The Atlantic’s Goldberg stands by latest anti-Trump story despite many on-the-record denials



Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic, is sticking to his latest story in which he claims former President Donald Trump rudely refused to pay for the funeral of Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen after initially offering to cover the expenses. Multiple people affiliated with the story went on the record to deny the allegations against Trump.

Guillen was killed in 2020 by a soldier she worked with. Guillen's death became a nationwide story after her family members jumped into action when a military investigation into her initial disappearance was severely mishandled.

Goldberg alleges that Trump became enraged when he found out the cost of the funeral in December 2020:

'It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f***ing Mexican!' He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: 'Don’t pay it!' Later that day, he was still agitated. 'Can you believe it?' he said, according to a witness. 'F***ing people, trying to rip me off.'

Goldberg's story was met with a flurry of denials, most importantly from Meadows. Guillen's family and attorney also said the story does not match their experience with Trump.

'Treat this dishonest piece accordingly.'

— (@)

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Goldberg was asked what he thought about the denials.

"I don‘t make much of them at all. The sister wasn‘t in the meeting. The lawyer for the family wasn‘t in the meeting. Mark Meadows was in the meeting. Kash Patel was in the meeting. A whole bunch of other senior officials were in the meeting. I have sources who are sitting in that meeting. I have contemporaneous notes taken by participants in that meeting that describe exactly what I described in the story," said Goldberg.

Goldberg pointed to his poorly sourced "suckers and losers" story from 2020 as an example of why he has creditability this time around.

"So it‘s not surprising that Mark Meadows is going to deny it, but the denial doesn‘t hold weight. I have contemporaneous sources, contemporaneous notes from that meeting. [Trump] said it. It also tracks with everything that we know about the way he speaks," he insisted.

Patel likewise denied the allegations about Trump.

Ben Williamson, a spokesman for Meadows, showed how the Atlantic twisted the denial to make it seem less credible.

"I sent ... a comment saying President Trump 'absolutely did not say that,' referring to the alleged comments about Ms. Guillen they printed. ... Atlantic translated that comment to 'didn’t hear Trump say it.' Treat this dishonest piece accordingly," he said, showing a screenshot of the statement he sent.

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Bloomberg: '2024 is the year of elections and that's a threat to democracy'



Opinion writers at Bloomberg and other liberal publications appear to share at least one thing in common with President Joe Biden: a sense that democracy is safe only so long as the right candidates are winning. It turns out, the right candidates happen to be establishment liberals.

Return of the 'unthinkables'

On Sundays, Bloomberg Opinion senior editor Tobin Harshaw cobbles together the various opinions his publication spat out over the course of the previous week and attempts to pull at the threads common among them. This Sunday, in a roundup entitled "2024 Is the Year of Elections and That's a Threat to Democracy," Harshaw exposed his team's disdain for democratic processes that yield results unfavorable to the liberal status quo.

India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico, Iran, the U.K., South Africa, Austria, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, and possibly Ukraine are among the 64 countries set to hold elections this year, along with the European Union.

"41% of the world's population is having major elections this year. Yay democracy! Right?" wrote Harshaw. "Not really, what with extremist populist parties — mostly right-wing — on the rise everywhere from the European Union to the Pacific rim."

Harshaw referenced a weekend piece by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, which cast the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the restoration of British sovereignty via its Brexit break with the European Union as "unthinkables," then suggested the world in 2024 "is almost a mirror image of 2016."

"In this year of elections, voters in countries representing 41% of the world's population will go to the polls — and in a terrifying number of cases, candidates who would have been seen as extremist wild cards in 2016 look the strongest," wrote the Bloomberg duo.

"The long-shot unthinkables from eight years ago are now the firm favorites, or even just the accepted status quo," wrote Micklethwait and Wooldridge. "Bookmakers give Trump a 40% chance of winning November's presidential election. His closest rival, Joe Biden, is an 81-year-old prone to gaffes and memory lapses, exactly the rival that Trump would want in the grueling marathon that is a modern presidential race."

Not only is a candidate loathed by establishment Washington and the liberal media poised to win the 2024 presidential election, but right-leaning populists farther afield — such as Dutch prime ministerial candidate Geert Wilders and France's Marine Le Pen — are also ascendant, to the chagrin of liberal onlookers in the media.

The Bloomberg duo suggested optimists might be satisfied to know there's a 10% chance of "more benign possibilities" seizing the day. In the case of the U.S. election, they floated the names of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and Nikki Haley as so-called "benign" options.

After insinuating that the basic requirement that things turn out "alright" in 2024 is that "somebody other than Trump wins the US presidency," Harshaw noted that voters may also threaten democracy in the island nation of Taiwan, where "another victory by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party may bring the territory closer to a Chinese invasion."

The head of the DPP, current Vice President Lai Ching-te, has been called a "complete troublemaker" by the Chinese regime.

To deliver the Bloomberg opinion team a "surprisingly good year," voters will have to make sure that "America will be celebrating its first female president; Trump and Netanyahu will be spending more time with their lawyers; the US and China will be devoting more time to mending their economic relationship and less to shadowboxing over Taiwan; [British leftist Keir] Starmer will have begun [reunification] negotiations with the EU; the Israelis and Palestinians will be talking to each other seriously, for the first time in decades; and one or another of the world’s nastier dictatorships will have fallen."

Birds of a feather

The Atlantic is another liberal outfit that has fearmongered over the possibility that voters may not provide establishmentarians with what Harshaw called a "good year."

Brian Klaas, a contributing writer for the Atlantic, suggested Saturday that "even with all this voting, democracy is under severe threat, endangered by predatory politicians who rig elections and disgruntled voters willing to hand over power to autocratic leaders." Klaas even came up with a term to denote the tendency for democratic elections to produce results he doesn't like: "counterfeit democracy."

The decision to seek remedy for bad leadership at the ballot box is emblematic of democracy's erosion, according to Klaas.

Rather than lean into the kind of "stolen election" rhetoric failed Democratic candidates Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton have deployed in recent years, Klaas suggested that democracy is failing because of a "toxic cycle: Governance is dysfunctional, so politicians fail to deliver for voters—and voters respond to those failures by contemplating whether authoritarian rule might be better."

"Billions of ordinary people around the world will vote this year," wrote the Atlantic contributor. "If they make the wrong choice, 2024 may be remembered as the year the world embraced elections without democracy."

Campaigning on theme

The democracy rhetoric deployed in the Atlantic and Bloomberg pieces has been central to Biden's re-election campaign.

Within hours of a Democrat-aligned group getting his top rival removed from the primary ballot last month, Biden tweeted, "Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America's standing in the world."

"But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy," continued Biden. "If we lose that, we lose everything."

In his first major campaign event of 2024, Biden said, "America, as we begin this election year, we must be clear, democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot."

While he claimed that "democracy is about being able to bring about peaceful change," Biden also insinuated that voters' decision to change the man in the White House could mean democracy's end.

The Biden campaign has also capitalized on this suggestion in the decrepit candidate's new 2024 campaign ad.

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Mammoth cargo ship carrying Porsches and other vehicles sinks in the Atlantic



A massive ship transporting thousands of vehicles sank in the Atlantic on Tuesday.

Porsches, Bentleys, Audis, Lamborghinis, and additional Volkswagen-AG brands went down with the ship, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Reports indicate that around 4,000 vehicles were on the huge 650-foot-long ship. The New York Times said that the ship was carrying in excess of 1,000 Porsches.

The 22 crew members were successfully evacuated after the ship Felicity Ace caught on fire last month.

Efforts were being made to tow the vessel when it was swallowed by the Atlantic.

"The ship, apparently stable, has no fires on the outside or inside, although there is a high temperature in the central area, with no smoke in its structure,” the Portuguese navy said on Friday, according to the New York Times. The outlet reported that according to the Portuguese navy, on Tuesday the vessel "lost stability and sank."

“We are already working to replace every car affected by this incident and the first new cars will be built soon,” vice president of PR at Porsche Cars North America, Inc. Angus Fitton noted, according to the Associated Press.

US concerned as Iranian warships cross Atlantic — reportedly headed for Venezuela and carrying arms



The Biden administration, Pentagon and several U.S. lawmakers are expressing concern as Iranian warships are making their way across the Atlantic Ocean, reportedly headed for Venezuela to make good on delivering arms in a deal the two nations made last year.

What are the details?

Politico reported Wednesday that as of that morning, two Iranian warships believed to be carrying arms "had completed more than half the journey from Iran to Venezuela, and were steaming slowly northwest more than 1,000 miles from Cape Town, South Africa," according to a defense official, noting that this is the furthest the Iranian navy has ventured into the Atlantic.

A source told the outlet that the intelligence community "has evidence that one of the ships...is carrying fast-attack boats, likely intended for sale to Venezuela."

"The sale of the Iranian weapons happened one year ago under the previous [U.S.] administration and like many situations related to Iran under the previous administration — including the breakout of Iran's nuclear program following the Trump administration's reckless withdrawal from the [Iran nuclear deal] — we are working to resolve it through diplomacy," a senior Biden official told the outlet. "But to be clear, Iran sold weapons to Venezuela over a year ago, which we believe was to test the Trump administration's maximum pressure posture."

In reaction to the article, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tweeted, "#Venezuela bought attack boats from #Iran last year, but only now are they trying to deliver them. Ignore the petty sniping from Biden official & focus on what matters. Either #Maduro unconditionally turns them away or U.S. should force them to turn around."

#Venezuela bought attack boats from #Iran last year,but only now are they trying to deliver themIgnore the petty… https://t.co/rxqhDut6du

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) 1623339906.0

AFP reported that during a congressional hearing on Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) addressed the situation with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, asking the Pentagon chief whether the Biden administration "knows exactly what is on those Iranian vessels."

The Democrat noted that satellite imagery shows the fast-attack boats on the deck of one of the warships, but that "it's still unclear whether those boats were aboard when the ships began their journey."

Blumenthal also pointed out that "there are reports that Venezuela was considering purchasing missiles from Iran, including long range ones."

"I am absolutely concerned about the proliferation of weapons, any type of weapons, in our neighborhood," Austin told Blumenthal at one point, adding, "And so, I share your concern."

The Washington Post reported that the ships travelling through the Atlantic are the Iranian destroyer Sahand, and a support vessel named Makran.

The two ships began their voyage last month according to Iran's deputy Army chief, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, and Iranian state-owned television provided footage of them chopping through the Atlantic waters.

"The Navy is improving its seafaring capacity and proving its long-term durability in unfavorable seas and the Atlantic's unfavorable weather conditions," Sayyari said, according to The Post.

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