TV News LIES

The posts are ominous.

“Pick a side, or YOU are next,” wrote conservative talkshow host Dan Bongino on the Truth Social media platform in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions.

The replies were even more so.

“Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.”

That’s a common version of how many people on the US right reacted to the ex-president’s verdict, drawing on a “mirror world” where Trump is seen as the selfless martyr to powerful state forces and Joe Biden is the dangerous autocrat wielding the justice system as his own personal plaything and a threat to US democracy.

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About half of Americans believe former President Trump should end his campaign, describing his guilty verdict as “correct,” according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll published Sunday.

Trump was convicted Thursday of 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents, the first time a former president was ever convicted of a crime. He has appealed the ruling.

Exactly 50 percent of those polled said Trump’s guilty verdict was the correct decision by the New York jury, and 49 percent said Trump should immediately drop out of the presidential race.

Despite that, Trump’s favorability did not fall in the poll compared to previous editions. About 31 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the former president both before and after the conviction.

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Film actor Robert De Niro was scheduled to accept a leadership award from the National Association of Broadcasters, but the group has rescinded the award after the celebrity spoke out against Donald Trump outside the former president’s criminal trial in New York this week, the Hill and the Huffington Post report.

The National Association of Broadcasters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the group told the Hill on Thursday that the event was “proudly bipartisan” and said: “While we strongly support the right of every American to exercise free speech and participate in civic engagement, it is clear that Mr De Niro’s recent high-profile activities will create a distraction from the philanthropic work that we were hoping to recognize. To maintain the focus on service of the award winners, Mr De Niro will no longer be attending the event.”

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The conservative media company behind the book and film “2,000 Mules,” which alleged a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to steal the 2020 election and was embraced by former president Donald Trump, has issued an apology and said it would halt distribution of the film and remove both the film and book from its platforms.

In a statement posted to their website, Salem Media Group, Inc. apologized specifically to Mark Andrews, a voter from Georgia falsely depicted illegally voting in “2,000 Mules.”

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation cleared Andrews of wrongdoing, and found he was legally dropping off ballots for members of his family. Andrews filed a defamation lawsuit against Salem, as well as the team behind the movie: right wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza, and the group True the Vote.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group fell as much as 15% as investors took stock of Donald Trump’s guilty verdict on all 34 felony counts in his criminal hush money trial.

The after-hours slide was the latest turbulent turn for Trump’s namesake social media company, which rises and falls with the former president’s fortunes. Trump owns 65% of the shares in the parent company of the Truth Social app.

The stock, which trades under the ticker “DJT,” recovered as trading continued, but remained down about 4% in the early evening Thursday.

Volatility has been the stock’s governing principle since it began trading after the merger with shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp. in  March. It has swung wildly from a high of $79.38 a share at the close of March 26 to its lowest close of $22.84 on April 16.

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The state department falsified a report earlier this month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week.

Stacy Gilbert left her post as senior civil military adviser in the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration, on Tuesday. She had been one of the department’s subject matter experts who drafted the report mandated under national security memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and published on 10 May.