Will Heracles Biden Slay The Many Headed MAGA Monster
The MAGA monster is a real life Hydra, the water monster in Greek and Roman mythology that lived at the entrance to hell.
According to the Greeks and Romans, Hydra had poisonous breath and blood so nasty that even its scent was deadly. The Hydra had many heads, regenerating two new heads for every one chopped off.
But Heracles persevered and with the help of his nephew Iolaus, they lopped off all of the monster’s heads and burned the neck using a sword and fire.
As we hope that Biden is the new Heracles, here is a glimpse of the many faces of MAGA.
Rep. Andy Ogles
Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., told colleagues that climate change is just “climate alarmism” because it was 29 degrees on Halloween when Ogles went trick-or-treating with his children. Never mind the worldwide cataclysmic weather, the record heat, record flooding, record hurricanes,record wildfires, not to mention the consensus of every legitimate climate change scientist.
“You know, we may have had a hot summer, but I just went trick or treating with my kids, and it was like, you know, the low that evening was 29 degrees, so temperatures change, alright? Temperatures have been changing for the millennia,” said Ogles.
Ogles said that “alarmism” over climate change is standing in the way of the nation achieving energy independence.
“If we were truly worried about the environment, if we truly wanted to be energy independent, we would have modular nuclear reactors being built all over this country. That is the future of electricity. That is the future of the environment. That is the future of us being energy independent,” said Ogles.
Ogles, 52, is in his first term as a congressman for Tennessee’s 5th congressional district. As a member of the far right Freedom Caucus, Ogles opposes abortion with no exceptions and want to prohibit same-sex marriage.
During the attempts by trump supporters to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Ogles falsely claimed that the election was stolen.
At a political debate, Ogles called himself “a former member of law enforcement, worked in international sex crimes, specifically child trafficking” and at a separate forum, he said, “I went into law enforcement. I worked in human trafficking.”
Published reports showed that Ogles was a volunteer reserve deputy with the Williams County Sheriff’s Office from 2009 until he was released in 2011, for failing to meet minimum standards, failing to progress in field training, and failing to attend required meetings.
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office has no records showing Ogles trained or worked against international sex trafficking as a reserve deputy.
Ogles also sent a 2021 Christmas card with a photo of the congressman and his family, posing with assault rifles.
Gabrielle Hanson
Gabrielle Hanson claimed that voter fraud was why she lost overwhelmingly to incumbent Ken Moore in the October election for mayor of Franklin, Tenn. Moore got 12,822 votes and Hanson picked up a paltry, 3,322 votes.
“Outside of donald trump, I don’t think there’s anybody that’s run for office that’s been as persecuted as I was,” claimed Hanson, a real estate agent.
Hanson, who is a former alderman, also was widely criticized for turning up at a candidate forum with members of the Tennessee Active Club, an extremist group supporting white supremacy. Last week, she was seen at government meetings with bodyguards who have affiliations with neo-Nazi groups and the Proud Boys.
The Center on Extremism of the Anti Defamation League reported that Active Clubs around the nation distribute white supremacist propaganda, participate in small-scale demonstrations, and often gather privately for training events such as sparring, hiking or book/flag burning. The Active Club network formed in January 2021, and is active in at least 25 states and with multiple chapters abroad.
“Active Club members see themselves as fighters training for an ongoing war against a system that they claim is deliberately plotting against the white race,” the center reported.
Hanson also admitted that she was arrested for promoting prostitution in Dallas in the mid-1990s. She claimed the arrest stemmed from a job she had answering phones for a “modeling and entertainment casting company” in Dallas while she was attending Southern Methodist University. According to Hanson, she was unaware that the company was running an escort service until the police showed up at her door about a year later.
Hanson said she couldn’t afford a lawyer so she plead no contest to one count of promotion of prostitution. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt but acceptance of punishment as if one had pleaded guilty. Hanson said the court ordered that she “not live in Dallas for two years,” so she moved to Chicago where she said she “rekindled her love for Christ.”
Hanson, a vehement opponent of the LGBTQ community, tried to block a Pride event held in a city park in April, while in 2008, her husband was running for congress when he wore nothing but an American flag Speedo bathing suit at the RuPaul’s Drag Race in Chicago. Hanson later said she had dared her husband to put on the Speedo for the race.
Tim Ballard
Tim Ballard, an anti-child trafficking activist and darling of the far right, has been sued for sexually abusing women who posed as his wife.
Ballard’s life story and work with his organization, Operation Underground Railroad, are the basis of “Sound of Freedom,” a 2023 film popular with conservatives. Ballard recently resigned from the Operation Underground Railroad group but denied allegations of sexual abuse and harassment.
Five women filed the lawsuit, alleging that they were sexually manipulated, abused and harassed by Ballard on overseas trips that were ostensibly designed to lure and catch child sex traffickers. The women had posed as Ballard’s wife to fool sex traffickers into thinking he was a legitimate client, according to the lawsuit filed in Utah state court.
While promotional materials portrayed the group’s overseas missions as “paramilitary drop-ins to arrest traffickers and rescue children,” they mostly involved “going to strip clubs and massage parlors across the world, after flying first class to get there, and staying at five-star hotels, on boats, and at VRBOs (vacation rentals by owner) across the globe,” the lawsuit alleges.
The women who filed the lawsuit allege Ballard used his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and connection to church leaders to persuade them what he was doing was just for the good of children in need of help.
Ballard also was a special advisor to trump’s daughter, Ivanka trump, and was appointed in 2019 to a White House anti-human-trafficking board.
Douglass Mackey
Rabid trump supporter Douglass Mackey was sentenced to seven months in jail for tweeting false voting ads “suggesting the importance of limiting ‘Black turnout,’ federal prosecutors said.
During the 2016 presidential election, Mackey posted the phony campaign ads on his social media account. Prosecutors said the ads urged people to vote for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton via social media or text message, which are both invalid ways to cast ballots. Prosecutors said Mackey had posted the fraudulent ads to his Twitter account, now known as X, where he had about 58,000 followers at the time.
“One of the foundational rights we hold as Americans, a right that many fought so hard to obtain, is the right to vote,” said Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for New York’s Eastern District. “The defendant weaponized disinformation in a dangerous scheme to stop targeted groups, including black and brown people and women, from participating in our democracy.”
Dave Roetman
Dave Roetman, the newly-appointed and quickly, ex-executive director of the North Dakota Republican Party, quit after it was discovered that he had posted racist tweets suggesting that African American should “move to Wakanda.”
Roetman was on the job for just 10 days when he resigned after the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported that Roetman made “dozens and dozens of ignorant social media posts,” including comments underneath photos of half-naked women, jokes about women making sandwiches and pies, and a suggestion that African Americans should leave the United States and migrate to Wakanda, the fictional African kingdom that was the setting for the Marvel film “Black Panther.”
The paper also reported that in response to a woman’s post about relationship advice, Roetman said, “Here’s a quarter, keep it between your knees.”
A COVID-19 conspiracist, Roetman also backs trump’s false claims that voter fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election.
Roetman was hired by the North Dakota Republican Party after the former executive director, Samantha Holly, abruptly quit in September because she wanted to exclude traditionally conservative Republicans in favor of trump loyalists.
Ben Carson
It’s easy to say Al Capone in the same breath as trump and that is exactly what Ben Carson, the former Republican presidential candidate and Housing and Urban Development Secretary under trump, did.
Trump had 44 cabinet officials and only six have endorsed his 2024 presidential reelection bid. The latest, Carson, said trump has been treated even worse than notorious gangster, Capone.
The other former cabinet members supportive of trump 2024 are Sarah Huckabee, the former trump mouthpiece and now governor of Arkansas; Matthew Whitaker, former acting attorney general; Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff; Russell Vought, Trump’s former budget chief; and Richard Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence, according to NBC.
“Al Capone, who was a notorious killer, had one indictment, and Donald Trump has four indictments. That would tell you something right there. … It’s evidence that you have a group of people, a system that is out to get this president, and they feel that he is an existential threat to their existence,” Carson said in a television interview.
Carson apparently was saying that as bad as Capone was, he was indicted just once. Trump, however, is a victim of a weaponized Justice Department that has indicted trump many times, Carson claimed.
The comparison to one of the nation’s most notorious bank robber, murderer and mob boss, was previously drawn by trump, himself, when he whined about his legal problems and said, “Never before has this happened to another President, and it is an absolute violation of my civil rights…. I’ve been investigated by the Democrats more than Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Al Capone, combined.”
Another time, trump messaged that he has “more lawyers working for me on this Corrupt Law Enforcement induced Bull…. than any human being in the history of our Country, including even the late great gangster, Alphonse Capone!”
All of this mumbo jumbo really means is that the government has enough evidence to charge the historically evasive trump with multiple crimes but only needed one allegation of federal income tax evasion to nab Capone.
Trump and Capone were both successful in avoiding prosecution for so many years. Now trump continues to try to delay trials in hopes of being elected in 2014 and pardoning himself of any crimes.
The government failed to bring Capone to justice for masterminding the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, in which seven of his gangland Chicago rivals were killed, and for the violent extortion and bootlegging empire he built during Prohibition. In the end, Capone was sent to prison in 1931 after he was found guilty of income tax evasion. Capone was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison, fined $50,000 and charged $7,692 for court costs, in addition to $215,000 plus interest due on back taxes.
Suffering from paresis derived from syphilis, he had deteriorated greatly during his confinement. He had become mentally incapable of returning to gangland politics. In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist, after examination, both concluded Capone then had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. Capone died on Jan. 25, 1947, of a stroke.
Federico Klein
Last week, Federico Klein, 42, a former trump-appointed State Department employee, was sentenced to 70 months in prison for his violent role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by trump supporters.
Klein had been found guilty of unlawful entry, violent and disorderly conduct, obstructing Congress and law enforcement, and assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon. In videos, Klein is seen wearing a red “Make America Great Again” cap while assaulting officers with a stolen riot shield.
At the time, Klein was still employed by the State Department and had a Top Secret security clearance. He served in the Marine Corps for roughly nine years. In January 2017, he began working for the State Department as a desk officer specializing in the South American region. Klein worked for trump’s 2016 campaign and after the 2020 presidential election, he helped investigate the baseless claims of voter fraud promoted by trump.
Mark Meadows
Mark Meadows, trump’s former chief of staff, has been sued by a book publisher over claims made in Meadows’ book that trump was a victim of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
The publisher, All Seasons Press, claims that Meadows violated an agreement by including false statements about trump’s claims surrounding the 2020 election. Meadows’s book, “The Chief’s Chief,” was published in 2021 and includes information on the election.
“Meadows, the former White House Chief of Staff under President Donald J. Trump, promised and represented that ‘all statements contained in the Work are true and based on reasonable research for accuracy’ and that he ‘has not made any misrepresentations to the Publisher about the Work,’” the publishing company claimed in the suit.
The suit claims that Meadows breached the warranties, causing All Seasons Press to “suffer significant monetary and reputational damage when the media widely reported … that he warned President Trump against claiming that election fraud corrupted the electoral votes cast in the 2020 Presidential Election and that neither he nor former President Trump actually believed such claims.”
In the book, Meadows claimed that trump “was the true winner of the 2020 Presidential Election and that election was ‘stolen’ and ‘rigged’ with the help from ‘allies in the liberal media,’ who ignored ‘actual evidence of fraud.’”
The suit was filed after it was reported that Meadows received immunity to testify before a grand jury convened to hear evidence from special counsel Jack Smith, reportedly contradicting statements he made in his book.
According to published reports, Meadows testified before the grand jury that trump was being “dishonest” with voters when he claimed victory on election night. Meadows also admitted that trump lost the election and that he hasn’t seen any fraud in the 2020 election that would shift trump’s loss to President Biden.
Meadows has not been charged in the federal government’s election interference case against trump, but he has been charged in a racketeering and election law case in Georgia involving trump and others.
The publisher is asking for the $350,000 it paid Meadows as an advance for the book, $600,000 in out-of-pocket damages, and at least $1 million each for reputational damage suffered by the company and loss of expected profits for the book.
Cory Mills
Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., claimed that “paid actors” are pretending to be killed in the Israel-Hamas war. Mills made the unsubstantiated allegations during an interview on the Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a conservative propaganda media outlet best known for live streaming coverage of trump’s rallies, town halls, and public events on the RSBN YouTube channel. As of June 2023, RSBN’s channel has over 1.57 million subscribers and has received 235 million total views.
Mills, 43, is a freshman congressman representing Florida’s 7th District. After his election victory, Mills handed out commemorative 40 mm grenades stamped with the Republican Party logo to fellow House members.
“What the mainstream media is saying about the indiscriminate fire and the actors — I mean you literally have paid actors who are pretending to be killed, pretending to be treated,” he said in Kissimmee, Fla., site of the Florida Freedom Summit where GOP presidential candidates were scheduled to speak.
“So what I ask every individual as we already do here in America, educate yourself and find good, positive outsources and stop trusting mainstream media that corrupts the minds of every single American at home,” Mills said.
Far-right, conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones pushed similarly false claims of paid actors simulating real events. Jones was successfully sued by parents of victims of the 2012 Newtown, Conn., school shooting after he falsely claimed the massacre was a hoax that used actors.
An Army veteran, Mills was a civilian defense contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, working with DynCorp., specializing in anti-piracy and special tactical services. He is co-founder of ALS Less-Lethal Systems, a company that manufactures equipment for military and law enforcement clients.
In May 2023, Mills co-sponsored a resolution by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to impeach President Biden over his handling of security at the United States-Mexico border.
Mills is the fourth representative from Florida to endorse trump for president in the 2024 election.
Jimmy Patronis
Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer, said the state should fund trump’s legal battles because the ex-president owns a home in Florida and is “one of our own.”
Patronis posted on X, the former Twitter platform, that the Justice Department is “after” Trump, who is charged in Florida with mishandling classified documents by taking highly-sensitive documents with him in cardboard boxes to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach after leaving the White House.
“Are we really going to deny one of our own a fair shot against a witch hunt?” Patronis wrote. “We didn’t start this.”
Patronis also spoke of his plan at the Florida Republican Party’s Freedom Summit, where GOP candidates for president were scheduled to speak.
“I think we need to set up a new legal defense fund for any Florida presidential candidate to use when they are targeted by politically motivated prosecutors, by the Department of Justice,” Patronis said. Patronis said the state should help pay for trump’s legal bills in an effort to offset the “double standard of justice” faced by Trump.
“Imagine if we could fix the double standard of justice at the federal level,” Patronis said during a speech at the summit. “If we could fix the double standard of justice that doesn’t lock up a Hunter Biden but does everything possible to prosecute President Donald Trump.”
Patronis is Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, State Fire Marshal, and is a member of the Florida Cabinet. He has a degree in restaurant management from Gulf Coast Community College and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Florida State University. Patronis is a partner in a family-owned seafood restaurant called Captain Anderson’s that celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017.
Patronis is a former member of the Florida state House of Representatives. He did not seek re-election in 2006 because of a term limits law.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former trump press secretary who once insisted that trump never lied, has endorsed her former boss for president.
Sanders is currently governor of Arkansas. She was trump’s mouthpiece from 2017 to 2019 and had a confrontational relationship with the press. A graduate of Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., she has a bachelor’s degree in political science.
After trump fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017, Sanders said that she “heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the President’s decision” to fire him. Emails showed that several FBI heads of regional field offices and high-ranking FBI members reacted with dismay to Comey’s firing.
After Comey accused trump of lying about the circumstances in which he was dismissed, Sanders defended Trump, “I can definitively say the president is not a liar, and I think it’s frankly insulting that question would be asked.”
When interviewed by investigators as part of the Mueller probe, Sanders admitted to lying in her role. She had fewer press conferences than any of the 13 previous White House press secretaries.
In announcing her support for a second trump presidency, Sander said “It’s not a question between right versus left anymore. It’s normal versus crazy, and President Biden and the left are doubling down on crazy.”
She said it is time “to return to the normal policies of the Trump era which created a safer, stronger, and more prosperous America, and that’s why I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for President.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., campaigned for trump in New Hampshire, fueling speculation that she could run for president in 2028.