He’s been spilling even more nuclear secrets but his hand-picked judge in Florida continues to protect him by slow-walking the trial A delay to consider how long to delay the trial. Trump’s documents case, in Judge Cannon’s hands, is going nowhere fast. https://t.co/GxcTZhkqK0 — Steven Mazie (@stevenmazie) October 6, 2023 We just learned that Donald Trump has been whispering American nuclear secrets in the ears of his Mar-a-lago members and they’ve been spreading them around to anyone who will listen. Torri Otten at TNR reminds us of all the other times he’s done this: Trump allegedly told Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt in April 2021 that Australia should start buying its submarines from the U.S. Trump then told Pratt the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads a U.S. sub can carry, and how close it can supposedly get to a Russian sub without being detected, ABC News reported late Thursday, citing anonymous sources.
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When he was mocked on the cable networks for getting the lowest vote count in history, he pulled the plug. ABC’s Jonathan Karl writes: In reporting for my upcoming book, “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party,” I learned that Trump had secretly plotted to be elected speaker back in January, when he was publicly supporting Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who was struggling to get the votes he needed. The idea of Donald Trump serving as speaker was first proposed on the day he left the White House — Jan. 20, 2021 — by a pro-Trump activist named Rogan O’Handley, who went by the name “@DC_Draino” on social media. The idea was soon aggressively pushed by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist in the White House. At first Trump had no interest in the job, but that all changed as he watched McCarthy fail in vote after vote on the House floor in early January of this year. The prime-time drama surrounding the seemingly endless voting for House speaker in January caught the attention of the former president, who was soaking up every minute of coverage from his perch in Mar‑a‑Lago.
What Republicans did and what it really means A lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill have no use for Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and the seven others from the Republican caucus whose votes the other day sank Kevin McCarthy’s speakership. MAGA reactionaries lobbing grenades at Democrats is one thing. Lobbing them into the Republican caucus is quite another. As predicted, Republicans are trying to pin McCarthy’s ouster on Democrats. Reality check: It was Gaetz’s resolution. His alone. For reasons including his initiating an impeachment inquiry against President Biden and his reversal on condemning Donald Trump for precipitating a violent insurrection, Democrats saw no benefit in bailing out McCarthy. Now comes the aftermath. Giving McCarthy the boot is not a good look either for Republicans or for the U.S.A. as a whole. After a quick review of the week’s events and Donald Trump’s “burn-the-house-down” antics at his New York trial, Peter Baker (take with a grain of salt) writes that the foundations of our democracy appear shaky both to scholars and average Americans. Also, foreign adversaries are watching closely: Robert M.
Did Lincoln lose his soul or save a nation? And you don’t need to win over 100 percent of the people on the other side or on any side. In a democracy, what you need is a majority. — NPR’s Steve Inskeep to Anand Giridharadas at The.Ink Aggressive gerrymandering by GOP-led legislatures means in many places it takes much more than a simple majority to win power. Otherwise, Inskeep is correct. What Democrats must do in such places is shave the other side’s vote margins. That’s doable. Non-Democrats are not monolithic, nor are Trump supporters, as John Russell of The Holler found in Erie, Pennnsylvania. Democrats campaigning conservatively by avoiding all contact with such voters won’t cut it. Nor will giving potential allies the side-eye when they move in our direction. The left is too liberal with sticks and way too stingy with carrots. Inskeep (“Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America“) makes a case for political frenemies in conversation with Giridharadas: I don’t know if you’ve read Frank Foer’s new book on the Biden presidency.
Oh great I’ve argued that he is more likely to take votes from Trump than Biden. But it appears that at this point in the cycle anyway, I’m wrong. He does take more from Biden. Dan Pfeiffer writes about it in his newsletter today: Politico also reports that American Values 2024, a Super PAC supporting Kennedy Jr., has commissioned polling and is preparing for an independent bid. While multiple polls demonstrated that the No Labels and West candidacies could hurt Biden, the initial speculation was that Kennedy would hurt Trump more. On its face, Kennedy Jr. has been running as MAGA’s favorite Democrat. He is a regular on Fox News and other MAGA media outlets, where he mostly attacks Biden, spouts anti-vax conspiracy theories, and toes the Trump line on Russia. If West pulls disaffected liberals from Biden, and the No Labels ticket is a place for Republicans and independents that disapprove of Biden, shouldn’t RFK Jr. take votes from Trump? What the Polls Say Most of the polling shows Kennedy Jr. getting 10% and 20% of the vote against Biden in the primary.
Lol: Former President Donald Trump is considering a visit to the Capitol next week where he is open to pitching himself as a speaker candidate, according to a Republican familiar with internal discussions. If it happens, Trump would come speak to the House GOP sometime before lawmakers’ internal speaker election, which is set to happen on Wednesday, that person said. A final decision hasn’t yet been made. The full GOP will meet Tuesday for an internal “candidate forum.” It’s not clear if Trump — the frontrunner in the 2024 presidential primary — would actually run for speaker. Winning would require near-unanimity from the House GOP, a difficult hurdle for the controversial former president. One of his closest Hill allies, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, is already in the race. (Jordan told NBC that he discussed his speakership bid with Trump this week.) It remains a longshot idea: The House has never elected a speaker who wasn’t a member of Congress, though it is not technically a constitutional requirement.
Say it ain’t so… It’s been obvious that Rudy Giuliani drinks to excess for a long time. He’s shown up on Fox News inebriated more than once, as was obvious to anyone watching. In the infamous interview “Over Bloody Mary’s with NY Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi” he was described like this: His ex-wife had implied, in an interview with New York, that he was an alcoholic. Others anonymously question his mental state. “Oh yeah, yeah — I do a lot of drugs,” Giuliani said sarcastically. “There was one I was addicted to. I’ve forgotten what it is. I don’t know where the drug things come from — I really don’t. The alcohol comes from the fact that I did occasionally drink. I love Scotch. I can’t help it. All of the malts. And part of it is cigars — I love to have them with cigars. I’m a partyer.” Here’s some evidence.
That first hearing was a train wreck. Is there any possibility that the next ones will be better? House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer did not cover himself with glory in the hearings and the Republicans are not happy. They seem to think it was just a bad performance (which it was) but the real problem is the total lack of any evidence justifying an impeachment. The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone has the details: The House Oversight Committee’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden didn’t begin with the bang Republicans had wanted. The first hearing, one week ago today, was seen by many impartial observers as disorganized and rudderless. No surprise there: This has been the case throughout the past several months of the Oversight Committee’s sprawling probes into the president and the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden. The backlash was everywhere, on Capitol Hill and in conservative media. You can even see the skepticism in polling of Republicans. According to a new Monmouth University poll, just three in ten Republicans put a lot of trust in the fairness of the impeachment inquiry.
Analysts predict a massive drop in prices over the next few days and weeks. We’ll have to see if the media notices. Over the past few weeks there has been non-stop hysteria over the gas price spike on the news. There has been lots of speculation about how it’s the death knell for Biden’s presidency , of course. Will they report this? After spiking to alarming levels just last week, oil prices are suddenly in free-fall mode. The dramatic reversal should bring relief to drivers (and nervous central bankers) very soon. US oil prices plunged by 5.6% to $84.22 a barrel on Wednesday, marking the biggest one-day decline in a year. Crude dropped even further Thursday, sinking as low as $82.24 a barrel, a five-week low. This is quite the U-turn, even for the notoriously boom-to-bust oil market. As recently as last week, US crude briefly touched $95 a barrel and Wall Street banks were predicting $100 or higher amid Saudi Arabia and Russia’s aggressive supply cuts. Now, gas prices are already starting to retreat and experts predict sharper drops to come.
Apparently, he has a great fear that someone is going to poison him. Cassidy Hutchinson is still on her book tour. And she has some more tea (or, should I say, condiments)on Trump’s bizarre phobias and obsessions. He isn’t just an authoritarian monster, he’s also filled with weird paranoid neuroses: Cassidy Hutchinson is not done airing out the sordid, amusing, sometimes confounding things she witnessed while working under Donald Trump. The former White House aide, whose book Enough is leading American sales, stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live and spent much of her time explaining, of all things, the former president’s apparent inability to eat lunch like a normal person. Hutchinson’s testimony during last year’s January 6 hearings instantly went viral and, as Jimmy Kimmel put it on Wednesday night, “cast serious doubt on the highly professional, by-the-book reputation of the Trump administration.” Among other damning accusations, Hutchinson recalled a time when Trump threw his lunch against the wall in a fit of rage.