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Trump considers major changes amid escalating Russia crisis

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President Trump and his advisers, seeking to contain the escalating Russia crisis that threatens to consume his presidency, are considering a retooling of his senior staff and the creation of a “war room” within the White House, according to several aides and outside Trump allies.

Following Trump’s return to Washington on Saturday night from a nine-day foreign trip that provided a respite from the controversy back home, the White House plans to far more aggressively combat the cascading revelations about contacts between Trump associates — including Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser — and Russia.

White House officials also are trying to find ways to revive Trump’s stalled policy agenda in Congress and to more broadly overhaul the way the White House communicates with the public.

That includes proposals for more travel and campaign-style rallies nationwide so that Trump can speak directly to his supporters, as well as changes in the pace and nature of news briefings, probably including a diminished role for embattled White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Although much remained fluid Saturday, the beefed-up operation could include the return of some of Trump’s more combative campaign aides, including Corey Lewandowski, who was fired as campaign manager nearly a year ago, and David N. Bossie, who was deputy campaign manager and made his name in politics by investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton for two decades. Both men have been part of ongoing discussions about how to build a war room that have been led in part by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

Other Trump players who have drifted from his orbit in recent months, such as Sam Nunberg, are also being courted to play more active roles, either officially joining the White House or in an outside capacity, working through confidants of the president.

“Go to the mattresses,” a line from the film “The Godfather” about turning to tough mercenaries during troubled times, has circulated among Trump’s friends, said two people close to the war room discussions.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, has been involved in related talks, including with prominent Trump backers outside Washington and on Capitol Hill, and has contacted people from Trump’s campaign network, asking them to be more involved in supporting the president, said three GOP consultants working with the White House.

Meanwhile, White House counsel Donald McGahn is considering expanding his office, and an outside legal team led by Marc E. Kasowitz is preparing to meet with Trump and guide him, including on whether he should continue to comment on the Russia investigations on Twitter.

Kushner has played an active role in the effort to rethink and rearrange the communications team, improve the White House’s surrogate operation, and develop an internal group to respond to the influx of negative stories and revelations over the FBI’s Russia inquiry, said a person with knowledge of the coming changes.

“The bottom line is they need fresh legs; they need more legs,” said Barry Bennett, who served as a political adviser to Trump during the general-election campaign. “They’re in full-scale war, and they’re thinly staffed.”

As Trump has participated in meetings with world leaders in recent days, senior aides — including Bannon, Kushner and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus — have met in the White House to discuss a potential reshuffle.

Kushner’s role has emerged as a particularly sensitive topic of discussion within the White House, as his actions have come under increasing scrutiny in the FBI investigation of Russian meddling in the presidential election.

The Washington Post reported Friday night that Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring.

Some White House aides have discreetly discussed among themselves whether Kushner should play a lesser role — or even take a leave — at least until the Russia-related issues calm, but they have been reluctant to discuss that view with Kushner, and Kushner’s network of allies within the West Wing has rallied behind him.

Those close to Kushner said he has no plans to take a reduced role, although people who have spoken to him say that he is increasingly weary of the nonstop frenzy.

In recent weeks, the White House brought on Josh Raffel as a spokesman to handle many of the issues in Kushner’s portfolio; Raffel works out of a shared office in the West Wing, although he also has space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

During a lunch Friday, Kushner and Priebus talked about how Trump’s foreign trip had gone and began outlining what is coming up in the weeks ahead. Earlier in the day in Kushner’s office, the two briefly discussed the stories involving Kushner and Russia.

The president’s lawyers have urged Trump not to write adversarial Twitter messages or make off-the-cuff comments about the Russia investigations, explaining that those utterances could further hurt him if it seems as though he’s trying to obstruct the inquiries.

Underscoring the uncertainty of what lies ahead, some Trump associates said there have been conversations about dispatching Priebus to serve as ambassador to Greece — his mother is of Greek descent — as a face-saving way to remove him from the White House. A White House spokeswoman strongly denied that possibility Saturday.

The president has expressed frustration — both publicly and privately — with his communications team, ahead of the expected overhaul.

Although no final decisions have been made, one option being discussed is having Spicer — who has been parodied on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” — take a more behind-the-scenes role and give up his daily on-camera briefings.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, is being considered as a replacement behind the lectern. White House aides also have talked about having a rotating cast of staff brief the media, a group that could include officials such as national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Having several aides share the briefing responsibilities could help prevent Trump — who has a notoriously short attention span — from growing bored or angry with any one staff member.

The White House already has been testing this strategy, sending Spicer to the lectern along with another top staff member to talk about the news of the day: Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney on budget issues, for instance, or McMaster on questions of national security.

On Trump’s foreign tour, Spicer held only one briefing, an informal gaggle with the small, traveling press pool. Otherwise, he served more as an emcee, introducing other senior administration officials at more formal briefings.

On Saturday, it was Gary Cohn, the National Economic Council director, and McMaster who headlined the U.S. news conference at the conclusion of the Group of Seven summit in Taormina, Italy. Spicer introduced them and then retired to the corner of the room to watch McMaster and Cohn parry questions from journalists.

The episode highlighted how difficult it is to drive Trump’s agenda, with Russia so prominently in the news. The briefing grew testy after several questions related to Kushner’s activities were posed to McMaster, who largely deflected them.

The expected revamp in White House operations comes at a key juncture in Trump’s presidency, as his job-approval ratings continue to sag and he presses for progress on several marquee campaign promises — including revamping the Affordable Care Act and restructuring the tax code — before Congress takes its August recess.

A White House aide said Saturday that Trump also is considering pushing more modest initiatives in Congress that would stand a better chance of quick passage.

The aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk more freely, said that could include measures on immigration or infrastructure-related initiatives that most Republicans favor.

“They need accomplishments on issues that affect jobs,” one Trump adviser said. “If the White House and Congress have nothing in hand to tout by this summer, members of Congress are going to come back after their August recess freaking out.”

Conversations about a war room have focused on a model similar to what emerged during President Bill Clinton’s tenure to cope with the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal and other crises. Clinton pulled together a team of lawyers and communication and political aides to deal with those issues apart from the regular White House structure, with the aim of letting other business proceed as normally as possible.

Aides and allies of Trump say they now realize that unflattering stories about Russia will be part of the daily conversation for now and acknowledge that the White House has been ill-equipped to handle them.

Christopher Ruddy, a longtime Trump friend, said the White House has been caught flat-footed on many of the Russia stories.

“Because they did not believe there’s anything to it, they’re playing catch-up to get their side of the story out,” he said.

“At first, I thought the president was fretting too much about this,” said Ruddy, who is chief executive of Newsmax Media and a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. “But it keeps growing like a bad fungus, even though there’s nothing there.”

“The deep state and the swamp and many in the media are never going to let up,” added Jason Miller, who served as Trump’s senior communications adviser during the campaign and remains close to the White House. He is not expected to come back in a formal role.

The White House also has been pushing the Republican National Committee to defend the president more actively.

Members of the Trump family outside the White House have been ramping up their engagement in the president’s political operation, eager to contribute and guide the party.

On Thursday, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Eric’s wife, Lara Trump, participated in a two-hour meeting at the RNC headquarters in Washington, according to three people familiar with the session who were not authorized to speak publicly.

RNC spokesman Ryan Mahoney declined to address the specifics of the meeting but said the RNC is increasing its efforts to bolster Trump.

“The RNC’s role is to support the president,” Mahoney said. “We’re focused on creating as much content as possible to ensure we’re messaging effectively and doing so quickly in order to promote and defend this administration. It’s our top priority.”

Aides say they think Trump’s agenda will be boosted by making more targeted appearances around the country to tout it.

And several advisers are pushing Trump to do more of the campaign-style rallies like the one he had planned in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Thursday night. It has been postponed but will be rescheduled soon, Trump’s campaign committee said.

Being outside of Washington among his supporters, particularly in a state he won last year, energizes Trump and provides a way for him to communicate without the filter of the media, his advisers say.

“The conventional ways of communicating are not working for them,” one adviser said, adding that Trump should consider Facebook Live sessions and get out on the road “as frequently as possible.”

“They have to get the campaign brand back,” the adviser said.

Several Trump advisers cited the president’s recent interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, in which Trump made clear it was his idea to fire FBI Director James B. Comey, as the kind of thing to avoid going forward.

“I hope he’ll travel more and do these rallies once a week,” Bennett said. “You get to say whatever you want to say, and you don’t have to take questions.”

As the White House tried to strengthen its operations, some staff members who once fell out of favor with Trump have been brought back into conversations.

Lewandowski, who was fired from the campaign amid serious clashes with Kushner and the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, has been suggested as an effective messenger — either from inside the administration or from his current perch outside — to push back against the Russia controversy.

Nunberg, who was fired by the Trump campaign in 2015 and has been hostile to Lewandowski since, is now working with Ruddy. At a recent breakfast in Washington with Ruddy, Lewandowski and Alexandra Preate, a close ally of Bannon, the trio discussed whether Lewandowski and Nunberg could put aside their differences to again rally behind Trump, according to three people familiar with the conversation.

Aides to Trump say that they are pleased with the substance and the optics of his nine-day foreign trip, the first time he has traveled abroad as president, and that they hope that it willgenerate momentum for his agenda back home. Others aren’t so sure.

“He was given the chance to look presidential and change the pictures on our television screens,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University. “But it will be harder for him to manage news back at home than abroad. . . . The worries he had when he left have not gone away. They’ve only gotten worse.”

Philip Rucker in Italy contributed to this report.

Trump to troops: Lot of strength, lot of peace

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President Trump celebrated his “home run” of a foreign trip during a speech in Italy to U.S. military troops he called the “warriors of freedom” and “the patriots who keep the fires of liberty burning.”

“You are the protectors of that great American flag,” Trump said at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily. “You’re the metal spine forged out of the fires of American strength.”

“Every single day, you protect the safety and security of the American people — and provide a symbol of hope, freedom and justice for the world,” Trump said. “To our friends and allies, you are the ultimate reassurance — to our enemies, you are the ultimate deterrent.”

The president said he “took a little heat” from proposing to boost the military budget, characterizing the money in guns and ships as an investment in peace.

“What’s the expression? Peace through strength,” Trump said. “We’re going to have a lot of strength, but we’re going to have a lot of peace.”

In addition to thanking the troops, Trump used the last stop of his nine-day jaunt through Europe and the Middle East to recount what he saw as the expedition’s successes, saying: “I think we hit a home run no matter where we are.”

Pippa Garner’s Crossover Art of Gizmos, Gadgets, and Gender

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Installation view of “Pippa Garner: Tinker Tantrum” (2017), Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles (all images courtesy Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles)

Pippa Garner is a crossover artist with a penchant for satirical inventions and ideas. Tinker Tantrum at Redling Fine Art includes pencil drawings and texts, mixed media assemblages, and video performances from the 1970s to the present that showcase Garner’s ingenuity as an absurdist and bricoleur, exploring a vein of popular science mined by R. Crumb and Al Jaffee to lampoon American consumerism and culture.

Garner has been an absurdist for four decades, satirizing consumerism, marketing, and waste in performance art, videos, sculpture, installations, drawings and magazine editorials and art pages. She came to fame in the early 1980s, in her former identity as Philip Garner, after the publication of her books of madcap inventions, Philip Garner’s Better Living Catalog (1982) and Utopia – or Bust (1984). Her self-effacing humor and quirky utility apparel, including men’s midriff half-suits and umbrellas made from palm fronds, gained a wide audience through appearances on such talk shows as The Tonight Show, Today, and The Merv Griffin Show.

Pippa Garner, “Shirtstorm” (2017), 25 handmade t-shirts, 106 inches diameter

Studying automotive design at Pasadena’s Art Center College in the 1960s, at a moment when car culture was captivating the American imagination, Garner began exploring cars as vehicles for cultural introspection in the 1970s. She modified a Chevrolet for Esquire magazine in 1975 that captured the attention of the San Francisco art collective, Ant Farm, leading to collaborations with Chip Lord in counter-cultural performances and media events.

Garner explores the ambiguous role of the automobile in American culture with a thoughtful combination of satire and bricolage, which enabled her to cross over from the avant-garde to mass media. For 25 years, Garner had a monthly editorial page in Car and Driver, and her satirical art also appeared in Los Angeles magazine, Rolling Stone, Arts and Architecture and Vogue. Although she has exhibited sporadically in art galleries, she prefers the “broader appeal of magazines,” which reached a wider audience.

Pippa Garner, “Utopia or Bust” (2013), film still, 7 min 33 sec, edition of 5

In the late 1980s, Garner began another crossover, by transitioning to a different gender. The hyper-masculine, body-building, Vietnam veteran known for leading man good looks and charm made a gender transition decades before Caitlyn Jenner advocated for gender transition. Garner insists, “I was not born in the wrong body like people who are truly androgynous,” adding, “I was just tired of being an over-sexed male in his forties.” Before her transition, she took estrogen injections and people commented that she was “nicer and not as angst [ridden].” After five years of therapy and research while taking estrogen, she underwent sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) in Brussels.

Recalling Oscar Wilde’s famous comment, “One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art,” Garner emphasizes that the gender transition “is part of my work. I look at my body as being an appliance not unrelated to things in my works. This is something I have to work with. I had a playful attitude, which was the same as my books.” Moreover, “mixing characteristics of two genders short-circuits the system. A man can feminize, but can’t cross, because we can’t simulate the experience a woman has from a built-in reproductive system.”

Pippa Garner, “Tinker Tantrum” (2013), film still, 3 min 29 sec, edition of 5

The exhibition takes its title from a series of Tinker Tantrum videos (2013). In one video An In ‘Faux’ Mercial, Garner appears as both Gadget Girl and Gadget Guy, wearing headphones meant to make a personal statement, such as Barbie headphones for convicted pedophiles, bread loaf headphones for the gluten-friendly and “hear no evil” devotional hands.

In another video, Garner demonstrates pedal cars for sporty men and fashion-conscious women and showcases personal utility gadgets, and “more friendly iterations of up-cycled technologies” like the Personal Utility Drone (or PUD) engineered as a “handy household helper” for shopping errands. Her gender performance also extends to playing a leather-clad dominatrix, “Reprimand-a.”

For the video series Onboard Trophy Wife (2013), Garner appears as both a bride and groom in a marriage ceremony, which ends with a wedding pedal car and a protest sign to “legalize self-marriage.”

Pippa Garner, “Onboard Trophy Wife” (2013), film still, 4 min 6 sec, edition of 5

In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) philosopher Judith Butler analyzes gender as “improvised performance,” proposing drag to destabilize and poke fun at the notion of a universal or original gender. While artists have performed gender by playing with drag at least since Duchamp, few have been as subversive as Garner in both re-engineering their sexed body and legally changing the sex on their birth certificate post-op, two decades before transgender politics blurred gender binaries.

Garner creates a dialogue on the inefficiency of greed and waste in consumer culture with “The World’s Most Efficient Car” (2007) and “Crowd Shroud” (2017). The former is an old Honda 600 converted into a human-powered, vinyl-floored, decal-tagged “misc.pippa.” The latter, a wheelchair with a two-way mirror and bicycle lights, overturns the logic of privilege behind Victorian carriages that used underpaid human labor to carry aristocrats through crowded streets; Garner re-engineers this signifier of class into a vehicle of independence for a disabled passenger.

Pippa Garner, “Crowd Shroud” (2017), wheelchair, wood, paint, vinyl, two-way mirror, bicycle lights, 54 x 42 x 19.50 inches

The suite of pencil drawings from the 1970s to 2000 with illustrations of various inventions demonstrates the broad range of Garner’s skills as a draftsperson, inventor, and perceptive cultural commentator. These drawings show the influence of Zap Comix, Mad magazine, automotive design training, and a childhood in Illinois when boys learned to become jack-of-all-trades from their fathers by tinkering with do-it-yourself projects.

Pippa Garner, “Lookin’ Good” (1996), pencil on paper, 11.25 x 15 inches

Garner’s inventions capture the American ethos of ingenuity — although their future may or may not arrive. Although she skewers conventional logic, her madcap inventions lack the accusatory tone that characterizes some political art. Rather, her goofy, light-hearted touch allows her subversive satire to cross over to a broader audience.

Tinker Tantrum continues at Redling Fine Art (6757 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles) through June 3.

Garner will be in conversation with Zachary Drucker today and with Laura Fried on June 3, followed by a performance.

Denning shares video tips with Mt. Juliet chamber

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“Any business that needs to communicate emotions or legitimize themselves should be using video,” said Liz Denning, owner of Gamma Blast Studios.

Gamma Blast Studios specializes in visual storytelling and digital marketing with clients such as Nissan, HGTV and the Nashville Predators. Denning also writes the video blog, Vidruptive.com.

Denning said with current technology, any person or company could be its own movie studio and publish content. She said businesses – small and large – are intimidated by the perceived difficulty of creating video content.

She shared her seven-step strategy with the group, noting several steps take place before a recording device is used.

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“There are a lot of people who start doing video, and they don’t do any sort of planning at all,” Denning said.

She said businesses should create a content plan or strategy before filming and ask basic questions about the intended audience and their desires, as well as the desired end result.

“In our world, content is a business asset. The reason you’re creating content for your business is to get more business. It’s not just because it’s fluffy and nice. There’s an end goal and measurement around that,” she said.

Denning said the plans should have clear targets and calls to action from consumers.

“It’s surprising to me that a lot of people create content, and then they don’t tell people what they want them to do with it,” she said.

Entertainment was also a main talking point for Denning, who said the content should capture the audience.

“You have to entertain or give something to people that’s interesting to them so they continue to watch. It’s not that you have to be the latest viral video entertainer. You don’t; but there has to be some likeability there. You have to entertain people a little bit, and it has to be culturally relevant,” she said.

For more information, follow Denning on Twitter @GammaLiz.

The Business Boost is the chamber’s bi-monthly series of informative and interactive small business education sessions led by some of the area’s top professionals.

The next session will take place July 28 and feature Tim Shaver with Sandler Sales Institute. Shaver will discuss time management for professionals. To register for the event, visit mjchamber.org and click on chamber events.

 

‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Poster And Trailer Beats Out ‘Wonder Woman’ For Worst Marketing Ploys [Video]

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Fans have been very outspoken over the seeming lack of interest DC Entertainment has shown in marketing the upcoming Gal Gadot led Wonder Woman, but that’s trivial in comparison to the recent blunders over at rival Marvel Studios. Proving that there is such a thing as bad publicity, a newly released teaser poster from Spider-Man: Homecoming has come under fire by fans and critics alike with insinuations that the graphic artwork looks amateurish and unworthy of a film expected to be a major blockbuster. Adding to that marketing failure, a new Spider-Man: Homecoming video teaser also has its share of failures, giving Marvel fans even more cringeworthy moments.

Spider-Man: Homecoming Takes A Common Poster Theme And Runs It Into The Ground

Marvel Studios released a new teaser poster for Spider-Man: Homecoming and, as The Verge shares, the image, while familiar in theme, looks more like a draft of concept art than something intended to inspire interest in the film. The poster in question assembles a variety of images from various Spider-Man: Homecoming teasers to showcase the various characters and story arcs in the upcoming Marvel Studios film.

The concept is not a new one. It has been seen in posters for a number of theatrical releases, particularly those that feature an ensemble cast. Most notably, this type of collage has been used in teaser posters for films in the Star Wars franchise.

Yet, as veteran comic book illustrator and artwork designer Tommy Lee Edwards suggests, the poster for Spider-Man: Homecoming comes off looking unprofessional and seems more like a rough draft than something intended for public consumption.

“In a way…that Spider-Man poster almost looks like, ‘Here’s a bunch of references I got from the movie. Let’s put it all together and see how it looks.’ From there, you might be inspired to do a real poster,” says Edwards. “Instead, they just stopped at that point. It just looks like it’s not even finished.”

Tommy Lee adds that a collection of elements from any given film can be assembled together in a single poster and come off looking professional and enticing, so the flaw isn’t with that concept. Instead, he suggests the artists at Marvel Studios might have taken more time in adding a little finesse to the Spider-Man: Homecoming poster.

A New Spider-Man: Homecoming Trailer Doesn’t Get Everything Wrong

The Hollywood Reporter recently shared the third trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming, a video teaser which seems to be pushing the “friendly, neighborhood” aspect of Spider-Man just a little too hard. Each scene pushes that concept either blatantly, as when Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark tells Peter Parker outright to stick to being the “friendly, neighborhood” superhero or when Peter is seen struggling with villains bigger than himself.

Even Tom Holland’s character is frustrated with that label and with the rest of The Avengers treating him as the resident kid, even though that’s just what he is in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Spider-Man Homecoming, Peter Parker, Marvel
‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ gives Peter Parker the classic struggles of an up and coming superhero. [Image by Marvel Studios]

While Marvel Studios isn’t forcing yet another Spider-Man origins down our throats, the studio is giving fans a similar Peter Parker. Still wet behind the ears and still trying to understand his place as a young superhero, Homecoming delivers a story of Peter Parker trying desperately to fit in and failing at it.

That said, Spider-Man: Homecoming does deliver an action-packed teaser with its third trailer and reveals more about that suit gifted to Peter Parker by father figure Tony Stark.

Speaking of that father/son dynamic, the Spider-Man: Homecoming does deliver some humor, even in the two and a half minute teaser. The most memorable moment of levity comes when Tony reaches past Peter to open the car door and poor Peter misinterprets the move as a hug and reciprocates. Awkward, but funny.

Spider-Man: Homecoming swings into theaters on July 7.

[Featured Image by Marvel Studios]

‘Final act of bravery’: Men who were fatally stabbed trying to stop anti-Muslim rants identified

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Two men were stabbed to death and one injured Friday on a light-rail train in Portland, Ore., after they tried to intervene when another passenger began “ranting and raving” and shouting anti-Muslim hate speech at two young women, police said.

Portland police on Saturday identified the two slain victims as 53-year-old Ricky John Best and 23-year-old Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche.

A third victim, 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher, is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

According to witnesses, a white male passenger riding an eastbound MAX train early Friday afternoon began yelling what “would best be characterized as hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions,” police said. Some of the slurs were directed at two female passengers, one of whom was wearing a hijab, according to police.

“This suspect was on the train and he was yelling and ranting and raving a lot of different things, including what we characterized at hate speech or biased language,” Portland police spokesman Pete Simpson said at a news conference Friday evening.

At least two men tried to calm the ranting passenger down, but “they were attacked viciously by the suspect” when they did, Simpson said.

“It appears preliminarily that the victims — at least a couple of them — were trying to intervene in his behavior, deescalate him and protect some other people on the train when [the suspect] viciously attacked them,” Simpson said.


Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche (Courtesy Vajra Alaya-Maitreya)

About 4:30 p.m. Friday, police responded to calls of a disturbance at the Hollywood Transit Station in east Portland. There, they found three stabbing victims, all adult men. Despite attempted lifesaving measures, Best, a resident of Happy Valley, Ore., was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

Namkai Meche, of southeast Portland, died at a local hospital; Fletcher, of southeast Portland, is expected to survive, police said Saturday.

The Oregon State Medical Examiner is conducting autopsies on Best and Namkai Meche and expected to release results late Saturday afternoon, according to police.

Based on witnesses’ statements, officers on Friday were able to locate and arrest the suspect, who had fled the train on foot.

Police identified the suspect early Saturday morning as 35-year-old Jeremy Joseph Christian, of north Portland. Christian is being held without bail on two counts of aggravated murder, one count of attempted murder, two counts of intimidation in the second degree and one count of possession of a restricted weapon as a felon.

Jeremy Joseph Christian (Courtesy Portland Police Bureau)

The stabbing attack shocked the city.

“It’s horrific. There’s no other word to describe what happened today,” Simpson said Friday. “It is simply horrible.”

[Suspected attacker Jeremy Joseph Christian stood out amid rising tensions in Portland]

The attack shut down the Hollywood Transit Station and Portland MAX trains in both directions for several hours Friday evening.

Simpson noted then that several passengers, including the two young women thought to be the target of the man’s anti-Muslim slurs, had left the train after the stabbings. He urged any witnesses to come forward to give statements to police. Simpson added that it did not appear that the suspect or the victims had any relationship with one another.

“We don’t know if (the suspect) has mental-health issues or was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or all of the above,” Simpson said. “With this incident, we’re obviously in early stages of the investigation.”

The attacks occurred just as Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, was set to commence at sunset Friday. Simpson said that Portland police had already reached out to Muslim organizations, mosques and imams in the community to talk about extra patrols during Ramadan — and that those extra patrols would continue.

“Our thoughts are with the Muslim community,” Simpson said Friday. “As something like this happens, this only instills fear in that community.”

[The white flight of Derek Black]

On Saturday, people mourned the stabbing victims and praised them as heroes for their actions. Namkai Meche’s sister, Vajra Alaya-Maitreya, emailed a statement to The Washington Post on behalf of their family, saying her brother lived “a joyous and full life” with an enthusiasm that was infectious.

“We lost him in a senseless act that brought close to home the insidious rift of prejudice and intolerance that is too familiar, too common. He was resolute in his conduct (and) respect of all people,” she wrote. “In his final act of bravery, he held true to what he believed is the way forward. He will live in our hearts forever as the just, brave, loving, hilarious and beautiful soul he was. We ask that in honor of his memory, we use this tragedy as an opportunity for reflection and change. We choose love.”

By Saturday afternoon, a GoFundMe campaign called “Tri Met Heroes” set up for the victims’ families had raised more than $30,000. A GoFundMe spokesman confirmed to The Post that the company would ensure funds are sent to the victim’s families.

The attack prompted a slew of outraged responses Friday from Oregon residents and lawmakers, as well as nationally.

Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly called the incident “especially sad and disturbing” in a statement on behalf of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who was traveling Friday night, and the City Council, according to KGW News.

“People lost their lives or were injured because they stood up to hate,” Eudaly said in the statement. “We need to offer our heartfelt support to the women and others who were targeted. The courage of the people who stood up for them is a reminder that we as a city need to stand together to denounce the hate.”

Multnomah County officials announced that its mental-health call center would be available 24 hours a day for those affected by the MAX train stabbing.

“We are very sad. Ramadan started just a couple hours ago,” Imtiaz Khan, president of the Islamic Center of Portland, told Oregon Public Broadcasting on Friday night. “We are very sorry for the two men who tried to do the right thing. … Of course people from the Muslim community are concerned. And, unfortunately, the easy targets are women because of the headscarf.”

The Portland Mercury, a local newspaper, reported that Christian was a “known right wing extremist and white supremacist” who had attempted to assault protesters at local demonstrations in the past. Video from April 29, shot by Mercury reporter Doug Brown, showed Christian arriving at a “March for Free Speech” draped in an American flag and carrying a baseball bat. While there, Christian yelled to the crowd that he was a “nihilist,” shouted the n-word at people and gave Nazi salutes, Brown reported.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Facebook page they said belonged to Christian showed he held racist, white supremacist and extremist beliefs. On that profile, the Facebook user said he supported creating a “White homeland” in the Pacific Northwest and declared on April 9 that he had “just Challenged Ben Ferencz (Last Living Nuremberg Persecutor) to a Debate in the Hague with Putin as our judge. I will defend the Nazis and he will defend the AshkeNAZIs.”

On April 19, the anniversary of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the user praised bomber Timothy McVeigh in another status update.

“May all the Gods Bless Timothy McVeigh a TRUE PATRIOT!!!” he wrote. McVeigh was sentenced to death for the 1995 bombing, which killed 168 and was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil before Sept. 11, 2001.

[Trump’s statement on Ramadan is almost entirely about terrorism]

On April 28, the same Facebook user shared a meme that showed a picture of Confederate statues being removed.

“If we’re removing statues because of the Civil War, We should be removing mosques because of 9/11,” the meme stated.

That same day, the user posted a lengthy Facebook status “too (sic) all my Portland Peeps” encouraging them to attend a free speech rally in Portland:

I will be there Demasking anyone with a mask. I will attend in Lizard King Regalia as a Political Nihilist to Provoke both Sides and attempt to engage anyone in a true Philosophy and Political Discussion. This Is what I have done for the last 6 years in front of Powell’s Books Downtown. I take the Role of International Patriot and Revolutionary VERY SERIOUS BUT YOU ALL KNOW I AM THE MOST LAID BACK DUDE IN THE WORLD- Until you cross that line then nothing will stop our COME TO JESUS TALK FRIEND OR FOE.

By Saturday morning, the page was flooded with furious comments from people who had linked him with the Portland train stabbing suspect. An SPLC spokeswoman told The Washington Post on Saturday that the group had confirmed this was Christian’s Facebook page by corroborating his mugshot likeness with pictures the Facebook user had shared, as well as with other reporting.

Portland police confirmed to The Post that they believed the Facebook page belonged to Christian.

Christian’s mother, Mary Christian, told the Huffington Post that she couldn’t imagine why her son would be involved in such an incident, “unless he was on drugs or something.”

“He’s been in prison. He’s always been spouting anti-establishment stuff,” Mary Christian told the news site Saturday. “But he’s a nice person. I just can’t imagine.”

Todd C. Frankel contributed to this report. This post has been updated.

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