House Speaker Mike Johnson describes himself as a Christian before anything else. He has said his “faith informs everything I do.” He has told people curious about his views to “pick up a Bible.” His wife reportedly runs a counseling service whose operating agreement, which he himself notarized, states, “We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery…is sinful and offensive to God.” He has said he and his son use a software program called Covenant Eyes to ensure neither is looking at porn.
Given all this, you may think that Johnson would not be comfortable showing up to a criminal trial to defend a guy who allegedly had an affair with an adult film star (according to the adult film star anyway, though Trump denies it), paid her to stay quiet about the alleged affair, and then was accused of covering up said payment. But you would think wrong!
On Tuesday, Johnson attended Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan, where—prior to the proceedings getting underway—the congressional leader nodded approvingly at Trump from behind a metal barrier, like a groupie at his favorite band’s concert.
You’re close… Stormy Daniels, through disgraced former lawyer Michael Avenetti (hey, remember him???), sued Trump for defamation, not the other way around.
When that case failed, she was on the hook for Trump’s legal fees, not for any defamation on her part.
$300,000, not $500,000, later reduced to $120,000.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168215663/trump-stormy-daniels-defamation-lawsuit
NPR isn’t a very good source for news. They even recently had 25 year veteran reporter blow the whistle on them about how they’ve been reporting news since around 2015-16. They’re completely one-sided similar to MSDNC, Rawstory, etc. Anytime a news organization doesn’t allow healthy debate, I’ve quit using them as they’re no more than propaganda now
One should note that Democrats are literally only left by weird American standards.
Literally everyone outside Land of the free will tell you Dems are moderate rights, and the truth is super far from “between Dems and Reps”.
America hasn’t seen a healthy political debate since the Red Scare. With the real left eradicated and members of any left organizations, let alone past or current member of the communist parties, becoming essentially enemies of the state, politicians felt comfortable instating that Dems are “actually left”, so as to gradually put real left to serve a slightly leftier flavor of capitalists.
And as such, you don’t see the actual unbiased debate you expect. You see two kinds of right-winger debating how right America should go.
Real “unbiased” center is more left than Democrats, even.
We just gotta agree to disagree on the comment about two right wingers debating how right America should go and that the left is eradicated. I see people all the time wanting to bring down capitalism in favor of guaranteed healthcare and income, etc.
Universal healthcare doesn’t “bring down capitalism” and doesn’t mean socialism. It’s just a norm of civilized capitalist world, one of the achievements of the working class that became entrenched in policies. Same for guaranteed income. All good policies, but can absolutely exist in a non-socialist world.
Socialism is characterized by common ownership of the means of production, i.e. all the big businesses go away and the control of industries is public, either through government or worker’s cooperatives.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans offer anything close.
(Socialist political groups can advocate for things such as universal healthcare/UBI/etc, but their endgoal has to be the eradication of private property)
NPR is one of the pre-eminent sources of US news, reliable and fact checked. If you’re blind to that there is absolutely no hope for you.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/npr/
“Overall, we rate NPR (National Public Radio) Left-Center Biased based on story selection that leans slightly left and High for factual reporting due to thorough sourcing and accurate news reporting. (5/18/2016) Updated (M. Huitsing 06/30/2023)”
Maybe it was at one time, but that changed. This is a reporter that’s been there 25 years, and was ultimately let go for speaking out about it. Just like some of the other media outlets, they did anything they could to help stop Trump from getting elected and boost Bidens chance by burying the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/npr-whistleblower-uri-berliner-claims-colleagues-confidentially-agree-with-him-about-broadcaster-s-hard-left-bias/ar-BB1lpy5Y
Again, that doesn’t change the basic factual nature of NPR.
You can argue bias all you want, but the basic facts are the basic facts and NPR gets it right.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/npr-whistleblower-uri-berliner-claims-colleagues-confidentially-agree-with-him-about-broadcaster-s-hard-left-bias/ar-BB1lpy5Y
Doesn’t change the basic facts of the matter:
Trump did NOT sue Daniels for defamation, it was the other way around.
The amount charged was for legal fees, not damages.
The amount wasn’t 500,000, it was 300,000, then reduced to 120,000.
Factually, you got all three points wrong, NPR got it right.
Facts are facts.