Trump Donor Made the Rifle That Almost Killed Him
Media are ignoring the company that made it, and who owned the company
July 26: Harris pulls green green … Harris impeachment … Trump bails on debate … Haley targets, uh, former Haley voters …
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Harris Moves Left on Gaza, Earth
GREEN GREEN Special-interest groups whose special interest is having an environment that supports human life are opening their wallets for Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, Semafor reports this morning.
Unenthused about Pres. Joe Biden’s chances of re-election, some climate donors had stayed on the sidelines, which is weird because the sidelines are experiencing record temperatures and also there are no sidelines.
Harris, however, is seen as having a better shot at both saving democracy and the planet. That’s because she’s seen as having a strong record on climate, in the White House and the Senate.
Biden is, too, but he’s also been friendlier to Big Oil than activists and Gaea would like.
And with Harris inspiring new giving, Semafor assesses, that’s put climate donors on track to rival even the big money of Big Oil.
GAZA Although the White House says there’s no daylight between Harris and Biden when it comes to Israel, it sure seems like Harris brought at least a little flashlight into her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday.
No one seems to expect a major shift of policy in a Harris White House — meaning, keep rubber-stamping those illegal arms sales, State Department! But after her Netanyahu meeting yesterday, she was more willing to pressure him publicly than Biden has been.
Specifically, Harris said she told Netanyahu to stop fucking around killing people and sign the cease-fire he proposed weeks ago. “It is time for this war to end,” she said. “There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal, and as I just told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done."
She stuck the traditional Democrat landing, though, defending Israel’s right to defend itself without doing anything it wants in the process, and voicing sympathy with any hypothetically remaining people in Gaza. “We cannot allow ourselves to be numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”
Meanwhile, in the Gaza of Trump’s Mind
While the actual death toll of almost 40,000 people in Gaza may be driving a rift between Democrats and Netanyahu, the ego-death of one (1) former president was sufficient to do so between Netanyahu and former Pres. Donald Trump.
Netanyahu, you see, quickly recognized Pres. Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. Like a traitor.
So today, in their meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Trump and Netanyahu will try to heal this painful rift and work together to blaze a trail on the journey of healing.
Trump has sent the same message to American Jews: That loyalty to him is paramount, and their Jewishness is at risk if they vote Democratic.
The dilemma for Netanyahu — along with all the other dilemmas that come with a Trump meeting (say, politely informing the former president that he has a cheeseburger stuck to the corner of his mouth) — is that he’ll want to see whether Trump will be more helpful than Biden has been regarding Gaza…if Trump is represident in January 2025. But Trump has said he wants the war done. (Because it’s bad PR.)
On the other hand, Trump benefits politically from the Gaza conflict, which means he’s obviously fine letting it grind up more Palestinians if that’ll help him pick up a swing state.
Harris Impeachment Effort Resumes
They can’t figure out how to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s nasty, but too nice to criminals. She’s incompetent, but successfully covered up the commander in chief’s brain death and waged a covert war on plastic straws. “They’re literally grasping at straws,” a former state GOP official tells Politico.
(Robert Leonard has a good roundup and analysis of all the putrid wetbrained attacks on Harris out there that I can’t bring myself to delve into what with fearing I’ll lose hope for all humanity.)
It’s not just sexism and racism that House GOP leaders oppose fear will cost them votes, it’s bullshit impeachment efforts…which of course are happening.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) this week introduced articles of impeachment against Harris — his second try (#She’sjustnotintoyou). Despite all the Republican bravado about investigating and impeaching everyone because revenge, some House Republicans are having first thoughts.
Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), a former Trump aide, told Politico, “I see no more reason for investigations to start in the House if they’re going to be politically weaponized,” apparently unaware that they’re going to be politically weaponized.
But Ogles isn’t just weaponizing investigations, he’s weaponizing names. Which is weird for a guy whose last name is literally an inappropriate focus on a woman who has not consented to it. Ogles weaponized Harris’s name by dropping her middle name.
“Kamala Devi Harris has knowingly misled the people of the United States … to obfuscate the physical and cognitive well-being of the President of the United States, Joe Biden,” Ogles’ impeachment article says, without saying “Robinette,” Biden’s middle name.
And it’s true, Harris’s middle name is Devi. Literally, DEI is Harris’s middle name with a V thrown in for Victory, fuckers!
But it turns out Andy Ogles has a weird name, too: William Andy Ogles IV. That’s right, he’s got a “V,” too. And not the Churchillian kind, but a patrician, obnoxious, elitist “V.”
And as for misleading the people, Ogles had to apologize for lying about what his college major was, which he later claimed he didn’t know. Over the years he had called himself an economist, and said his ‘course of study” was in political science and international relations.
Lie.
His major was Liberal Studies. Liberal.
Billionaire Trump Donor Made the Rifle That Almost Killed Him
In 1985, a guy named Randy Luth started a company called Defense Procurement Manufacturing Services. As the name indicates, DPMS’s entire raison d’etre was to suckle off at least one (1) government teat, a Pentagon teat.
At some point, the company began calling itself DPMS Panther Arms and selling guns to an even bigger sucker than the Pentagon: Gun nuts.
By 2007, DPMS Panther Arms was making assault rifles as props for the Hollywood-inspired fantasies of preppers and cityphobes. That’s when they got purchased by Stephen Feinberg’s holding company, Cerberus Capital Management. As “AccurateShooter.com” “reported,” embiggening Cerberus’s enkillening portfolio would embiggen its pro-gun/anti-life clout in Washington.
“AccurateShooter.com” “reported” that “It looks like Cerberus intends to be a major player in the semi-auto AR-platform market.”
Sadly for Feinberg, a 20-year-old fuckup named Adam Lanza wanted to take out some minor players in the public education market with a rifle made by a Cerberus company. Lanza used Feinberg’s gun to kill 20 school kids and seven other people in Newtown, CT.
Cerberus decided to sell its gun companies because they had just helped make 27 people dead…and millions of other people did not like that. But, sadly for Feinberg, not a lot of bidders for companies that sell child- and teacher-killing machines!
It didn’t help when a San Bernardino, CA, gunman used Feinberg’s product to end the lives of 14 people and seriously fuck the lives of 22 more in 2015.
The next year, though, Feinberg joined presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Economic Advisory Council. Trump, the former Democrat and pretend businessman, succeeded in suckering in Feinberg, who should have known better as a New York native, Princeton alum, and human with a functioning cerebral cortex. But, because the Ivy League doesn’t make you smarter, Feinberg pitched in more than $2 million to Trump’s two campaigns, like a Princeton-educated sucker.
The following year, then-Pres. Trump appointed Feinberg to a panel reviewing the agencies charged with spotting possible threats to national security. Like the rifle Feinberg had sold four years prior. (Foreshadowing!)
The year after that, 2018 — c’mon, man, keep up! — Washington Post writer Adnan Khashoggi was killed by Saudi Arabian government operatives who had been trained by a company owned by Feinberg. This would not be the last threat to national security that was missed by the security agencies reviewed by Feinberg.
Last year, Trump visited a South Carolina dealer of hand-held people-killing machines called Palmetto State Armory. PSA is owned by a company called JJE Capital Holdings. JJE Capital Holdings’s owners include Julian Wilson, son of Rep. Joseph Wilson (R-SC), whose most notable accomplishment in years as a federal legislator is yelling “You lie” during an address to a joint session of Congress by America’s first Black president.1
Wilson’s company sells guns bearing messages such as “Let’s go, Brandon,” (droll MAGA code for “Fuck you, Biden”), “Stop the Steal,” and, uh, “You Lie!”2
Trump admired the store’s guns and even suggested he might buy one. Which he was legally forbidden from doing because guns are for future criminals. Wilson said any president would be welcome at the store, “so long as they’re supportive of our Second Amendment.”
Now, why am I delivering an overlong picaresque, Rachel Maddow-style narrative here instead of getting to the fucking point?
Well, we’re actually at the fucking point, my impatient Newsfuckers! To wit:
The gun that almost killed Trump was made by DPMS. When Thomas Matthew Crooks’s Dad went shopping for an AR-style rifle — like a normal person — the rifle he bought in 2013 was still being produced and sold by Cerberus, the company owned by Feinberg, the man who would later be one of Trump’s point people on national security and spend millions trying to make him president, which typically involves being not dead.
When Feinberg did finally manage to unload DPMS in 2020, the company was bought by…JJE Capital Holdings…the company co-owned by the son of the “You Lie!” guy, which Trump boosted by promoting guns emblazoned with right-wing political slogans.
Everytown has more on the intersection of the gun industry, big money, and Trump’s ear, but can you even imagine if the company that made the Trump ear-nicking rifle had been owned by George Soros and then bought by Susan Sarandon Capital Holdings, which also sold guns bearing hateful slogans such as “Medicare 4 All” and “Universal Basic Income”?
Despite the abundant paper trail, I haven’t seen anyone else tie the gun that almost killed Trump to one of the billionaires pushing him on us. If connecting big-ass dots like this on big-ass events like attempted presidential assassinations is important to you, please consider supporting our aggressive aggregation (aggravation?!?) by becoming a paid subscriber. The dots will thank you.
Unafraid of Gun-Making Donors, Trump Runs from…Harris
In a dumb-guy move last night, the represidential campaign of Donald Trump used its very special genius to boost the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. How?
By backing out of the debates. Temporarily. Trump had said he would debate Harris multiple times, but that changed last night.
In a statement, he said that “election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee… Democrats could very well still change their minds.”
Which, sure, technically true. But, er, Trump literally already debated an unformally decided nominee when Democrats not only could very well still change their minds but did. So why back out this time, when there’s far less time for a Democratic rival to announce they’re running, when none has, and when Harris has locked up all the delegates she needs without jeopardizing her nomination by being 81 years old?
Well, the obvious answer is fear, which I’m not sure is true but I try not to begrudge minor fanfic. Signaling fear of a Black woman — after being on the ropes from so many others (prosecutors Fani Willis and Letitia James come to mind) — isn’t exactly the best tough-guy move right now. And it’s strategically poopy in another way(s).
Suggesting Harris might lose the nomination vindicates the notion that this is still a fight, and ergo worthy of attention and interest. Point for Democrats.
Suggesting Harris might lose also makes her presumed nomination less of a coronation and more of a genuine victory when she presumably gets it. Point for Democrats.
There was no reason to do this. Just insist the debate will happen but not until the nomination is finalized. But Trump just couldn’t. Because what even is impulse control to the commander in chief of unforced errors?
Likewise, Haley Elevates Halley Backers…of Harris
Republicans who voted for former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) and don’t like Donald Trump — but for some reason are still Republicans even though that’s now defined as liking Donald Trump — have formed a club.
It’s called Haley Voters for Harris. As in Kamala.
That’s right, unlike Haley (a Never-Trumper who swore Always-Trump fealty at the convention), some of her supporters are as good as their word. But, because betraying them once at the convention wasn’t enough for Haley, she’s at it again, Streisand style.3
Haley is demanding that Haley Voters for Harris — HV4H (which sounds like a virus I think?) — cease and desist their HV4H-ing.
And now HV4H is striking back.
“Our rights to engage with likeminded voters and encourage them to vote for @KamalaHarris — the clear better choice for the country — will not be suppressed,” HV4H Tweeted, after Haley’s attempted suppression made the news. All of which, of course, is drawing voters’ attention to the fact that there are Haley voters for Harris.
OBAMAS Hilariously, the whole impulse-control thing was on self-destructive display with Trump himself last night.
Trump joked said lied that “There is a strong sense in the Democrat Party — namely Barrack Hussein Obama — that Kamala Harris is a Marxist fraud who cannot beat President Trump, and they are still holding out for someone ‘better.’” Not sure who he’s quoting with “better” there, but yeah no not even a little bit.
It’s true that Obama hadn’t endorsed Harris as of last night. And presumably Trump couldn’t imagine someone acting strategically rather than on impulse, so he assumed Obama wasn’t on board. Much in the manner one might were one an idiot.
Sure enough, this morning both Obamas endorsed Harris. (Psst: When everyone endorses on the same day, you only get one news cycle. Little tip for your 2028 campaign. When you’re 82.)
TCB
Look at me! I finally served up that Trump-rifle thing I promised. Yay!
If you appreciate dot-connecting and money-trail following — that corporate media don’t do even on stories like the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate (seriously, search for yourself to see how many outlets haven’t even mentioned what kind of rifle it was!) — or if it’s just that TFN helps you face the news or laugh in its face, please consider supporting TFN with a paid subscription or one-time donation.
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Go get ‘em, kids. And give yourself a good weekend, okay? We deserve it!
Wilson later apologized. So he’s officially a sorry excuse for a legislator.
Apologies not legally binding on merch. See terms and conditions for further details. Not applicable in California.
The Streisand Effect is when your attempt to quash something gives it more attention than it would’ve got otherwise.
Great column, and fantastic legwork on the rifle that almost killed Trump. Fresh reporting on a topic I haven't seen anyone else dig into.
So, the GOP circular firing squad is a real thing! :) Thanks for connecting the dots!