Biden-Harris HQ goes after Donald Trump. Hard. While we were reading accounts of the latest GOP insanities in D.C. and in the states, and about the Fox/MAGA conspiracy freakout over Taylor Swift, plus a random, MAGA-inspired(?) beheading straight out of Se7en, Team Biden was going hard at getting under Donald Trump’s skin. And rubbing his nose in it on Truth Social (Huffington Post): President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign flipped former President Donald Trump’s excuses for his verbal stumbles right back at him in a new ad. The 60-second spot features multiple Trump stumbles and the Republican front-runner’s claims that he does it “purposely” or because he speaks “in long, complex sentences.” “Have you noticed he’s a little confused these days?” Biden asks in speech footage that is featured towards the end of the clip. The video concludes with reports that Trump is “rattled by Biden’s efforts to get under his skin.” Yup, this one: The ad above posted at 1:03 p.m. Wednesday on Formerly Twitter, the Now Muskian white-nationalist cesspool. It was only one of a flurry of ads from Biden-Harris HQ.
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America: If you love it, hate it Oliver Darcy on Tuesday wrote, “Conservatives are going into self-exile.” The Formerly Republican Party, like Formerly Twitter, “is now led by far-right media forces hoping to cash in on attention from raging culture wars, sealing off its adherents from the rest of society.” One wonders what’s left of America for Republicans to love. Red-hatted Make America Great Again believers are systematically excommunicating anyone and everyone not not eaten up with gnawing grievances. They have demonized DEI efforts (diversity, equity and inclusion) and seem bent (apt?) on making their clan “the most restrictive country club in America.” In the 1960s, the conservative slogan was, America: Love it or leave it. Today the message is, America: If you love it, hate it. Darcy writes: From a bird’s eye view, the state of affairs among MAGA Media diehards as it sits today is remarkable.
Well, she’s being a true daughter of South Carolina: It’s not like Harris was in the Obama administration or really had anything to do with him. She’s against Harris being president because Black presidents are “divisive.” Until Obama was elected and divided us, we didn’t have any of these “problems.” Harris will obviously do the same thing. Because she’s Black. And you know how they are. And she said it on The Breakfast Club a podcast hosted by Black people. Jesus. And then there’s this: Actually, it can’t secede. As that old woke Justice Antonin Scalia said, “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.” Haley is campaigning in her home state of S. Carolina a state that knows from secession.
Texas Congressman Chip Roy is not one of the MAGA goofballs. He even endorsed DeSantis over Trump. He was once Ted Cruz’s chief of staff so he’s an extremist but he isn’t stupid. As Judd Legum notes in his newsletter, there’s a method to his madness: Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) is publicly urging Texas to ignore the Supreme Court. In previously unreported comments, Roy explained that he feared his position would push the country into “a post-constitutional world.” But, Roy said, the Supreme Court is “pushing our hand” by issuing a ruling related to the southern border that he opposes, and the Supreme Court needs to “feel the pressure.” The next day, Roy told Fox News that Texas should “tell the court to go to hell.” On January 24, in a little-noticed interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Charlie Kirk, Roy expanded on his thinking.
Let’s talk about the REAL border crisis. Hear me out… Would it surprise you to know that 90% of people that try to cross our border end up in the hands of Customs and Border Protection? There is no open border flood of undocumented immigrants crossing into the U.S. 📌 Many… pic.twitter.com/nKGTb4AkZI — Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) February 1, 2024 The media is not telling the real story, as usual. It’s just a “crisis” or a “caravan” or a “catastrophe” without any context or nuance. They have been doing this for years. I know they aren’t this incompetent. They can’t be.
If you think the Republicans in the Senate are the more sane members of the MAGA GOP, think again. They’re just as cravenly partisan as the nuts in the House. Remember Thom Tillis, the “brave” Senator who has been criticizing the House Republicans for refusing to even consider the border and Ukraine deal? Well… The House passed its $78 billion, bipartisan tax bill with a lopsided 357-to-70 vote on Wednesday, in which the measure attracted slightly more Democratic than Republican support as it overcame opposition from hardline conservatives. Now comes the hard part: Winning over GOP senators. Republicans in the upper chamber are already expressing deep skepticism toward the legislation, which combines several business deductions with an expansion of the Child Tax Credit that would all sunset at the end of 2025. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Wednesday that he’s been advising Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP Senate leaders that it would be “a mistake” to pass the bill.
Speaking of suckers and losers, let’s consider just how dumb you have to be to give money to a billionaire for legal fees to fight his massive number of lawsuits and criminal cases? Former President Trump‘s political fundraising apparatus spent more than $50 million on legal costs last year as he faced a barrage of lawsuits and criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions. The stunning new campaign finance reports reveal the financial damage the GOP presidential frontrunner has sustained while facing a colliding campaign and courtroom calendar. The mounting legal costs have drained large sums from Trump’s campaign coffers as he gears up for what’s expected to be another tight race against President Biden. Overall, Trump’s fundraising brought in less than his campaign spent in 2023, Politico reported. Trump’s Save America PAC spent roughly $47 million on legal consulting last year, according to the group’s latest financial report. That includes $25 million in the last six months of the year, the Federal Election Commission data shows.
As MAGAs pitch hissy fit over Taylor Swift and immigration Axios reports this morning that our Biden-led, post-pandemic U.S. recovery is outpacing other G7 economies: The largest federal investments in infrastructure and manufacturing in decades, championed by the Biden administration, contributed significantly. Growth in the U.S labor force also helped, Axios adds, “both due to more Americans choosing to enter the workforce and a surge in immigration.” Read that again. Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (no, not that one) tells Axios: Meantime, House Republicans refuse to do productive legislative work for which you and I are paying them. The GOP-led House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday passed two articles of impeachment against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Biden’s homeland security secretary, the New York Times reports, despite lack of evidence “of a crime or acts of corruption.” Republicans on the panel argue “that the Biden administration border policies he implemented ran afoul of the law.
It’ usually the debt ceiling or the budget. This time it’s the border. Can this ritualized GOP stunt make Democrats pay this time? Generally, it’s always fair to assume that the American right wing is 100% hypocritical in all things. They do not practice what they preach and they preach a lot. So, I think we would all have thought that while they desperately want to give Donald Trump dictatorial power, it’s the last thing they would want to grant President Joe Biden. And yet as these negotiations over immigration have played out, it’s clear they want Biden to seize dictatorial powers as well, at least on that issue. I guess we can say that they have some consistency after all. After years of insisting that the congress must act to “protect the border” and browbeating the Democrats for their alleged failure to do it, they are now giving Joe Biden the green light to use executive orders the way Donald Trump used them. They once railed against such supposed usurpation of congressional prerogatives when a Democrat was in the White House but now they argue that they have no role to play and it’s all up to the president.
Heartbreaking. Now recall: Trump had the nerve to criticize Biden over the deaths of the three US soldiers from the done attack over the weekend. And his brainwashed cultists are all saying that he never lost a life while he was president. Oh, and he’s also claiming that only he can bring world peace.