Beto O’Rourke: Meghan McCain Is Almost Giving People ‘Permission to Be Violent’

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastBeto O'Rourke has a message to those warning that his mandatory gun buyback proposal might spark civil unrest: you're part of the problem. The former Texas congressman, whose presidential campaign has been re-animated by his often visceral responses to two mass shootings in Texas, said he was disheartened by commentary from, among others, Meghan McCain, warning that forcing Americans to sell their assault rifles would prompt violence.“I just I think that kind of language and rhetoric is not helpful,” the former congressman told The Daily Beast prior to joining a Wednesday marathon climate town hall on CNN. “It becomes self-fulfilling; you have people on TV who are almost giving you permission to be violent and saying, ‘You know this is this is going to happen.’”O’Rourke brought up McCain’s name unprompted after “The View” host had said, earlier this week, that an attempt by the government to compel AR-15 owners to sell back their weapons would prompt “a lot of violence.” “When someone says, “If you do this, then this will happen,” O’Rourke said, “almost as though that’s a natural response or maybe even something that should happen or deserves to happen. When I think the response should be, ‘We’re doing nothing now and we’re seeing people slaughtered in their schools, at work, at a Walmart, in a synagogue, in a church, at a concert. There is violence right now and it is horrifying and it is terrifying and it is terrorizing.’.... We should be worried about that kind of violence right now.”McCain responded Thursday on Twitter by saying: “Beto is the only man in all of Texas who would revise ‘Come and Take It’ to ‘Please, Come and Take It.’”O’Rourke’s comments came after a tour of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, where he met with immigrants and asylum seekers participating in the congregation’s legal clinic which assists in the completion of asylum applications. After touring the synagogue, O’Rourke spoke exclusively with The Daily Beast about his gun control plans, during which he urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to call Congress back into session to vote on gun control legislation. “If the urgency that people feel on this issue is not reflected in the leadership that they see in this country, then they begin to give up hope,” he said. “I think that can lead to more of the cynicism, can force people to give up hope, stop them from having faith in our ability to actually get something done and you know when you lose that faith, when you lose that hope and when you lose that drive, then you’re no longer working towards that solution. I think that’s a dangerous place for the country to be.” Since returning to the campaign trail, O’Rourke has made an effort to go to traditionally redder parts of the country, including a gun show in Arkansas and the most Trump-friendly part of Virginia. The approach has mirrored his somewhat improvisational Texas Senate run that took him to Republican territory throughout the Lone Star state. He maintains that in these face-to-face conversations, there is more openness to the issues he’s discussing than what many in conservative media say. That includes things like a mandatory buyback program, which was implemented in Australia following that country’s worst mass shooting and has resulted in a dramatic drop of gun-related deaths there. “I think in a mandatory buyback, the vast majority of people will follow the law,” O’Rourke said. “Not everyone will agree with it, not everyone will like it. But I think that ultimately, they’ll follow the law. And I think many will see this in the national interest. I listen to gun owners and non-gun owners alike who just who say that this current level of bloodshed and violent death in this country is unacceptable. Worries them, it worries their kids and they want to do something about it. And I can’t escape the conclusion that even universal background checks and red flag laws and ending the sale of weapons of war would not be enough to significantly change the outcome.”Exclusive: Beto O’Rourke Apologizes to Campaign Staff for Being a ‘Giant Asshole’O’Rourke had not specifically built his presidential campaign around a push for national gun policy. The issue, instead, found him after his home city of El Paso witnessed a deadly mass shooting earlier this month. But the congressman also is maintaining his focus on other policies, as was evident by his decision to meet with asylum seekers before jetting off to the CNN climate town hall. Asked which of these issues, among the many others, he would prioritize first in the Oval Office, the Texas Democrat rejected the premise of the question and said it was vital to make progress on everything as soon as possible; though he specifically said “it’s hard for me to think of a more important issue,” than climate change. “It is existential,” O’Rourke told The Daily Beast. “If we cannot get this right—I think the trajectory now is by 2100, we will have warmed another four or four-and-a-half degrees Celsius—my youngest son will be 88 years old and he’ll be fucked.”This story has been updated to include McCain’s response.Meghan McCain Clashes With ‘View’ Co-Hosts: ‘I’m Not Living Without Guns’Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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An Oval Office mystery: Who doctored the hurricane map?

The perpetrator may have committed a crime with the suspicious Sharpie marking. “I don’t know,” the president said repeatedly when confronted.

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South Africa shuts embassies in Nigeria amid violence

South Africa has closed its diplomatic missions in Nigeria, underscoring the growing strain between Africa's two largest economies after the latest wave of xenophobic violence in South Africa, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation said Thursday. The department said that while there had been "no direct physical threat" to any diplomats or staff, the situation remained "somewhat unpredictable" and there were sufficient safety concerns to close the offices in Lagos and Abuja on Tuesday. On Sunday, violent mobs began looting and setting fire to foreign-owned businesses in several areas of Johannesburg and the South African capitol Pretoria.

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View Photos of the New 2020 Porsche Taycan

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Ghost Ship Trial: Verdict reached in deadly Oakland warehouse fire

More than two and a half years after 36 people died in the Ghost Ship inferno, a decision has been reached in the case against the two men prosecutors claim are criminally responsible.

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Where is Hurricane Dorian now? And where is it headed? Here's the latest storm track

Hurricane Dorian was a Category 2 storm moving northeast Thursday evening, about 45 miles south-southeast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

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Jeffrey Epstein’s Donations Create a Schism at M.I.T.’s Revered Media Lab

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Environmental Justice Was a Climate Forum Theme. Here’s What It Means.

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They Posed as Soldiers in Love. Over 30 People Lost $2.1 Million.

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Hurricane Dorian Becomes a Carolina Problem With a Fierce Lashing of the Coast

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Trump says 'I don't know' how map was altered to show Alabama in Hurricane Dorian's path

During an Oval Office briefing, the president showed reporters an enlarged map that he said was the initial forecasted path of the storm. It appeared to have been altered with a marker to include Alabama.

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Kamala Harris wants to ban plastic straws but says paper straws too 'flimsy'

During CNN's climate change town hall Wednesday, the California senator said that she believes single-use plastics like plastic straws need to be banned, but that the paper alternative breaks too often and is ripe for some innovation.

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Britain Can’t Fix Brexit Until It Drafts a Constitution

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Democracy, Winston Churchill once famously said, was the worst way to run a country “apart from all the others that have ever been tried.” Unfortunately, he did not make clear what kind of democracy he favored.Britain’s dreadful Brexit impasse has divided the country into roughly equal camps, both convinced democracy has been traduced. And they both have a point. What started as an argument over the European Union’s democratic deficit, and the way in which it encroached on Britain’s unwritten constitution, has degenerated into something more fundamental: an argument about the nature of democracy itself in the U.K.This crisis is in turn the bequest of generations of making minor tweaks to an unwritten constitution while avoiding the extremely difficult decisions needed to write a new one.  In the void, two forms of democracy are attempting to co-exist in Parliament -- representative democracy and direct democracy.On the one hand, Britain is a representative democracy, leaving decisions to elected MPs. Yet those same MPs sanctioned a Brexit referendum, or an act of direct democracy. The current crop of representatives, elected a year after the referendum, cannot agree on a way to enact it. The House of Cards-style intrigue plainly shows the limits of representative democracy. Within the Commons there is no majority for any one course of action, and nobody has managed to thrash out a workable compromise. Two prime ministers – Theresa May, and now Boris Johnson – have tried to paint the issue as Parliament thwarting the will of the people. But the imbroglio also shows the weakness of direct democracy. Britain’s membership in the EU, we now know, was far too complicated and subtle to be framed as an either/or question. One tribe says that nobody voted for a “no-deal” Brexit, while the other says that a majority is for a Brexit in some form. Both are right.To deal with this, either the people should be asked ever more questions to help their representatives sort out the mess, which is impractical. Or they must trust their representatives to sort it out. Neither is happening.And the problem runs deeper. Time and again in the last few decades, politicians have confronted anachronisms in Britain’s political apparatus and made changes while shirking the far harder task of devising new institutions. The result is a political system in gridlock.Under Britain’s unwritten constitution, the monarch is absolutely powerful but faces a duty of eternal self-restraint. In this way, Britain has avoided arguments attending any attempt to write a constitution and abolish the monarch. The Queen worked on the assumption that she had no right to turn down Johnson’s request to suspend Parliament. For a hereditary monarch to say no to a prime minister would have introduced an even deeper constitutional crisis. But the incident revealed that the prime minister enjoyed monarchical powers to suspend Parliament – and it is not surprising that it triggered a rebellion.Next look at the House of Lords which, it is whispered in the parliamentary lobbies, might yet try to stage a filibuster of the bill barring Johnson from accepting a “no-deal” Brexit. The Lords has been stripped of hereditary peers but it is still an unelected body. It is hard to believe it has the the legitimacy to thwart the will of elected MPs.  Now turn to the parties. Until a generation ago, MPs alone chose their leaders. Both Labour and the Conservatives have moved toward a looser model like the American system, where all party members have a vote. But the result has been half-baked. Johnson was elected by 140,000 Conservative activists far more strongly opposed to the EU than the rest of the country. Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn was elected by an expanded party that allowed anyone to be a voting member after paying a modest fee.  An influx of enthusiastic ideological left-wingers swung the result. Neither party’s leader has anything like the broad mandate of a U.S. presidential nominee. Both represent unrepresentative electorates while failing to command the support of their own MPs in Parliament. So the major parties lack the legitimacy to sort the Brexit mess.Would a general election help, as Johnson suggests? Probably not. The “first past the post” system works well in a purely representative democracy where MPs as individuals have great latitude. It is useless if there is any hope that Parliament should reflect the “will of the people.” In that scenario, results are affected by the geographic distribution of votes and distorted by the presence of major alternative parties. There is no reason to think that MPs in a new Parliament would accurately reflect the broad spread of opinions about Brexit. So it looks hard for the U.K. to sort Brexit without reforming its parties and its electoral system (while also possibly agreeing on an elected upper chamber and even limiting or replacing the power of the monarch). Moreover, nothing will be solved until Britain drafts a written constitution. The nation’s democratic deficit appears at least as serious as that of the EU, and resolving it may require turning the U.K. into something far more like a continental European country.And that is not what anyone thought they were voting for back when the Brexit referendum first surfaced. To contact the author of this story: John Authers at jauthers@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Timothy L. O'Brien at tobrien46@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.John Authers is a senior editor for markets. Before Bloomberg, he spent 29 years with the Financial Times, where he was head of the Lex Column and chief markets commentator. He is the author of “The Fearful Rise of Markets” and other books.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Mike Pence accused of humiliating hosts in Ireland: 'He shat on the carpet'

The vice-president’s comments on Brexit while visiting Ireland and his stay at his boss’s golf course did not go down wellVice-President Mike Pence arrives in Doonbeg to dine with relatives at a seafood restaurant. Photograph: Jacob King/PAMissteps during Mike Pence’s visit to Ireland that included controversial praise of the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, have led to accusations of betrayal and “humiliation”.One Irish Times columnist concluded that the vice-president, a “much-anticipated visitor”, turned out to have “shat on the … carpet”.Pence’s problems started with his decision to stay for two nights at Donald Trump’s golf resort in Doonbeg, County Clare, more than 140 miles from Dublin, necessitating costly and logistically complex travel. The move quickly drew fire from ethics experts and political rivals.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, called Trump’s properties a “cesspool of corruption” and accused the president of “prioritizing his profits over the interests of the American people”.“Pence is just the latest Republican elected official to enable President Trump’s violations of the constitution,” she said.A spokesman for the vice-president said the decision was partly based on the president’s suggestion Pence stay there, and partly on secret service concerns about costs and logistics. Questioned about the decision on Wednesday, Trump claimed he had “no involvement, other than it’s a great place”.But that was only the start of the controversy.The Irish Times columnist Miriam Lord responded to a tense meeting between the vice-president and the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in which Pence urged the republic to protect the “United Kingdom’s sovereignty”. That Varadkar is gay and Pence a past champion of anti-LGBTQ legislation in Indiana also caused widespread comment.Pence laid on platitudes about being “deeply humbled” and “honoured” to be visiting Doonbeg, the home of his mother’s grandmother. But in Dublin he offered his hosts a clear lesson in his administration’s political priorities.“Let me be clear: the US supports the UK decision to leave the EU in Brexit,” Pence told Varadkar in a prepared statement. “But we also recognise the unique challenges on your northern border. And I can assure you we will continue to encourage the United Kingdom and Ireland to ensure that any Brexit respects the Good Friday agreement.”Among media responses, Irish Central asked: “Did VP Pence betray Ireland in his Brexit comments during Irish trip?”The Irish Examiner accused Pence of trying to “humiliate” the republic.But Lord struck the most telling blow.She described the impact of the Pence visit on Ireland as “like pulling out all the stops for a much-anticipated visitor to your home and thinking it has been a great success until somebody discovers he shat on the new carpet in the spare room, the one you bought specially for him”.“As Pence read from the autocue and Irish eyes definitely stopped smiling,” she added, “it was clear he was channeling His Master’s Voice. Trump is a fan of Brexit and of Boris.”“Pence,” Lord continued, “is Irish American and wastes no opportunity to go misty-eyed about his love for the ‘Old Country’ as he lards on his Mother Machree schtick on both sides of the Atlantic.”Lord wasn’t alone in her criticism. The Cork Examiner’s political editor, Daniel McConnell, wrote: “The cheek of him coming here, eating our food, clogging up our roads and then having the nerve to humiliate his hosts.”

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Stunning satellite images show Hurricane Dorian's floodwaters engulfing The Bahamas

A satellite image taken Monday shows the floodwaters that engulfed Grand Bahama Island after Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas.

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33 bodies recovered after California dive boat disaster

Rescue workers have recovered a total of 33 bodies from a scuba-diving boat disaster off the coast of California, authorities said Wednesday, adding that one person remains missing. Divers have since recovered 13 other bodies, according to the Santa Barbara County sheriff's department, which is in charge of the investigation. The boat had been on a diving excursion around Santa Cruz Island, just west of Santa Barbara in southern California.

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Under siege in Nigeria, South African businesses shut stores

ABUJA/JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African companies MTN and Shoprite closed stores in Nigeria on Wednesday in the face of attacks targeting their premises in retaliation to similar violence in their home country. Nigeria's vice president is also boycotting an economic forum in Cape Town on boosting intra-African trade, the country's foreign minister said, after days of rioting in South Africa aimed at foreign-owned businesses. At a Shoprite supermarket on the outskirts of the Nigerian capital Abuja, hundreds of protesters tried to break into the premises, throwing stones, setting fire to tires and nearly overwhelming police protecting the site.

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Putin says he offered Trump the chance to buy Russian hypersonic weapons

Putin said he gave Trump the opportunity to buy new Russian weapons, including hypersonic missiles, supposedly to stop an arms race.

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Nervous wait for Jeffrey Epstein's associates as court mulls release of 10,000 pages of documents

Jeffrey Epstein’s friends are facing a nervous wait after a judge in New York laid out a schedule for releasing court documents which mention “literally 1,000 people” by name. One unnamed man, known only as John Doe, wrote to the court in advance of Wednesday’s hearing begging the judge to keep his name out of the public domain. Jeffrey Pagliuca, a lawyer for Epstein’s long-term companion Ghislaine Maxwell, said the sealed documents include “hundreds of pages of investigative reports that mention hundreds of people.” They contain depositions taken from 29 people. “There are hundreds of other people who could be implicated” in the documents, he said. British heiress Ghislaine Maxwell was sued by Virginia Roberts-Giuffre in 2015, for defamation. The case was settled in 2017 and the documents in the case are now in the process of being released Judge Loretta Preska is overseeing the unsealing of the 10,000 pages relating to a slander case filed by Virginia Roberts-Giuffre, an alleged victim of Epstein, against Miss Maxwell, accused of being his “madam”. She has always denied any wrongdoing, and was not in court for Wednesday's hearing. The case was filed in September 2015 and settled in May 2017. On July 2 the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered that the documents in the case be unsealed, owing to the overwhelming public interest. The first tranche of 2,000 pages was published on August 9, the day before Epstein killed himself in jail. The second set is due to be published in the coming months, when Judge Preska is satisfied. “In some of these documents there are literally 1,000 people named,” she said, presiding over the hearing. “It’s not going to be easy.” The case files are known to contain claims by Mrs Roberts-Giuffre that she was sexually abused by “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister and other world leaders.” Virginia Roberts-Giuffre with Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell in early 2001 Mrs Roberts-Giuffre has claimed that she was “lent out” by Epstein to Prince Andrew, and forced to have sex with him. He has always denied the claim, and all allegations against the Duke were struck from the court record in 2015 after being described as "immaterial and impertinent" by a judge. On the eve of the hearing the anonymous man wrote to Judge Preska and begged for his name not to be mentioned, arguing that his reputation would be destroyed. "Unsealing references to non-parties would throw those non-parties into the middle of this frenzy, and unfairly do irreparable harm to their privacy and reputational interests," the man's New York-based lawyers, Nicholas Lewin and Paul Krieger, wrote. “But it is clear that these materials implicate the privacy and reputational interests of many persons other than the two primary parties to this action, Giuffre and Maxwell.” Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, pictured in 2005 The letter goes on to say a prior judge overseeing the case summarised the still-secret documents as containing a “range of allegations of sexual acts involving Plaintiff and non-parties to this litigation, some famous, some not; the identities of non-parties who either allegedly engaged in sexual acts with Plaintiff or who allegedly facilitated such acts.” Doe’s lawyers do not say in the papers if he is famous, or what accusations he expects to face in the court papers. Judge Preska asked the lawyers for both Miss Maxwell and Mrs Giuffre-Roberts to begin the process of categorising the 10,000 pages, prior to unsealing them. She told the lawyers to spend the next two weeks dividing the documents into 10 categories, and then after that they would have a week to designate which group of documents should be unsealed first, with a rolling week-to-week process thereafter to evaluate the material and argue over how much or how little should be disclosed publicly. Mr Pagliuca urged the judge to delay the release of the documents, saying he wanted a month or so to determine which documents go in which categories. Judge Preska denied his request, adding: “You know we have got to get this done.”

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Hurricane Dorian has killed at least 20 people in the Bahamas, including an 8-year-old boy who reportedly drowned

Hurricane Dorian pummeled the Bahamas this past weekend as a Category 5 storm, destroying houses and creating a storm surge of up to 23 feet.

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Manafort's lawyers: State charges are double jeopardy

Lawyers for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort filed court papers seeking the dismissal of his New York mortgage fraud case, arguing that the charges brought in the wake of his federal convictions amount to double jeopardy. The state case involves some of the same allegations as federal cases that have landed Manafort behind bars, violating a state law that bars repeat prosecutions for the same general conduct, lawyer Todd Blanche wrote in the filing late Wednesday. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. announced the state charges in March, minutes after Manafort was sentenced in the second of his two federal cases, which stemmed from the special counsel probe of Russian election meddling.

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Everything we know about the California boat fire victims

Three sisters who were helping celebrate their father's birthday are thought to be among the 34 people killed when a diving boat caught fire off the coast of Southern California.Susana Rosas of Stockton, California, posted on social media that her three daughters, their father and stepmother were on board.

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Sealed Jeffrey Epstein Court Documents Name at Least 1,000 People. A Judge Must Decide Whether to Release Them

An individual only named "John Doe" sent a letter to the court arguing that the documents should remain sealed.

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