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Cher has issued an apology following backlash for a tweet she shared regarding the death of George Floyd. Fans of the singer accused her of having a "white savior complex."
On Saturday, the 74-year-old singer shared two tweets following a controversial tweet she wrote then promptly deleted that suggested if she had been there when Floyd died, she would have been able to help.
Cher (Mike Marsland/WireImage)
In her first tweet, Cher said she struggled with whether she wanted to share the now-deleted tweet, writing, “Wrestled With This Twt, Because I Thought some ppl wouldn’t understand, Or Believe an Entertainer Could have Honest emotions about a human Being,suffering & Dying,even if It’s Only Shown On tv.”
“You Don’t Know What I’ve Done,Who I Am,Or What I Believe.I CAN,I HAVE,& I WILL..HELP,” she continued.
Two hours later, she tweeted an apology writing, “I Just got off phone With Friend Karen.Told her what Happened,& Realized,You Can Piss Ppl Off,& Hurt Them By Not Knowing Everything That’s’NOT Appropriate’To Say.”
“I know Ppl Apologize When They’re In a Jam,BUT🤚🏼TO GOD🙏🏼,IM TRULY SORRY If I Upset AnyOne In Blk Community,” she added. “I Know My❤️”
The apology comes after a now-deleted tweet from the singer caused controversy online amid the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, for the charges of third-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter, as well as second-degree murder.
“Was talking With Mom & She Said ‘I Watched Trial Of Policeman Who Killed George Floyd,& Cried’,” she wrote. “I Said ‘Mom, I Know This Is Gonna Sound CRAZY,But.. I Kept Thinking …..Maybe If I’d Been There,…I Could’ve Helped😔.”
While some fans understood the singer’s intentions from the tweet and accepted her apology, others tried to educate her on why the tweet was perceived negatively.
“Cher, I love u, but it wasn't just some people who didn't understand,” one user tweeted. “It was thousands of people who saw something wrong with what you said. No one is arguing the intention wasn't good, but maybe you should try to see why it was problematic? Even if your 💚 was in the right place”
Another person added, “Sometimes you can accidentally hurt people’s feelings even if it wasn’t your intention & if you’re in the limelight, you’ve got a bigger crowd listening when you speak. Not sure if the witnesses saw the tweet, but maybe reach out to them too.”
Days before her controversial tweet, Cher shared a tweet while seemingly watching the trial, writing, "Feel So Unbelievably Sad For The Brave Ppl Who Stood Their Ground To Bear Witness,& Chronicle The Murder Of George Floyd For All The World To See."
She continued, adding, "😔These Were Americans Who Didn’t/Couldn’t WalkAway From a Fellow Human Being Having His Last Breath...Crushed Out Of His Body."
OpEd: Some self-righteous asshole who should have their lying hypocritical politically correct lie hole smashed with a brick is criticizing Cher for her sincere non offensive comment about the murder of George Floyd by the police. Some asshole who deserves a session with a flame thrower accused Cher of having a "White Savior Complex".
Maybe if Cher was there she could have helped. As a celebrity Cher has a lot of clout. Maybe she would have gone after the cop who was pretending to hold back the "angry crowd that stood there and watched Derek Chauvin kill George Floyd. Maybe had she charged the cops the crowd would have followed and pulled the other three pigs off of George Floyd.
Here's a fact you fuckers will call racist. In NYC most of the attacks Asians were committed by Blacks. That fact doesn't fit your narrative. Cher has probably done more for civil rights causes than the assholes who criticized her.
Maybe Cher would not have charged the cops but maybe if someone had George Floyd would be alive today. What if this happened in Texas where lots of Texans carry guns including AR-15 assault rifles? Maybe to cops killing George Floyd would have backed off for fear of rounds from an AR-15 ripping through their bullet proof vests and rendering them dead in seconds.
What do you think would have happened if Cher was there and got the crowd to charge the cops? A lot of the bystanders regret not doing just that. I think what would have happened if the bystanders attacked the cop "keeping the crowd back" Chauvin would have gotten up and off Floyd's neck.
Cops murdered a handcuffed man in broad daylight and politically correct do nothing assholes criticize Cher. Fuck you America. You deserve COVID-19!
Then-President Donald Trump throws campaign hats during a campaign event in Avoca, Penn., Nov. 2, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500.
It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell Blatt, for help.
What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud.
“It felt,” Russell Blatt said, “like it was a scam.”
But what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit company that processed its online donations, WinRed. Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors for every week until the election.
Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.
As the election neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.
The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.
The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final 2 1/2 months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. All campaigns make refunds for various reasons, including to people who give more than the legal limit. But the sum the Trump operation refunded dwarfed that of Joe Biden’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.
The recurring donations swelled Trump’s treasury in September and October, just as his finances were deteriorating. He was then able to use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.
In effect, the money that Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.
Political strategists, digital operatives and campaign finance experts said they could not recall ever seeing refunds at such a scale. Trump, the RNC and their shared accounts refunded far more money to online donors in the last election cycle than every federal Democratic candidate and committee in the country combined.
Donors typically said they intended to give once or twice and only later discovered on their bank statements and credit card bills that they were donating over and over again. Some, like Stacy Blatt, who died of cancer in February, sought an injunction from their banks and credit cards. Others pursued refunds directly from WinRed, which typically granted them to avoid more costly formal disputes.
Jason Miller, a spokesperson for Trump, downplayed the rash of fraud complaints and the $122.7 million in total refunds issued by the Trump operation. He said internal records showed that 0.87% of its WinRed transactions had been subject to formal credit card disputes. “The fact we had a dispute rate of less than 1% of total donations despite raising more grassroots money than any campaign in history is remarkable,” he said.
A Small Yellow Box and a Flood of Fraud Complaints
The small and bright yellow box popped up on Trump’s digital donation portal around March 2020. The text was boldface, simple and straightforward: “Make this a monthly recurring donation.”
The box came prefilled with a checkmark.
Even that was more aggressive than what the Biden campaign would do in 2020. Biden officials said they rarely used prechecked boxes to automatically have donations recur monthly or weekly; the exception was on landing pages where advertisements and emails had explicitly asked supporters to become repeat donors.
But for Trump, the prechecked monthly box was just the beginning.
By June, the campaign and the RNC were experimenting with a second prechecked box, to default donors into making an additional contribution — called the money bomb. An early test arrived in the run-up to Trump’s birthday, June 14. The results were tantalizing: That date, a seemingly random Sunday, became the biggest day for online donations in the campaign’s history.
The two prechecked yellow boxes would be a fixture for the rest of the campaign. And so would a much larger volume of refunds.
Until then, the Biden and Trump operations had nearly identical refund rates on WinRed and ActBlue in 2020: 2.18% for Trump and 2.17% for Biden.
But from the day after Trump’s birthday through the rest of the year, Biden’s refund rate remained nearly flat, at 2.24%, while Trump’s soared to 12.29%.
Around the same time, officials who fielded fraud claims at bank and credit card companies noticed a surge in complaints against the Trump campaign and WinRed.
“It started to go absolutely wild,” said one fraud investigator with Wells Fargo. “It just became a pattern,” said another at Capital One. A consumer representative for USAA, which primarily serves military families, recalled an older veteran who discovered repeated WinRed charges from donating to Trump only after calling to have his balance read to him by phone.
The Trump operation was not done modifying the yellow boxes. Soon, the fact that donations would be withdrawn weekly was taken out of boldface type, according to archived versions of the president’s website, and moved beneath other bold text.
As the campaign’s financial problems became increasingly acute, the yellow boxes became dizzyingly more complex.
By October there were sometimes nine lines of boldface text — with ALL-CAPS words sprinkled in — before the disclosure that there would be weekly withdrawals. As many as eight more lines of boldface text came before the second additional donation disclaimer.
The ‘Gary and Gerrit’ Operation
By last summer, the Biden campaign had begun outraising Trump’s team, and the president was hopping mad. For months, years even, his advisers had been telling him how he had built a one-of-a-kind financial juggernaut. So why, Trump demanded to know, was he off the television airwaves just months before the election in critical battleground states like Michigan?
“Where did all the money go?” he would lash out, according to two senior advisers.
Inside the Trump reelection headquarters in Northern Virginia, the pressure was building to wring ever more money out of his supporters.
Perhaps nowhere was that pressure more acute than on Trump’s expansive and lucrative digital operation. That was the unquestioned domain of Gary Coby, a 30-something strategist whose title — digital director — and microscopic public profile belied his immense influence on the Trump operation, especially online.
A veteran of the RNC and the 2016 race, Coby had the confidence, trust and respect of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who unofficially oversaw the 2020 campaign, according to people familiar with the campaign’s operations. Kushner and the rest of the campaign leadership gave Coby, whose talents are recognized across the Republican digital industry, wide latitude to raise money however he saw fit.
That meant almost endless optimization and experimentation, sometimes pushing the traditional boundaries. The Trump team repeatedly used phantom donation matches and faux deadlines to loosen donor wallets (“1000% offer: ACTIVATED…For the NEXT HOUR”). Eventually it ratcheted up the volume of emails it sent until it was barraging supporters with an average of 15 per day for all of October and November 2020.
Coby declined an interview request for this article.
Coby’s partner in fundraising was Gerrit Lansing, president of WinRed, which had been created in 2019 as a centralized platform for GOP digital contributions after prominent Republicans feared they were falling irreparably behind Democrats and ActBlue.
Top Trump officials said they did not know specifically who had conceived of using the weekly recurring prechecked boxes — or who had designed them in the increasingly complex blizzard of text. But they said virtually all online fundraising decisions were a “Gary and Gerrit” production.
Unlike ActBlue, which is a nonprofit, WinRed is a for-profit company. It makes its money by taking 30 cents of every donation, plus 3.8% of the amount given. WinRed was paid more than $118 million from federal committees the last election cycle; even after paying credit card fees and expenses like payroll and rent, the profits are believed to be significant.
WinRed even made money off donations that were refunded by keeping the fees it charged on each transaction.
All told, the Trump and party operation raised $1.2 billion on WinRed and refunded roughly 10% of it.
And after Trump’s first public speech of his post-presidency at the end of February, his new political operation sent its first text message to supporters since he left the White House. “Did you miss me?” he asked.
The message directed supporters to a WinRed donation page with two prechecked yellow boxes. Trump raised $3 million that day, according to an adviser, with more to come from the recurring donations in the months ahead.
In late January 2020, U.S. Secret Service agents received information that Rep. Matt Gaetz had accompanied a Florida county tax official they were already investigating on an unusual nighttime visit to a government office—where the local official was allegedly making fake IDs, a source close to the investigation told The Daily Beast.
That tip to the feds came in a text message conversation that Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg had with an employee explaining why they were both in the office one weekend two years earlier, according to this person.
A timestamp visible in the text message thread indicated the conversation took place on Monday, April 16, 2018.
According to three people with direct knowledge of the incident: Greenberg visited the Lake Mary, Florida branch of his tax collection agency that weekend. Grainy surveillance footage captured Greenberg standing near a manager’s desk with another man. Greenberg forgot to set the alarm on the way out, which concerned the assistant branch manager when she walked into the office Monday morning. That employee was surprised to find that drivers' licenses—which are normally turned in when expired at the tax office for shredding—were scattered all over the desk instead of in the appropriate disposal basket. She reviewed the camera footage and alerted her boss, who in turn contacted Greenberg via text.
“Did you happen to visit the Lake Mary Office on the weekend?” the text message read.
The image obtained by The Daily Beast shows that Greenberg allegedly responded, “Yes I was showing congressman Gaetz what our operation looked like. Did I leave something on?”
handout
The Daily Beast obtained images of additional text messages that purport to show Greenberg helping Gaetz get duplicate IDs—outside of proper channels on a Sunday afternoon. On Sept. 2, 2018, Greenberg directly asked an employee to quickly create a new card that complies with the heightened security standards of “REAL ID,” a process that would normally require providing additional documentation, according to the images.
“Amy- is there anyway to assist one of our Congressmen in getting an emergency replacement ID or DL by Tuesday 2pm? His was lost yesterday and he’s got a flight Tuesday. Doesn’t have any other form of ID currently on him. Sorry to bother you on Sunday,” Greenberg wrote.
Greenberg then confirmed that the favor was for “Matthew Louis Gaetz II,” born on May 7, 1982.
handout
When Greenberg later came under investigation by the Secret Service for identity theft and stalking, agents approached former employees at the tax office to obtain proof of the public official’s activities. That’s when they were suddenly directed to Gaetz.
According to the source who provided the text message conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to guarantee their safety, Secret Service agents directed them in the final days of January 2020 to print out the full text message conversation with Greenberg from online AT&T records. That source said those text messages were delivered to the Secret Service, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and most recently, another federal agency.
Gaetz, a Florida Republican, is now the target of a Justice Department investigation that is focusing on allegations that the Republican congressman and Greenberg recruited young women and paid them for sex, according to The New York Times.
CNN first reported the existence of text messages on Thursday. The Orlando Sentinel confirmed their existence as well.
On Wednesday, The Daily Beast attempted to file a public records request to obtain a copy of the video surveillance that is believed to show Gaetz with Greenberg on that weekend in April 2018. However, a Seminole County representative indicated that the video is unavailable because the government agency has a policy of deleting all surveillance footage after 60 days. County officials would not comment on what exactly employees have told federal investigators about their recollection of the incident.
The Daily Beast also attempted to reach the former employee who interacted with Greenberg via text message, but was unsuccessful. That employee eventually signed a $50,000 settlement with the Office of the Seminole County Tax Collector over claims of unfair retaliation at work after Greenberg allegedly used a circle of personal friends he hired at the agency to harass and intimidate her and her family. That settlement bars her from “false or defamatory statements” about her former employer but importantly does not prevent her from speaking to government investigators, according to a copy obtained by The Daily Beast.
Her attorney, Daniel A. Pérez, declined to comment on any current efforts to assist federal law enforcement.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida would not confirm the existence of an ongoing investigation into Gaetz.
Prosecutors there do have an ongoing case against Greenberg, who came under federal scrutiny after he repeatedly angered fellow county officials with his bizarre, erratic behavior.
According to people familiar with the investigation, Secret Service agents were initially interested in Greenberg’s failed attempt to allow Seminole County residents to pay their taxes in Bitcoin. Attorneys have revealed in court that the federal probe quietly began by April 2019. That began to heat up when Greenberg ran for re-election and faced political opposition from a fine arts teacher at Trinity Preparatory School.
Federal agents arrested him at his Lake Mary home on June 17, 2020, and the case initially hinged on accusations that Greenberg had set up fake online profiles to defame the teacher and had sent several letters to the school with lurid accusations that his opponent had engaged in sexual misconduct with a student.
As of Tuesday, that case has now vastly expanded to a 33-count indictment that includes a diverse list of crimes that range from wire fraud to sex trafficking. Investigators say Greenberg recruited at least one teenager between 14 and 17 years old to engage in a “commercial sex act” between May and November 2017 in Central Florida and elsewhere.
Investigators also say that Greenberg used his privileged access to Florida’s drivers' license database to look up private information on “individuals” with whom he “was engaged in ‘sugar-daddy’ relationships.”
Additionally, Greenberg is also accused of making fake IDs—potentially explaining why the 2018 surveillance footage raised concerns that led to that text message conversation handed to investigators.
The Daily Beast obtained text messages handed to federal investigators that allegedly show Greenberg acknowledging that he visited the office on the weekend of August 4, 2018, where there were drivers' licenses “scattered across the desks and not put away in an organized manner.”
They were also together in the Florida panhandle region on July 5, 2019 when they called a state legislator, Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, and left her a peculiar voicemail that has been obtained by The Daily Beast.
“My dear Anna, this is your favorite tax collector. I’m up in the panhandle with your favorite U.S. congressman, Mr. Gaetz,” Greenberg starts to say.
“Hi Anna!” Gaetz jumps in.
“And, uh, we were just chatting about you, and talking about your lovely qualities,” Greenberg continued.
“We think you’re the future of the Democratic Party in Florida!” Gaetz said.
On Thursday, Eskamani told The Daily Beast that she kept Greenberg at arm’s length for years. Their interactions started when she called him out over Islamaphobic comments and then helped him connect with the Muslim community to recover from that. Eskamani said she cautiously entertained “weird” contacts from Greenberg and Gaetz that made her uncomfortable.
“We were not friends. We never hung out. We didn't talk ever, really. I just played nice. For so many women you're either very blunt and be called a bitch, or you try to play nice and pivot and deflate,” she said.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) spun a new conspiracy theory this week that combines capitalism, communism, fascism, corporations, the coronavirus vaccine, the biblical apocalypse and President Joe Biden in one extremely hard-to-follow narrative.
Greene, who is known as the “QAnon Congresswoman” for her embrace of wild conspiracy theories, railed against the notion of “vaccine passports.” That’s a proposal for a form of ID to prove that someone has been inoculated against the coronavirus before traveling or attending certain events.
“Is this something like Biden’s mark of the beast because that is really disturbing and not good,” she said in a rambling Facebook Live video, referring to an apocalyptic prophecy from the Book of Revelation in the Bible:
Greene also warned that “big, powerful corporations” would enforce those passports.
“It’s still fascism. Or communism. Whatever you want to call it, but it’s coming from private companies,” she said. “I have a term for that, I call it ‘corporate communism.’”
She said companies thrive on capitalism but are also “adapting these communist policies just like the Democrats are and they are pushing them on us through their private companies.”
On social media, Greene’s critics had a devil of a time figuring out what the hell she was talking about. Then, they broke out some digital fire and brimstone:
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been update
My Op Ed: Normally I would wish cancer on the vile bitch and eventually I hope she gets it or somebody throws her live into a chipper shredder but she's doing a good job spreading lies to the other Trumpanzees. The new COVID surge is picking up steam and that means more Republican voters will get sick and die. That puts a smile on my face.
The Anti-Christ is Trump and this is why. Trump and his evil son in law Jared Kushner own a building located at 666 Park Avenue in New York City.
Here's another fact that points to Trump being the anti-Christ. Trump grand mother was the matriarch of the Trump empire. Her name was Elizabeth Christ Trump. She died on June 6 1966.
Trump has claimed to be the 2nd coming of God and the chosen one.
The name Donald John Trump is am English derivation of Donald Johann Drumpf
Cindy Hyde Smith is a filthy cancer deserving senator from the depraved state of Mississippi. This brutal cunt is work to suppress Black and working class votes by making it illegal for Americans to vote on Sunday. She believes or pretends to believe that the evil Bible is the law of the land rather than United States Constitution.
************
Dear Cunt,
You Republicans really are earning the hate.
BTW dum dum the Sabbath is Saturday and the Jews are not whining about voting on Saturday. BTW dum dum Jesus never existed but I think you already know that.
In God We Trust is a lie and a violation of separation of church and state and the constitution. If you want to live in a theocracy insufferable pig, live in some Muslim country.
If there were a moral god you would not have ever been born. The god you pretend to believe exists is a monster just like you and the rest of you filthy hypocrites.
Keep in mind you filthy pig, the Blacks are not cowed any longer and if they come for you with a noose like Trump's mob came for Mike Pence when they stormed the Capitol, you will have earned it you traitorous liar.
This filthy traitorous cunt needs to hear from you.
Call fax or email this cancer deserving cunt. Contact Senator Cindy Hyde Smith Say what ever you want to this cunt but be lawful.
Jackson 190 East Capitol St. Suite 550 Jackson, MS 39201 Phone (601) 965-4459 Fax (601) 965-4919
Gulfport 2012 15th Street Suite 451 Gulfport, MS 39501 Phone (228) 867-9710 Fax (228) 867-9789
Oxford 911 Jackson Ave. Rm. 249 Oxford, MS 38655 Phone (662) 236-1018 Fax (862) 236-7618
Mississippi has always been a corrupt state. There are many versions of the song Here's To The State Of Mississippi. Share them on social media
[Chorus] Whoa, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
And here's to the people of Mississippi Who say the folks up north, they just don't understand And they tremble in their shadows at the thunder of the Klan The sweating of their souls can't wash the blood from off their hands They smile and shrug their shoulders at the murder of a man
[Chorus] Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
[Chorus] Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
[Verse 5] And, here's to the judges of Mississippi Who wear the robe of honor as they crawl into the court They're guarding all the bastions of their phony legal fort Oh, justice is a stranger when the prisoners report When the black man stands accused, the trial is always short
[Chorus] Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
[Verse 7] And here's to the laws of Mississippi Congressmen will gather in a circus of delay While the Constitution is drowning in an ocean of decay "Unwed mothers should be sterilized", I've even heard them say Yes, corruption can be classic in the Mississippi way
[Chorus] Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
[Verse 8] And here's to the churches of Mississippi Where the cross, once made of silver, now, is caked with rust And the Sunday morning sermons pander to their lust The fallen face of Jesus is choking in the dust Heaven only knows in which God they can trust [Chorus] Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of
