L-O-S-E-R Donald Trump has hawked “digital trading cards” of himself, Trump gold shoes, and Trump Bibles, a pundit pointed out on Friday. And Trump this and Trump that and Trump vodka he doesn’t drink. Trump is even peddling the hem of his garments like some oleaginous televangelist selling prayer cloths with magical healing powers and weekly “prosperity plans.” The man who once boasted he was so rich he couldn’t be bought advertises every single day that he’s for sale. Perhaps Trump fatigue finally is setting in. He can still sucker the press into covering his daily outrages. He can still draw eyeballs and clicks. MAGA politicians who rode in on his coattails still genuflect before his image. But can he win a presidential election? Politico considers that Trump is losing more than the suburbs: The analysis of GOP presidential primary results from more than 1,000 counties shows warning signs for Trump, especially as Republican voters continued to vote against him in closed primaries after he clinched the nomination. And it makes clear that, while independents and crossover voters may have boosted former U.N.
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Trump just loves them: Former president Donald Trump disseminated on social media on Friday an image of President Biden with his hands and feet tied, the latest example of the Republican candidate’s use of increasingly violent rhetoric and imagery this campaign season. The image can be seen about halfway through a 20-second video that Trump posted on his Truth Social site. The post says it was recorded Thursday on Long Island, where Trump traveled this week to attend a wake for a recently killed police officer. In the video, two trucks decorated with giant Trump flags and altered American flags are driving on a highway. On the tailgate door of one of the trucks is the image of Biden bound and lying horizontally. Similar images of Biden have been circulating on social media for months, if not years, on sites including Instagram, Reddit and Twitter, before the platform changed its name to X. In February, the popular World Star Hip Hop site posted a video of a truck it said was in California featuring such an image.
That means nothing to the zealots Via Axios: More than 7 in 10 Americans support access to medication abortion, and even more back the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to regulate drugs, a new Axios-Ipsos poll finds. The findings suggest a Supreme Court decision that would overrule the FDA to limit access to the commonly used abortion pill mifepristone would be out of step with public sentiment in the post-Roe world. There’s widespread support for letting women obtain drugs for medication abortion from their doctor or a clinic, with 72% supporting — including half of Republicans — and 26% opposed. But the public is split almost evenly on obtaining pills through the mail, which is among the FDA permissions that anti-abortion doctors are challenging at high court. 6 in 10 strongly or somewhat agree with states using ballot measures to make, or keep, abortion legal at the state level. “There is a resounding consensus to stop litigating this, that this is a health issue between a woman and a doctor,” said Ipsos vice president Mallory Newall.
This is totally correct. He always sucked. Every single day. Don’t forget.
The myths of demagogues collapsed too Lost amidst the tangle of steel and roadway that fell into the icy Patapsco River in Baltimore on Tuesday were eight men pursuing their American Dreams. Two were rescued. Crews pulled the bodies of two others from the water on Wednesday. Four others are presumed dead. Will Bunch considers who the victims were and what their lives meant: From the day in the mid-2000s when a then-20-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval crossed the border into America, he never stopped working. The youngest of eight children, Suazo was fleeing numbing poverty and a dead-end career path in Azacualpa, a small rural village in the western mountains of Honduras. The undocumented Suazo wound up in Greater Baltimore, a magnet for Central American refugees with its relatively cheap housing for the bustling Eastern Seaboard, a friendly climate toward migrants, and lots of opportunity. With American dreams of entrepreneurship, he took menial jobs like clearing brush, then launched a package delivery service, and when COVID-19 ended that, started working overnight construction for a Baltimore contractor, Brawner Brothers.
Some Friday messaging advice Two bits about defining Trump caught my attention. You’d think the guy’s image is as set as can be with his friends and foes. What else is there to tell about the twice-impeached, yada-yada? But this is campaign season. The GOP was working “but her emails” all the way up to the election in 2016. Take the hint. Joe Biden is running ads here in N.C. beginning with “Here’s the difference between me and Donald Trump…” In the wake of the Key Bridge collapse this week, Biden immediately pledged, “It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge.” Full stop. Brian Beutler reminds his Off Message readers that should Trump get reelected we can expect him to hold recovery funds hostage and to extort Maryland and Baltimore for favors: Four years ago this week, it became clear that Donald Trump would husband emergency pandemic resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment for Republican-run states. Or rather, Trump made it clear.
Glenn Youngkin, lame duck: No Virginia governor has come into office with a deeper dealmaking background than Glenn Youngkin, who as former co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group made a fortune acquiring and merging companies around the globe. But as the Republican chief executive of a purple state, Youngkin has struggled to translate that business acumen into political success — or even economic development success, with the demise Wednesday of his much-touted plan to bring the Washington Wizards and Capitals to Alexandria. While Youngkin and his group of financial experts had negotiated with team owner Ted Leonsis to cut what the governor called “the single largest economic development deal in Virginia’s history,” the governor was never able to work the same magic with members of the General Assembly who had to sign off on the $2 billion project. The plan’s failure wipes out a significant legacy-making opportunity for a novice politician who burst onto the scene in 2021 and drew national attention as a fresh Republican face.
I guess that’s how MAGA prefers it?
Trump’s getting worse by the day Dana Milbank: This week, he announced that he is not — repeat, NOT — planning to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He apparently forgot that he had vowed over and over again to do exactly that, saying as recently as a few months ago that Republicans “should never give up” on efforts to “terminate” Obamacare. “I’m not running to terminate the ACA, AS CROOKED JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME,” the Republican nominee wrote this week on his Truth Social platform. Rather, he said, he wants to make Obamacare better for “OUR GREST AMERICAN CITIZENS.” Joe Buden disinformates and misinformates? For a guy trying to make an issue of his opponent’s mental acuity, this was not, shall we say, a grest look. The previous day, Trump held a news conference where he nailed some equally puzzling planks onto his platform. “We’ll bring crime back to law and order,” he announced.