Could be… He’s still at it: Tony Bobulinski, the high-flying investor who is the House GOP’s star witness in the Oversight Committee’s ever-expanding probe into Hunter Biden, has become the one Biden business associate that Republicans would like voters to believe. “Of all of the guys that were involved in the Hunter Biden orbit, Tony Bobulinski appears to me to be the one solid guy that tried to do the right thing and was honest,” Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) told Lou Dobbs earlier this month. But as Republicans examine Hunter Biden’s questionable business ties, it turns out Bobulinski is connected to one particular character perhaps more unsavory than any other figure in the inquiry’s constellation: Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. Vekselberg is a Ukrainian-born energy magnate who’s been a close ally of Vladimir Putin’s for decades.
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I guess she hasn’t received her check recently Melania has been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail since Trump announced. Maybe that’s why. She used to get paid for it: A super PAC aligned with former President Donald Trump paid his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, $155,000 in 2021, according to new financial filings. The New York Times first reported that the group, Make America Great Again, Again — which has since been closed — made the unusual payment to the first lady in December 2021. The payment was not included on the group’s initial federal reports, which instead listed two transactions, for $125,000 and $30,000, last year for a client called the Designer’s Management Agency. Melania Trump is listed as a client of that agency. The payments were revealed Thursday after Trump filed new financial disclosure forms, which listed the $155,000 figure as the fee for a “speaking engagement.” The date of the payment coincides with a private fundraiser at the Trumps’ Mar-a-Lago club in Florida at the the time, which sold seats for $125,000 a pop. Former U.S.
Dems post another pair of special election wins Former congressman Tom Suozzi won the special election on Tuesday for the Long Island congressional seat recently held by “serial fabulist and expelled former GOP Rep. George Santos,” as CNN framed it. Santos won the seat by 8 points in 2022. Suozzi, a Democrat, defeated Nassau County GOP legislator Mazi Pilip by nearly 8, a 16-point swing in Democrats’ favor. The win shaves House Republicans’ majority thinner than it was on Monday (New York Times): The outcome flipped one of the five House seats Democrats need to retake the majority in November, giving the party a badly needed shot of optimism. But Mr. Suozzi’s campaign also provided something that may prove more valuable, a playbook for candidates across the country competing on turf where President Biden and his party remain deeply unpopular. The strategy went something like this: Challenge Republicans on issues that they usually monopolize, like crime, taxes and, above all, immigration. Flash an independent streak.
Can you smell the fear on the GOP? Molly Jong-Fast reflects on Robert Hur’s hit job. Democrats freaked out about the special counsel’s gratuitous comments about Joe Biden’s memory. The press obsessed over it. Republicans redistributed theories that Biden might drop out and Michelle Obama might step in. Biden himself has responded with jokes about his age. Jong-Fast writes (Vanity Fair): Now, I understand why everyone’s so anxious; another Trump presidency could be the end of American democracy. But there’s also a reason why Republicans are so obsessed with trying to get Biden to drop out. It’s not because they are concerned about Biden’s mental acuity; it’s because they know that incumbency is a huge advantage and the economy is picking up. (Meanwhile, Trump is trying to look like an incumbent president—while taking credit, somehow, for the stock market’s rise.) […] The media’s decision to seize on bad polls, especially around Biden’s age, has ratcheted up Democrats’ nerves for months. Yet polls have been wrong before. Remember the red wave of 2022?
People are worried about Biden’s mental acuity but this man is on the Armed Services Committee Steve Benen points out that this man has access to very important defense information. I think that’s a big mistake: Over the course of just three years, Sen. Tommy Tuberville has made quite a name for himself. The Alabama Republican is perhaps best known for launching an unprecedented, 10-month blockade, preventing confirmation of U.S. military leaders, but that’s not the right-wing senator’s only notable contribution. Tuberville has also made headlines for embracing Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” for example, and voting against certification of the 2020 election results. He’s also disputed the racism of white nationalists and presented an unsubtle argument that “inner city” school teachers are lazy and possibly illiterate. He’s also struggled with basic details related to civics and modern American history. But let’s also not forget that Tuberville has shared a variety of curious thoughts about foreign policy in general and Russia’s attack on Ukraine in specific.
By the way, here’s Trump being “funny.” I’m sure the kids love this stuff.
This isn’t on some obscure corner of the internet. It’s on Newsmax which is watched by many MAGA Republicans and on which many GOP elected politicians appear: I just thought you’d want to know what your fellow Americans are watching. Now, go have a drink.
Above banner this a.m. from the Washington Post Let the follies begin (Washington Post): The Senate passed a $95 billion national security package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other U.S. allies early Tuesday morning after a monthslong debate that has deeply divided congressional Republicans. The bill passed 70 to 29, after 22 Republicans joined Democrats in approving the aid. God immediately told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to reject the Israel aid because the package wasn’t harsh enough on strangers in the land. Johnson dismissed it premptively Monday night. “In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will o these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.” Johnson’s statement comes after he and other House leaders helped torpedo an earlier version of the legislation that includes sweeping border security measures and other reforms. The whiny voice of God Johnson is hearing is Donald Trump’s, if not Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speaking through Donald Trump.
Republicans plan “Jan. 6 hearings” on age Tired: Benghazi-Benghazi-Benghazi. “But her emails.”Wired: Ageism. “Joe Biden is better on his worst day than Donald Trump is on his best day,” Lawrence O’Donnell noted Monday night, referencing Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s accomplishments in office and physical condition when he ran for a fourth presidential term. There are serious stakes for these United States in this fall’s elections, particularly regarding who wins the White House. But Republicans are proving themselves no more serious today than they were in 2016, 2018, 2020 or 2022. They plan to campaign on ageism. Paul Krugman wrote on Monday, Lincoln’s birthday: But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered. And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now.
The Senate stayed in session all night to pass the Ukraine funding bill. Now Mike Johnson says he won’t bring it to the House floor because it doesn’t have border funding. I know it’s hard to believe. But it shouldn’t be. They have discovered that nothing matters to their people except owning the libs and licking Trump’s boots. They’re very busy anyway. There’s a lot of important business on the agenda: House Republicans have reached out to special counsel Robert Hur to discuss having him testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee about his report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Hur’s report released last week did not charge the president with a crime, but it painted a picture of a forgetful commander in chief who failed to properly protect highly sensitive classified information – a depiction that could hurt Biden politically and that Republicans have seized on. Hur has retained Bill Burck as his personal attorney.