He’s a tried and true Trumper and I’m sure he believes that Ukraine is responsible for election interference rather than Russia. That’s what Putin told Trump and now half the GOP (at least) believes it. I seriously doubt he meant to say Russia, considering Trump’s fealty to Vladimir Putin. He didn’t misspeak. Some Republicans know otherwise. But will they have the nerve to defy Dear Leader? I’m not so sure:
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It’s even more ghastly when you read the whole thing. I just thought I’d put this up as we go into the final week before the 2016 Stormy Daniels election fraud case begins on the 15th. Think about what he said and the fact that dozens of other women have accused him of the same thing and that he’s even been held liable for defamation and sexual assault for over 90 million dollars. The man is a reprehensible reprobate on a level we’ve never encountered in presidential politics — and we’ve had some real beauts when it comes to womanizing. This man is truly disgusting.
He’s not going to find it Trump told a rally audience last week that he would be coming up with a policy on abortion in the next week. (And yes, everyone made the same joke about “infrastructure week and health care reform in two weeks” joke when he did it.) But he does have to come up with something because his own people are waiting for the magic words he’s been promising that will put this whole thing to rest. Unfortunately for him, it’s not possible: Former President Donald Trump is vowing to solve the abortion dilemma that has dogged Republican candidates since the fall of Roe v. Wade with his singular dealmaking acumen. The presumptive Republican nominee, who has pledged to make a statement on abortion this week, has said for months that if elected he would “come together with all groups” and “negotiate something” that would “make both sides happy,” suggesting that “15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.” “We’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” he said.
Trump says he made over $50 million and maybe he did. But I think I’d wait for the fundraising reports to come in before treating that as a confirmed number. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but he tends to exaggerate a little bit. On the other hand, those crooked gazzilionaires really might have added a zero to their checks when they heard this: Donald Trump promised to keep billionaires’ taxes low at a fundraising dinner Saturday night in Palm Beach, Fla., held at the home of billionaire John Paulson. A Trump campaign official told NBC News that the former president “spoke on the need to win back the White House so we can turn our country around, focusing on key issues including unleashing energy production, securing our southern border, reducing inflation, extending the Trump Tax Cuts, eliminating Joe Biden’s insane [electric vehicle] mandate, protecting Israel, and avoiding global war.” NBC News requested to have a reporter present at the fundraiser, but the campaign refused. […] Some billionaires who abandoned Trump in the wake of Jan.
But of course they did President Joe Biden on Friday visited the fallen Key Bridge site in Baltimore and pledged to citizens that “your nation has your back.” Politico: “My administration is committed, absolutely committed, to ensuring that parties responsible for this tragedy pay to repair the damage and be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law will allow, but I also want to be clear: We will support Maryland and Baltimore every step of the way to help you rebuild and maintain all the business and commerce that’s here now,” he said at the foot of the downed bridge, with the wind whipping behind him. Well, not the entire nation. While Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young has requested Congress to authorize “a 100 percent Federal cost share for rebuilding the bridge,” unconditional support is out of fashion for the party dominated by a former president whose every decision is transactional (also Politico): The House Freedom Caucus signaled Friday that they’re open to giving federal funds to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, but they have a few significant conditions.
Netanyahu and bad faith all around It’s a struggle to manage the frustration this week. Yes, the economy (in the aggregate anyway) continues to go gangbusters. Simon Rosenberg continues to push Hopium like a street hustler. Don’t worry. Be hopey. And yet. Beneath it all is the nagging sense that the world is teetering. Gaza is a mess. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu looks more and more like a murderous autocrat with familiar echoes of our bumbling homegrown one. Like Donald Trump, he needs to stay in power to stay out of jail. So far, three years after instigating a violent insurrection, that’s one thing at which Trump seems infuriatinglly adept. Michael Tomasky laments that it’s taken President Biden this long to at least threaten Netanyahu with harsh language: It’s sad that it takes the tragic killing of seven workers for the great global humanitarian José Andrés, as opposed to the piles upon piles of dead Palestinian babies, to spur this change. And, of course, it’s not even really a change yet. It’s a threat of a change down the road if certain behaviors continue.
I think Trump’s incoherence has a lot more salience now that the right has been slagging Biden for his alleged dementia. They opened the door to a closer look at how daft he really is and how much worse it’s gotten. As long as people see it. Rachel Leingang writes about this in the Guardian today: Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories. Curiously, Trump tucks the most tangible policy implications in at the end. His speeches often finish with a rundown of what his second term in office could bring, in a meditation-like recitation the New York Times recently compared to a sermon. Since these policies could become reality, here’s a few of those ideas: -Instituting the death penalty for drug dealers.
The Washington Post took a look at what we know about the state of Trump’s health: As former president Donald Trump escalated his attacks on President Biden’s health and mental fitness last fall, Trump released the first updated report on his own condition in more than three years. This assessment, however, stood in stark contrast to the relatively detailed reports released by the White House during his term. Instead of specifics like blood pressure and medications, the letter had just three paragraphswithout specific numbers proclaiming that Trump was in “excellent health” and had “exceptional” cognitive ability. It did not disclose Trump’s weight. And after relying on a longtime personal doctor and then twoWhite House physicians who had attested to his well-being in office, Trump turned to an unknown on the national stage to providethis report: Bruce A. Aronwald, a 64-year-old osteopathic physician from New Jersey — and a longtime member of Trump’s Bedminster golf club.
Rigging the election for Dear Leader And Trump and his henchmen are lying about it: Former President Donald Trump picked up a phone to pressure a Nebraska state senator to revive a winner-take-all system of awarding its Electoral College votes for president, sources told the Nebraska Examiner on Friday. Trump, the sources said, called State Sen. Tom Brewer, who chairs the State Legislature’s Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, and urged him to take action to get a winner-take-all bill up for debate in the waning days of the 2024 session. Four working days remain in the 60-day session. Brewer, the sources said, responded that it doesn’t work that way. The deadline is past to vote a bill out of a committee and get it passed this year. In addition, the Speaker of the Legislature on Friday said it’s also too late to amend a bill into another bill. Trump then reportedly told Brewer, who is term-limited this year, that his political career was over. Brewer, 65, is a decorated military veteran who represents Nebraska’s Sandhills area.
It’s still happening If you wonder why so many Republicans are now backing Vladimir Putin and are hostile to Ukraine in its fight to remain a free sovereign country, you don’t have to look much farther than the fact that they are members of a cult that worships a man who seems to have an unusual affinity for Valdimir Putin. That certainly informs the cultists’ beliefs. But just as important is the right wing media’s eager dissemination of Russian talking points. Even some Republicans are becoming alarmed: The most striking example came this week. In an interview with Puck News’s Julia Ioffe, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) — none other than the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — flat-out said that Russian propaganda had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul suggested conservative media was to blame. “There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical [to what they’re saying on Russian state television] — on our airwaves,” McCaul said.