Sen. Markwayne Mullin tried to blame former President Barack Obama for Jeffrey Epstein‘s 2008 plea deal, despite Obama not being president at the time.

Mullin made the comments while being interviewed by Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. First, Tapper and Mullin debated over whether the attorney general has the ability to release documents related to the Epstein investigation, with Mullin insisting that only judges have the ability to make that information public and Tapper arguing that there is additional information that Attorney General Pam Bondi could — and has promised to — release, yet she has not done so.

Then Mullin made a bizarre claim that Epstein struck a deal in Florida in 2009, under President Obama. But that is factually incorrect, as Tapper pointed out.

  • 13igTyme@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    A few weeks ago I had to correct someone on Lemmy who was blaming Obama for the “great recession”. The comment even had a bunch of up votes.

    Other people proceeded to also argue with me that Obama, who was sworn in on Jan 20th 2009, was responsible for the Great recession that started December 2007.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Though Obama did team up with Bush to ensure the banks that caused it were bailed out quickly. This happened sometime around nov or dec 2008, after Obama had been elected but before he was sworn in.

      And it was changes made during the Clinton presidency that allowed so many high risk mortgages to exist in the first place.

      Not sure if the approval to bundle them together and call them lower risk was a Bush era thing or came from before that.

      But even if the timing of the recession had started in 2009, it would have been something Obama inherited from Bush and Clinton. He only controlled his response to it (which wasn’t great, as that money was used to allow banks to pay bonuses and buy up foreclosed properties while people laid off for no fault of their own lost their homes).

      • sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca
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        22 hours ago

        He only controlled his response to it (which wasn’t great, as that money was used to allow banks to pay bonuses and buy up foreclosed properties while people laid off for no fault of their own lost their homes).

        That ‘not great’ response prevented the complete and imminent collapse of the entire global economy. I’m not sure what the phenomenon of discounting the much worse outcome is once it is avoided, but I’m pretty sure it has a name.

        It’s the same phenomenon that has people say that the covid crisis was overblown and vaccination was unnecessary because it subsided on its own, ignoring the impact that billions of people getting vaccinated had.

        • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          That’s a bit hyperbolic. Certainly a lot of big players in the financial industry would not exist anymore and a lot of rich people would have gone bankrupt, but for the majority of people, it would not have looked much different than doing nothing.

          What should have happened is, instead of giving free money to the banks, the bad loans should have been paid off through a forgiveness program. That would have saved both the banks and regular people and wouldn’t have given the banks cover to make up fraudulent liens to steal people’s homes.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          Though it was one of the least responsible ways to save it: handing a blank check to the ones that made the bad gambles in the first place. They didn’t even have anyone go and look at what was being done with it. It might have been one of the biggest wealth transfers in history. Plus it set a precedent that the government will step in to limit risk, which encourages more of this shit.

          Though at least they didn’t do the same to bail out the shortsellers that were getting squeezed for GME and those other meme stocks a few years back (which could have also broken the economy). There was fuckery, but it wasn’t “the taxpayers will pay your bills when you lose big while you proportionally pay less than most of them when you do win”.

          • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
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            12 hours ago

            They should have made any bank bailout contingent on nationalization. That was the big mistake.

            Is your bank insolvent to the point that it needs emergency federal assistance? Is it so grand that letting your Tower of Babel collapse endangers the entire nation? Do we the taxpayers have a guns to ours heads here, forcing us to give out these bailouts? All to clean up the mess left behind by overpaid, overconfident, completely incompetent bank executives?

            If so? Fine. A bailout will be given to protect the customers and the nation, but the existing shareholders are completely wiped out. The feds take ownership of the bank. They divide the accounts and remaining assets of the megabank up amongst a dozen smaller new banks it creates as a replacement for the failed giant. The Federal Reserve provides credit to the new banks as they get started. Eventually, when they stabilize, the government holds IPOs for the new banks and completely divests ownership of them.

            THAT is how bank bailouts should work. This way, moral hazard is avoided, the government isn’t fleeced, and market consolidation is reversed all in one go.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      I honestly don’t believe a lot of the anti-DNC content is organic. Like, yeah, we DO have lemmy users who don’t like the DNC, in no short supply. But more than that I think their representation and vote power is just botnets by Chinese and Russian trolls/psyops trying to create situations beneficial to their masters.

      Generally, people in the USA are tribalistic between the two sides or simply uninformed. To think more than half of a niche but open platform like Lemmy would be against both sides is just improbable.

      • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Lemmy has a much higher than average population of actual socialists, communists, and anarchists. It doesn’t blow my mind that they would oppose a neoliberal party that works exclusively for the rich.

        • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          There’s opposing the neo liberals and then there’s blatant fascist propaganda.

          Like the fact that Obama used the double tap drone strike, which is unarguably a war crime because it almost always hits first responders.

          That’s a true and valid criticism.

          Making believe that Obama had anything to do with Epstein or that he started Bush’s recession is just shifting blame away from the fascist party and helps no one but the fascists.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          Except for the fact that the only party who have taxed or regulated the rich in the last 40 years are those human rights advocates you despise so much, and the very very very few minor parties who caucus with them.

          • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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            22 hours ago

            They have least one thing in common that’s relevant to this conversation - they’re not big fans of neoliberala

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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            18 hours ago

            But a Tankie can pretend to be an Anarchist with no issue at all. They just have to advocate destroying the governing institutions in the west.

      • 13igTyme@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        There may be some bots, but honestly based on some conversations I’ve had with tankies and fake “leftist” many are some of the stupidest people I’ve talked to even compared to some brain dead Republicans.

        • Honytawk@feddit.nl
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          1 day ago

          Those bots have to play stupid, otherwise their propaganda isn’t consistent enough and they will be found out easily.

          • Klear@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I’m not saying there are no bots, but some of them are definitely just that dumb.

            • AlexLost@lemmy.world
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              19 hours ago

              I think you mean children. A whole lot of people commenting are literal children with no idea how the world works yet, or at the least very little.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          Maybe a hundred years ago, but today we have one party with a black president and another party who want to put him in jail because he was black.

          • fritobugger2017@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            You are almost correct. The shift began with Nixon’s Southern Strategy. The transition of Southern Democrats who are also KKK members/racists to the Republican party began about 60 years ago.

            • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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              12 hours ago

              Pretty sure Democrat President Lindon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act predates that, but yes roughly 60 years ago.

      • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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        23 hours ago

        Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony to Trump’s DoJ definitely doesn’t mean she’ll soon be swearing it was only Democrats and Donald’s political enemies (and maybe sacrificial Republicans) that abused and trafficked children with Epstein… Then, a surprise pardon will suddenly reward her in the future. Mark my words.

      • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Well, the democrats were trying to become the party of Bush so I guess they kind of both want the same thing.

          • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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            I didn’t say they’re the same. Have you already forgotten that the Harris campaign literally paraded around members of the Bush administration?

              • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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                I’m not disagreeing with that. She surely would have been vastly better than the current president. It’s too bad the DNC paraded around those Bush admins and lost the election. She had so much momentum until they toned down her more progressive message.

                • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  She got all the votes from the progressives it was the center-right members of the party that didn’t show up to vote which tells me that they didn’t lean right enough.

    • Floon@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      They just want every intolerable thing Republicans do to be misremembered as something done by a Democrat. Witness so many chyrons on Fox News mislabeling a GOP pol as (D) when they were forced to talk about some current scandal.

      • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Iran has been next on the list for a while. John McCain even had a cute little song about it while campaigning. Though, I think Dick Cheney wanted to do Syria first.

  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Are we also ignoring that the AG that have Epstein the plea deal was Secretary of Labor under trump?

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This the idiot hick who wanted to fight the Teamsters guy in a committee meeting?

    Yeah. Seems like a real genius.

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      That’s kind of unfair to people in blue states. Are they supposed to travel to other states where they are not residents and confront politicians elected in elections in which they could not vote?

    • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
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      2 days ago

      That’s just unrealistic.

      It’d take some kind of constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms and something about well regulating a militia. Probably framed in terms of security of the union or something.

      Then maybe these fascists might be kept in check.

  • Lasherz@lemmy.worldM
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    2 days ago

    Mullin is one of the dumbest people ever elected to congress, and that’s saying something.

  • Lucky_777@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This is what happens when you run as an R only. Oklahomans don’t care about who or what is on the ballot. If it has a -R, then that’s the ticket!

  • LordCrom@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Denying the truth and rewriting history is tmright out of 1984. All they lack is the enforcement part where if anyone disagrees with the rewrite, they would get black bagged.

    Oh, didn’t ICE just get more funding then most military

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Gotta be like China to compete with China.
      Soon there will be dates you cannot speak of. Children working in factories. One political party. (Problem is we don’t export anything.)