Trump and Fox Nina Burleigh has written a great piece for TNR about Joe Biden’s other opponent in the 2024 election: Fox News. I urge you to read the whole thing if you can. It will be worth your while. It opens with this: On October 6, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report for September. The numbers were extremely positive, with 336,000 jobs added, almost double the forecast. Most media outlets were reporting the numbers as a sign of improvement in the economy—which they are. But Fox reported otherwise. On his prime-time show that night, host Jesse Watters called the report “a straight-up scandal.” He accused the Biden administration of “cherry-picking and double counting the numbers.” As he babbled, chyrons drove home the point in capital letters, for anyone watching with the sound down, in, say, a bar or a gym: “Biden’s Jobs Numbers Scandal” and “Biden’s Economy Is Smoke & Mirrors.” That day, the network flooded all its zones with the same shade.
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He can’t win but if he dirties up Trump it’s fine with me. I can’t argue with a thing he says there. Stay in Chris! You’ve already burned your bridges with MAGA. You have nothing to lose.
Why does this keep coming up? That guy’s a bit of a nut. On the other hand, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this sort of thing. Remember this? A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin. “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.
You’ve already heard about the head of the Republican Party down in Florida who is accused of raping a woman with whom he and his wife, a founding member of the far right, anti-LGBTQ “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty, had previously had a three way sexual affair. It turns out that they aren’t the only hypocrites in the GOP. (Ya think????) Here’s another lovely mom for liberty: A former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor candidate and outspoken voice in the conservative “parental rights” school movement has been charged with punching a teenager while hosting an underage drinking party at her Bucks County home in September. Clarice Schillinger, 36, is facing criminal charges of assault, harassment and furnishing minors with alcohol during her daughter’s birthday party, according to the case filed in late October. Her attorney has denied all charges and said she will fight them in court.
It never fails. The man simply cannot be a decent human being. After months of Lieberman saying that there was no way that No Labels would do anything to help Donald Trump get a load of this: Tensions flared around No Labels, the quixotic third-party operation attempting to place Joe Manchin (or another centrist-ish candidate) on 2024 ballots. On Wednesday, the group’s founding chairman, Joe Lieberman, hit back at Democratic anguish over the group’s spoilsport campaign, tellingThe Wall Street Journal that “Right now, looking at the polling, it’s not No Labels that’s going to re-elect Donald Trump… Right now, it looks like it’s Joe Biden who’s going to re-elect Donald Trump.” Lieberman’s out-of-right-field attack isn’t shocking; after losing the 2006 Connecticut Senate primary, he left the party and successfully ran as an independent, while still caucusing with Dems. Two years later, he crossed party lines to campaign for John McCain, cementing his apostasy with a speech at the Republican National Convention. But the comment is nonetheless extraordinary.
“Profound losers” Readers may enjoy an older video making the rounds again from the show “Letters Live.” Contrary to JoJoFromJerz’s description (social media sometimes strips context), the words are not actress Edie Falco’s. She came to read them in 2018. Via YouTube: In the wake of violence in Charlottesville in 2017, a Salt Lake City resident named Jonna Ramey wrote an open letter to white nationalists that was titled, “What Is Wrong With You?” Her letter was published in The Salt Lake Tribune and was soon read by millions. At Letters Live at New York City’s The Town Hall back in 2018, acting legend Edie Falco joined us to read it. The Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 19, 2017: Letter of the week: What is wrong with you, white supremacists? I am a 67-year-old American white woman. My parents enlisted in World War II to fight fascism. They both served; my mother was a nurse, my father navigated bombers. They lost friends in that bloody war so that all the world could be free of fascism. They did not fight so that some white people could claim supremacy or that Nazis could openly walk the streets of America.
Some uplifting messages from your once and (hopefully not) future dictator I love that “additionally, I did nothing wrong…” Dingell criticized his “rot in hell” Christmas message which clearly got to him. Aaaand a little RINO bashing for good measure I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t sound to me like he’s having a very good day. Maybe his Flock of Seagulls do isn’t cooperating?
Purity for thee but not for he Several years ago, when many Democratic strategists were demanding that the party embrace the tenets of the Christian Right in order to win over the salt of the earth, white, Real Americans (whom they insisted were essential to a legitimate governing majority) the media briefly reported on some of their more extreme rituals. They looked at “purity culture” practices such as gay conversion “therapy”, masturbation abstinence and “purity balls” which feature a pseudo wedding ceremony between a father and daughter. All these practices were disturbing enough that they pretty much went underground after being publicly exposed and the culture wars turned to their next battlefield, the latest being the cruel bullying of transgender teens and banning of gay literature in schools. There was something particularly creepy about the purity balls.
Unfortunately, sometimes people have to see the consequences of their actions before it can. If there’s one issue I’ve sadly become so pessimistic about that I can hardly write about it anymore, it’s guns. The ongoing tragedy of our fetish for the grotesque weapons of war with which so many Americans believe they have a right to play makes me feel like pulling the covers over my head and never coming up for air. I’ve noted the failure of NRA in the last couple of years and they did manage to pass a very tepid gun safety bill in the last congress. But even with that it just seems so hopeless that I’ve lost heart. But I read a story this morning in the Washington Post that makes me wonder if maybe something might be changing and I’m sharing it with you with a gift link so you can read it too. It’s about four current and three former Senators who have changed their minds. That’s not something I expected to see. They interviewed these senators who all voted against the bills that were proposed in the wake of the horrific Sandy Hook massacre in 2013.
All the most hopeful political strategists I read have one big caveat as they contemplate the upcoming election: the third party threat. That could throw a monkey wrench into everything and usher in another Trump flukey win. I’ve written before about No Labels, which is nothing more than a grift of dumb big donors. But this one is something else and it’s kind of terrifying: The super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid is narrowing its ballot access campaign focus to seven states — including crucial battlegrounds that will determine the outcome of the presidential election. American Values 2024 will now prioritize helping to get Kennedy on the ballot in Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York and Texas, according to plans first shared with POLITICO. Half of these target states were decisive in the 2020 race, and won by now-President Joe Biden by narrow margins. The promotion of a third-party candidate in these battlegrounds could change the pathways for victory for the major parties’ nominees — even if Kennedy only garners single-digit support next November.