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'And Then What?' Asks Cori Bush After MTG Boasts About Armed Insurrection
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed over the weekend that the January 6 insurrectionists "would've been armed" and "would have won" had she and Steve Bannon been in charge.
Dec 12, 2022
Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia asserted over the weekend that former President Donald Trump's right-wing mob would have pulled off a successful coup had she and erstwhile Trump adviser Steve Bannon organized the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol.
"I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would've been armed," Greene said Saturday night at the annual New York Young Republican Club dinner, during which the club's president instructed a throng of white nationalists and other far-right figures, including Donald Trump Jr., to prepare for "total war."
U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who has called for the expulsion of Greene and other congressional Republicans accused of helping to plot the deadly insurrection, responded on social media by asking, "And then what?"
As Rolling Stone reported Sunday:
Greene's comments about that day seem to imply that she was not involved with the planning of Jan. 6. Two anonymous sources who organized the pro-Trump rally that preceded the Capitol attack have told Rolling Stone they recalled working with Greene on the rally. "I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically," one organizer said.
"I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs." Greene's communications director told Rolling Stone in October of last year that the congresswoman was involved only in planning to object to the electoral certification on the House floor, not the rally.
But in testimony she gave under oath this year, when Greene was asked if she recalled hearing anyone mention there would be potential violence on Jan. 6 or if she talked to fellow House Republicans or the White House about Jan. 6 protests, she answered repeatedly, "I don't remember."
Greene is among the GOP lawmakers accused of giving reconnaissance tours of the Capitol to insurrectionists before the deadly attack. She has also been a staunch defender of the rioters jailed for violently attempting to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory, referring to them as "political prisoners."
More than 950 people have been arrested so far. That includes nearly 300 individuals who have been charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement as well as two leaders of the far-right Oath Keepers militia who were recently convicted of seditious conspiracy. In the immediate aftermath of Trump's failed coup, Greene and 146 other congressional Republicans voted to reverse Biden's decisive win.
"Very soon," historian Harvey Kaye warned Monday morning, House Democrats "hand over power to the likes of her."
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Judge Grants NY AG's Request for Independent Monitor to Oversee Trump Organization
New York Attorney General Letitia James said the ruling means "Donald Trump and his companies cannot continue the extensive fraud that we uncovered."
Nov 03, 2022
A New York judge on Thursday granted the state Attorney General Letitia James' request for an independent monitor to supervise the businesses of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is a defendant in a fraud lawsuit recently filed by James.
"Time and time again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump cannot evade the law for personal gain."
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron issued an order approving James' motion for the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee Trump's dealings with financial institutions, as well as any major asset sales.
In a statement welcoming Thursday's order, James said that "time and time again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump cannot evade the law for personal gain."
"Today's decision will ensure that Donald Trump and his companies cannot continue the extensive fraud that we uncovered and will require the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee compliance at the Trump Organization," she added. "No number of lawsuits, delay tactics, or threats will stop our pursuit of justice."
James accuses the former president and other members of his business organization of "engaging in ongoing and extensive acts of fraud in the preparation of Mr. Trump's annual statements of financial condition" in violation of state executive and criminal laws.
In September, James' office sued Trump and three of his children--Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump--for what the lawsuit called "staggering" fraud.
According to James, "Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization used fraudulent and misleading asset valuations over 200 times in 10 years on his annual financial statements."
"Since Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization became aware of [the attorney general's] investigation, they have continued to engage in many practices they knew to be improper or fraudulent," James' office asserted, "including on Mr. Trump's 2021 statement of financial condition."
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Trumps Agree to Be Questioned Under Oath Unless NY Court Intervenes
The pending depositions relate to the state attorney general's civil probe of the family business.
Jun 08, 2022
Former President Donald Trump and his two eldest children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump, have agreed to be questioned under oath next month by lawyers with New York Attorney General Letitia James' office unless the state's highest court intervenes, a filing revealed Wednesday.
The deal to begin the questioning on July 15 comes after a New York appeals court last month upheld a lower court's ruling that the trio must sit for depositions as part of James' civil investigation into the Trump Organization's business practices.
Trump attorney Alina Habba "said soon after that ruling that she would appeal the matter to the Court of Appeals," The New York Times reported, noting that it's not clear if the state's top court "will agree to hear the case, but if it does, the three Trump family members may still have a hope of avoiding the interviews."
The Associated Press noted Wednesday that "the former president had plenty of experience with such questioning during his business career, and he gave a deposition just this past October in a lawsuit filed by protesters who said his security team roughed them up during his first presidential campaign."
His other adult son, Eric Trump, was deposed for the New York probe in 2020 and invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times in six hours to avoid answering questions.
Separate from the deposition deal on Wednesday, a New York state judge--who previously held the ex-president in civil contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena related to James' investigation--ordered Trump to provide her office with additional information.
"Leaving the contempt order in place is the simplest, most effective way to get the job done," said Judge Arthur Engoron, according to CNN--which noted that Trump now has "until June 17 to submit affidavits from the Trump Organization's accounting, marketing, hotel, golf, and legal departments explaining the units' document destruction and retention policies."
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Trump-Backed Nebraska Gubernatorial Candidate Accused of Groping Several Women
"Charles Herbster's behavior is completely unacceptable for anyone, especially someone seeking a public office of authority and trust," said every female Nebraska state senator, including five Republicans.
Apr 14, 2022
Eight women including a Republican state senator have come forward to accuse Charles Herbster--a front-runner in Nebraska's GOP gubernatorial primary who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump--of sexual assault or other grossly inappropriate behavior, according to a report published Thursday.
"I'm scared for any young women that he would be dealing with in the future. Don't send your daughters to work for this guy."
The Nebraska Examiner reports Herbster, the CEO of Conklin Company, stands accused by Nebraska state Sen. Julie Slama (R-1) of reaching up her skirt in the middle of a crowded ballroom during the Douglas County Republican Party's annual Elephant Remembers dinner in 2019. Another event attendee told the Examiner that they witnessed the assault; that person and two others also said they saw Herbster grope another woman's buttocks at the dinner.
Responding to the paper's allegations, Slama tweeted a statement affirming that "today's Nebraska Examiner report about Charles Herbster sexually assaulting me in 2019, when I was 22 years old, is true. I indirectly referenced the assault in a February 2022 floor speech in the Legislature and prayed I would never have to relieve this trauma."
"When the Nebraska Examiner contacted me about a witness account of my assault and the seven other women who shared their stories, I was not going to deny the truth," she added. "I am not seeking media attention or any other gain, I simply was not going to lie and say it did not occur. I would request my family's privacy be respected at this difficult time."
According to the Examiner:
Six women... told the Nebraska Examiner that Herbster touched them inappropriately when they were saying hello or goodbye to him, or when they were posing for a photograph by his side. The women said Herbster groped them on their buttocks, outside of their clothes, during political events or beauty pageants.
Each woman said she was grabbed, not inadvertently grazed, by Herbster. A seventh woman said Herbster once cornered her privately and kissed her forcibly. All the incidents occurred between 2017 and this year, according to those involved. The women ranged in age from their late teens to mid-20s at the time of the incidents.
Other than Slama, all of Herbster's accusers spoke to the Examiner on condition of anonymity, with some saying they feared the candidate's wealth and power and others expressing concern for their careers or over how their families and churches would react. Two of the women said they are considering filing police reports.
"Being a conservative Republican woman in politics, you just expect to be treated with respect," one of the women told the Examiner. "To be treated in that way in a public event, in front of everyone, just to prove, I believe, that he could get away with it, and not having recourse, it's terrifying."
"I'm scared for any young women that he would be dealing with in the future," she added. "Don't send your daughters to work for this guy."
The paper continued:
The Nebraska Examiner corroborated six of the women's accounts with at least one witness to each incident. The other two women told at least one person about the incident on the same day it occurred. Each witness and confidant confirmed the women's description of what happened.
One witness said he saw Herbster grope a woman during a large conservative gathering and was appalled. The witness, a combat veteran, asked the woman if she wanted him to intervene. She asked him to restrain himself because she didn't want to cause a scene.
A witness to a different incident showed the Examiner a photograph of a young woman posing with a group after meeting Herbster. Herbster's arm is stretched behind the woman, just below her waist. Both the woman and the witness have confirmed that Herbster was grabbing the woman's buttocks at the time.
Herbster is endorsed by Trump--who in 2015 appointed him chair of the White House Agriculture and Rural Advisory Committee--as well as his son, Donald Trump Jr., who joined the candidate on a three-city campaign tour Wednesday. According to recent polling, Herbster is the front-runner in the GOP gubernatorial primary.
In the wake of Thursday's report, GOP Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts and every female state senator--including five Republicans--condemned Herbster's alleged behavior.
"This is beyond horrible," Ricketts said in a statement, adding that Herbster "should beg forgiveness of the women he has preyed upon and seek treatment. Sexual assault is criminal behavior and should disqualify anyone from elected leadership."
The bipartisan group of 13 female state senators said that "this is not a question of politics--it is an issue of character and basic human decency. Charles Herbster's behavior is completely unacceptable for anyone, especially someone seeking a public office of authority and trust. Herbster's actions as outlined by the Nebraska Examiner render him unfit to serve."
For his part, Herbster denied the allegations as "libelous" and "100% false," while blasting the Examiner report as "libelous fake news" by a "leftist news site."
Herbster is the owner and CEO of half a dozen agribusiness and manufacturing companies, including Conklin Company, which bills itself as being "dedicated to having a positive impact on the future of America while building a business to the glory of God."
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Trump Jr. Pushed Meadows to Overturn Election as Votes Were Counted, Texts Show
"This is as explicit as it gets," said one observer.
Apr 09, 2022
Text messages obtained by the House select committee that is investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection revealed that people in former President Donald Trump's closest circle--specifically his son, Donald Trump Jr.--were strategizing before the votes were even counted how they could overturn the results of the 2020 election and make sure Trump served a second term.
As CNN reported late Friday, Trump Jr. texted former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on November 5, 2020--just two days after the election and before President Joe Biden was announced the winner--to urge White House officials to use "operational control" to ensure a Trump victory regardless of the results.
"POTUS must start 2nd term now," Trump Jr. told Meadows.
He then suggested that Republican-controlled state legislatures in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan "step in" and put forward "Trump electors."
"This is as explicit as it gets," tweeted Yale University philosophy professor Jason Stanley.
The former president's son also suggested that the U.S. House could vote for president by state party delegation if neither Trump nor Biden got enough electoral votes to be declared the winner, with each state getting one vote.
"Jr. was all in on the coup and demanding misuse of the government to investigate Trump's enemies."
"We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021," said Trump Jr.
His final suggestion was having the White House dismiss FBI Director Christopher Wray, who angered Trump and his allies by not releasing information that they believed would be harmful to the former president's rivals.
"Fire Wray," the president's son told Meadows, adding that former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell should replace him.
Later that same day, Grenell announced that he was joining Trump campaign officials in filing a lawsuit to "stop the counting of illegal votes."
"Jr. was all in on the coup and demanding misuse of the government to investigate Trump's enemies," said New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.
Trump Jr.'s text messages were revealed less than two weeks after a federal judge found that the former president and his lawyer likely committed a felony in their efforts to overturn the election by filing dozens of lawsuits and demanding vote recounts--which took place in several states and never unveiled any irregularities that would have changed the outcome of the vote.
As Common Dreams reported last month, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter found the Trump campaign's strategy after the election was "a coup in search of a legal theory."
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For Trump and GOP, No Hope, Just the Audacity of Lies
They have nothing to sell but fear itself.
Aug 30, 2020
During the first Clinton term, I worked on the public TV series In Performance at the White House.
One of our episodes was an Aretha Franklin concert on the South Lawn. The show was great. It goes without saying what a remarkable talent she was. But Ms. Franklin was demanding, too. At one point, she insisted we shoot her in a designer ballgown as she made a grand entrance, coming down the stairs from the executive mansion's Truman Balcony. We cut it from the final show; for whatever reason, no matter how we tried in the editing room, it just looked cheesy.
The potential for cheese didn't stop Donald and Melania Trump. Thursday night, they dramatically descended that same staircase just before the president made his big acceptance speech.
Here's another difference between our show and Thursday's big South Lawn GOP convention finale: Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul.
The Trumps just think they're royalty. And so do a lot of their followers.
Because my, what a coronation the Republicans had! The floodlights! The fireworks! The empty, inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda! The massive and flagrant violations of the Hatch Act, using government property and personnel for political gain! Trump! Trump! Trump!
Friday morning, much of the nation awoke with a hangover, having gotten literally or metaphorically drunk the night before from either the elation of seeing their boy pour on his patented brand of bull or the depressing realization that he could still win this thing.
What's clear from his 70-minute remarks and all the other speechifying is that Donald Trump and his Republican cohort have decided they can lie with impunity, subvert the truth and heedlessly break the rules because their devoted base doesn't know or care about such lawlessness, and nobody pushes back much, so why the hell not?
The notion that each of us should possess a moral compass that guides our conscience and actions no matter what, no matter where you are or whom you're with, has vanished. Trump and his gang are poster children for situational ethics; they'll do or say anything, even incite violence. The ends always justify the means.
And they also justify the mean -- that is, the cruel, uncaring heartlessness of gimme-gimme avarice and the bigotry of race, religion, gender and class prejudice. On the first night of their confab, when young right-wing activist Charlie Kirk absurdly described Trump as "the bodyguard of western civilization," every racist hound in a 5000-mile radius heard the dog whistle: Kirk, of course, really meant white Christian civilization.
It was an unending tumble downhill from there. Kimberly Guilfoyle, girlfriend of Don Trump, Jr., national chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee 2020 and former Fox News personality, shouted her way, Nuremburg-style, through a speech in which she - former wife of California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom -bellowed, "Do you support the cancel culture, the cosmopolitan elites of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, who blame America first? Do you think America is to blame?!"
Cloud Cuckooland hypocrisy filled the air. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the entitled St. Louis couple who pointed guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators, warned, "No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats' America." Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who accepted an illegal $25,000 campaign contribution from a Trump charity shortly before she dismissed a lawsuit against now-defunct Trump University, accused Joe Biden of nepotism - which, compared to the Trumps turning the Federal government into one more corrupt family business, is worthy of open mic night at the Ha-Ha Club. In his remarks, Vice President Pence consoled the sister of Federal Protective Service Agent Dave Patrick Underwood, shot and killed during the recent protests in Oakland, California, but failed to mention his alleged murderer is an acolyte of the Boogaloo Bois, the alt-right white supremacists actively seeking race war.
Trying to divert attention from Trump's fatal fumbling of the crisis, the pandemic was barely acknowledged and when it was, the falsehoods and misleading statements flowed. There were occasional expressions of sympathy, but largely, the coronavirus plague was presented as if it was something aberrant that had happened once upon a time in the past, even though during the four nights of the GOP convention, more people died from COVID-19 than were killed on 9/11. At the acceptance speech, there was no social distancing and barely a soul wore a mask. Masks, of course, are for losers...
Over the course of his acceptance speech, like many of those who went before him last week, Trump threw the requisite red meat to his base - lock your doors, the socialists and anarchists are on the march, and they're using Joe "the Destroyer of American Greatness" Biden to burn down your suburban homes and steal your guns and hamburgers! There were no new programs proposed, no agenda for a second term except more of the same. In fact, several parts of the address seemed an almost word-for-word reiteration of his 2016 "And I Alone Can Fix It" convention speech with one big difference -- the wild-eyed accusations of a challenger seemed more than a little weird when they're coming from the incumbent on whose watch all of this alleged mayhem is happening.
Also, compared to 2016, Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne noted, the 2020 Trump looks like a man who knows his show is about to be canceled." With any luck, a heavy turnout and a modicum of common sense, the kind of claptrap the president spews -- his own little, fascistic Triumph of the Bilge - won't be enough to sway the swing voters he needs to win him reelection. But danger lurks. The kind of unhinged demagoguery in which Trump excels is seriously seductive to some. There are polling numbers out there that indicate shifts back toward this incompetent, corrupt bully -- that the panic he peddles makes the hesitant, weak, and irrationally violent turn up the heat and pick up their weapons.
That's because the only thing Trump has to sell is fear itself. People like him and the countless dictators before him use red-in-tooth-and-claw propaganda and despicable scare tactics because they work. The vitriol so rampant in Thursday night's acceptance speech was repeated Friday night at his rally in New Hampshire and will keep hammering us until November and beyond. We must turn our backs to it and vote with the conscience and sense of community he lacks.
Trump sees himself as emperor; the only royal title he truly deserves is Clown Prince. But like those sinister jokers in the movies whose villainy lurks behind a painted smile, Trump despises anyone else's happiness and only seeks to consolidate power and malevolence through chaos.
In a 1787 letter, patriot John Jay, the man who would become our first chief justice, asked, "Shall we have a king? Not in my opinion while other Expedients remain untried." Our constitutional presidency was the answer and its success would be tied to the faithful adherence to the three separate yet equal branches of government and the system of checks and balances.
But nine years later, in his Farewell Address, the man to whom Jay asked his question, our first president, George Washington, warned that our government could be manipulated by "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" seeking "to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
Send in the clowns. Those men and their despot at the top are here. When it comes to our democracy, if Donald Trump is reelected and the Senate remains Republican, you've only seen the beginning - and caught a glimpse of the end. Contrary to all the GOP convention bombast, the worst is yet to come.
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'This Is Lunatic, Fascist Stuff': Watch Don Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle Kick Off RNC With Falsehood-Filled Rants
Kimberly Guilfoyle's remarks on the opening night of the GOP event brought "the convention's fascist timbre to the next level," wrote one observer.
Aug 25, 2020
"Terrifying."
"Insane."
"Fascist."
That's just a small selection of the adjectives commentators mustered in an attempt to describe in words the unhinged performances Donald Trump Jr. and and his partner Kimberly Guilfoyle delivered Monday from a largely empty auditorium in Washington, D.C. on the opening night of the Republican National Convention.
But other observers struggled to verbally characterize the falsehood- and conspiracy theory-riddled remarks, leaving those who want to get a sense of how just bizarre and alarming the speeches were to simply watch for themselves.
Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality and a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump, spoke early in the night, warning--at what was described as an unusual volume, given the lack of crowd--of supposed Democratic plots to "destroy this country" and "steal your liberty" with "socialist policies."
"This is lunatic, fascist stuff," tweeted Vox's Aaron Rupar.
Watch Guilfoyle's full speech:
As Matt Stieb of The Intelligencer wrote, "The speakers after Guilfoyle were faced with the impossible task of matching her energy."
"While the night was already governed by a bleak message of the threat of life without Trump--contrasting with the president's promise that the evening would be 'uplifting and positive'--Guilfoyle brought the fear, the fanaticism, and the convention's fascist timbre to the next level," Stieb added.
But Don Jr. followed shortly thereafter with a 10-minute primetime speech that was characterized as at least equally disconcerting, both because of its contents and the first son's appearance while delivering it.
Watch:
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Mick Mulvaney Suggests Media Attention on Coronavirus Merely a Ploy to Tank Trump
"As Mulvaney spews this disinformation for political reasons, he highlights the grave danger of politicizing the response to an emergency for the benefit of a corrupt president."
Feb 27, 2020
President Donald Trump's acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Friday morning said that media coverage of the coronavirus is aimed at attacking the White House and not informing the American public about the illness spreading across the U.S. and the world.
Mulvaney made the remarks to a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Fort Washington, Maryland.
"The reason you're seeing so much attention paid to it today is that they think this is what brings down the president," said Mulvaney. "This is what it's all about."
Mulvaney then recounted an exchange he allegedly had with a reporter.
"I got a note today from a reporter saying, 'What are you going to do today to calm the markets,'" said Mulvaney. "I'm like, 'Really what I might do today to calm the markets is tell people to turn their televisions off for 24 hours.'"
Watch:
Mulvaney also downplayed the risk of the virus, telling the CPAC crowd "this is not Ebola."
"As Mulvaney spews this disinformation for political reasons, he highlights the grave danger of politicizing the response to an emergency for the benefit of a corrupt president at the expense of American families," tweeted attorney Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics.
The president's chief of staff was not the only right-wing luminary to comment on the virus. Donald Trump, Jr., the president's son, suggested on Fox News morning show "Fox and Friends" Friday that Democratic lawmakers were salivating at the prospect of coronavirus killing Americans.
"For them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so that they can end Donald Trump's streak of winning is a new level of sickness," said Trump Jr.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), whose northern California district is where the country's first known coronavirus outbreak occurred this week, said in response to those comments on MSNBC that the president's son should not say something like that in front of him.
Despite his comments at CPAC downplaying the threat of the virus, Mulvaney acknowledged that the spread of the virus will likely impact day-to-day life for Americans.
"Are you going to see some schools shut down? Probably," said Mulvaney. "May you see impacts on public transportation? Sure."
As Bloomberg News reported, the comments came just before markets opened with an immediate loss:
Mulvaney's remarks indicate that the administration is planning for potentially bigger disruptions. He spoke a day after stock markets plunged the most since 2011 over concerns that the coronavirus outbreak would continue to spread and drag down the global economy. There are now more than 83,000 cases of the virus worldwide, with infections spreading in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
"What an inspired course of action for public confidence as we face a mounting pandemic," tweeted Montana-based progressive activist Reilly Neil. "How about the truth and a solid plan instead?"
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Amid Global 'Extinction Crisis,' Donald Trump Jr. Auctions Himself Off for Luxurious Wildlife Slaughter Vacation
Fundraiser featuring son of U.S. president denounced as "business as usual for the trophy hunting industry."
Feb 03, 2020
A national hunting group is under fire from animal rights groups for auctioning off the opportunity to spend a week in close quarters with Donald Trump Jr. in Alaska for a luxury "dream hunt" of Sitka black-tailed deer.
The Safari Club International (SCI) will auction the trip at its annual convention. Bidding currently stands at $10,000.
"This annual event is the largest meeting in the world of people who celebrate the senseless killing, buying, and selling of dead animals for bragging rights," Humane Society president and CEO Kitty Block told the Guardian Tuesday. "As our planet suffers an extinction crisis, it is business as usual for the trophy hunting industry and SCI, who continue to revel in spending millions of dollars every year to destroy imperiled wildlife."
According to the Guardian:
The four-day event organized by Safari Club International (SCI) and advertised as a "hunters' heaven," will culminate on Saturday with an auction for a week-long Sitka black-tailed deer hunt in Alaska with Trump Jr, his son, and a guide. At the time of writing, bidding for the yacht-based expedition stands at $10,000 (PS7,685).
Other prizes include the chance to shoot an elephant on a 14-day trip in Namibia, an all-inclusive hunt package to Zimbabwe to kill buffalo, giraffe and wildebeest, and a 10-day crocodile hunting expedition in South Africa. The proceeds from the auction, which campaigners say could exceed $5m, will fund SCI's "hunter advocacy and wildlife conservation efforts," according to the organization.
Trump Jr.'s presence at the event led Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson and member Al Jardine to call on their former bandmates to pull out of a scheduled appearance at the conference.
"This organization supports trophy hunting, which both Al and I are emphatically opposed to," tweeted Wilson, linking to a petition aginst the performance.
The president's son will deliver a keynote address to the convention, a move that Independent reporter Chris Riotta noted was a bit on the nose for SCI, a group that claims to be concerned with conservation and protection.
"His speech comes as the Trump White House continues a rollback of global wildlife protections," said Riotta.
As Common Dreams reported, Trump Jr. was criticized in December over a hunt he took part in Mongolia where he killed an endangered sheep but was granted retroactive permission after a private meeting with the country's president.
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'Endangering Endangered Species Seems to Be the Family Hobby': Trump Jr. Denounced for Killing Rare Sheep in Mongolia
Days after killing the endangered animal, Trump Jr. was given retroactive permission for slaughtering the sheep.
Dec 11, 2019
Donald Trump Jr. over the summer killed an endangered Mongolian Argali sheep, continuing the tradition he shares with his brother Eric of going to other countries and killing their rare wildlife, ProPublica reported Wednesday.
Trump Jr., son of U.S. President Donald Trump, was days later retroactively given permission for killing the animal.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of climate advocacy group 350.org, tweeted that Trump Jr. was following his family's example.
"Further endangering endangered species seems to be the family hobby," McKibben said, a reference to how the president has systematically slashed species protections in the U.S.
According to ProPublica, the timing of the permit's issuance was a bit suspect:
The Mongolian government granted Trump Jr. a coveted and rare permit to slay the animal retroactively on Sept. 2, after he'd left the region following his trip. It's unusual for permits to be issued after a hunter's stay. It was one of only three permits to be issued in that hunting region, local records show.
Afterward, Trump Jr. met privately with the country's president, Khaltmaagiin Battulga, before departing the capital of Ulaanbaatar back to the U.S., according to Khuantai Khafezyn, a local government official in the region where Trump Jr. hunted the argali and a former government official with knowledge of the meeting. It isn't clear what was discussed.
Animal rights activist Ari Solomon said on Twitter that Trump Jr.'s behavior was par for the course.
"While his father is trying to gut the Endangered Species Act, he's out killing endangered animals," said Solomon. "This family is trash."
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