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10,000 People Showed Up for Trump’s Pre-Inauguration Concert. 400,000 Showed Up for Obama’s.

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40 Times More People Came for Obama 

Thursday afternoon Donald Trump held a concert to kick off his inauguration and a weekend of celebration at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The president-elect tried to spin it, suggesting that maybe no one had ever held a concert there, pretending there were “tens of thousands of people” there, filling the space, “all the way to the back.”

Trump told attendees, “This started out tonight being a small little concert, and then we had the idea maybe we’ll do it in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t know if it’s ever been done before,” he said, according to Buzzfeed. “But if it has, very seldom. And the people came by the thousands and thousands, and here we are tonight, all the way back. All the way back.”

Later, at a donors’ dinner, Trump tried to spin a bit harder.

“We thought it would be a small concert and tens of thousands of people were there,” the president-elect said. “It went all the way to the back. They never had so many people. And very few people ever had a concert at the Lincoln Memorial.”

None of his remarks were true.

According to an MSNBC crowd estimate, 10,000 people showed.

Meanwhile, eight years ago, Barack Obama held a pre-inauguration concert at the National Mall. 

Rap fans danced to country music, elderly white men high-fived with young African Americans and tears mixed with laughter as a varied lineup of A-list stars and an equally diverse crowd jammed the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the nation and its historic president-elect yesterday,” The Washington Post reported Jan. 19, 2009.

By some estimates, more than 400,000 people filled the western end of the Mall for the official start of a three-day jubilee of prayers, parades and parties. They endured long security lines and chilly weather for a two-hour salute to the man who will be America’s first black president and to the nation that elected Barack Obama to the White House despite centuries of racial divisiveness.”

This tweet sums it up:

The photo above, a screenshot from CNN, was taken at 4:44 PM ET. Here’s video of Trump and his family arriving at 4:13 PM ET:

Many noted it didn’t help Trump wasn’t able to attract well-known talent:

Friday doesn’t appear to be much different. D.C. should be packed. Trump and his team have been falsely claiming dress shops and hotels are sold out but according to many, including one New York Times reporter, the city is conspicuously empty:

UPDATE:
Buzzfeed editor tweets there’s a light crowd out Friday AM: 

 

 

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Trump DOJ Fires ‘More Than a Dozen’ Prosecutors from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Team

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The U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump’s Acting Attorney General, James McHenry, on Monday reportedly fired career prosecutors who worked for Special Counsel Jack Smith and were involved in the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump. The number of attorneys fired was “more than a dozen,” according to The Washington Examiner.

“Given your significant role in prosecuting the President, I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully,” McHenry wrote to the lawyers, the Examiner also reported.

Special Counsel Jack Smith prosecuted Donald Trump for allegedly unlawfully removing, retaining, and refusing to return classified documents including the nation’s nuclear secrets, largely under the Espionage Act. He also prosecuted Trump for his actions to subvert the 2020 election, including those surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the insurrection.

READ MORE: Trump Team Pushing ‘Utter Propaganda’ on Deportations to Create ‘Climate of Fear’: Experts

The Trump Department of Justice “announced Monday that it had fired several career lawyers involved in prosecuting Donald Trump,” who “had been involved in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation that led to now-dismissed indictments against Trump over his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol,” NBC News reported.

“Today, Acting Attorney General James McHenry terminated the employment of a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” a DOJ official told NBC News. “In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda. This action is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government.”

According to NBC News, the firings are questionable because career civil servants “can’t just be summarily fired — there is a legal process that will unfold.”

Additionally, on Monday, a top D.C. prosecutor appointed by President Trump opened an investigation into why hundreds of people who allegedly engaged in unlawful acts and were convicted on federal charges were prosecuted for crimes related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the insurrection.

READ MORE: ‘We Are the Opposite of Nazis’: Colombia’s President Slams Trump Deportation Policies

President Donald Trump’s newly-appointed interim U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Ed Martin, is an attorney who reportedly “led the ‘Stop the Steal’ effort” to overturn the U.S. election and “represented Jan. 6 defendants.” The Washington Post reported Monday that Martin has launched a “special project” to investigate “the office’s charging of more than 250 Capitol riot defendants with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, a statute the Supreme Court ruled last June was too broadly applied.”

Martin, who helped craft the Republican Party’s 2024 platform,  reportedly “has raised jailing women who get abortions and advocated for a national ban without exceptions for rape or incest,” according to a CNN report last summer. Martin has served as president of far-right groups aligned with the late anti-feminism and anti-LGBTQ activist Phyllis Schlafly.

“Obviously, the use was a great failure of our office … and we need to get to the bottom of it,” Martin wrote in the email announcing the new investigations, according to The Washington Post, “saying he expected a preliminary report by Friday.”

Martin’s “focus on prosecutors’ charging decisions is likely to cheer President Donald Trump and other right-wing supporters who have called for prosecutors to be prosecuted,” the Post also reported.

Opening investigations into the prosecutions is a move similar to the investigations and reviews under the first Trump administration, of why Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed and why the DOJ and FBI investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

National security attorney Mark Zaid remarked on the firings of Smith’s prosecutors, “This is not how the system is supposed to work, and will be challenged.”

Monday’s moves also follow Trump’s highly-controversial and some suggest unlawful firings of approximately 17 Inspectors General last week in what Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer labeled a “chilling purge.”

READ MORE: Fetterman Denies Rightward Shift Toward Trump Amid Concerns Over His Democratic Dedication

 

Image via Reuters

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Fetterman Denies Rightward Shift Toward Trump Amid Concerns Over His Democratic Dedication

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U.S. Senator John Fetterman’s complex relationship with President Donald Trump has raised many eyebrows on the left, with some Democrats worrying he could switch sides, giving Senate Republicans a greater advantage in their current narrow majority.

Fetterman, the senior senator from Pennsylvania, was the first Senate Democrat to join Trump’s Truth Social website and the first Democratic Senator to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the 2024 election.

“President Trump invited me to meet, and I accepted. I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians— not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman declared, Reuters reported.

He was also the first Democratic Senator to call for President Joe Biden to pardon Trump.

“The Trump hush money and Hunter Biden cases were both bullshit, and pardons are appropriate,” Fetterman wrote in his first Truth Social post, the UK’s The Times reported last month. “Weaponising the judiciary for blatant, partisan gain diminishes the collective faith in our institutions and sows further division.”

On Monday, he became the last Senate Democrat to sign on to a resolution condemning Trump’s pardons of over 1500 people convicted of crimes related to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the insurrection.

According to the Associated Press, “Fetterman has warmed to Trump so much that some in his party are quietly disavowing the man they supported in 2022, when the Pennsylvanian easily won a three-candidate primary and survived a stroke amid a high-pressure campaign to become the only Democrat to flip a Republican Senate seat that year.”

And he’s embraced Trump’s proposed Greenland grab, calling it “a responsible conversation.”

On Monday, Fetterman rejected the party switching rumors, declaring those who suggest he has made a “rightward” move are wrong: “it’s just happened not to be true.”

“I’ve been record too, saying, I am not gonna become a Republican, you know, although maybe some people might be happy on one side, but I would make a pretty terrible Republican because, you know, pro-choice, pro-really strong immigration pro-LGBTQ, uh, you know, just pretty, like, I don’t think I’d be a good fit, so I’m not gonna change my party.”

“I can’t keep chasing down every last thing that’s online, because they’re just happen not to be true and just look at my votes, look at the things that I haven’t changed,” Fetterman insisted.

Watch below or at this link:

 

Image via Reuters 

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‘We Are the Opposite of Nazis’: Colombia’s President Slams Trump Deportation Policies

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American consumers narrowly escaped dramatic increases in the cost of their morning coffee and Valentine’s Day flowers after President Donald Trump on Sunday announced, then quickly rescinded, a 25% tariff on all imports from Colombia — with plans for a whopping 50% tariff to be imposed one week later. Trump’s tariffs were in retaliation for President Gustavo Petro refusing two U.S. military planes carrying deportees from the United States, and for denouncing the U.S. for transporting them in handcuffs.

“The US began using military aircraft to return recent border crossers back to their countries of origin last week, with flights expected to continue daily – partly as a message to other nations, White House border czar Tom Homan said Sunday,” CNN reported.

Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil have all objected to Trump’s decision to fly deportees on U.S. military planes, a change from the Biden administration’s use of charter flights, which are far less expensive.

Earlier this month the Council on Foreign Relations warned of China’s “growing influence” in Latin America. Trump’s and Petro’s short-lived trade war, experts warn, could push Colombia closer to China and Russia.

READ MORE: Trump Team Pushing ‘Utter Propaganda’ on Deportations to Create ‘Climate of Fear’: Experts

Under the Biden administration, Colombia accepted hundreds of flights returning its deportees each year, but President Petro expressed outrage Sunday over the military planes and the treatment of the deportees.

“President Petro appeared to object to the return of deportees on military rather than civilian flights – and to the way the migrants may be treated on those military flights,” the BBC reported. “In his posts on X, Petro referenced a news video showing migrants deported from the US to Brazil, who had been handcuffed and had their feet restrained during the deportation flight.”

Petro “said that he would ‘never allow Colombians to be returned handcuffed on flights.'”

Trump’s trade war, which was quickly matched by President Petro, fizzled before it was put into action after Colombia, according to the White House, agreed to all of Trump’s demands, including the use of military planes.

“The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” the White House’s statement read. “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump … expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.”

President Petro took the opportunity to denounce President Trump’s immigration policies.

RELATED: ‘Hunting Grounds’: Trump Cancels Biden Ban on ICE Arrests at Schools, Churches, Hospitals

“Petro — Colombia’s first leftist president, who is closely allied with the presidents of Brazil and Mexico — said that over 15,600 U.S. citizens are living in Colombia without the proper documents. Petro added that while he is aware some Americans are living in Colombia illegally, he’s not going return them to the United States in chains,” according to The Washington Post.

“We are the opposite of the Nazis,” Petro wrote, according to Reuters.

“You will never see me burning a U.S. flag or carrying out a raid to return handcuffed illegal immigrants to the US. True libertarians will never attack human freedom,” Petro also wrote, according to Newsweek.

“Sergio Guzmán, director of the political consultancy Colombia Risk Analysis, said that the standoff could push Colombia closer to China,” The Washington Post also reported. “He noted that Colombia has expressed interest in joining BRICS — the economic partnership of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Amid the diplomatic crisis between Petro and Trump on Sunday, China’s ambassador to Colombia posted on X saying Colombia and China are in the ‘best moment of our diplomatic relations.’”

AFP and Australia’s news.com.au reported, “New US trade war with Colombia could open door for China.”

Professor Markus Wagner, an expert in international economic law, “said Mr Trump’s ‘weaponisation of trade relations’ through tariffs could push countries like Colombia away from America and closer to China.”

China “is already South America’s top trading partner and a major source of foreign investment, while also strengthening military ties with nations like Venezuela,” the report added.

READ MORE: ‘Not Good’: Trump Proposes ‘Getting Rid of’ FEMA, Conditioning California Aid on Voter ID

 

Image via Reuters

 

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