Former president Donald Trump won’t be appearing at tonight’s GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee Wisconsin. He says he has no need to participate because he’s so far ahead in the polls. And he’s right. He’s also very busy. He needs to get ready to be arrested on Thursday when he turns himself in for booking at the Fulton County jail. He’s got a lot on his plate. It will be interesting to see if any of the challengers will summon up the nerve to attack Trump for failing to show up or go after him for his legal problems. I’m sure we’ll hear something about Hunter Biden since this will be broadcast on Fox and they apparently have some sort of contractual obligation to discuss the “Biden Crime Family” every ten minutes or so. I expect the candidates will all be eager to participate. The question really is whether any of the challengers will take the opportunity to tell the audience about the “Trump Crime Family’s” global pay-to-play operation.
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Republicans trust their doctors to make health recommendations. That’s good… But nearly 75% of Republicans trust Donald Trump to make health recommendations. They trust him over the CDC. Here’s where we are. Trump pushed Operation Warp Speed and took the vaccine but he isn’t allowed to take credit for it because his people have been brainwashed against them: America’s growing anti-vaxx crisis has been laid bare in a national poll that shows huge chunks of the country believe in conspiracy theories about safe shots. One-quarter of adults said they believe the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism – a widely studied and discredited claim that emerged in the 1990s. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll also found that a third of adults believe that the Covid shots caused thousands of sudden deaths in otherwise healthy people. The vaccine-skeptical movement across the country intensified after the Covid pandemic, linked to pushback against Covid vaccine mandates and increased misinformation as people spent more time online.
The last time Trump skipped a debate was January 28, 2016. Remember this? Those were the days. I’m going to guess that won’t happen this time. Ron DeSantis has been admonished not to go after Trump and instead take on Vivek Ramaswamy and he’s already sinking like a rock in the polls. Chris Christie will likely be the lone Trump critic and he’ll probably be pretty harsh. But what difference does it make? This debate is basically a death watch pageant to determine who will be in position to step in if Trump is unable to run? Nothing will ever beat this moment, however. He’s so dignified. The good news for Trump lovers is that he’ll be with Tucker Carlson on his Xitter show: The interview between Carlson and Trumpalmost didn’t happen, according to two people familiar with its planning.The men had been talking informally for two months about possibly setting up an event to draw attention away from the Fox-hosted debate.
This new talking point is just plain weird. It’s all over Fox News that Biden doesn’t care about the Maui fire victims: Okaaaay: For some weird reason, the fact that Biden stopped to talk to a dog handler and pat the dog is being portrayed as more evidence of his cold indifference to suffering. Whatever. This is clearly an official talking point that’s coming out of Republican circles following the old Karl Rove strategy of “attack your enemy’s strength” as they did with John Kerry. But that was attacking him for something he’d done long in the past that couldn’t be verified. This is something that’s happening in real time. Not that it will stop them. They have realized that they can say anything — up is down and black is white — and their audience will believe them because they see nothing else. And if they do happen to see something that refutes the MAGA media, they just think it’s fake news. And honestly, the right is so performative now that it’s really all just a big game show to them. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. All that matters is if it owns the libs.
Donald’s Trump’s threats on social media MIGHT finally lead to legal consequences for him. Woo hoo! Today it was revealed that in Trump’s pretrial conditions in the Georgia RICO case he is forbidden from making any “direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community or to any property in the community,” including in “posts on social media or reposts of posts” by others on social media. Wow. It took a long time to get here, especially considering all the other times he intimidated and threatened witnesses on social media. Remember Alexander Vindman? Marie Yovanovitch, US Ambassador to Ukrainian? But now, because he’s under pretrial conditions and protective orders issued by a judge in our legal system, he MIGHT be charged with witness tampering. It’s one of the reasons that we needed to get him in this position. It’s the difference between lying to the media and on social media to the public, vs lying in court under oath. Keep Normalizing Jail For Trump Every time these conditions are set I watch the cable hosts and legal analysts talk about how pretrial jailing is not going to happen.
This is a very useful piece about the timing of good economic news from Bill Scher: Despite near-record low unemployment, respectable Gross Domestic Product growth, wages outpacing inflation, and disposable personal income rising, Joe Biden’s job approval numbers have been stuck in the low 40s. Even more perplexing, approval for his handling of the economy is usually a tick worse than his overall job approval. In turn, several commentators are openly wondering: Why hasn’t Biden gotten credit for the improving economy? But the better question is: How long does it take for any president to get credit for an improving economy? We don’t have a pat answer because every president’s economic circumstances differ. But we have evidence to suggest that credit does not come quickly. Ronald Reagan experienced a sharp recession early in his first term, from July 1981 to November 1982, with the unemployment rate peaking at 10.8 percent a month after the recession officially ended.
Another GOP train wreck is coming to town They just can’t help themselves: Members of the House Freedom Caucus are making it harder for leadership to avoid a government shutdown, announcing on Monday that they’ll oppose a stopgap funding bill unless it caves to their terms. The HFC is demanding more funding for border enforcement, cuts to the Department of Justice and FBI, and an end to “woke” policies at the Department of Defense. “We refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” they said in a statement. “Any support for a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago.” Congress is unlikely to complete its work on appropriations bills by the deadline on Sept. 30, with leadership calling for a continuing resolution to provide themselves with more time.
We still don’t know what’s going on with him. This is an interesting discussion about it: He knows it all…
Thickly but not well enough Amanda Marcotte comments on the Roger Stone video that “The Beat with Ari Melber” on MSNBC has been reporting on this week. The show ran excerpts of video of Stone shot by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen for “A Storm Foretold.” The clips provide further proof that the Trump plot to overturn the election did not arise from a “sincere” belief that the election was “stolen.” Marcotte writes: The video captures Stone’s aggravation at finding he’s been barred from speaking at Trump’s January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse in Washington D.C. “I don’t understand how they want us to lead the march but can’t even tell us where to go,” Stone whines, adding that he’s not speaking directly to Rudy Giuliani or the rest of Trump’s inner circle. He complains that it’s “very clear that I was never on their list.” “It’s just childish and it’s amateurish. That’s why they lost.
Lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie So, okay, Donald Trump is not being booked the day of the GOP debate (AP): Former President Donald Trump says he will surrender to authorities in Georgia on Thursday to face charges in the case accusing him of illegally scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. “Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED,” Trump wrote on his social media network Monday night, hours after his bond was set at $200,000. This will be Trump’s fourth arrest since April. When defendants arrive at the building, they typically pass through a security checkpoint before checking in for formal booking in the lobby. During the booking process, defendants are typically photographed and fingerprinted and asked to provide certain personal information. Since Trump’s bond has already been set, he will be released from custody once the booking process is complete. Unlike in other jurisdictions, in Fulton County, arraignments — where a defendant first appears in court — are generally set after a defendant completes the booking process and do not happen on the same day.