A state senator publicly shares one of the most painful moments of her life so that cruel misogynists might understand what they’re putting women through Here’s the story: Arizona’s anti-abortion laws impact women across the Grand Canyon State, and one Democratic state senator spoke out about how those laws have hurt her as she seeks to end an unviable pregnancy, urging GOP lawmakers to consider the harm caused by the restrictive laws they support. An emotional Sen. Eva Burch described, in a speech Monday on the Senate floor, the hoops she has had to jump through to secure an abortion, after finding out her pregnancy is not viable. Despite knowing for weeks that her pregnancy is likely to result in a miscarriage, the Democrat from Mesa has not yet received the care she needs. “I don’t think people should have to justify their abortions,” she said, her voice shaking.
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Dan Pfeiffer makes this observation about Trump’s grotesque behavior: The man who tried to violently overturn the election promising a “bloodbath” if he loses sparked alarm across the political spectrum. Trump supporters argued that the former President was speaking specifically about the auto industry. Some pundits chastised Democrats — including the Biden campaign — for taking Trump out of context. This is overly pedantic idiocy. Following the logic of any Trump speech is nearly impossible. The comment came during a section about Chinese competition in car manufacturing, so maybe he was taken out of context. But that’s so far beyond the point. Much like his legal strategy, Trump is trying to get off on a technicality. The bloodbath comment is not new nor is it out of character. If you are arguing that Trump didn’t really mean bloodbath, you lost the forest for the trees a long time ago. He has threatened violence if he gets convicted or loses the election. Just a few weeks ago, Trump warned there would be a “civil war” in the U.S. if he lost. Either way, Trump has political violence on the brain.
MAGA Republicans can dish it out but they can’t take it President Biden’s fiery SOTU hurt MAGA feelings. Axios has it: They’re aborting the State of the Union? Emmer’s demand came after Biden’s March 7 speech. Others in his caucus wanted to abort it. Axios reminds readers. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) introduced a bill in late February to keep Biden from being invited to address the Congress if his budget and national security strategy is late to arrive. On Super Tuesday, MSNBC reported: Rep. Scott Perry raised the specter of rescinding Biden’s invitation. “He comes at the invitation of Congress, and Republicans are in control of the House,” the Pennsylvania Republican told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo. “There’s no reason that we need to invite him to get more propaganda.” Glass jaws on that side of the aisle. Decorum for thee but not for me. Democrats laughed at the Georgia Peach Queen of decorum last May when she called for it after her past heckling of Biden’s SOTU. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download.
What’s so witty about Trump, mockery, and “Birdbrain”? Michael Kruse examines how Donald “91 Counts” Trump uses humor “to maintain the useful reputation as a politically incorrect outsider despite his obvious insider status as the leader of the GOP.” “Hilarious, “super funny,” some say. Kruse isn’t joking. He has quotes. Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, “had the same twisted sense of humor,” says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen.” It’s a part of Trump’s bonding with his audience. “It’s such a huge part of his movement,” Alexander Reid Ross, the author of Against the Fascist Creep and a member of the executive committee of the Far Right Analysis Network, told me. “It is a way of inverting and reversing assumptions in a carnivalesque kind of way. It’s a way of upending morality,” he said.
Back in 2000 when Donald Trump first tested the waters of a presidential campaign , giving a series of speeches as a possible Reform Party candidate, he famously told Forbes Magazine, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” He was speaking at the time about a weird deal he had going with motivational speaker Anthony Robbins in which he timed his political appearances around paid seminars that Robbins paid him a million bucks to give. By the time he decided to run for real in 2015 he didn’t publicly suggest that he could make money campaigning but he did make the case that he was incorruptible saying, “I don’t need anybody’s money.” (He’d obviously figured out that that real graft was to made once he was in the White House.) He pledged to spend a hundred million of his own money on his run but ended up only giving about $66 million out of $398 million so Trump didn’t “self-fund” by a long shot. In 2020 he didn’t use any of his own money at all instead raising $774 million for the campaign with the RNC and his Super PACs raising much more.
The stock market stopped trading during that press conference. Here’s what I wrote that day: President Trump’s Oval Office speech last week was a massive dud and the stock market took a huge dive last Thursday. So Trump decided to take the bull by the horns and held a press conference in the Rose Garden with a group of CEOs just before closing time the next day. The market made a sharp upward turn as he spoke and the president was extremely pleased with himself. Numerous reports about the deliberations within the dysfunctional White House over the past week, however, have made it clear that was the only thing that pleased him. According to the New York Times, it’s been an extremely chaotic time with infighting among the various task force members, Jared Kushner stepping all over everyone’s toes and incompetent leadership from the top. In other words, it’s been business as usual in the Trump administration. Unfortunately, this time this bumbling White House is confronting its first real crisis and one of the most serious global challenges in decades.
Trump says Israel should “finish the problem” Because he’s a big peacenik, dontcha know: Former President Donald Trump called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza quickly during an interview with Fox News Channel’s “MediaBuzz.” This is the first time Trump has called to end the war in Gaza since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. Trump’s comments in Sunday’s aired interview follow calls he made on Friday with FNC’s “Fox and Friends” host Brian Kilmeade that Israel should “finish the problem.” “You had a horrible invasion. It took place. It would have never happened if I was president, by the way,” he added Friday. On Sunday, the former president didn’t mention hostages or any other conditions that he would back to broker a ceasefire. “You have to finish it up and do it quickly and get back to the world of peace. We need peace in the world…we need peace in the Middle East,” Trump said when asked by “MediaBuzz” host Howard Kurtz what he would tell Netanyahu about the war in Gaza.
Ankush Khardori at Politico takes a look at some polling on Trump’s legal problems: Eight months out, we had questions. Among them: If Trump is convicted of a crime, how will it affect his chances of returning to the White House? What do Americans make of his claim that he should be immune from prosecution even if he actually perpetrated a criminal scheme to steal the last election? Does the public trust the Supreme Court to decide that issue fairly? To find out, we worked with Ipsos to poll the American people — and we discovered some surprising answers to all of these questions, and several more. The bottom line is that a conviction in Manhattan may not doom Trump, but it would do real damage. More than a third of independents said a guilty verdict would make them less likely to support Trump’s candidacy. In a close race, that might matter. It also cuts against the conventional wisdom, as analysts have sometimes doubted the political impact of the prosecution in Manhattan, which concerns Trump’s alleged falsification of his company’s business records in connection with a hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Trump is lying more than ever This Washington Post fact check is worth reading if you aren’t following all the latest Trump lies: Trump frequently recycles false claims of achievement from when he was president that we have repeatedly fact-checked, including: -He created the greatest U.S. economy in U.S. history (not by any metric).-He passed the biggest tax cut in history (it ranks 8th).-He did more for Black people than any president but Abraham Lincoln (not by any metric).-He defeated ISIS in four weeks (it took the United States and coalition partners more than two years after he took office).-He was the first president to impose tariffs on China (China has faced U.S. tariffs since George Washington first enacted them in 1789).He increased government revenue even though he cut taxes (False). But there are always new lies. Here are a few: Biden was declared ‘incompetent’ to stand trial in documents case “He’s [Biden] at great jeopardy, really, but they said: ‘Look, he’s incompetent to go to court but he can be president.’ Figure that one.
No vaccine yet for MAGA fever That’s the thing about democracy. When it’s working smoothly no one notices. Public officials derided as the Deep State do their jobs, underpaid compared to the private sector, and deliver your mail, take away your trash, deposit your Social Security checks, run your police department. A small army of them administer elections in your state, unseen save for the handful of retirees you see every two years at your polling station. “Nobody knew who we were, what we did,” [Arizona Secretary of State Adrian] Fontes said ruefully. “It’s a little bit different now.” Fontes now has a bodyguard, reports The Guardian: “It’s very sad,” Fontes said. “It’s a sad state of affairs that in a civil society, in one of the most advanced civilizations that anybody could have imagined, we have to worry about physical violence.” These are troubled times in Arizona. Until 2020, election officials were the largely anonymous folk who did the important yet unseen work of making democracy run smoothly.