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‘Should Not Be Normalized’: Warnings Issued After Trump Calls Pelosi an ‘Animal’ on Eve of Election
History and political experts are issuing warnings after Donald Trump repeatedly called Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi an “animal” at a campaign rally during which he strongly suggested he will announce another run for president next week.
Marietje Schaake, the former President of the CyberPeace Institute (CPI), which advocates “for respect of laws and norms in cyberspace to ensure people’s rights and fundamental freedoms,” issued a strong warning.
“Dehumanizing and political violence are close neighbors,” said Schaake, columnist and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the Netherlands. “Trump is playing with fire and knows it, still chooses to call Pelosi (and gang members) an animal. It is appalling and should not be normalized.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough delivered a heartfelt yet stern warning, calling those who can’t find any sympathy for Pelosi after her 82-year old husband of nearly 60 years was “bashed in the brains” by an attacker who has spouted far right wing conspiracy theories and ideologies “sick.”
Scarborough also likened the dehumanization of Pelosi to “how Nazis turn people into, they dehumanize them.”
“People have been lying about Nancy Pelosi and have been spreading, spreading just the most vile attacks against Nancy Pelosi for so long that she’s been turned – again, she’s been, you look at what I just said about how Nazis turn people into, they dehumanize them, and they dehumanize this woman who actually is a woman of great faith,” Scarborough said Tuesday on “Morning Joe.”
“And if you don’t like that, tough, I really want to say another word. I’ll just say ‘tough luck,’ because she has anybody that’s talked to her for more than five minutes knows. She is a Catholic of deep faith and and a kind warm and you may not like it may not like politics, it’s that we’re supposed to be a nation where Jefferson and Hamilton can hate each other’s politics, right? But she’s been dehumanized to such a point that I know you. I know you people. I know. I won’t say your names of course. But I know you’ve dehumanized Nancy Pelosi. You’re a good person. You live in a good, good neighborhood. You got a good family. You go to a good church, but you’ve dehumanized Nancy Pelosi so much that you can’t even feel sympathy. You can’t even relate to her having an 82-year old husband, who was beaten up, bashed in the brains, had to be rushed to emergency surgery in the middle of the night. And you have allowed politics to dehumanize her so much that you don’t feel any emotion for that.”
“And I just ask that you, you, you I ask it. However you got to that point. If you’re Christian, just you know, we should pray about that today. If you’re not that’s fine. I hope you can meditate on it. I hope you can think about it. Because that’s a real sickness. And that’s your sickness. Nancy Pelosi is not the one who’s sick. You’re the one who’s sick. If you don’t feel pain for her and her family.”
“Nancy Pelosi is not the one who’s sick. You’re the one who is sick if you don’t feel pain for her and her family,” —@joenbc on those who dehumanize the House Speaker pic.twitter.com/ZP0DmKE2Eq
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) November 8, 2022
CNN’s Jake Tapper, pointing to Anderson Cooper’s interview with Speaker Pelosi in which she reveals for the first time how she learned of the attack on her husband Paul, blasted Trump.
“While this interview was airing, with Speaker Pelosi sharing her heartbreak after an intruder looking for her broke into her house and attacked her husband, prompting a national conversation about dehumanizing rhetoric, Donald Trump called her an ‘animal’ to an Ohio rally.”
Political scientist Brian Klaas, an associate professor in global politics at University College London, warned: “Trump, just tonight, has called Pelosi ‘an animal,’ days after she was targeted in an assassination attempt and has suggested journalists who don’t reveal sources should be jailed, where, he implies, they will be raped. Do not vote for his disciples. This is a very dark path.”
(Klass is correct on Trump calling for journalists to be jailed, specifically, journalists involved in the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft decision striking down Roe v. Wade.)
Immediately after Trump’s speech Monday night MSNBC’s Medhi Hasan tweeted, “This morning on CNN, Kevin McCarthy said the best way to avoid violence is for *Biden* to tone down his language.”
“Tonight, Trump called Nancy Pelosi, whose husband was attacked 10 days ago, an ‘animal.’ Yes, an ‘animal.’ And it won’t even be a headline tomorrow morning.”
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, speaking on CNN Tuesday morning told viewers that calling Speaker Pelosi an “animal” is “a dehumanizing thing to say about somebody who is third in line for the presidency and whose husband was just attacked in in in a break-in attempt where she was the target. So, you know, highly motivated.”
“Yeah. Donald Trump has a very long history of demanding to be treated with some level of humanity while dehumanizing others,” Haberman continued, as Mediaite reported. “And this was no exception. But this was pretty striking given everything that we know that’s going on right now.”
Haberman added, “Trump’s idea of strength is violence.”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
