President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects, according to a damning new account of life inside the Trump administration by former national security adviser John Bolton.

During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that “Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats.

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

The episode described by Bolton in his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” bears striking similarities to the actions that resulted in Trump’s impeachment after he sought to pressure the Ukrainian president to help dig up dirt on Democratic rival Joe Biden in exchange for military assistance. The China allegation also comes amid ongoing warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies about foreign election interference in November, as Russia did to favor Trump in 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-chinas-xi-to-help-him-win-reelection-according-to-bolton-book/2020/06/17/d4ea601c-ad7a-11ea-868b-93d63cd833b2_story.html

Celebs ranging from Chelsea Handler and Jessica Chastain to Jennifer Aniston and Ice Cube have been fawning over Louis Farrakhan—a homophobic anti-Semite with ties to Scientology.

I regret to inform you the celebs are at it again.

On Sunday, in lieu of posting Instagram-friendly protest content, discussing White Fragility in a Zoom book club, or recording a mortifyingly tone-deaf PSA renouncing racism, the comedian Chelsea Handler shared a video clip to her 3.9 million Instagram followers. The clip featured Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, during a 1990 appearance on The Phil Donahue Show.

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On top of his rabid anti-Semitism, Farrakhan, 87, has banned women from his speeches; said they should eschew short skirts and abortion, and opt to be homemakers who dote on their husbands; and, during the aforementioned 2018 speech at Mosque Maryam, floated a bizarre conspiracy involving Barack Obama, the Jews, the World Bank, and the gay community. “Brother Barack [Obama], under Jewish influence, trying to introduce same-sex marriage to African people, and the Africans say, ‘We don’t have nothing like that in our history. We can’t identify with that.’ Then the Western man says, ‘If you want this money from the World Bank or the IMF, you have to make a law that allows same-sex marriage.’ Look, brothers and sisters, this is satanic,” he said.

Farrakhan has also repeatedly praised Donald Trump, saying in a 2016 speech that he was “the only member who has stood in front of the Jewish community and said, ‘I don’t want your money.’” When Farrakhan praised Trump again in 2018, right-wing trolls Candace Owens and Glenn Beck celebrated Farrakhan’s endorsement of their Dear Leader.

Oh, and let’s not forget Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam’s strange ties to the Church of Scientology. As I reported in 2018, “The alliance between the Nation of Islam, a black organization, and Scientology, an almost entirely white one, was hatched in the mid-Aughts, when the late Isaac Hayes, one of the only famous black Scientologists, approached Scientology leader David Miscavige and asked why the “religion” wasn’t doing more to court black Americans. So Miscavige reached out to the Nation of Islam, and by 2010, they began promoting the “benefits” of Dianetics, the core set of ideas preached by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. During a sermon in Chicago on July 1, 2012, Farrakhan proclaimed to his acolytes, ‘I found the tool that I know can help us. And I thank God for Mr. L. Ron Hubbard. And I thank God for his research and teaching.’”

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