Lemur babies is in the mornings just when the Zoo opens as the group is fed at this time and they are often very active,” said Sasha.
Keepers hope to name the Ring-tailed Lemur babies in the coming weeks.
Taronga Western Plains Zoo is home to two groups of Ring-tailed Lemurs, a breeding group near the Savannah picnic ground and a bachelor group in the Savannah Visitor Plaza precinct. The breeding group now has 17 individuals including the most recent babies, whilst the bachelor group has four individuals.
The “highly transmissible” Omicron variant of coronavirus ripping through South Africa is putting disproportionately large numbers of children under 5 years old in hospitals, a top South African government medical adviser said Friday.
The alarming development raises the prospect of a new global battle cycle against the virus, given that the new variant has already spread to dozens of countries. The South African scientists also said the new variant was spreading much quicker than any previous wave of the coronavirus.
In a worrying virtual press conference, government adviser Waasila Jassat, speaking about the worst-affected area of Gauteng province (which includes the city of Johannesburg), said: “It’s clear in Gauteng, the week-on-week increase we’re seeing in cases and admissions is higher than we’ve seen it before. We’ve seen quite a sharp increase [in hospital admissions] across all age groups but particularly in the under 5s.”
She added: “The incidence in those under 5 is now second highest, second only to those over 60. The trend that we’re seeing now, that is different to what we’ve seen before, is a particular increase in hospital admissions in children under 5 years.
“We’ve always seen children not being very heavily affected by the COVID epidemic in the past, not having many admissions. In the third wave, we saw more admissions in young children under 5 and in teenagers, 15-19, and now, at the start of this fourth wave, we have seen quite a sharp increase across all age groups, but particularly in the under 5s.”
Jassat produced graphs that clearly showed how children under 5 years old are now being hospitalized at an alarming rate.
She said, for example, that in the city of Tshwane Metro, more than 100 children under the age of 5 were admitted to hospitals with COVID in the first two weeks of the new fourth wave (Nov. 14 to 27). In the first two weeks of the country’s third wave, in May of this year, fewer than 20 children were admitted to hospitals.
In a follow-up question-and-answer session, asked about the extraordinary numbers of children being admitted to hospital, Jassat said she suspected there might be an “immunity gap” and that the lack of vaccination of children might account for the numbers.
I don’t know what to say about that. Kids under five have not been cleared for vaccines. A lot of parents haven’t been willing to vaccinate their kids over five. Way too many people haven’t bothered to get themselves boosted. And 40% of Republican adults are still refusing to get vaccinated.
Now, maybe none of that makes a difference. We might find out that the vaccines simply don’t work at all on Omicron. But so far, it appears that while it is very transmissible, the vaccines will retain at least some of their potency against it. Fingers crossed. But either way, it looks like we are in for bad winter. Don’t throw away you masks and get some new filters for your Hepa filters.
Justice Department prosecutors say they have evidence that an alleged rioter who brought a gun to the US Capitol on January 6 was targeting both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. According to a filing Thursday, Guy Reffitt, a member of the Texas Three Percenter militia, “specifically targeted at least two lawmakers — the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and then-Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell — whom he sought to physically remove or displace from the Capitol building.”
Prosecutors aim to prove the allegation at Reffitt’s trial, which is tentatively scheduled for late February. He will be the first January 6 defendant to go to trial, and is facing five federal charges. He has pleaded not guilty, and has been in jail since his arrest in January.
According to court documents, Reffitt drove to Washington, DC, days before the riot, carrying an AR-15 rifle and pistol in his car. Prosecutors say Reffitt wore body armor and carried his pistol and plastic cuff restraints on the Capitol grounds on January 6.
The assertion by prosecutors may further undermine efforts by some Republicans to whitewash the deadly insurrection and claims by former President Donald Trump that rioters posed “zero threat” to those inside the building.
Other rioters have been accused of hurling threats against lawmakers before, during, and after January 6. In the week after the 2020 election, Michael Lopatic, of Pennsylvania, allegedly posted photos online of birds he had shot on a hunting trip which he had named after prominent Democratic lawmakers. Garret Miller, of Texas, is accused of tweeting “Assassinate AOC” and wrote on Facebook about hanging a Black police officer. Mark Mazza, who is also charged with carrying a loaded firearm to the Capitol, allegedly told investigators that if he had found Pelosi that day, “you’d be here for another reason.”
Do not think that it couldn’t have happened. If they had come across any of their enemies like Pelosi, AOC or Ilhan Omar I honestly think someone would have killed them. If you doubt it, watch this video from that day which contains language and threats so vile that Youtube will not allow it to be embedded.
The Michigan prosecutor charged this week’s school shooter’s parents with involuntary manslaughter and rightly so:
Four days before 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley allegedly opened fire at his Michigan high school, his parents bought him an unusually early Christmas gift: a 9mm Sig Sauer handgun.
The teen accompanied his father, James Crumbley, to buy the gun at Acme Shooting Goods in the small town of Oxford. Ethan referred it to that night on Instagram as his “new beauty.”
The next day, his mom, Jennifer Crumbley, who once posted an open letter thanking President-elect Donald Trump for protecting “my right to bear arms,” penned her own Instagram post. “Mom & son day testing out his new Xmas present,” she wrote, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said on Friday.
By Monday, however, Ethan’s new present, which was kept in an unsecured drawer in his parents’ bedroom, was already causing concern at Oxford High School.
A teacher found Ethan searching for ammunition on his cell phone during class and reported it to higher-ups. Administrators left a voicemail for Jennifer Crumbley and followed up with an email, but received no response.
“Lol, I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught,” Jennifer texted her son.
Conduct by James and Jennifer Crumbley before and after the shooting was “so egregious” that it warranted charging them with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, McDonald announced Friday in an extraordinary move that is a rarity in the U.S. legal system, which seldom holds parents of school shooters accountable for their child’s actions.
Charges were filed, in part, to “send a message that gun owners have a responsibility,” she said. “Four kids were murdered and seven more injured. So yes, I think we should all be very angry and we should take a very hard look at what is in place in terms of criminal responsibility and what gun owners are required to do.”
On the morning of the shooting on Tuesday, a teacher was “alarmed” at a drawing made by Ethan. It included a handgun with the text, “the thoughts won’t stop. Help me,” and a bullet with the words, “blood everywhere.” There were also some laughing emojis, a person who’d been shot, and the words, “my life is useless,” and “the world is dead,” McDonald said.
The drawing prompted staff to remove Ethan from class, and his parents were called into the school. James and Jennifer were shown the drawing and told they had to “get their son into counseling within 48 hours.”
“Both James and Jennifer Crumbley failed to ask their son if he had his gun with him or where his gun was located and failed to inspect his backpack,” McDonald said.
They resisted taking Ethan home with them and left the school soon after, she said. Ethan returned to class with the handgun in his backpack.
“The notion that a parent could read those words [in the drawing] and also know that their son had access to a deadly weapon that they gave him is unconscionable. And I think it’s criminal,” McDonald said.
Just after lunchtime that day, the sophomore student went into a bathroom with his backpack, then came out into a hallway and started shooting students at random, sending terrified teens ducking for cover and into hiding, police said. Sixteen-year-old Tate Myre, 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana, 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin, and 17-year-old Justin Shilling died. Seven more, including a teacher, were injured.
As news alerts went out about an active shooter at the school, James Crumbley “went straight to his home to look for his gun,” McDonald said. Jennifer Crumbley texted her son, “Ethan, don’t do it.”
James then called 911 to report that his gun was missing and that “his son could be the shooter,” McDonald said.
Acme Shooting Goods declined The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Friday. Multiple attempts to contact the Crumbleys were unsuccessful.
Involuntary manslaughter was “the strongest possible charge that we could prove and that there’s probable cause to charge,” said McDonald.
Ethan has been charged as an adult with one count of terrorism, four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of assault with intent to murder, and 12 counts of possession of a firearm.
At Crumbley’s arraignment on Wednesday, Oakland County Sheriff’s Lt. Tim Willis said police seized “two separate videos recovered from Ethan’s cellphone made by him the night before the incident, wherein he talked about shooting and killing students the next day at Oxford High School.”
Willis also told the judge that investigators discovered a journal in Ethan’s backpack, “detailing his desire to shoot up the school, to include murdering students.” Social media accounts showed Ethan practicing with a Sig Sauer handgun identical to the one used in the shooting, Willis told District Court Judge Nancy Carniak.
His new Christmas present. They bought it for him. And then he killed four people and injured seven more all casualties of a grotesque gun culture that inspires people like this. They encouraged their sick kid to become a gun nut and he became a murderer. The same thing happened with the Newtown killer Adam Lanza. What kind of people would think that handing a gun to a disturbed 15 year old kid is a good idea?
This kind of person. Here’s an open letter from the shooter’s mom to Donald Trump back in 2016:
“Mr. Trump, I actually love that you are a bad public speaker because that showed sincerity, and humility,” she wrote. “You changed your mind, and you said ‘so what.’ You made the famous ‘grab them in the pussy’ comment, did it offend me? No. I say things all the time that people take the wrong way, do I mean them, not always. Do I agree that you should of [sic] shown your tax returns? No. I don’t care what you do or maybe don’t pay in taxes, I think those are personal and if the Gov’t can lock someone up over $10,000 of unpaid taxes and you slipped on by, then that shows the corruption.”
Crumbley went on to tell Trump that she hoped he would “really uncover the politicians for what I believe they really are,” and that he might “shut down Big Pharma, make health care affordable for me and my MIDDLE CLASS family again.” She was in favor of Trump’s long-promised border wall, and noted that she was “not racist” because her grandfather “came straight off the boat in Italy.”
“As a female and a Realtor, thank you for allowing my right to bear arms,” the letter continued. “Allowing me to be protected if I show a home to someone with bad intentions. Thank you for respecting that Amendment.”
She complained about parents at other schools where the “kids come from illegal immigrant parents” and “don’t care about learning.”
It was signed, “A hard working Middle Class Law Abiding Citizen who is sick of getting fucked in the ass and would rather be grabbed by the pussy.”
She seems nice. So does her husband who responded to that letter with this:
