by Sharon Rondeau
(Feb. 18, 2023) — On his TruthSocial account Friday evening, “@DC_Draino,” the screen name for former California entertainment attorney Rogan O’Handley, provided details about his dinner meeting that evening with 45th President and 2024 presidential candidate Donald J. Trump.
Now a Florida resident and full-time “social media guru,” O’Handley’s Twitter account was suspended in 2021 for expressing doubt about the declared results of the 2020 presidential election. At some point the account was reinstated and now mirrors his TruthSocial posts.
O’Handley considers himself a “civil rights activist” and “Commie Fighter.” According to The Federalist, a tweet he issued on May 14, 2020 was retweeted by Trump, causing the account to “go viral.”
“Uh oh, wouldn’t want the Commies in blue states to see us Floridians all out at bars having a good time with no face masks,” the tweet reads. “Might destroy their narrative that everyone’s gonna die if we don’t life in a bubble forever!”
On Friday O’Handley reported that two 2024 Trump election priorities are “ballot harvesting” and a change in theme from his 2020 “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” to simply, “Save America.”
A list O’Handley provided of the issues he and Trump reportedly discussed is:
Ballot harvesting will be a big part of ‘24
Ashli Babbitt was murdered & her family deserves justice
Digital Bill of Rights = top priority
Mitch McConnell is a dirty RINO (my choice of words)
2024 phrase might be “Save America”
Rallies are coming
O’Handley credited Donald Trump Jr.’s announcement of his father’s planned visit to East Palestine, OH next week, where on February 3 a Norfolk Southern train derailed, releasing toxic chemicals into the environment and apparently causing wildlife to perish and humans to experience medical issues.
Two weeks later, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) indicated it will provide assistance to the community. In its latest podcast dated February 16, 2023, the agency discusses the subject of “Before, During & After” offering “insights into where emergency management is headed, conversation about preparing for the threats of tomorrow and how everyone has a role in keeping communities safe from disaster.”
While O’Handley claimed “FEMA just announced they’re going to start paying funds to the victims after Trump announced his visit,” The Post & Email was unable to confirm it through public reports. However, “federal resources” from FEMA will reportedly begin to arrive on Saturday.
“Tomorrow, FEMA will supplement federal efforts by deploying a Senior Response Official along with a Regional Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) to support ongoing operations, including incident coordination and ongoing assessments of potential long-term recovery needs,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and FEMA regional administrator Thomas Sivak announced Friday.
A medical clinic will also be established as a joint effort between the state health department and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), a federal agency.
In the early hours of Saturday, Trump Sr. retweeted a story from The Post Millennial reporting his intent to visit the traumatized community next week with the comment, “Great people who need help, NOW!”
One month after Trump announced his 2024 candidacy, he unveiled his plan as chief executive to halt “censorship” on the part of social-media companies. “First, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business or person to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens…”
Further, he said, he “will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship, directly or indirectly…” to include any violations of federal law.
“The time has finally come for Congress to pass a Digital Bill of Rights,” he said at 5:14 in the video, encompassing the concept that “government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter,” a reference to revelations from the “Twitter Files.”
As for “ballot harvesting,” The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday:
After years of assailing early voting, Donald Trump is having a change of heart.
The 2024 presidential candidate remains critical of various forms of early voting, advisers say, but his campaign is nonetheless mounting an effort to pursue such votes after Democrats excelled at doing so in recent elections. His team is studying state laws governing absentee and mail-in voting as well as ballot collection, called “ballot harvesting” by critics, in which third parties gather and turn in votes, people familiar with the effort said.
It amounts to a significant shift for Mr. Trump and comes as GOP rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, say the party squandered chances in recent elections by focusing too much on Election Day turnout.
…Mr. Trump highlighted the move in a fundraising email this week, saying, “The radical Democrats have used ballot harvesting to cancel out YOUR vote and walk away with elections that they NEVER should have won. But I’m doing something HUGE to fight back.”
The email added, “Our path forward is to MASTER the Democrats’ own game of harvesting ballots in every state we can. But that also means we need to start laying the foundation for victory RIGHT NOW.”
Update, 12:10 p.m. EST: Approximately two hours ago, Trump remarked on his TruthSocial account, “Biden and FEMA said they would not be sending federal aid to East Palestine. As soon as I announced that I’m going, he announced a team will go. Hopefully he will also be there. This is good news because we got them to ‘move.’ The people of East Palestine need help. I’ll see you on Wednesday!”
