TV News LIES

President Donald Trump began Day 2 of his presidency on Tuesday with a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. He didn’t seem particularly impressed with it.

As a cease-fire and hostage release deal was reportedly reached between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday, new polling made it clearer than ever that Vice President Kamala Harris' refusal to break with the Biden administration's position on Israel's relentless assault on Gaza had an impact on her support from voters, and contributed to millions of potential Democratic voters deciding to stay home on Election Day.

A YouGov poll backed by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project and released on Wednesday showed that among the 19 million people who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 but did not vote in 2024, nearly a third named Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza as a top reason for staying home.

"The top reason those non-voters cited, above the economy at 24% and immigration at 11%, was Gaza: a full 29% cited the ongoing onslaught as the top reason they didn't cast a vote in 2024," wrote Ryan Grim at Drop Site News, the first outlet to report the news.

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Elon Musk waded into controversy on Monday when he gave back-to-back fascist-style salutes during celebrations of the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.

“I just want to say thank you for making it happen,” the owner of SpaceX, X and Tesla, the richest person on earth and a major Trump donor and adviser, told Trump supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington.

Musk then slapped his right hand into his chest, fingers splayed, before shooting out his right arm on an upwards diagonal, fingers together and palm facing down.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which campaigns against antisemitism, defines the Nazi salute as “raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down”.

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President Trump issued pardons for some 1,500 defendants who participated in the siege on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, including the leader of a far-right group, fulfilling a campaign promise to exercise executive clemency on behalf of people he's called "patriots" and "hostages."

"We hope they come out tonight," he said in a signing ceremony at the Oval Office on Monday evening.

The order would grant "a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021." That means a pardon for Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman, who had been sentenced to 22 years in the federal penitentiary.

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There is a “real and very, very present” threat to the US from a shadowy collection of rightwing leaders, a new book on the movement behind Donald Trump warns, with the aim being “an end to pluralistic democracy”.

Katherine Stewart, a journalist who specializes in the religious right, spent years researching the money and influence that has aided and encouraged tens of millions of Americans in their worship at the throne of Trump.

The result is Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, which sees Stewart explore the “antidemocratic movement” – an unholy mix of Christian nationalists, billionaire oligarchs and conservative ideologues who have seized control of the Republican party, and aim to fundamentally change the US.

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