Biden Campaign Tries to Spark Another Donald Trump Hoax by Manipulating Charlottesville ‘Little Peanut’ Quote

 The Biden campaign is again working to contrive a false narrative about former President Donald Trump by twisting his post-court remarks.

After Trump’s day of court in the Manhattan business records trial concluded, he spoke to reporters. Trump said the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, riot, which he has strongly condemned, “was a little peanut” compared to the widespread antisemitic protests taking place on college campuses across the country and slammed President Joe Biden for having an “absolutely horrible message” on the matter.

In Trump’s full quote, he says:

And, very importantly — as you look at the various colleges all over the country and beyond colleges because it’s happening in other areas, too — you see what’s happening on the front having to do with Palestine and Israel and protests and hate, anger. Biden is sending an absolutely horrible message — horrible, horrible message. He has no idea how to message. He can’t speak; he can’t put two sentences together. He doesn’t know what to do. This is not our president. This is somebody that shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing because he can’t do it — he can’t do it well. We’re having protests all over. He was talking about Charlottesville; Charlottesville was a little peanut and it was nothing compared — and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here. This is tremendous hate, and we have a man that can’t talk about it because he doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t understand what’s going on with our country.

The @BidenHQ X account quickly spliced the video into an eight-second clip that omitted the quote’s larger context, writing in its caption, “Trump says neo-Nazis and KKK members marching in Charlottesville chanting, ‘Jews will not replace us’ was ‘a little peanut’: ‘It was nothing.'”

The disingenuous caption fails to note that Trump was comparing Charlottesville to the outbreak of antisemitism at many American universities, as the video itself starts only after Trump had already established that was the context in which he was speaking.

 

The Biden campaign’s manipulation efforts mirror that of the “Bloodbath” hoax in March. At a Buckeye Values PAC rally for Ohio Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno, Trump forecasted a financial “bloodbath” in the U.S. auto industry if he was not elected. The Biden campaign disingenuously edited that video to omit the auto industry context.

“Crooked Joe Biden and his campaign are engaging in deceptively out-of-context editing,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said at the time.

Democrat FCC Majority Votes to Restore Obama-Era Net Neutrality Rules

 The Democrat majority at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on Thursday to restore the Obama-era net neutrality rules.

During President Donald Trump’s administration, then-Chairman Ajit Pai had repealed them.

Leftists have long sought to capture more regulatory authority over the internet using Title II regulations.

Essentially, net neutrality regulations seek to prohibit internet service providers (ISPs), such as Comcast and Verizon, from blocking, slowing down, or allowing for “paid prioritization,” by which users can pay for faster, more consistent service.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told Breitbart News in an interview in April that net neutrality represents a leftist “power grab by the administrative state” and an “unlawful overreach.”

Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr speaks during the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC.)  (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty)

Allum Bokhari, a former Breitbart News reporter, explained:

The law of common carriage, mandated by the Title II regulations demanded by Democrats, is one of the solutions recommended by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to address tech censorship. Yet Democrats want the rule applied to service providers, which are not in the habit of kicking off internet users for their political viewpoints, while not recommending similar regulations on the companies and platforms that are actually responsible for suppressing online discourse over the past five years — companies like Google, YouTube, Twitter/X, and Facebook.

Progressives and Democrats lost their minds when the FCC repealed Net Neutrality under Trump, predicting the end of the internet as we know it, and a variety of other disasters. As Breitbart News predicted at the time, none of these doom-laden predictions came true, and in fact broadband speeds across the country improved.

Carr also lamented that the FCC moved to reenact net neutrality and not hold big tech accountable, which he said is the “greatest threat on the internet.”

While net neutrality wants to ensure that internet service providers cannot block or throttle websites, Google actually blocked some California news outlets while fighting California over a state bill to make Big Tech giants pay online publishers.

This raises questions over if big tech platforms such as Google or internet service providers such as Verizon stifle free expression on the internet.

Carr said in his dissenting statement against the net neutrality order that bringing back net neutrality will harm the increased broadband speeds and lower prices America experienced without net neutrality:

Here’s what the data show. Internet speeds are up 430% since 2017 on the fixed broadband side, and they are up 647% on the mobile side. In real terms, the prices for Internet services have dropped by about 9% since the beginning of 2018, according to BLS CPI data. On the mobile broadband side alone, real prices have dropped by roughly 18% since 2017, according to BLS and industry data. And for the most popular broadband speed tiers, real prices are down 54%, and for the fastest broadband speed tiers, prices are down 55%, over the past 8 years, according to BLS and industry data.30

FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon said in a written statement on Thursday:

We were told when the policy was repealed under the Trump administration that the internet was over. Sure enough, that wasn’t the case. In 2020 we had the pandemic, and frankly, we should all be thrilled that internet service providers were able to deftly handle the increased traffic for telehealth and distance learning, which may have been at the expense of streaming Tiger King.

Even outside of a crisis, one has to wonder what incentive a data provider or internet service provider (ISP) would have to discriminate when it comes to content. The short answer is that there is none. They have every incentive to promote public safety and fairness online, lest they lose business. This latest leftist incursion isn’t about fairness. It’s about keeping the internet more firmly under government control and limiting free market innovation.

Americans for Prosperity senior policy analyst James Czerniawski said in a statement:

The FCC’s vote to restore Net Neutrality is a net loss for Americans. Net neutrality is Bidenomics for the web – an expensive government takeover of the internet that would increase costs, limit choice, and stifle innovation. Despite claims that the world would end without these burdensome internet rules, the contrary occurred. Since 2017, internet speeds have increased, prices have gone down, and consumers have more options than ever before.

Czerniawski added, “Rather than bringing back a partisan scheme that makes our internet worse, the FCC should be focused on restoring its spectrum authority and working to close the digital divide.”

Liberal Utopia: New California Law Could Terminate Up to 500,000 Jobs

 The leftist legislators in California have done it again, making things more difficult for the very low-income people they claimed to be helping, this time with a law that is throwing thousands of minimum wage earners out of their jobs.

As Ronald Reagan used to say, the scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,” and California has once again proven that quip to be a hardbound truth.

Economics has always been a concept that liberals cannot understand. Deep-blue California’s recent passing of Assembly Bill 1228, forcing certain — but not all — fast-food restaurants to wildly raise their minimum wage by up to $4 an hour all at once, is having the unintended consequence of costing people their jobs, not enriching their lives.

As CNBC noted, the state has more than 500,000 fast-food workers, but now many of them are under threat of losing their jobs.

This month, the left coast state’s new $20-per-hour minimum wage took effect on the fast-food industry. Business owners have responded by putting in more electronic ordering devices and firing costly human employees.

 

The new wage hike comes on the tail of the disastrous COVID shutdowns that devastated the restaurant industry, causing profit margins to plummet. Just as restaurants in California were starting to regain their footing, the left-wing legislature weighed them down with this new wage law.

The warning by Burger King franchise owner Harsh Ghai is on target: Ghai said that the costly new wage law has forced him to put in place a plan to add electronic ordering kiosks at his 140 locations within two months, Business Insider reported.

Ghai even pointed out that prices for customers at fast-food places have gone up between eight and 10 percent in the past year, when prices usually only go up by about three percent a year. And this new wage law will make that problem worse.

“The majority of that is going to get absorbed in the inflation of our food costs,” he said of the higher costs the state is imposing on restaurants. “So we’re not even compensating for most of the labor costs that we’re going to be experiencing with this legislation.”

Ghai added that the higher prices — already in effect before the higher staffing costs began hitting business owners — are driving customers away. So, instead of raising prices further, the easiest way is to cut the number of employees.

The businessman added that he has revisited plans to roll out electronic, self-ordering kiosks over a 10-year period across his 140 locations and will now add them in a matter of months.

“[W]e are just going ahead and installing the kiosks in every single restaurant in response to the legislation to be able to balance some of these labor costs that are hitting us,” he said.

“We can’t move fast enough on this,” Ghai told Business Insider.

“We’ve done the financial analysis and it makes more sense for us to spend the capital expenditure on the technology, and obviously when you’re buying large amounts of the hardware, you obviously get it for a cheaper price as well,” he added.

“So it’s making more sense for us to just roll that across the business in its entirety,” he said.

Other restaurant chains have responded by firing hundreds of employees. A large number of pizza chains in California immediately fired their delivery drivers earlier this year after the law passed, including Pizza Hut and Southern California Pizza Co. stores in the state.

Many restaurants have even simply closed down rather than face barely scraping, by thanks to the higher costs imposed on them.

Still other restaurants are looking at plans to try locations that have no dining area and no cashiers at all. Chick-fil-A, for instance, is testing its “grab and go” locations where customers order exclusively online or via an app and pick up their order at a drive-through at a location with no cashiers and no eat-in area.

California’s left-wing legislature is causing every fast-food customer to dish out more for their food. But it is also costing tens of thousands of people their jobs. The legislature’s actions are having the exact opposite effect of what they intended.

World’s Chocolate Supply Under Threat By Virus, Researchers Call for Cacao Trees To Be Vaccinated

 

Cacao trees in West Africa, where 50% of the world’s chocolate originates, are currently under threat by a virus that may jeopardize the global supply of chocolate.

In a new scientific study, researchers from the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana and the University of Kansas, Prairie View A&M, reported that the cacao swollen shoot virus disease (CSSVD), caused by tiny insects called mealybugs, has endangered cacao trees in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

Harvests in the Ivory Coast and Ghana have been cut by 15% to 50% since the virus has wreaked havoc on cocoa trees.

To combat the pesky virus, researcher Chen-Charpentier from the University of Kansas, Prairie View A&M, has advocated for vaccinating cocoa trees and spreading them out from one another.

 

Chen-Carpentier stated, “What we needed to do was create a model for cacao growers so they could know how far away they could safely plant vaccinated trees from unvaccinated trees in order to prevent the spread of the virus while keeping costs manageable for these small farmers.”

Vaccinated the cocoa from mealy bugs?
“Farmers can combat the mealybugs by giving vaccines to the trees to inoculate them from the virus. But the vaccines are expensive….. and vaccinated trees produce a smaller harvest of cacao…devastation of the virus”https://t.co/JMd6Wwcmcf

— Alita Gail (@RealAlitaGail) April 23, 2024

Per Science Daily:

A rapidly spreading virus threatens the health of the cacao tree and the dried seeds from which chocolate is made, jeopardizing the global supply of the world’s most popular treat.

About 50% of the world’s chocolate originates from cacao trees in the West Africa countries of Ivory Coast and Ghana. The damaging virus is attacking cacao trees in Ghana, resulting in harvest losses of between 15 and 50%. Spread by small insects called mealybugs that eat the leaves, buds and flowers of trees, the cacao swollen shoot virus disease (CSSVD) is among the most damaging threats to the root ingredient of chocolate.

Chen-Charpentier and colleagues from the University of Kansas, Prairie View A&M, the University of South Florida and the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana have developed a new strategy: using mathematical data to determine how far apart farmers can plant vaccinated trees to prevent mealybugs from jumping from one tree to another and spreading the virus.

“Mealybugs have several ways of movement, including moving from canopy to canopy, being carried by ants or blown by the wind,” Chen-Charpentier said. “What we needed to do was create a model for cacao growers so they could know how far away they could safely plant vaccinated trees from unvaccinated trees in order to prevent the spread of the virus while keeping costs manageable for these small farmers.”

World’s chocolate supply under ‘devastating threat’ from cacao tree virus https://t.co/6ISArlelFn

— The Sun Tech (@TheSunTech) April 24, 2024

TikTok Rages After U.S. Passes Law Requiring Its Sale From Chinese Parent Company

 TikTok CEO Shou Chew vowed on Wednesday that the company would fight the U.S.’s new law requiring it to be sold from its Chinese-government-controlled parent company, ByteDance, or else face being banned in the U.S.

In a video posted to the platform, Chew claimed that the law would “take TikTok away from you and 170 million Americans who find community in connection on our platform.”

“Make no mistake, this is a ban, a ban on TikTok, and a ban on you and your voice,” he continued. “Politicians may say otherwise, but don’t get confused.”

“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” he added. “We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts.”

Chew later claimed that the company has “built safeguards that no other peer company has made” and that it “invested billions of dollars to secure your data and keep our platform free from outside manipulation.”

His claims come after reports surfaced earlier this month of a former senior employee at the company who says that he was forced to send American user data to ByteDance in Beijing, contradicting the company’s contention that it operates independently from China.

FBI Director Christopher Wray recently testified to Congress: “This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government.”

Former ByteDance executive Yintao Yu made explosive allegations against the company in a federal lawsuit last year, saying that ByteDance’s offices in Beijing had a special unit of Chinese Communist Party members who “guided how the company advanced core Communist values.”

“The Committee maintained supreme access to all the company data, even data stored in the United States,” said Yu, who spent part of his time at the company in its Chinese offices. He said it did not matter where users were located because the company created a “backdoor” to access their information.

 

He said the company “systematically created fabricated users” to boost engagement numbers and witnessed engineers manually alter the algorithm to achieve the country’s geopolitical agenda. One example he cited was how engineers boosted content “that expressed hatred for Japan,” The New York Times reported.

“There was no debate,” he said. “They just did it.”

ABC News reported last year that cybersecurity experts discovered that for those who have downloaded the app but never used it, TikTok “still has your data even if you’ve never used TikTok.”

The report added, “And it’s collecting and transferring that data whether or not the app is deleted.”

Biden Rubs Americans’ Noses In The Fact That He’s Done Nothing On The Border Crisis

 President Joe Biden signed the $95 billion foreign aid bill on Wednesday — and then immediately took time out to remind Americans of one thing that did not make it into the final product: border security.

Biden complained about the bipartisan border security bill that was negotiated earlier in the year, saying that it should have been included in the foreign aid package. It was ultimately rejected by Republicans over concerns that it would simply provide amnesty for illegals already in the country while doing little to stem the flow across the southern border.

“There’s one thing this bill does not do: Border security. You know, just this year, I proposed and negotiated and agreed to the strongest border security bill this country has ever, ever, ever seen. It was bipartisan. It should have been included in this bill,” Biden said. “And I’m determined to get it done for the American people. I come back to that in another moment, another time.”

Biden spent the rest of the time touting the foreign aid package that sends billions to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, saying, “This package is literally an investment not only in Ukraine’s security but in our own security.”

Biden’s comments come as more and more Americans in multiple polls have said that illegal immigration and border security are among their top issues going into the 2024 presidential election — and just days after the Democrat-led Senate killed Republican efforts to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The president has said on a number of occasions that he needs Congress to act to secure the border — but critics often point out the fact that he spent a fair amount of time and energy during his first few days in office undoing the border security measures that were implemented by former President Donald Trump.

 

Since Biden took office — and removed the Trump border policies — the United States has seen record numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border almost every month.

House Dem Centrists Push For Border Security After Biden Signs Foreign Aid Bill

 A group of centrist House Democrats called on President Joe Biden and Congress to take steps toward securing the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday.

Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), Jared Golden (D-ME), Mary Peltola (D-AK), Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), and Don Davis (D-NC) — all of whom have 2024 races rated “toss up” or “lean Democrat,” according to The Cook Political Report — released a statement after Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid package into law.

“Our national security interests don’t stop at our physical borders. That is why we voted to send more weapons to Ukraine for its fight against Russia,” they said. “The lesson of Pearl Harbor must not be forgotten: appeasement invites aggression against us. As Speaker [Mike] Johnson stated last week, we would rather send ‘bullets than American boys.'”

Beyond defending U.S. allies, the group said they “strongly agree” with the National Border Patrol Council on the view “that Congress and the President must act and bring order to the Southern border.”

“That is why we also voted for H.R. 3602 on Saturday,” they said, referring to border security legislation that failed to pass as lawmakers considered a bill series for the foreign aid package, “and why we all voted last month for $19.6 billion for Border Patrol so that it could ramp up its efforts to secure the border.”

The Democrats said they were “calling today on President Biden to use the authority given the executive by Congress to immediately reimplement” a section of U.S. Code geared toward returning migrants to Mexico pending court proceedings.

And they called on leaders in both the House and Senate to “to pass legislation to give Border Patrol back the expulsion authority that expired last year, alluding to the pandemic-era Title 42, which allowed authorities to quickly turn away migrants at the border on public health grounds.

With a presidential election coming up in November, border security as well as immigration have become top issues for Americans as the backlog of asylum seekers and migrants living in the U.S. is projected to reach more than 8 million by October.

Hardline Republicans who opposed the foreign aid package — which seeks to boost U.S. allies such as Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan — lashed out, in part, because of a dearth of provisions geared toward alleviating the border crisis in the final product.

The statement from the House Democrats included a quote that Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, gave to Fox News last weekend.

“We are beyond disappointed that the House would give aid to secure the borders of foreign countries but gave nothing to allow the Border Patrol to secure the safety of the United States,” Judd said.

“There’s nothing more backwards,” he added, “I wouldn’t have even expected taxpayers’ dollars. They could have given us policy, and that would have been enough.”