Yet they support him anyway Trump’s relationship with GOP Senators has always been a little bit fraught. It’s clear that there are some who are not true believers, they’re just cynical opportunists and cowards. It never fails to amaze me to see them demonstrate it in public, however. It’s as if they’re actually proud of their lack of backbone: For weeks, Senate Republicans delighted in the misery of their Democratic counterparts. The political story of the summer — whether President Biden would back down from his run at a second term — left GOP senators smiling and away from the media’s glaring spotlight on their foibles. But the tables quickly turned. Their party’s presidential nominee recently returned to his natural form and lashed out against Vice President Harris in divisive terms that had little basis in truth. Republicans went right back into the political PTSD of the Donald Trump era, mouthing the same platitudes that they grasped onto during his presidency. “He needs to focus on the policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told reporters Thursday morning.
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The state GOP just got even crazier There are election deniers in important jobs in many swing states. But Arizona is ground zero for MAGA wackos. Bolts has the latest from the Arizona primaries this week: Democrat Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, the elections head in Arizona’s Pima County, says she drove to work in silence on Wednesday morning, after her counterpart in Maricopa County, Republican Stephen Richer, lost his primary to a far-right challenger. “Are you allowed to print expletives?” she told Bolts. Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and 4.5 million residents, is the nation’s most populous swing county—and it’s lately seen a torrent of right-wing activism pushing false claims about recent elections.
This is the tech billionaire election and they’re almost all supporting Trump. One of them is Elon Musk. This is his latest contribution: Elon Musk’s new super PAC is collecting scores of voters’ personal information under the guise of inviting them to register to vote, as part of his effort to boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Earlier this month, Musk denied reports that he would be donating $45 million a month to Trump’s campaign during an interview with right-wing commentator Jordan Peterson. Instead, the technocrat clarified that he had created a new super PAC, called the America PAC. Musk’s America PAC is a door-to-door canvassing operation, which allows it to work in direct coordination with the Trump campaign, according to an FEC advisory from earlier this year. This allows Musk, and his fellow Silicon Valley donors, to stick their hands—and their cash—right into the presidential race on Trump’s behalf. How exactly they plan to do this is even more disturbing.
The Washington Post has published a blockbuster expose about a big Trump payoff when he was president in 2017. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that his cronies at DOJ shut the investigation down: Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash. Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags, according to records from the bank. Four men arrived and carried away the bags, which U.S. officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of U.S. currency. Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S.
Trump’s close adviser, the literally insane Laura Loomer, posted the following and Trump retweeted it: In case you need something to send to a brainwashed relative to prove Harris is Black, here’s a picture of her and her father: He’s still alive: Her father is Black. Clearly. He was born in Jamaica. And she has always identified as Black and Indian which is what she is. Like tens of millions of other bi-racial Americans, she identifies as both. And also like most Black Americans she has a slave owner forefather. Do these people have any idea what they are saying? This is so dumb I can hardly wrap my mind around it. But get ready. It’s going to be a thing.
Andy Beshear is super popular I don’t have a dog in the VP fight and will be fine with whomever she decides to choose. The Democrats are blessed with a very strong bench. But I was on Majority Report this week and Sam Seder told me about this. I was shocked: After widespread speculation that Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear was on the list of potential running mates for Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the Democratic National Convention, a new poll found Beshear is the most popular Democratic governor in the country. The Morning Consult poll shows Beshear has a 67% approval rating, with 28% disapproving, placing him at second place among all governors. He falls behind Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott who has an astounding 81% approval rating. The poll, which was conducted from April to June this year, also showed that Beshear had the highest approval rating among both Republican and Democratic voters of any Democratic governor. He came second place in popularity with independents compared to other Democratic governors, too.
In case you are tempted to believe Trump’s fatuous claim that he secured the release of prisoners without giving anything up in return, here’s a fact check: Criticizing the Biden administration’s recent prisoner swap of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner as “a one-sided disaster,” former President Donald Trump wrongly boasted that his administration “got 58 hostages released from various hostile countries without paying any money, or giving up anything.” In fact, several of the deals resulting in the release of Americans held hostage or being wrongfully detained abroad came as a result of prisoner swaps during Trump’s time in office. In November 2019, the Trump administration secured the release of American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks, who were being held by the Taliban, in exchange for the release of three senior Taliban leaders being held in jails in Afghanistan. In December 2019, the U.S. did a prisoner exchange with Iran, freeing Xiyue Wang, a graduate student at Princeton University who was serving a 10-year sentence in Iran on espionage charges.
When the going gets tough TFG has had many bad weeks, but the last couple have been especially bad. Vice President Kamala Harris now leads in some national and swing state polls. President Joe Biden’s success in winning (hear that word, Donnie?) the release of prisoners held in Russia has TFG flummoxed. His “unmitigated caucasity” (as a friend put it) in explaining blackness to the National Association of Black Journalists has neither won him friends nor expanded his voting base. Now the orange-hued, former wrestling promoter is trying to brand Harris as dumb and — xenophobia being his signature chokeslam — as failed “Border Czar Harris.” In TFG’s dim mind, the Biden approach is both weak and dumb. Actual data undercut that argument, Greg Sargent observes. Not that facts mean anything on the right. Border crossings have dropped for the fifth straight month per unpublished data obtained by CBS News and The New York Times, Sargent explains: These numbers badly undermine Trump’s primary attack line on Harris—and not just in the most obvious way.
Not that reality actually means much, but here’s a little dose of it anyway: At a rally in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Donald Trump rolled out a new attack on Vice President Kamala Harris that showcased his well-known fondness for high-toned discourse: Her handling of immigration reveals her as not just weak, but also dumb. The former president luridly claimed that Venezuelan gang members were “plotting to conduct ambush attacks” on American cops, then added: “All the while Harris and Biden sit in the White House and try to figure out who is dumber.” He proceeded to blame “Border Czar Harris” for a series of crimes by migrants, even though President Biden tasked her with addressing the root causes of Central American migration, while the Department of Homeland Security secures the border. Unfortunately for Trump, unpublished DHS data shows that border encounters between ports of entry plummeted again to approximately 57,000 in July, according to an official familiar with the numbers. The data, which is preliminary until its official release in the coming days, was also leaked to CBS News and The New York Times.
That energy has a familiar feel: Look around and you might see it: the telltale signs that the #Resistance has been born again. A-list celebs are rallying for and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris; Zoom calls of Black, Latino, female, and young voters are reaching capacity; the coconut-tree and brat memes keep coming. Even cringe and earnest #Resist merch is back — now in the form of organic Kamala Harris merch. The political movement that materialized organically, protested policy decisions, and eventually helped end Donald Trump’s presidency may now be taking on a second political life with the goal of not just beating Trump, but electing the first woman president. None of this was a sure thing. Just a few months ago it looked a lot like the anti-Trump #Resistance was dead. Progressive organizers and activists were exhausted; Trump fatigue had settled in. And voters of all kinds were tuned out and unenthusiastic about the candidate choices they had. That dynamic has flipped — for now.