Don fanning the flames of GOP war
Probers get grisly details in vicious slay
The GOP civil war just keeps on raging.
Former President Donald Trump took aim at the Senate’s top Republican and a conservative newspaper editorial board on Thursday over what he described as their attempt to “badly hurt” the GOP by pushing for his banishment from the party.
Trump, a voracious consumer of conservative media, took the broadsides in a lengthy statement, beginning with a lament about the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which published a piece this week arguing that Republican candidates will keep losing elections if they have nothing going for them except their loyalty to the ex-president.
“They fight for RINOS that have so badly hurt the Republican Party,” Trump said of the editorial board, using an acronym to disparage moderate GOP lawmakers. “That’s where they are and that’s where they will always be. Fortunately, nobody cares much about the Wall Street Journal editorial anymore. They have lost great credibility.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board was a major source of Trump-boosting content throughout his time in office — until he incited the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, at which point the outlet switched gears and called on the ex-president to resign.
Pivoting away from the editorial board and seeking to deflect blame, Trump said it’s not him, but establishment GOP lawmakers like Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell who are at fault for Republican election defeats.
He blamed the twin GOP losses in January’s critical Georgia Senate runoffs on McConnell’s refusal at the time to pass $2,000 coronavirus stimulus checks for most Americans.
“This latter point was used against our senators and the $2,000 will be approved anyway by the Democrats who bought the Georgia election —and McConnell let them do it!” Trump said. “Even more stupidly, the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent millions of dollars on ineffective TV ads starring Mitch McConnell, the most unpopular politician in the country.”
A spokesman for McConnell did not return a request for comment.
Since leaving office in disgrace after being impeached for an unprecedented second time, Trump has focused most of his political energy on besmirching members of his own party who broke with him after the Capitol riot.
An ex-con has been charged with stabbing dead a 23-year-old man visiting the suspect’s Bronx apartment — and leaving the victim’s body there to rot, police said Thursday.
Johnnie Vickers, 39, was charged Wednesday with murder, manslaughter and weapon possession in the death of Adam Saunders.
Saunders’ decomposing body was found face-up in the living room of Vicker’s apartment on Cruger Ave. near Lydig Ave. in Pelham Parkway on Feb. 22. The victim, who lived in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, had been repeatedly stabbed in the upper body about 8:20 a.m. four days earlier, according to prosecutors.
Police said Saunders was known to visit the building, though the victim’s mother, Musu Saunders, 66, told the Daily News she had no idea why he would be there.
Vickers told police he had been friends with Saunders about a year and he spun a bizarre tale about how the victim wound up fatally stabbed.
“He came in,” Vickers told cops, according to court papers. “He was digging in his pocket. He took out a razor blade. I picked up two knives I keep in the living room for protection.”
“He charged at me,” Vickers added. “He didn’t have the razor blade in his hand any longer. When he charged at me, he cut his finger on one of my knives. I didn’t swing at him. He must’ve cut his hand on my knife.”
Things escalated from there, Vickers claimed.
“He grabbed my neck,” Vickers told cops. “I started swinging the knives back and forth. I was hitting him with them. He finally let go. He let go because the knives got the best of him. I looked at him. It did not look good.”
Vickers called 911 but hung up without speaking, he claimed.
“I knew this guy had ruined my life so I hung up. So I left. I ditched the knives after I left my place,” Vickers said.
Prosecutors did not buy his claim of self defense. Vickers was ordered held without bail during his arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court on Thursday afternoon.
Saunders, the father of a 1-yearold boy, dreamed of playing professional basketball.
“He loved everybody, even those that didn’t love him, and it really hurts my heart that this happen to him because he didn’t deserve this,” said friend Janiyah Williams, 26. “They didn’t even give my friend a chance to grow up and it’s really sad that the good ones have to go so young.”
Police said the victim had no criminal history. Not so for his suspected killer.
Vickers has about eight previous arrests on his record dating back to when he was a teen, police said. Records show he served two terms in state prison.
Under an alias, Michael
Payton, he did 11 years for a Brooklyn robbery and was released in August 2014. Before that, he was behind bars for three years for another Brooklyn robbery conviction and was released in November 2002.
In October, police said, he was charged with pistol-whipping a man in the Bronx. That case is pending.
A neighbor of the alleged killer said she wouldn’t even open the door for Vickers when he would accidentally lock himself out. She hollered in relief when she heard he had been arrested, saying she hadn’t slept since the body was discovered.
“He had strange mannerisms,” she recalled of the suspect. “Sometimes, late at night, he’d knock on my door saying he had been locked out and wanted to climb through my window.”
Another neighbor said, “It surprised me because he didn’t seem like the type person who would kill someone.”
Samantha Stevens, 23, who has a 1-year-old son with the victim, said she’s relieved Vickers is in custody, “but at the end of the day, I still have to tell my son that his father was murdered.”