The return of Sinclair’s Mighty Wurlitzer Public Notice and Judd Legum’s Popular Information assembled another stew of cookie-cutter commentaries from right-wing Sinclair Broadcasting’s local talking heads. Sinclair repackaged talking points from the Wall Street Journal’s widely panned June 4 article, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Sipping,” questioning Joe Biden’s mental fitness. The sourcing is questionable. Conveniently, repetition obliterates questions: Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal piece was repackaged by Sinclair Broadcast Group and beamed into the homes of millions of Americans. Sinclair, which is controlled by right-wing media mogul David Smith, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets. Sinclair repackaged the Wall Street Journal story through its centralized news team, known as The National Desk. The segment was then pushed to dozens of local news stations owned by Sinclair. Local anchors introduced the piece by reading from a nearly identical script.
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Democrats overperform again Politico reported this morning: If last night’s election returns were going to provide any surprises, they weren’t supposed to come out of Ohio’s 6th Congressional District. In a special election race that got basically zero national attention, Republican state Sen. MICHAEL RULLI was thought certain to rout Democrat MICHAEL KRIPCHAK, a former Air Force officer and once-aspiring actor who quit a Youngstown-area restaurant job to run for Congress. DONALD TRUMP, after all, had won the blue-collar, mostly rural district previously represented by GOP Rep. BILL JOHNSON by 29 points in 2022. Furthermore, Rulli raised nearly 30 times more than Kripchak’s shoestring budget.
Igor Bobic asked Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley about the Hunter Biden verdict: “In our constitutional system, you gotta rely upon what the judges and juries decide. I’m sorry for the Biden family but people decide what justice is and you got to conclude that justice was done.” As for whether that applies to the Trump verdict he said “it’s an entirely different thing. The Justice Department was doing everything they could to cover up his tax problems and his gun problems.” What? Ok. Sen. John Thune: “Hunter Biden’s not running for any political office. Donald Trump’s running for president. There are all kinds of different dynamics in two totally different cases,” he said. “The clear thing in the (Trump) New York case, I mean, there’s no argument. … This is politically motivated. The prosecutor ran, he got up there, got the job on the predicate of trying to prosecute the former president.” Sen.
It’s never a good bet Well, this is eye-catching from Jeet Heer: “In other words, a significant portion of America’s economic elite are either autocrats, cowards, or so single-mindedly rapacious that they are indifferent to the survival of democracy.” Heer begins: While Donald Trump’s felony conviction for falsifying business documents is hurting him with independent voters, it has only increased his popularity with a demographic cohort that is much smaller in number—but still has an outsize role to play in election outcomes: the super-rich. Axios reports that a Morning Consult poll shows that 49 percent of independent voters think Trump should drop out of the presidential race because he is a felon. This strong negative result is already in evidence in polls showing that Trump’s persistent lead over rival Joe Biden has shrunk and the presidential race is now dead even.
As Democrats continue with their perennial handwringing over the election and media bigfoots write the 3,785th article about why, despite polls showing a tied election. Joe Biden should drop out it’s interesting to note that the recently convicted felon heading up the other party’s ticket is being deliriously embraced by voters and officials alike. Not even one Republicans has suggested he step down. Not one newspaper or right wing columnist. Nada. The Huffington Post’s S.V. Date takes a look at the GOP’s total unwillingness to even consider dumping Trump: Eight years after a credible effort to dump Donald Trump as their presidential nominee because of his vulgarity, Republicans today appear stuck with the newly convicted felon for November, with no realistic means of taking the nomination away from him at their convention next month, even if they wanted to. “There will be no move to, no mechanism for and no interest in removing Trump at the convention,” said Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Illinois.
2024’s biggest story you’ve never heard about That’s just fascinating. But this is the only place I’ve heard about it. I’m going to guess that the Biden campaign doesn’t want to say anything ab out it for fear of it backfiring. But it’s something that history will surely record.
This isn’t a surprise. I expect that Hunter will see the inside of a jail cell for his crimes of filling out one form wrong and paying his taxes late long before Trump will. After all, Trump just tried to stage a coup and stole nuclear secrets so the punishment must fit the crime. For the first time ever in history, the right is applauding someone being found guilty on federal gun charges of failing to properly fill out a form. Normally they have a hard time applauding the conviction of mass murderers if they used a precious AR-15 to do it. Nonetheless, they are absolutely convinced that it’s all for Biden’s benefit because it makes him look good: They are also a little bit bewildered that the leader of the Biden Crime Family allowed this to happen. They assumed that he would get off: That fine fellow is on the short list for Attorney General in a new Trump administration. I heard something this morning that I’ve missed before. Apparently, one of the reasons the plea agreement fell apart last year was because they wanted the judge to supervise his parole and she refused.
Simon Rosenberg has a good one today. He shows that Biden has made some slight gains in the polls in the wake of Trump’s conviction although it’s still essentially tied. He also notes: 538 unveiled its 2024 forecasting model this morning and it gives Biden a 53% chance of winning the election. The key to how we win in this model is our strength in MI, PA, WI, the blue wall states which get us to 269 Electoral College votes, or check as I’ve been calling it. He also notes that we have reports in the last week or so showing that the economy is rolling, crime is way, way down and (I would add, border crossings are also much lower in the last 6 months.) Rosenberg concludes: In the last few weeks we’ve gotten repeated confirmation of the success of the Biden Presidency – inflation is down, food prices are down, crime and murder rates are way down, gas prices are down, the flow to the border is down.
If only … I doubt it will happen, unfortunately. I wish these two were moderating instead of Tapper and Bash.
Momma always said feral is as feral does Yes, it’s true that just over a third of Republicans are unaware that their party’s nominee has been indicted for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. But that says more about them than it does about Joe Biden’s and Democrats’ prospects for November. Even most of the third-plus that are aware of Trump’s indictments will vote for him anyway. It’s the slow bleeding of support that’s begun that will doom Trump’s reelection. Why do you think he’s working more systematically than ever to prepare his minions for overturning democracy and instituting authoritarian rule when he loses in 2024? He doesn’t need a majority to do it, just general American complacency and numbness to his nuttiness. Yes, Trump rants like someone you’d cross the street to avoid. But it’s not the unwell, conscious parts of his brain plotting authoritarian rule. That’s his feral instincts at work, the ones that have kept him out of jail into his late seventies.