A California school district has put teacher Gregory Salcido on administrative leave after a video went viral in which he can be heard calling U.S. troops the “lowest of the low” and a “bunch of dumb shits,” according to a new report.
Salcido, who is also a city councilman in Pico Rivera, was also removed from the council’s committees after local officials condemned the comments, which were made to a group of high school students, a CBS News affiliate also reported.
The moves come amid a public firestorm over Salcido’s anti-military rant that prompted the Pentagon to respond on Monday. Phones have been ringing off the hook at the Pico Rivera high school and city hall with demands for him to resign, according to the Whittier Daily News, which first reported the administrative leave decision.
The Pentagon’s top outreach official yesterday called the comments “very uninformed” and said it was an example of why the military needs to better educate the public about its role.
The unidentified student who recorded Salcido told Fox News radio that the teacher had called him out in front of the class for wanting to join the military.
This bastard is a dumb POS.
“I told him it’s a family tradition; it’s something I’ve been wanting to do as a kid,” the student told the radio show. “And he ended up saying, ‘So if it was a family tradition to beat women, would you continue it?’”
The student then sat down and started recording with his cell phone to show his parents.
But supporters, who appeared to be loyal students, popped up on Twitter using the hashtag #JusticeForSauce and called for Salcido to be reinstated.
In the video posted on YouTube, Salcido can be heard repeatedly warning his students not to join the military and criticizing the quality of its troops.
“We all have night-vision goggles, all that kind of stuff, and we can’t freakin’ control these dudes wearing freakin’ robes and chanclas [flip-flops] because we have a bunch of dumb shits over there,” Salcido said. “Think about the people you know who are over there, your freakin’ stupid uncle Louie, or whatever, they’re dumb shits. They’re not like high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people. They’re the freakin’ lowest of the low.”
He also told his high school students that signing up to serve is similar to prostitution.
“I don’t understand why we let the freakin’ military guys come over here and recruit you at school. We don’t have pimps come into school. Anyone interested in being a ho [whore]? And they’re going to freakin’ lie to you,” Salcido said.
At one point, he addresses a student who is wearing a Marine Corps shirt.
“Why are you wearing that Marines shirt? I thought you were going to college,” he asked the student.
The student tells him, “I am, I just had the shirt.” But Salcido warns him not to wear it to school.
“Why would you wear something that you can’t freakin’ support? Don’t ever wear that again, don’t ever wear it here,” Salcido said.
Join Our Show on tomorrow were we will give the BSET report on what President Trump had to say at the State of The Union address. Liberals showed up just to have long faces because they truly hate when America does well. We will also discuss those hero’s that the President invited as special guest.
Just some of the points we will be covering below:
On Monday night’s Special Report panel, Mollie Hemingway of ‘The Federalist’ weighed in on the decision to release the report prepared by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes alleging FISA abuse took place during the 2016 campaign.
Mollie Hemingway: Media Is Missing “Something Huge” Happening At FBI
On Monday night’s Special Report panel, Mollie Hemingway of ‘The Federalist’ weighed in on the decision to release the report prepared by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes alleging FISA abuse took place during the 2016 campaign.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: This is a summary memo, this is a four-page memo that is just a summation of a year’s worth of work, hundreds of thousands of pages of testimony, visits to foreign countries, and speak with all different people.
What broke today with Andrew McCabe, the number two at FBI, stepping down, suggests that we have a pretty big situation on our hands. He’s only the most recent person to be demoted, step down, or be reassigned after Congressional or other inquiries about some of what is happening at the FBI.
You had Bruce Ohr, who was demoted twice.
You had Peter Strzok, who had to be taken off the case.
You had Baker, who is gone, and Rybicki, also.
This is quite a collection of people, obviously, there is something huge going on. And I think a lot of people in the media are missing this very large story. Perhaps this memo will help us learn a little bit more about what it is that is causing these changes.
The Trump administration’s record numbers of airstrikes in Afghanistan have failed to expand the Afghan government’s control over its population and stop the Taliban from quickly replacing its opium and heroin processing labs pulverized by the U.S. military, a watchdog agency said in a report to Congress released Tuesday.
In its latest quarterly audit to lawmakers, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted:
The expanded authorities provided [by President Trump] to U.S. forces in Afghanistan have resulted in a significant uptick in U.S. air strikes and special operations against the insurgency, with the U.S. dropping 653 munitions in October 2017, a record high since 2012 and a more than three-fold increase from October 2016.
These actions have yet to increase the Afghan government’s control over its population … The goal of the Afghan government is to control 80% of its population within the next two years.
While the U.S. military is targeting the Taliban’s opium business, dealing a blow worth millions of dollars to the group, it is barely making a dent on the illicit trafficking of the lucrative poppy plant, noted SIGAR, explaining:
U.S. and Afghan air strikes this quarter have targeted the Taliban’s opium-production industry, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates has as many as 400–500 active facilities at any given time.
According to [U.S.] General [John] Nicholson, [the top commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan], U.S. and Afghan forces recently began targeting them, destroying 10 on November 19 alone.
Gen. Nicholson vowed to continue the pressure on the Taliban’s economic engine — opium and heroin — while remaining careful to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties, which have increased by more than ten percent to 4,474 between June 1 and the end of November 2017 when compared to the same period the previous year.
Why let the Taliban have the fields.
Afghan security forces, supported by U.S. Air Force B-52s, F/A-18s, and other aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor, are carrying out the operations against opium and heroin, which generate up to 60 percent of the Taliban’s funding.
“Brigadier General Bunch announced that 25 narcotics labs had been destroyed since the beginning of the campaign in November, which he said was the equivalent of nearly $80 million eliminated from the drug-trafficking organizations while denying over $16 million in direct revenue to the Taliban,” reports SIGAR.
The inspector general suggested the cost of carrying out the airstrikes on the heroin labs may outweigh the outcome, noting:
According to the latest DOD [U.S. Department of Defense] financial- management report, an F-22 costs between $35,294 and $36,799 per hour to operate; a B-52 between $32,569 and $34,341 per hour; and an F/A-18 between $9,798 and $16,173 per hour, depending on the model.
By contrast, the labs being destroyed are cheap and easy to replace. Afghans told Reuters it would takes three or four days to replace a lab in Afghanistan. According to UNODC [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime], the morphine/heroin labs need only simple equipment such as a stove, iron barrel, and locally made pressing machines. According to DOD, the value of seizures and destroyed equipment is based on DEA baselines.
In the report, SIGAR revealed that for the first time, the Pentagon prohibited the watchdog agency from publicizing the full district and land-area under the control of the Afghan government and terrorist groups.
The Pentagon also banned SIGAR from reporting on the strength and capabilities of the struggling Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), who, along with Afghan civilians, have borne the brunt of casualties primarily at the hands of the Taliban in recent years.
“Afghan government control or influence has declined and insurgent control or influence has increased overall since SIGAR began reporting control data in January 2016,” noted the auditor.
U.S. military combat deaths have also increased in recent months.
“From January 1 through November 26, 2017, 11 U.S. military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, and 99 were wounded. This is double the personnel killed in action compared to the same periods in 2015 and 2016,” noted SIGAR in a press release announcing its report to Congress.
Gen. Nicholson did say in November, “About 64 percent of the population is controlled by the government, about 24 percent live in contested areas, and the Taliban control the remaining 12 percent,” without mentioning anything about who controls the territory.
Based on the top commander’s assessment, Afghan terrorist groups, primarily the Taliban, control or contest 36 percent of the population.
Some independent analysts, namely experts from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), have questioned the U.S military’s assessment placing the territory under terrorist control or influence at about 45 percent in late September.
In a significant departure from previous administrations, President Trump authorized the U.S military to strike opium and its heroin derivative in Afghanistan, the world’s top producer of the poppy plant.
Despite investing $8.7 billion in American taxpayer funds on counternarcotics efforts since the Afghan war began in October 2001, Afghanistan is producing more opium and heroin than ever before, doubling production last year to 9,000 tons from 2016, revealed the United Nations.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan is reportedly growing, claiming responsibility for an attack in Kabul this week and “the deadliest attack” covered by the SIGAR quarterly report “when an IS-K [Khorasan province] militant detonated a suicide bomb during a gathering of 150–200 people at a Shi’a cultural center in Kabul. The Afghan Ministry of Public Health said at least 41 people were killed and 84 wounded.”
He should talk about MAGA not MAD which is Make America DACA or MAD.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump stressed the need for “unity” Tuesday afternoon, hours before delivering a State of the Union address that White House officials have previewed as “bright and optimistic.”
“I want to see our country united,” Trump told network news correspondents during a traditional, and otherwise off-the-record, lunch at the White House where he made the case that the same national divisions encountered by his administration had plagued his predecessors as well.
The United States “was divided, not just under President Obama or President Bush. I remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Tremendous divisiveness, not just over the past year,” he said, adding that he would consider uniting the country “a tremendous success.”
“I would love to be able to bring back our country in a great form of unity, without a major event — very tough to do. I would like to do it without a major event, because that major event is usually a bad thing. Unity is really what I’m striving for, to bring the country together,” he said.
Aside from the traditional correspondent lunch, Trump spent Tuesday much as he’d spent the previous day: making impromptu changes to his first official State of the Union address as he practiced the speech, which is slated to include bipartisan overtures on big items like immigration, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday.
The president did several “dry runs” of the speech Monday afternoon in the Map Room of the White House, said a White House official, who told NBC that Trump’s handwritten notes and edits on each draft have been transcribed into its more current versions.
The process of writing and re-writing the address began in December, this official said, with a “pretty meaningful” edit on the plane ride to Davos, Switzerland, last week.
“He’s been going through the speech meticulously,” Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told Fox News on Tuesday afternoon, describing Trump as using a “black felt-tipped pen” to edit the remarks before sending it back to staff, and calling him a “master messenger.”
Vice President Mike Pence, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn weighed in on policy in the speech, while staff secretary Rob Porter, policy advisor Stephen Miller, and speechwriters Vince Haley and Ross Worthington crafted the text
However, “the speech begins and ends with POTUS,” the same official told NBC, looking to stress Trump’s level of involvement in his remarks.
The address will cover “a lot of territory,” Trump himself told reporters Monday as he finished swearing in his new Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar. The president said he would tout the “great success” of the stock market and the tax cuts passed at the close of the year, but will also make a push on immigration policies, including DACA.
“For many years,” Trump said, lawmakers have “been talking about immigration” but “never get anything done.” Now, with him at the helm, he said he’s hopeful for action that unites Democrats and Republicans.
“We’re going to get something done, we hope bipartisan,” Trump said, noting that the reality in Congress for Republicans makes bipartisanship an essential factor, not a wishful one. “The Republicans really don’t have the votes to get it done in any other way. So it has to be bipartisan.”
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Trump offers preview to State of the Union address 1:05
The White House released its immigration plan last week, in a bid to re-start stalled negotiations on the topic. Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Monday the president’s actions and negotiations on this topic were a sign of his “openness” to getting a deal done — especially for “Dreamers” who were brought to the U.S. as children and protected from deportation under an Obama-era policy, DACA.
Bipartisanship, she said in an interview with The Washington Post on Monday afternoon, is “the only way to function in this town,” but she knocked Democrats for a strategy she described as “obstruct, resist, hold up a stop sign” to Trump.
Despite her own jabs across the aisle, Conway promised a State of the Union address that’s “positive in tone and content” and one in which Trump will be “forward looking” — seeking the nexus between his accomplishments over the past year and how those achievements have bettered the lives of Americans.
To support the president’s push for his agenda on issues such as immigration and border security are guests like Elizabeth Alvarado, Robert Mickens, Evelyn Rodriguez, and Freddy Cuevas: parents who lost daughters to violence from the gang MS-13.
Veterans who have battled ISIS, law enforcement officers on the front lines of the opioid crisis, and American workers who benefit from Trump’s tax cuts will also be seated with first lady Melania Trump for the address.
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Sarah Huckabee Sanders: American people ‘sick and tired of Russia fever’ 6:00
And though senior administration officials previewed what they called an “optimistic speech,” it won’t be without the brand of tough talk that helped propel Trump to the office in the first place.
Noting once again his belief that “the world has taken advantage of us on trade for many years,” Trump promised Monday that his administration would bring any unfair practices to an end. But Tuesday’s speech will be light on specifics as to how that might be accomplished, senior administration officials told reporters over the weekend.
The speech, the officials said, would touch on the “broad themes of U.S. engagement in the world” — encompassing trade and global economic systems in the remarks, but not getting into specifics or naming names of countries that Trump feels are abusing their trade relationship with the United States.
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The state of the union is always ‘strong.’ But why? 1:11
More than anything, the White House has indicated that the president’s remarks will likely seek to strike a tone of command and stability against the backdrop of a political system that has been reeling since his arrival one year ago. Trump’s address will come as investigations into his campaign’s contacts with Russia remain ongoing, and a three-day government shutdown is still only barely in the administration’s rear-view mirror.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is slated to deliver a televised address immediately following President Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday.
Waters, one of Trump’s most vocal critics, will appear on “Angela Rye’s State of the Union” on BET, according to BuzzFeed News.
Rye, a Democratic strategist and commentator, is set to produce quarterly news programs for the network focused on issues affecting black Americans.
I can’t wait to hear her.
A spokesperson for BET told BuzzFeed that activists and other elected officials will join Waters to discuss the first year of the Trump presidency following his speech, and will discuss “building black politics and the value of engagement across today’s socio-political landscape.”
Waters, who is one of several Democratic lawmakers who have said they will not attend Trump’s speech on Tuesday, has consistently criticized Trump throughout his presidency, repeatedly calling for his impeachment.
She is a communist
While Waters will be delivering an address Tuesday night after Trump’s speech, Democratic rising star Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) is set to give the party’s official response to the State of the Union, party officials announced this week. That speech is also televised.
A group of anti-Trump celebrities, including Mark Ruffalo and Whoopi Goldberg, have also announced plans to hold a “People’s State of the Union” on Monday night.
