Do people really want someone who acts like this in a federal court room to be the president of the United States? I guess he’s the best the Republican party can do… Roughly 20 minutes after walking into the courtroom, Donald Trump stormed out of closing arguments in a civil trial to determine how much money he owes E Jean Carroll for repeatedly defaming her. The former president arrived in federal court in Manhattan on Friday morning after briefly testifying in his defence on Thursday afternoon, after which he unleashed more attacks and potentially defamatory statements about the former Elle magazine columnist. In her closing statement, Ms Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan told jurors that the former president “acts as if these rules of law just don’t apply to him.” His attacks didn’t stop after he was found liable for defamation and sexual abuse in a $5m jury verdict, she noted. “Not at all,” Ms Kaplan said.
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He just can’t do anything right James Comer is an idiot: The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released the transcript of the testimony of Kevin Morris, a friend of and attorney for Hunter Biden, and his statements undercut everything Republicans have said about the embattled first son. Morris is a high-powered entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles who met Hunter at a 2019 presidential fundraiser for his father, Joe Biden. Morris has loaned Hunter nearly $5 million in the years since. He testified about his relationship with Hunter in a closed-door committee hearing last week. Initially, Oversight Chair James Comer just released a list of paraphrased highlights from Morris’s testimony. Comer claimed that Morris informally loaned Hunter the money and does not expect to be repaid until after the 2024 election—or possibly ever. But the transcript shows this couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, Morris never once mentioned the possibility of forgiving the loans.
Biden delivers, Trump dithers President Joe Biden was in Superior, Wisconsin on Thursday to tout federal funds released to replace the obsolete Blatnik Bridge between Superior and Duluth, Minnesota. The bridge opened in 1961. “For decades, people talked about replacing this bridge, but it never got done, until today,” Biden told a crowd. He made sure to take a poke at Donald “91 Counts” Trump who over four years of inaction turned “Infrastructure Week” into a punchline. “On my watch, instead of Infrastructure Week, America is having an Infrastructure Decade,” Biden quipped. Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure investments already have poured $6.1 billion into Wisconsin and $5.7 billion into Minnesota: And I’m proud to announce $1 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be used to build this new bridge, a new bridge that will increase capacity for large trucks and oversized loads; a new bridge with a modern design, wider shoulders, smother on — smoother on and off ramps; a new bridge with a shared path for pedestrians and cyclists.
I guess I don’t expect anything better of these people but it makes me ill anyway: Big Pharma has invested big money in the organizations planning what a MAGA policy agenda will look like in a new Trump administration. Not surprisingly, that policy playbook contains a major gift for the drug industry: a swift end to the Biden administration’s landmark program to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. For two decades, Congress barred Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices, which is a major reason why Americans pay higher prices for drugs than anyone else in the world. In 2022, Democrats finally passed legislation creating a price negotiation pilot program. The same year, Washington’s top drug lobby — Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA — donated $530,000 to groups involved with the far-right Project 2025 agenda. The agenda, which is meant to serve as a policy roadmap for the early days of a new Donald Trump presidency, includes a call to repeal the new provisions allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
It tells you a lot about the cult and why they love him Philip Bump reads Trump’s social media so you don’t have to. And his analysis of what it tells us is right on: Truth Social is a weird place. The social media site started by Donald Trump (or, really, by tech-savvy people working for him) is not formally oriented around Trump, but it is in practice. It is largely populated by Trump fans and allies who use the site to orbit Trump like asteroids circling the sun. Trump uses it differently, injecting rhetoric and framing into the national conversation. Nearly every one of his posts triggers the same response from the site’s users: a flurry of pro-Trump, anti-Biden memes tacked on to Trump’s missive. It’s feudalistic; when the king emerges from the castle, the serfs compete to offer him their wares in the hopes that — glory be! — he might lackadaisically bless them with a reshare. All of that, the context for the site, offers insight into how Trump approaches power. But one post in particular, offered up by Trump on Wednesday evening, was even more revealing.
Some beautiful creatures:
Some illiteration about the mad king U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan adjourned E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Donald “91 Counts” Trump in New York City on Monday after one of the jurors became sick. Trump himself is expected to take the stand this afternoon. The mad king was using his thumbs about it again last night. If Trump’s Truth Social account is any indication of his state of mind, hoo-boy (The New Republic): Trump made 42 posts about Carroll (and one pushing falsehoods about the House January 6 investigative committee) on Truth Social in the span of 13 minutes. Many of his posts included photos or clips of interviews that he has previously shared about Carroll. Trump’s posting rate is so fast that the former president must have some prescheduled, some drafts saved for constant reuse, someone else posting for him, or some combination of all three. His Truth Social account shared media interview clips and social media posts that appear to come from Carroll, all stripped of context so as to paint her as some sort of sexual deviant.
Whatever happened to those pink pussyhats? Over at Anand Giridharadas’ The Ink this morning, Anat Shenker-Osorio emphasizes the need for the left to adopt and use symbols the way MAGA uses hats. Or rather, the way abortion rights activists in Argentina use green bandanas not only to signify their movement’s cause, but to provide people not in the movement with social proof. “It’s one of the most persuasive tools in our arsenal,” Giridharadas writes. Shenker-Osorio explains (subscription req’d): The thing is, people need to see, “Oh, that’s what my kind of a person thinks.” Humans are social creatures. We’re tribal. We want to find cues in our environment that tell us what our category subscribes to. That is, what do people like me think? Or as Girdharadas explains below, what do people like me wear? Shenker-Osorio continues: So while I think there is some symbology on the movement side of the left, there isn’t enough. On the Democratic side, I think it’s very hard to maintain.
He put that out last night. David Leonhardt wonders if we should really worry our pretty little heads about all this: My colleagues Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Charlie Savage are writing a continuing series on what Donald Trump plans to do during a second term as president. With Trump on his way to winning the Republican nomination, I want to devote today’s newsletter to a conversation with the three of them. David: One question that some people have is whether Trump would govern as radically in a second term as his rhetoric suggests. After all, he also made sweeping promises when running in 2016, but he often failed to follow through. There is no border wall. He didn’t withdraw from Afghanistan. He didn’t “lock up” Hillary Clinton. The courts rejected his initial Muslim ban and his changes to the census. What’s your view about whether to assume he will really do what he says in a second term? Jonathan: I would challenge the statement that Trump didn’t do a lot of what he promised in his first term.
He’s openly threatening anyone who supports Haley — and no doubt any of his other enemies. Come crawling now or never crawl to me again. I doubt he rally means it. He won’t turn away money. But he does want to see who comes running. Why is he so desperate and angry at Haley? He’s ahead in all the polls, he won the first two contests, he’s certain to be the nominee. Could it possibly be that he just can’t stand a woman who refuses to succumb to his orders? In any case, this was the response: She said she’s raised a million dollars since her New Hampshire speech, mostly from small donors. She probably raised even more since Trump’s fatwa against her donors.