Tag: Montana

Montana man believed he was acting on Trump’s orders in attacking boy for wearing hat during national anthem

The attorney for a 39-year-old man charged with assaulting a child who didn’t take his hat off for the national anthem says his client, compromised by a traumatic brain injury, believes he was acting on an order from President Donald Trump. 

Superior resident Curt Brockway was charged Monday with felony assault on a minor. His defense attorney, Lance Jasper, told the Missoulian Wednesday the president’s “rhetoric” contributed to the U.S. Army veteran’s disposition when he choke-slammed a 13-year-old, fracturing his skull, at the Mineral County fairgrounds on Aug. 3.

“His commander in chief is telling people that if they kneel, they should be fired, or if they burn a flag, they should be punished,” Jasper said. “He certainly didn’t understand it was a crime.”

A request to the White House for comment was not returned. Mineral County Attorney Ellen Donohue’s office said she was unavailable for comment Wednesday afternoon. 

Jasper said he’s gotten a handful of hateful voicemails at his office since taking Brockway’s case, but that Brockway’s family has received “hundreds” of death threats in the days since the 13-year-old boy was flown to Spokane by emergency flight for treatment. KPAX reported the boy is back home after being released from the hospital; no further information has been released on his condition.

Brockway was apprehended at the Superior fairgrounds on Saturday after several people saw the alleged assault. According to charging documents filed in Mineral County District Court on Tuesday, Brockway told Deputy Micah Allard the national anthem was playing before the rodeo got underway, and he noticed a young teenager still wearing his hat. Brockway told the deputy he asked the youth to remove his hat because it was disrespectful, to which the youth responded by saying “(expletive) you.”

Charging documents indicate Brockway told the deputy he grabbed the boy by the throat, lifted him into the air and slammed the boy on the ground. Taylor Hennick, who was at the fair,told the Missoulian earlier this week that Brockway defended his action as people closed in on him by saying the boy had been disrespectful. Deputies later learned the boy had suffered a concussion and a fractured skull.

Jasper said Wednesday that he will seek a mental health evaluation for his client before determining how to proceed further in the defense. 

Brockway sustained a traumatic brain injury in a vehicle crash in the winter of 2000, Jasper said. He was on active military duty at Fort Lewis, Washington, at the time, and was driving home to visit family for the holidays, Jasper said. He was honorably discharged from the military due to disability, according to Jasper.

He said Brockway’s military background has been central to his identity since suffering the injury to his frontal lobe, which controls cognitive functions like judgement and problem solving.

Couple that injury, Jasper argues, with the president’s calls to weed out those who have protested the national anthem or criticized the nation, and Brockway is no longer thinking for himself but responding to a presidential order.

“Obviously he (Brockway) owes a big portion of accountability for what took place, but it’s certain that there was other things at work here that definitely contributed,” he said.

Trump’s rhetoric has varied in degrees of severity. In 2017, he told an Alabama crowd that he would “love” to see NFL owners punish, even fire, players who knelt during the national anthem. Videos of fans who agreed with the president subsequently posted videos burning their jerseys and memorabilia when teams refused to pull players who protested the anthem. 

But Jasper said Wednesday he believes his client’s condition means he can be “exploited” by such “animosity” from the president.

“Trump never necessarily says go hurt somebody, but the message is absolutely clear,” Jasper said. “I am certain of the fact that (Brockway) was doing what he believed he was told to do, essentially, by the president.”

Jasper plans to deploy that argument. “There is the defense that his mental illness or brain injury that will be raised, along with permission given by the president,” Jasper said. “Whether that passes muster with the court as a viable defense is for a different day.” 

Last year, the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals found Trump did not incite violence at a Louisville, Kentucky, rally in 2016 when he said “get ’em out of here,” followed by “don’t hurt ’em,” as supporters began pushing and shoving protesters at the event.

Brockway’s injury played a role in a 2010 incident in which he was charged with a felony after pulling a gun on a family member when he was coming back from cutting firewood. Jasper, who represented Brockway in that case as well, said the court took Brockway’s brain injury into consideration during sentencing.

District Court Judge John Larson, who will preside over Brockway’s arraignment next week, sentenced Brockway to 10 years of probation in that case. In February, Brockway successfully petitioned for early release from probation after seven years of good behavior, Jasper said.

“Obviously it’s a tragedy whenever someone is injured, especially a young kid, but with my client being a veteran with a traumatic brain injury, it is absolutely fair to say he got caught up in a heightened animosity and a heightened rhetoric that too many people are engaged in,” Jasper said.

“Everyone should learn to dial it down a little bit, from the president to Mineral County.”

Superior is a small town by Montana standards, and Jasper said the Brockway family is “devastated” at the incident.

The boy’s mother did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday afternoon. A GoFundMe account “A Victim of Forced Patriotism Needs Our Help” has been set up to assist the boy’s family with medical expenses.

Brockway’s case was transferred Wednesday from justice court to Mineral County District Court. His arraignment is set for Aug. 14.

[The Missoulian]

Reality

Donald Trump supported Greg Gianforte after he choke-slammed a reporter to the ground.

Donald Trump called athletes protesting the national anthem “sons of bitches” and regularly demonized them.

Donald Trump approves of violence against his critics.

Trump Praises Rep. Gianforte For Assaulting Reporter: Anyone Who Can Body Slam is ‘My Kind of Guy’

 President Donald Trump praised a Republican congressman who body slammed a reporter last year, saying the lawmaker was “my guy.”

Trump, speaking at a rally in Montana, said Rep. Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to assaulting a reporter who asked him a question, was a good guy.

“Greg is smart and, by the way, never wrestle him,” the president said, motioning as though he was slamming someone to the ground. “Any guy that can do a body slam — he’s my guy.”

He added Gianforte was a “great guy” and a “tough cookie.”

In May 2017, Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs said Gianforte “body slammed” him for asking a question during an event. Gianforte went on to win Montana’s only U.S. House seat despite the misdemeanor charge and two Montana papers — the Missoulian and the Billings Gazette — rescinding their endorsements.

Gianforte’s campaign initially released a statement claiming Jacobs had “aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg’s face” and instigated the attack. Gianforte later pleaded guilty to an assault charge and apologized for the incident, pledging a $50,000 donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Gianforte is in a battle against Democrat and former state legislator Kathleen Williams in next month’s election.

Guardian Editor John Mulholland denounced the president’s praise for the assault as an attack on the First Amendment.

“The President of the United States tonight applauded the assault on an American journalist who works for the Guardian,” he said in a statement given to CNN. “To celebrate an attack on a journalist who was simply doing his job is an attack on the First Amendment by someone who has taken an oath to defend it.”

Mulholland continued, saying the rhetoric was dangerous, especially given the disappearance of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who is believed to have been killed in the Saudi consulate in Turkey.

Mulholland said this “runs the risk of inviting other assaults on journalists both here and across the world where they often face far greater threats. We hope decent people will denounce these comments and that the president will see fit to apologize for them.”

During the rally, Trump talked about learning of the assault and said he initially worried Gianforte would lose his election last year.

“I said, ‘Oh, this is terrible. He’s going to lose the election,”‘ Trump told the crowd. “Then I said, ‘Well, wait a minute. I know Montana pretty well. I think it might help him and it did.'”

Throughout his rally, the president made several remarks about Gianforte’s attack on Jacobs. He cited the incident when he mentioned comments by former Vice President Joe Biden, who said that if he’d known Trump in high school he would have “beat the hell out of” him.

The president challenged Biden during the rally, saying “He’d be down faster than Greg would take him down. He’d be down so fast. Faster than Greg. I’d have to go very fast. I’d have to immediately connect.”

[USA Today]

Media

Trump Talks Fighting Joe Biden: ‘He’d Be Down Faster’ Than Greg Gianforte Could ‘Take Him Down’

President Donald Trump fired off tough words at Joe Biden at a rally on Thursday night, boasting he would knock him down faster than Rep. Greg Gianforte could, the Montana Republican who attacked a reporter during his campaign for Congress.

After praising Gianforte for body slamming Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, a crime for which the lawmaker was just sentenced, Trump brought up his feud with former Vice President Biden.

“How about Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump said, while listing off his potential 2020 competitors. “Remember he challenged me to a fight.”

“And when I said he wouldn’t last long, he’d be down faster than Greg would take him down,” Trump continued. “He’d be down so fast. Remember? Faster than Greg. I’d have to go very fast. I’d have to immediately connect.”

During the 2016 campaign, Biden criticized Trump’s “disgusting assertion” about groping women on the access Hollywood Tape.

“The press always asks me: don’t I wish I were debating him,” Biden said in a speech. “No, I wish we were in high school—I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.”

Those comments prompted a war of words between the two, with Trump saying Biden would “go down fast and hard, crying all the way.” Biden eventually said he regretted his comments.

[Mediaite]

Several People Behind Trump Were Removed, Replaced During Rally In Montana

President Donald Trump’s rally in Billings, Montana, on Thursday had many strange moments, including a tangent where he speculated about his potential impeachment and an instance where he seemed unable to pronounce the word “anonymous.” Perhaps oddest of all, though, was that several people standing behind Trump were replaced on camera as the evening went on.

A man in a plaid shirt was replaced seemingly after he made a series of animated facial expressions as the president spoke.

A woman, who some people on Twitter said looked like to be longtime Republican operative Zina Bash, eventually came and took the man’s place on camera. You can watch the moment below:

That man was not the only one removed from his spot behind Trump during the speech. As seen in the clip below, a man and woman in the same row were replaced by two blond women. The resulting image is Trump flanked by young women.

It’s not uncommon that Trump’s rallies feature a mix of supporters and protesters, leaving Trump staffers to handle situations quickly and quietly.

But these swaps are particularly egregious considering they were all mid-speech and directly behind the president, and the people who were swapped out didn’t appear to be doing anything wrong.

The White House did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

[Huffington Post]

Trump: Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was ridiculed by the ‘fake news’

President Trump on Thursday night claimed that the media “excoriated” President Lincoln when he gave the Gettysburg Address in 1863.

“You know when Abraham Lincoln made that Gettysburg Address speech, the great speech, you know he was ridiculed?” Trump said during a rally in Billings, Mont., citing the 272-word speech that Lincoln gave on a battlefield near Gettysburg, Pa., during the Civil War.

“And he was excoriated by the fake news. They had fake news then. They said it was a terrible, terrible speech.”

Trump said the speech only became widely revered 50 years after Lincoln’s death.

“Fifty years after his death they said it may have been the greatest speech ever made in America,” Trump said. “I have a feeling that’s going to happen with us. In different ways, that’s going to happen with us.”

Trump’s comments came as part of a free-wheeling speech he delivered in support of GOP Senate candidate Matt Rosendale on Thursday night.

The president touted Rosendale, Montana’s state auditor, during the speech while taking several shots at his Democratic rival, incumbent Sen. Jon Tester.

“Jon Tester will never drain the swamp because he happens to live in the swamp and he loves the swamp,” Trump said.

Tester is one of 10 Democratic senators running for reelection in states that Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race between Tester and Rosendale as a “likely” win for the Democrat.

[The Hill]

Trump Says He’s Going to Tell Sean Hannity to Stop Airing His Critics

During a rally in Montana Thursday night, President Donald Trump gave a shout out to a Fox News host.

“Do we love Sean Hannity, by the way?” Trump asked the raucous crowd.

He then suggested that he’s going to tell the Fox News host not to air his critics anymore.

“I love him. But here’s the only thing,” Trump said. “He puts up all these losers that say horrible things. I’ve got to talk to him.”

Then pointing to the media pen, he told the crowd, “And by the way, look at all the fake news back there.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Mocks the #MeToo Movement During Montana Rally

Donald Trump, whom more than a dozen women have accused of sexual misconduct, has made no secret of his distaste for the #MeToo movement, defending both longtime pal Roger Ailes and ex-Fox mega-host Bill O’Reilly against charges of sexual misconduct (Ailes he called a “very, very good person,” while of O’Reilly he said, “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”). But in February, the president made his position on #MeToo even more explicit: the day after defending former staff secretary Rob Porter, who resigned amid allegations of domestic abuse from two of his ex-wives, Trump tweeted that “lives are being shattered and destroyed” by “mere” allegations. “He says he’s innocent, and I think you have to remember that,” Trump said the day prior. “He said very strongly . . . that he’s innocent.” The comments inspired a wave of disquiet among those inclined to support women in speaking out about harassment and abuse. And on Thursday, the president revived his rhetoric during a bizarre rally in Montana ostensibly intended to stoke support for the state’s Republican Senate candidate.

Riffing on his nickname for Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose Native American heritage he has repeatedly questioned, Trump—who made no mention of the hasty same-day resignation of E.P.A. chief Scott Pruitt—told the crowd, “I want to apologize. Pocahontas, I apologize to you . . . to you I apologize. To the fake Pocahontas, I won’t apologize.”

He went on to suggest that if Warren won the 2020 Democratic primary, he would dare her to take an ancestry test during a televised debate. “We’ll take that little kit and say, we have to do it gently because we are in the #MeToo generation, so we have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it” to Warren, “hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm.” Trump added that he’d give $1 million to charity if the test “shows [Warren is] an Indian . . . I have a feeling,” he said, “she will say no.”

Nor did Trump confine himself to insulting a potential Democratic opponent—during the same speech, he also claimed that Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters had an I.Q. in the “mid-60s,” lobbed derogatory criticisms at journalists, and vouched for Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the rally, Warren fired back with a tweet, writing, “Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order. Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you’re destroying.”

The president’s particular strain of misogyny has been on display for much of this week—earlier on Thursday, Trump told reporters that he doesn’t believe allegations that G.O.P. Rep. Jim Jordan knew about the sexual abuse of student athletes while he was a coach at Ohio State University. (Jordan himself has denied them.) “I don’t believe them at all,” Trump said of Jordan’s accusers, adding that he believes in Jordan’s innocence “100 percent”. Thursday also happened to be the day the White House officially hired Bill Shine, the former Fox News co-president who allegedly covered for Ailes for years. In making such statements, Trump seems to be indicating that no line of attack is off-limits—a tactic that successfully set him apart from a crowded Republican field in 2016.

He’s also setting a deeply toxic precedent for the 2020 presidential race—particularly if he faces off against another woman. And though this strategy is likely to appeal to his base, potentially deepening the gulf between people who believe women when they say they’ve been forced to endure sexual harassment and people who don’t, it is not without risk for Republicans. Not only could it further galvanize Democrats, but it could also alienate women voters who, according to a poll published on Friday, have a disproportionately negative view of the president: just 32 percent of women approve of his job performance, compared to 51 percent of men.

[Vanity Fair]

Trump dismisses concerns about Russia: ‘Putin’s fine’

President Trump on Thursday waved off concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions as he prepares to meet with his Russian counterpart in Finland later this month.

Speaking at a campaign-style rally in Montana, Trump attacked critics who have questioned his preparedness for the July 16 summit with Putin and made light of Putin’s past as a top-ranking intelligence official.

“They’re going ‘Will President Trump be prepared, you know, President Putin is KGB and this and that,’” Trump said. “You know what? Putin’s fine. He’s fine. We’re all fine. We’re people. Will I be prepared? Totally prepared. I’ve been preparing for this stuff my whole life.”

In fact, Putin served for years in the KGB, the now-defunct Soviet intelligence agency, before becoming the director of its successor, the FSB.

Trump has long insisted that he wants to improve U.S. relations with Russia – a task that has been complicated by the U.S. intelligence community’s determination that Moscow sought to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

That interference by Moscow – and whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with the Russians – is the subject of a special counsel investigation, which Trump has dismissed as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.”

The American president on Thursday rebuffed critics, who have expressed concern over his ambitions to form bonds with authoritarian leaders, like Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said that “getting along” with such countries “is a good thing.”

“Getting along…with Russia and getting along with China and getting along with other countries is a good thing,” he said. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing.”

[The Hill]

Trump returns to attacks on media: ‘These are really bad people’

President Trump attacked the media once again on Thursday, calling them “downright dishonest” and “really bad people” during a campaign-style rally in Montana.

“I see the way they write. They’re so damn dishonest,” Trump said. “And I don’t mean all of them, because some of the finest people I know are journalists really. Hard to believe when I say that. I hate to say it, but I have to say it. But 75 percent of those people are downright dishonest. Downright dishonest. They’re fake. They’re fake.”

“They make the sources up. They don’t exist in many cases,” he continued. “These are really bad people.”

Trump’s comments, made at a rally in Montana where he blasted incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), came a week after a gunman opened fire on the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., leaving five people dead and several others injured.

The suspected shooter, who was identified as 38-year-old Jarrod Ramos, was arrested shortly after the attack and charged with five counts of first-degree murder.

While the attack was not determined to be politically motivated, it reignited criticism of Trump’s own rhetoric towards the press, which he has previously called the “enemy of the American people.”

After the shooting last week, Trump offered his condolences to the shooting’s victims and their families, and condemned the attack.

“Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job,” he said.

[The Hill]

Reality

Fox Business host Charles Gasparino pointed out Trump was his anonymous source for years.

Trump repeats inaccurate claim that Reagan didn’t win Wisconsin

President Trump repeated on Thursday his inaccurate claim that former President Ronald Reagan didn’t win the state of Wisconsin during his presidential elections.

“Take Wisconsin, I just left Wisconsin,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Montana.

“Reagan had his big win. He won every state except one, the great state of Wisconsin,” Trump said. “I won Wisconsin, first time since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.”

Reagan won the state in both 1980 and 1984. Minnesota was the only state that Reagan did not win in the 1984 election.

Eisenhower also won the state in his reelection in 1956. Former President Richard Nixon also won the state multiple times between Eisenhower’s and Trump’s elections.

Wisconsin is traditionally a blue state, but Trump narrowly picked it up in the 2016 election.

Hillary Clinton‘s lack of campaigning in Wisconsin has been widely cited as to why she lost the state.

Trump made a similar remark during an event in Wisconsin last week.

“And I won Wisconsin. And I like Wisconsin a lot but we won Wisconsin. And Ronald Reagan, remember, Wisconsin was the state that Ronald Reagan did not win,” Trump said at the time.

[The Hill]

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