Trump proved himself to be a branding genius and excellent judge of popular sentiment on Tuesday, June 15th, when he released a statement saying that he will visit the border since Kamala and Joe won’t. Here’s what he said:
“I have accepted the invitation of Texas Governor Greg Abbott to join him on an official visit to our Nation’s decimated Southern Border on Wednesday, June 30, 2021. The Biden Administration inherited from me the strongest, safest, and most secure border in U.S history and in mere weeks they turned it into the single worst border crisis in U.S history. It’s an unmitigated disaster zone.
We went from detain-and-remove to catch-and-release. We went from having border security that was the envy of the world to a lawless border that is now pitied around the world. Biden and Harris have handed control of our border over to cartels, criminals, and coyotes. Drug dealers, MS-13 gang members, human smugglers, sex traffickers, and the criminal elements of the world now have free reign. Hospitals and schools are getting crushed and public health is being sacrificed all in service of a radical left anti-borders agenda. Our brave border agents and courageous ICE officers have been illegally stopped from doing their jobs. Our Nation is now one giant sanctuary city where even dangerous criminals are being cut loose and set free inside the U.S interior on a daily basis.
If this weren’t bad enough, Biden and Harris won’t even tour the scenes of the wreckage they created, or come down and visit with the Border Patrol and ICE heroes risking their lives to defend our Nation at a time when the White House is doing everything it can to make their job totally impossible.
What Biden and Harris have done, and are continuing to do on our border, is a grave and willful dereliction of duty. My visit will hopefully shine a spotlight on these crimes against our Nation—and show the incredible people of ICE and Border Patrol that they have our unshakeable support.”
Trump is amazing. He’s right; the Biden Administration, especially Kamala Harris, has done a terrible job with the border. Rather that protect Americans and keep taxpayers safe, they’ve opened the border and let illegal immigrants stream into our once-great nation.
But he’s more than right, he’s also brave. Few former presidents, forced to leave office because of the perfidy of their opponents, would have the cajones to visit the border and stand up for what is right. They’d slink into hiding, resigned to live out the rest of their lives bitterly.
Not Trump.
Despite being temporarily out of the White House, he’s ready to go back out there and stand up for his homeland. Good for him. He’s calling out Biden, drawing attention to a major problem, and standing up for America.
See more at https://www.wnd.com/2021/06/trump-will-visit-border-since-kamala-biden-wont/
Image source: Twitter video screenshot via @bennyjohnson
Ty Smith — a black man who has two sons, 17 and 19 — absolutely annihilated critical race theory during his comments to an Illinois school board earlier this month, saying it will teach children of different races to "hate each other" and will reverse Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that all people may be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin.
"You're going to deliberately teach kids, 'This white kid right here got it better than you because he white?'" Smith asked the board of Bloomington School District 87. "You're going to purposely tell a white kid, 'Oh, the black people are all down and suppressed.' How do I have two medical degrees if I'm sitting here oppressed?"
Smith added that he grew up with no mother or father in the house and "worked my way through college, sat there and hustled my butt off to get through college. You're going to tell me somebody look like all y'all white folks kept me from doing that? Are you serious? Not one white person ever came to me and said, 'Well, son, you're never gonna be able to get nowhere because, you know, the black people,' but guess what? What's sickening about this whole thing is what y'all doing right now is already something I do in my community right now, to speak out against [this stuff] because black folks are getting told by other black folks, 'Oh, you know, you ain't going to be able to do nothing out there in the world because them white folks ain't going to let get no … the white man gonna keep you down.'"
Smith said he wasn't buying critical race theory because how he chose to live his life proved to him that his skin color wasn't a barrier.
"How did I get where I am right now if some white man kept me down? How am I now directing over folks that look just like you guys in this room right now? How? What kept me down? What oppressed me?" Smith asked what appeared to be a room full of mostly white listeners. "I worked for myself from off the streets to where I am right now, and you're going to sit here and tell me this lie of critical race theory? ... The reason why black folks can't get ahead because of white folks? Are you kidding me? This is what we've come to? I can't believe we even talking about this right now."
He added that if critical race theory is allowed to be taught to children in the schools, it will reverse King's dream of racial equality: "So, when February comes, don't talk about Martin Luther King ... if y'all going to sit there and just pretty much just pee on his grave with this nonsense. That's exactly what's about to happen."
Smith concluded his remarks by saying critical race theory is "BS."
'This systemic racism, where's it at?'
Following his school board address, Smith spoke with Fox News' Martha MacCallum about his concerns regarding critical race theory and his life experiences.
Smith — who is host of "Cancel This with Ty Smith" on WRPW-FM — told MacCallum that despite the disadvantages he grew up with, he made decisions along the way to make his life better.
"I went beyond this stuff," he said, which led to him "becoming successful."
Indeed, Smith's radio station bio notes that he "grew up in the tough neighborhoods of Decatur, and knows first hand the struggles people in poverty have. He will dive into why the media's message to disadvantaged people is wrong, and what we should be telling those struggling."
Smith also wasn't buying leftist virtue-signaling — particularly those who march in the streets with "their fists up," because he said "none of them" ever go to the communities he works with every day.
He added to MacCallum that he also began asking questions like, "This systemic racism, where's it at?" But in the end, despite trying to find it so he could figure out how to deal with it, no one could ever show Smith evidence of systemic racism.
See more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/black-father-destroys-critical-race-theory-school-board-meeting?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20210618Trending-BlackFatherCRT&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Breaking%20News
A music composer, who is a liberal, was branded a "racist" and a "white supremacist piece of garbage" by woke critics because he spoke out against arson on social media. The cancel culture mob has reportedly been successful at destroying the musician's professional career for the crime of tactfully pointing out that violent riots are self-defeating.
Daniel Elder is a 34-year-old composer based in Nashville, who won the Abbey Road Studios Anthem Competition in 2011 for his debut commercial album, "The Heart's Reflection." Elder claims that he has been blackballed by his publisher and choral directors refuse to work with him over potential backlash from a post he made on social media over a year ago.
During the George Floyd protests last summer, Elder was concerned about the rising tide of violent riots. On May 30, 2020, the riots hit close to Elder's home in Tennessee. Criminals damaged over 30 buildings, the city's historic courthouse was set on fire, rocks were hurled at law enforcement officers, and police cruisers were destroyed after a Black Lives Matter-inspired protest escalated into a full-scale riot.
"I saw a mob mentality around my own friends, and I worried that was what was happening on the outside, too," Elder told Reason.
On his professional Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages, Elder wrote, "Enjoy burning it all down, you well-intentioned, blind people. I'm done."
Elder, who had always considered himself center-left, received a tidal wave of hate from progressives over his post against burning down the city of Nashville. He was called a "racist" and a "white supremacist piece of garbage" by the outrage mob, despite Elder supporting police reform and opposing racism.
"I am a choir director and department head for the music department for a private school in Ohio," one commenter demanded. "I want to inform you that your rhetoric surrounding the recent protests is unacceptable and my school will not be programming your music unless and until a public apology is issued."
Another critic said, "Hope that you find a way to lose that hate in your heart."
"Do some research and maybe some inner reflection and maybe figure out where your racist tendencies are coming from," another person proclaimed. "You are canceled. Black lives matter!"
Some people who enjoyed Elder's music vowed that they would never listen to it ever again.
"I've relatively recently become aware of your work and have enjoyed your compositions for their sensitivity and artistry," a former fan wrote. "However, after learning of your insensitive comments on social media, however perceived as misunderstood, I've decided to unsubscribe from your [YouTube] channel and will no longer recommend your compositions to colleagues."
Within 24 hours, the blowback from the seemingly innocuous post reached Elder's publisher – GIA Publications, which is one of the biggest publishers of hymnals and religious music, plus it is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. On the morning of June 1, GIA president Alec Harris and media editor Susan LaBarr contacted Elder about issuing an apology over his social media post.
The company had already crafted an apology for Elder, which reads:
Over the weekend I made a post on my social media accounts that was insensitive and wrongly-worded. I deeply apologize for the anger, offense, and harm that this post caused. While this offense was not intended, it is what was created. For this I am truly sorry.
There is no justification that I can offer for my post. So, rather than try to offer an excuse for what was done, I offer a promise for what I will do going forward. I commit to making amends and to dialogue. I commit to continue educating myself about privilege and bias. I commit to continue seeking an understanding of the experience of others, especially the Black community. I know that working for justice requires that we each first act justly. My work begins now.
LaBarr allegedly told Elder that while "we know that you write music that promotes social justice," this was not clear to people who had read the Instagram post.
"We're feeling time pressure on this as some people are calling for boycotts," added LaBarr. "It's all very heavy."
Elder refused to apologize for his words.
"I chose to be that guy who didn't issue the apology," he told Reason. "Things went from there and it wasn't good."
Within hours, GIA denounced Elder and announced they would no longer publish Elder's work unless he "takes steps to publicly and appropriately address this situation."
The views expressed in composer Daniel Elder's incendiary social media post on Sunday evening do not reflect the values of GIA or our employees. GIA opposes racism in all its forms and is committed to do what Michelle Obama called "the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting it out." Therefore, we will suspend future publishing with Daniel until he takes steps to publicly and appropriately address this situation. We are grateful to those who brought this to our attention and to all who continue to hold individuals and organizations to account.
Reason reached out to Harris and LaBarr "to a request for clarification as to which aspect of Elder's anti-arson agenda they oppose," but both executives at GIA did not respond.
Local choral directors disassociated with Elder. The composer lost friends, colleagues, and fans over the so-called "controversy," which negatively affected his mental health. After he was canceled, Elder started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist, and said he has needed to be "talked off the ledge" several times. He has struggled to compose new music after being a victim of cancel culture.
"My artistic wellspring is capped," Elder said. "I think it will come back, but things have remained in quite a rough place after all this happened."
In June 2020, Elder permanently deleted his Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.
"I believe these platforms are encouraging a very dangerous division among us—a divide that is exponentially growing year-by-year—something very much out of line with what I strive to achieve as an artist," Elder wrote on his website. "I am extraordinarily grateful for the following I have achieved in only eight years as a professional composer. Social media was valuable for advertising, but I've learned over the past decade that it isn't the path towards musical and commercial success—it is merely an illusion."
Elder said the social media platforms are causing harm to "our cultural and political relationships."
He added, "For me the cost of social media has finally outweighed its benefits." Elder said, "I achieved all my major successes entirely offline and you can too."
Elder now only uses YouTube, but turns off comments on his videos.
The saga of having his professional life being robbed from him by progressives has shifted his political compass.
"Because I was exiled, I started listening to voices on the right and the center, especially these classical liberals who have been exiled from the leftist movement," Elder told Reason. "The strange silver lining is this shook me out of my prejudices a little bit."
See more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/liberal-composer-canceled-arson-post?utm_source=theblaze-dailyAM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily-Newsletter__AM%202021-06-18&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Daily%20AM
Saturday, May 8, 2021
How the New York Times has published lies to serve a biased narrative
The NY Times has twisted the facts to serve a larger narrative, from Hitler to Trump, according to a new book.
April was the month the narratives died.
On April 15, the Biden administration acknowledged there was no evidence that Russia ever offered bounties on American troops in Afghanistan, walking back a report that wounded former President Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Four days later, the Washington, DC, medical examiner revealed that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had not been murdered by rampaging Trump supporters during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, as reports had claimed, but had died of natural causes.
Both stories were based on anonymous, unidentifiable sources, but had become deeply enmeshed in the public consciousness. Both confirmed the assumptions of the nation’s left-leaning media and academic elite, while damaging their political enemies.
And both were driven by The New York Times, where malicious misreporting has been the practice for a century, argues journalist and media commentator Ashley Rindsberg.
“My research churned up not mere errors or inaccuracies but whole-cloth falsehoods,” Rindsberg writes in “The Gray Lady Winked” (Midnight Oil), out now, which examines how the nation’s premier media outlet manipulates what we think is the news.
The “fabrications and distortions” he found in the Times’ coverage of major stories from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia to Vietnam and the Iraq War “were never the product of simple error,” Rindsberg contends.
“Rather, they were the byproduct of a particular kind of system, a truth-producing machine” constructed to twist facts into a pattern of the Times’ own choosing, he says.
Rindsberg argues that Times reporters have followed the same playbook since the 1920s.
Star reporters cite fuzzily identified sources and make sweeping assertions to support a narrative aligned with the corporate whims, economic needs and political preferences of the patriarchal Ochs-Sulzberger family, which has helmed the operation since 1896, he writes. The chosen narrative, reinforced from multiple angles, is entrenched through a network of stories over time.
Rindsberg argues that Times reporters have followed the same playbook since the 1920s. Getty Images
“We toss the term ‘fake news’ around as if it’s something whimsical,” Rindsberg told The Post.
“But creating what I call a false media narrative is really hard,” he said. “It takes coordination, deliberation, and a lot of resources. And there aren’t many news organizations that can do it.”
With close to $2 billion in annual revenue, the Times has the money, prestige, experience and stature to set the narratives that other news outlets almost invariably follow.
“When the Times breaks these stories, it’s wall to wall,” Rindsberg said. “MSNBC, CNN — everywhere you look, you’ll get that story.
“And with the Times, it’s never just one false claim,” he said. “They make a concerted effort over time that they dig into and won’t let go.”
The paper’s coverage of Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the decade before World War II is an early example of its narrative manipulation, Rindsberg writes.
So glowing was its picture of the regime that the Nazis regularly included New York Times reports in their own radio programs.
The Times repeatedly claimed that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick (left) was killed by a Trump-led mob — a story that has since been proved wrong.Getty Images (2)
“That’s because the Times bureau chief in Berlin, Guido Enderis, was a Nazi collaborator,” Rindsberg said.
Under Enderis, bureau reporters won Pulitzer Prizes as they drew on Hitler’s propaganda to cover the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 1938 Munich Conference, when Britain and France tried to appease the fuhrer by giving him a chunk of Czechoslovakia. Enderis even parroted the Nazis’ claim that Poland invaded Germany to spark the war in Europe in 1939, not the other way around.
A fed-up Times staffer back in New York, Warren Irvin, complained to publisher Arthur Sulzberger about the glaring bias.
“Sulzberger replied that they couldn’t replace Enderis because he just had too much access. He got too many good scoops,” Rindsberg said. “Then he threatened to sue Irvin for defamation” if he went public with his criticism.
Once the United States declared war in December 1941, American journalists in Berlin were rounded up, placed under SS guard, and interned for five months in an unheated, under-provisioned hotel outside Frankfurt — except for one.
“Enderis was allowed to remain at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, a very posh hotel,” Rindsberg said — because of his “proved friendliness to Germany,” a Nazi Foreign Office bureaucrat wrote in an internal memo.
The Times’ Berlin bureau chief relied on Nazi propaganda while downplaying Hitler’s quest for power before WWII.Getty Images
“And you know, when you look back at the reporting, they were right,” Rindsberg said. “He did a great job for them. He was worth it.”
The infamous behavior of the Times’ star Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty — who pooh-poohed reports of the Holodomor, the 1932-33 mass starvation that Josef Stalin either allowed or imposed in the Ukraine — is well known.
But Rindsberg’s book reveals that Duranty had not accidentally overlooked the disaster that killed millions.
“Duranty was instructed by his higher-ups to cover the Ukraine famine in that way,” Rindsberg said. “At the time, The New York Times was actively pushing for American recognition of the Soviet Union,” he explained. The US business establishment, led by the Chamber of Commerce, was on board, and Soviet rhetoric meshed with the Ochs-Sulzberger family’s leftist politics.
Duranty personally shepherded the recognition effort, briefing soon-to-be President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the issue in 1932.
“You cannot convince the American public that this is a regime worth recognizing when it has just killed five million of its own people — even unintentionally,” Rindsberg said.
The Times got its way. With news of the Holodomor suppressed, Roosevelt formally recognized the USSR less than a year into his presidency. Duranty escorted Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov across the Atlantic for his first US visit in 1933.
All along, historians would later learn, Duranty and the Times had been doing Stalin’s bidding.
Documents in the US National Archives record a 1931 conversation in which Duranty told a State Department official that, “ ‘in agreement with The New York Times and the Soviet authorities,’ his official dispatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own.”
Rindsberg sees the Sicknick and Russian-bounty stories as the latest examples of narrative construction at the Times.
Sicknick died the evening of Jan. 7, the day after Trump supporters overran the US Capitol.
Times’ Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty (left) for then-NYT Publisher Adolph Ochs (middle) whitewashed Stalin’s mass murder to help promote communism abroad.Getty Images (3)
“By Jan. 8th the Times had already published two big stories on his death,” Rindsberg said. “Right off the bat the narrative was that he’d been murdered.”
In those initial stories, “two law enforcement officials” claimed that Sicknick suffered a “bloody gash” when “pro-Trump rioters . . . struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”
“Pretty profound claims: that these people were not just protesting or rioting, but were committing murder — at the behest of President Trump,” Rindsberg said.
Over the next month, at least 20 Times articles pounded the theme that Sicknick had been “killed” by the demonstrators or died as a result of rioters’ violence. None of the reports named a source for the claim, or even identified the law enforcement body from which it originated.
“Ten or 12 different reporters contributed to this,” Rindsberg said. “Several had won Pulitzer Prizes” for coverage of the Trump-Russia narrative after the 2016 presidential election.
“Yet early on, the story was already changing,” Rindsberg said. “Within a few days, there were doubts.”
In February, the Times shifted gears to claim that Sicknick had been overcome by mace or bear spray — as references to his bloody head wound faded from view. Ten more stories followed, continuing to press the idea that Capitol violence had killed him.
The Times reported that Russia had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militias for killing American troops in Afghanistan. But their story was false, relying solely on an intelligence assessment without any corroborating details.AFP via Getty Images
Not until April 19 did readers learn that Sicknick sustained no injuries at all in the melee, but had died of an unrelated stroke.
“To the Times, Sicknick was the perfect symbol,” Rindsberg said. “A devoted police officer, by all accounts a good man, put in Trump’s crosshairs” — a fresh indictment of a president who, according to a much larger Times narrative, had been poisoning the American political system for his entire term.
“When a symbol fits their narrative, they just cannot let it go.”
Similar hallmarks can be seen in the Russian bounties story, which the Times launched on June 26, 2020, Rindsberg said.
“What they were reporting on was an intelligence assessment,” Rindsberg said, a government account that by its very nature is ambiguous and incomplete.
The assessment alleged that a Russian intelligence unit had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militias for killing American and other coalition troops in Afghanistan. But it included no corroborating details on who if anyone had been paid, how much was offered, or even the source of the disclosure.
Nonetheless, “the Times coverage quickly became conclusive,” Rindsberg said. Its initial story was framed in the most absolute of terms, claiming that “American intelligence officials have concluded” that bounties were offered — and that Trump had refused to take action on the information.
Author Ashley Rindsberg
“It was circular logic: We know that Trump is colluding with the Russians, therefore he doesn’t do anything about the bounties,” Rindsberg said. “And why doesn’t Trump do anything about the bounties? Because we know he’s colluding with the Russians.”
Some of the paper’s top prize-winning reporters participated in follow-up stories that hammered on the theme for months, despite National Security Agency objections.
“When the NSA began questioning the reliability of the intelligence, the Times was very quick to downplay that,” Rindsberg said. “Immediately, the story became that Trump was pressuring the NSA to cast those doubts. Just like that, they’ve tainted the counternarrative.”
Ten months — and a presidential election — would pass before another media outlet, NBC, revealed that the initial intelligence had been “inconclusive” all along.
“CIA intelligence assessments never have been, never will be considered the gospel truth,” Rindsberg said. “You just cannot rely on them. The New York Times should have known that.
“But they did rely on it. The symbolism of the story was too good to give up.”
The damage wrought by such powerful yet false symbolism is profound, Rindsberg concludes.
“These narratives are interlocking,” Rindsberg said. “They have different nodes that connect to each other and strengthen each other in a network effect.
“Maybe you can knock down one piece of the story, but it doesn’t affect the bigger false narrative, because the network is so robust.”
And not even a retraction will dislodge it from our minds.
“We already believe Sicknick was battered to death, because we were told that for a month every single day,” Rindsberg said.
“And when the story turns out to be false, The New York Times does not do accountability,” he said. “It’s quiet little adjustments — updates to the Web pages, maybe run a small correction or an editor’s letter somewhere.”
After at least 30 Times stories and columns linked Brian Sicknick’s death to the actions of the Jan. 6 rioters, news that the medical examiner had punctured the narrative ran on page A12.
“Because they’re protecting the thing that is most valuable to them, their reputation,” Rindsberg said. “And doing it at the expense of the truth.”
See more at: https://nypost.com/2021/05/08/how-the-new-york-times-publishes-lies-to-serve-a-biased-narrative/?utm_source=email_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
Pitbull's grandmother initially fought in the Cuban revolutionary war on the side of Castro, but once he took power, she realized that she had made a grave mistake. In the early 1960s, there were rumors swirling in Cuba that Castro was going to round-up children and place them in communist indoctrination centers.
Pitbull's grandmother sent her two daughters to the United States during Operation Peter Pan, a covert program that brought 14,000 Cuban children to the U.S. between 1960 to 1962 at the height of the Cold War. Pitbull's mother and aunt were taken to Florida, where the rapper's father would also land after fleeing from Fidel.
"My grandmother fought in the [Cuban] revolutionary war actually with Castro, because everybody thought that Batista was corrupt," Pitbull told CNN in 2009. "I'm not saying that he wasn't, but it's almost like the lesser of two evils. [When she became disillusioned with the Castro government], my mother and my aunt got sent off in an operation called Peter Pan without their parents. She didn't see her mother for seven years. As far as my father – he came over also. He didn't come in the Peter Pan, but they fled the country."
Pitbull appeared on Revolt TV, a music-oriented digital cable television network founded by Sean "Diddy" Combs, where he discussed the dangers of communism.
"My family comes from communism, they fled communism, they had everything taken away from them, everybody got murdered, everybody got killed," Pitbull said. "That's the reason me, being a first-generation Cuban American, I look at freedom and I appreciate that s***. I appreciate opportunity. That comes from the fact that Castro took over everything."
He told people to stop being "worried about followers and likes, and whose on TikTok and Instagram."
Pitbull also brought up several conspiracy theories about the coronavirus during the interview.
Pitbull, AKA "Mr. Worldwide," has said that he would never play a concert in Cuba as long as the communist Castros are in charge of the country.
"I won't perform in Cuba until there's no more Castro and there's a free Cuba," Pitbull told The Guardian in 2011.
"To me, Cuba's the biggest prison in the world, and I would be very hypocritical were I to perform there," he explained. "The people in Cuba, they know what I stand for, and there's a lot of people in Cuba that stand for the same. But they can't say it."
see more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/rapper-pitbull-communism-lockdowns-cuba?utm_source=theblaze-dailyAM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily-Newsletter__AM%202021-02-07&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Daily%20AM
Thursday, January 21, 2021
JANUARY 21, 2021
Tennessee mayor lowers town's American flag on day of Biden inauguration, sparks massive criticism. But he's sticking to his guns.
'I was raised that everyone had the right to say what they wanted to, and if someone disagreed with you, then that's the way it is'
Photo by Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
By Sarah Taylor
A Tennessee mayor lowered his town's American flag to half-staff in mourning for the country on the day of President Joe Biden's inauguration. He posted about lowering the flag on Facebook.
While many critics accused him of trying to incite anger with the post, the mayor insisted that his post had nothing to do with Biden's inauguration.
What are the details?
Bruceton Mayor Robert T. Keeton III announced Wednesday that the town is grieving for the nation for various reasons.
In the Facebook post, Keeton wrote, "The Town of Bruceton grieves for our Republic and our loss of freedoms. We mourn the victims of the Chinese plague and those that have suffered its depredations. We pray that God delivers and restores us and that we do not fall to the clutches of communism."
Keeton's Facebook post drew a plethora of attention, which forced him on Thursday to clarify the intent of the original posting, which remains active at the time of this reporting.
As highlighted by WSMV-TV, one commenter wrote, "This is one of the most unpatriotic things I have ever seen. As friends and neighbors die from COVID and our nation hurts, you use the town page to air your personal grievances? This is not the way to promote Bruceton as a nice place to live. Shame on you."
Another critic added, "This is a slap in the face of all of our military heroes and leaders who have sacrificed their lives for this country. That's why we lower the flag. Mayor, you're placing the importance of your own personal, childish pouting on the same level with the men and women who have died fighting for you. This is shameless. I'm embarrassed for my friends who live in Bruceton."
"This is a flagrant incitement of anger and disunity on a public platform," another person added. "The mayor is not The Town of Bruceton. Was this statement approved by the city council? It seems like it is pandering to the worst characteristics of human nature. I expect better of my elected representatives."
Keeton fires back
The Jackson Sun reported that Keeton, also a lawyer, said that the post was "just a commentary and prayer for our country."
"I'm an attorney, and I'm seeing our constitutional rights being trampled on virtually every day, and I'm concerned for our republic, even though I've lost people that I know to this Chinese virus," he explained.
The outlet added, "Keeton said he's concerned with what he's seeing in the country starting with social media platforms not allowing certain communication to remain on their sites. Twitter and Facebook recently banned former President Donald Trump from posting on their sites in the final two weeks of his presidency, and Apple and Google removed the social media platform Parler – which had become a site many conservatives were going to once they felt they were being censored on Facebook and Twitter – from being available to download and access through their platforms."
He proclaimed, "That's not right, and the government isn't doing anything about it. And I was raised that everyone had the right to say what they wanted to, and if someone disagreed with you, then that's the way it is."
Keeton added that the lowering of the flag had nothing to do with Biden's inauguration.
“If anyone thinks this was because of the inauguration happening today or anything else, it's not," Keeton insisted. “We had a man in his mid-60s who called up to City Hall from the nursing home that died yesterday from the virus. He was in the nursing home alone and he died alone, and my post was a reaction to that and everything that's happened because of it."
Bruceton had a population of 1,478 in the 2010 census, the Sun reported.
2020 Election interesting recapAt 3 AM on November 4, Trump was winning Wisconsin by 4.1%, with 91% of the vote counted. He was winning Georgia by 2.6% with 93% of the vote counted, Michigan by 8.4% with 71% of the vote counted, and Pennsylvania by double-digits. By noon on Wednesday, he was behind in all of the swing states.
