President Donald Trump had a lot to say at the White House Social Media Summit on Thursday, including offering his take on what does and does not constitute free speech. While the social media influencers in the room do, he said, the mainstream media does not. Also writing something ‘bad’ about something ‘good’ didn’t make the cut.

The president was already deep into his address when he made the remark, having had two other people take the podium already. After he retook the microphone, he talked about speaking with the honchos at tech companies, including Google and Twitter. He told the audience that at these one-on-one conversations “at the highest level” the tech leaders seem to be understanding or on board, and that then they go back and he realizes “three or four weeks later it’s worse, it actually got worse.”

He talked about how Silicon Valley is admired for their technology and how smart they are, but that they aren’t “using that brilliance” fairly. “They have to do that.”

“And we don’t want to stifle anything, we certainly don’t want to stifle free speech. But that’s no longer free speech,” said Trump. “See I don’t think that the mainstream media is free speech either, because it’s so crooked, it’s so dishonest.”

“So to me, free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad, to me that’s very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it,” said Trump. “But that’s not free speech.”

He continued, talking about CNN and the use of the phrase “fake news” in the mainstream press. “The worst fakers of all” are using the phrase, he said. “They’ve turned it around!”

“We’re just not going to allow it to happen like this,” he said, returning to his commentary about what isn’t free speech. “We’re not going to be silenced.”

https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-says-its-not-free-speech-to-write-bad-about-something-good-thats-dangerous-speech/

A gun-toting Florida Man broke into the home of his wife’s lover and cut off the man’s penis with a pair of scissors, according to police who said that the intruder fled the residence with the severed organ.

The victim told cops that a neighbor, Alex Bonilla, 49, entered his mobile home in the town of Bell Sunday morning and threatened to kill him, according to a Gilchrist County Sheriff's Office arrest report.

Once inside, cops say, Bonilla warned the victim that he would kill him if he resisted. Bonilla then “took the Victim into his bedroom, tied him up, and forcefully cut off the Victim’s penis with a pair of scissors.” Bonilla, cops added, “then fled the Victim’s residence with the Victim’s severed penis in his possession.”

Investigators reported that there were two juveniles in the home (seen below) when Bonilla--armed with a 9mm handgun--burst in through an unlocked rear door.

According to the arrest report, Bonilla recently caught his wife and the victim having sex. Bonilla lives directly across the street from the victim.

Seen above, Bonilla, who works for a dairy, was charged with multiple felony charges for “completely severing” the victim’s sexual organ. Bonilla is being held in the Gilchrist County jail in lieu of $1.25 million bond.

The victim was transported to a local hospital for treatment. The arrest report does not detail the man's condition or whether the severed penis was recovered.

https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/revolting/florida-dismemberment-275903

A judge refused to set a minimum prison term because of Borges’ age when he committed the crime in November 2016, meaning he may be eligible for parole in years to come. Any adult convicted of first-degree murder in Massachusetts is automatically sentenced to life behind bars. Borges’ lawyer claimed the killer was ‘not irredeemably depraved.’ But Lee’s mother Katiuska Paulino called for him to spend the rest of his life in jail, WCVB reported. She said: ‘We feel that this criminal deserves to spend his life incarcerated so at the very least, it serves to keep him off the streets. ‘He should never have the opportunity to kill again, to rob another person of their life like he did Lee Manuel, in such a horrible and sad way.’ Borges and Lee were both students at Lawrence High School when Borges killed Lee. The teenager’s dismembered body was found along the banks of the Merrimack River by a dog walker. His head was found nearby, but Lee’s hands, which had also been chopped off, were never recovered. An autopsy revealed Lee’s recovered remains had suffered 76 wounds.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/10/jealous-boy-15-beheaded-schoolmate-16-talking-girlfriend-10149806/?ito=cbshare

Republican Sen. Rand Paul objected Wednesday to an attempt to pass the bill funding 9/11 first responders' health care unanimously, arguing that passing such a long-term bill without offsetting the cost would contribute to the national debt.

The delay presents another hurdle in the dramatic fight to secure funding for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's continued reassurances that the fund would be fully funded. After comedian and fund advocate Jon Stewart gave emotional testimony last month accusing lawmakers of failing to support the bill, the measure was swiftly approved for to a floor vote in the House and passed the lower chamber last week on an overwhelmingly bipartisan 402-12 vote.

When presidential candidate and Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New york requested unanimous consent -- a procedural move that allows a bill to skip several steps to pass unanimously, without senators casting an individual vote -- on the bill on the Senate floor Wednesday so that it be accelerated to a vote without debate, Paul objected.

"It has long been my feeling that we need to address our massive debt in this country -- we have a $22 trillion debt, we're adding debt at about a trillion dollars a year," he said. "And therefore any new spending that we are approaching, any new program that's going to have the longevity of 70, 80 years, should be offset by cutting spending that's less valuable."

"We need to at the very least have this debate. I will be offering up an amendment if this bill should come to the floor, but until then I will object," added Paul, who voted in favor of President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cut. That tax cut is helping drive a deficit increase.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics/rand-paul-objects-9-11-funding-unanimous-consent-gillibrand/index.html

https://news.yahoo.com/florida-deputy-arrested-planting-meth-162151151.html

MARIANNA, Fla. – Fired Jackson County Deputy Zach Wester was arrested on racketeering and numerous other charges for allegedly planting meth and other street drugs on unsuspecting motorists before hauling them off to jail.

Agents with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who have been investigating Wester for more than nine months, arrested him Wednesday. Wester, expected to make his first court appearance on Thursday, invoked his right to remain silent and declined to speak with investigators.

He was arrested on 52 counts in all. Aside from the racketeering count, he was charged with a number of other felonies, including official misconduct, false imprisonment, fabricating evidence and possession of a controlled substance. He was also charged with misdemeanor charges of perjury, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, FDLE said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is wading provocatively into a rift between a group of liberal Democratic congresswomen and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In tweets Sunday, Trump portrays the lawmakers as foreign-born troublemakers who, he says, should go back to their home countries. He tweets: "You can't leave fast enough." In fact, the lawmakers in question are Americans and all but one were born in the U.S.

Trump assails what he calls "'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe." He does not identify the women.

But he’s unmistakably referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and her allies in what’s become known as the squad. The others are Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. Only Omar was foreign-born.

https://www.apnews.com/728ada1e918a482c9e9b1f3e24937caa

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo now constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, the World Health Organization announced on Wednesday.

WHO defines a public health emergency of international concern as "an extraordinary event" that constitutes a "public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease" and "to potentially require a coordinated international response."
The facts about Ebola

The WHO International Health Regulations' Emergency Committee for Ebola Viral Disease in Congo convened at the organization's world headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday to discuss whether or not the outbreak constitutes international concern.
"The fight is ongoing for a full year now," Robert Steffen, chairman of the committee, said during a press conference on Wednesday.
The meeting was the fourth time the committee has convened to review the outbreak. In a deliberation on Friday, it was decided that the outbreak does not constitute a public health emergency of international concern.
"This emergency in Congo has been going on for almost a year and is a very, very serious emergency and has been treated as our highest level of emergency since the beginning -- but the difference that's going on with this committee is, do we need to tell the rest of the world to start taking measures? And if so, what measures are we going to tell them to do?" Dr. Margaret Harris, WHO's communication lead on the Ebola emergency in DRC, said in a video posted to Twitter ahead of the meeting on Wednesday.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/17/health/ebola-outbreak-who-emergency-africa-bn/

When President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter on Monday whether he was concerned that his tweets attacking four Democratic lawmakers were widely viewed as racist, the president said no because "many people agree with me."

It appears he may have been correct.

A national survey conducted online by Reuters/Ipsos on Monday and Tuesday — following Trump's racist tweets on Sunday — found that his approval rating went up with Republicans.

is net approval with Republicans in the new poll was 72%, an increase of 5 percentage points from a similar poll conducted last week.

On the other hand, Trump's approval dropped with Democrats and independents after his tweets. The poll found that about 30% of independents supported Trump, dropping from roughly 40% last week. Trump's net approval with Democrats dropped by 2 points in the new poll.

The latest online poll surveyed 1,113 adults. The credibility interval, an attempt at measuring precision, was 5 points for both Republicans and Democrats, meaning Trump's approval among Republicans, for example, could in fact be unchanged or even greater than the 5-point change found in the poll.

Trump's approval rating overall was unchanged since last week, with 41% of the US public approving of his performance in office and 55% disapproving.

Trump in his tweets told the lawmakers, who are women of color and US citizens, that they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." The tweets played off of the racist "go back to Africa" trope.

The president's demeaning tweets have prompted outrage across the US and led to condemnation from world leaders. A resolution condemning Trump's tweets passed in the House on Tuesday with every Democratic member voting in favor of it. Democrats were joined by just four Republican lawmakers in passing the resolution.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-approval-republican-voters-rose-after-racist-tweets-2019-7