Maybe you’re tired of hearing about DeSantis’ epic failure but I just can’t get enough of the schadenfreude. Just inject it straight into my veins: It was often said that when Bill Clinton walked into a room, each person thought he noticed them in particular. Clinton was the ultimate retail politician: he liked people and they knew it. When Ron DeSantis shows up, even those who want to support him feel that he harbours a special dislike for them. Being a black hole in terms of charisma is not automatically fatal to a candidate’s prospects. When your target is the diabolically charismatic Donald Trump, however, you are working at a big disadvantage. The story of how DeSantis went from being the favourite, or near-favourite, Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential race to America’s most rapidly falling meteor in years, tells us a lot about the mindset of US conservatism. The Florida governor’s campaign began with every advantage. He had huge sums of money, name recognition, powerful backers and the sense that he was the only Republican capable of replacing Trump. Yet he has singularly failed to perform.
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Not really There’s a lot of handwringing and gnashing of teeth over that headline today. Oh my God! The Democrats are blowing it … again!!!! But it seems to me that the headline is totally missing the point. We already knew that the GOP had higher turnout. This new study by Pew just reinforces the early data so I don’t think anyone should be surprised by it. Mid-terms always have higher turnout by the out party! Isn’t that the moldiest political trope in the world? In most midterm years, the party that is not in the White House fares well. And while Republicans enjoyed a turnout advantage in 2022, they nevertheless fell short of expectations and did not match Democrats’ turnout advantage in 2018, the first midterm election after Mr. Trump took office. Still, midterm voters historically skew older and whiter than voters in presidential years, a phenomenon that tends to benefit Republicans. The 2018 midterms were, in many ways, the exception to that rule, with increased turnout across age groups, but especially among young people. The 2022 electorate was more in line with historical trends.
Next time he’ll get ‘er done: Donald Trump wanted to “tap the phones” of White House aides who he suspected of leaking information, according to bombshell claims made by a former Trump administration official. Miles Taylor, who served as the Department of Homeland Security’s chief of staff under Mr Trump, has claimed in his new book Blowback that the then-president floated the idea “to pursue leakers by tapping phones” at some point in 2018. The idea was quickly shut down by then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly who warned Mr Trump he would be breaking the law. Mr Kelly “quickly nixed the suggestion, knowing it would be illegal,” Mr Taylor writes in the book excerpt, obtained by Axios. I suspect that Chief of Staff Kash Patel won;t be quite so squeamish.
That’s Trump talking about the country Excerpts from Trump’s softball interview with the Nevada Globe: TNG: What do you think that they would be saying to you now as you’re going through another campaign and this legal persecution, if you will? President Trump: It is persecution. It is. I call it election interference, more than anything else. These are terrible people, disgusting people. My father would be angry at these people. My mother would be– she’d feel a little remorse for me, because, you know, it’s very unfair. It’s a total…this witch hunt has been going on from the beginning–from the time I came down the escalator, and it has been proven to all be false. Everything has been proven to be false. If you look, every single thing that they’ve done, from Russia, Russia, Russia…it has all turned out to be a hoax. That’s what Democrats are good at is just these hoaxes. They’re not good at policy. They’re not good at, frankly, many things. All Democrats do is disinformation and hoaxes. But, I think that it has been an amazing period of time. We had an amazing presidency.
Yep, it’s the deep state You knew the Republicans were going to say this. I’m surprised it took so long. But the fact that he was indicted before the GOP took over the House makes this absurd. And it makes the House Majority MAGAs look like gullible idiots once again. *Sigh*. Philip Bump at the Washington Post. “Anyone offering criticism of President Biden instantly becomes credible on the right”: The Justice Department on Monday announced that it had unsealed an indictment against Gal Luft, a director at a think tank in the Washington area. According to federal prosecutors, he is also someone who violated Iranian sanctions, trafficked weapons and aided the Chinese government without registering as a foreign agent. The specific allegations included in the indictment were not known before Monday, but the fact that Luft had been indicted was. He was arrested in Cyprus in February, which Luft immediately suggested was a response to his having information incriminating President Biden and members of his family.
“He was always telling me that we need to use the FBI and IRS to go after people,” Kelly told the Times last year, adding that “it was constant and obsessive and is just what he’s claiming is being done to him now.” This lawsuit by Lisa Page and Peter Strzok is focusing attention once again on Trump’s abuse of power. Former Chief of Staff John Kelly testified that he wanted him to use the IRS to go after them, his political enemies. His abuses were extensive and a lot of it was right out in the open. I’m not talking about the rank corruption — running his business out of the White House, signing hush money checks in the oval office, accepting unlimited graft and access in the form of both foreign and domestic money at his hotels and resorts. Nobody seems to care about that at all. I’m talking about the abuse of his power as president. Aaron Blake has a short, incomplete, list: Trump also wanted the IRS to investigate former FBI director James B.
Can he keep it together or are we in for another round of crazy? I’m betting on crazy: Speaker Kevin McCarthy is working furiously to prevent another House floor takeover by his hardest-right conservatives as the GOP prepares to tackle some of the year’s biggest bills. With the House back for a final stretch before its August recess, McCarthy on Tuesday afternoon summoned a group of leaders from multiple corners of his conference to shape a strategy for staving off further right-wing revolts — which his team can’t afford this summer. Underscoring the urgency of their task, the group of GOP lawmakers met in the shadow of what could become a new right-flank rebellion over the rule for debating a must-pass Pentagon policy bill. “The speaker has called these meetings so we can get things hopefully worked out before it blows up on the floor, so there’s no surprises,” said Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, one of the 11 Republicans who held up the floor last month during an ongoing rift with leadership.
He only cared about himself while thousands were dying Take the time to watch that and remind yourself of Trump’s most grotesque failure. I can’t believe it’s going down the memory hole but at least there is this documentation — Trump running his mouth on tape — that proves his horrifying misconduct.
Notice from the editors.
The post Notice appeared first on The Intercept.
There’s something amiss in the whistleblowers’ tale CNN reports: US Attorney David Weiss, who is overseeing the Hunter Biden criminal probe, says in a letter obtained by CNN that he did not ask to be named as a special counsel and was never refused authority to bring charges anywhere in the country, refuting two key allegations from IRS whistleblowers. Weiss’ comments, in a letter sent Monday to GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, go against claims from IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley and one of his deputies, who said they witnessed political interference in investigation of President Joe Biden’s son. They testified to Congress that during an October 2022 meeting, Weiss said he had requested to be named as a special counsel but was denied by Justice Department leadership. But Weiss said in the new letter that he never requested special counsel status, but rather explored becoming a “special attorney” under a different statute. “I have not requested Special Counsel designation,” Weiss wrote to Graham on Monday. “Rather, I had discussions with Departmental officials regarding potential appointment under 28 U.S.C.