Is Kari Lake coming on too strongly? Kari Lake’s oh-so-unsubtle efforts to audition as Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate may be backfiring. Sure, she came in first for VP in CPAC’s straw poll this year. But the failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and championship election-denier seems not to know to avoid upstaging The Donald. Lake has spent more time at Mar-a-Lago than Melania Trump lately, a source told People, in “a suite there that she practically lives in.” The Daily Beast reports that Lake is falling out of Trump’s favor: “She’s a shameless, ruthless demagogue who wants power and will do whatever she has to do to get it,” a Trump adviser told The Daily Beast. This adviser added that, in recent months, Trump has been less enthusiastic about Lake himself. Two Trump advisers who spoke to The Daily Beast said the heart of Trump’s frustration with Lake is that, in his eyes, she always wants attention. As one of the advisers put it, she’s a “spotlight hound.” People called Bill Clinton “the Big Dog.” But nobody had better stand between Trump and center stage.
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I watched that whole interview and found his excuses appalling. I know this guy is a defense lawyer and he’s just making his best case for his client but the gaslighting was so extreme I found myself screaming at the TV. The whole world saw what happened on January 6th. That these people think they can persuade us that we didn’t see what we know we saw is astonishing. Philip Bump takes a look: Kenneth Thomas was convicted last month for his participation in the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As he awaits his sentencing later this year, he sought permission to travel to Missouri to participate in a festival dedicated to defendants in Capitol riot cases, permission that the judge overseeing his case denied. On Thursday night, Thomas’s attorney John Pierce joined CNN’s Abby Phillip to discuss the judge’s decision, with which he predictably disagreed. But over the course of the conversation, Pierce made a broader point about the events of that day: that Jan. 6 was not the violent event that so many have argued. “January 6th was a very complex event,” Pierce told Phillip.
It seems that every conversation I have about politics these days begins with someone making a breathless observation that “OMG! Joe Biden is soooo oooooold!” I get it. He is old. And he looks his age. Anyone but movie stars who have had extensive plastic surgery look old at 81 and they usually just look weird. He walks stiffly and he’s losing his hair — again. (He had a receding hairline before he was 30 and famously had hair transplants.) He also stumbles over his words and rambles when he’s speaking spontaneously, but as someone who’s been watching the guy for decades I can tell you that he’s always done that. Everyone knows now that he’s been fighting a stutter all his life but he’s also one of those garrulous old-style East Coast politicians who tells stories and flits from subject to subject. Still, there’s no getting around the fact that he’s the oldest president we’ve ever had and he’s running for another term, so people are going to be concerned.
Apparently, even Trump is sick of his mini-me Vanity Fair: Last month, an incredible report emerged about the lengths that failed-gubernatorial-candidate-slash-rabid-election-denier Kari Lake was going to in her quest to become Donald Trump’s 2024 vice presidential pick. Lake, sources told People, “spent a significant portion of her time at Mar-a-Lago during its open season,” so much so that she was apparently at the Florida resort “more than Melania Trump,” a.k.a. Trump’s wife. “Kari Lake is there all the time,” a person familiar with the matter told the outlet. “There’s a suite there that she practically lives in.” Yet, unfortunately for the VP hopeful, practically becoming roommates with Trump does not appear to be helping her chances. In fact, according to a new report, it’s quite the opposite. Trump has apparently grown “less enthusiastic about Lake,” the Daily Beast revealed on Thursday. Why?
FDA approves Alzheimer’s treatment Whatever your age now, you’ll be old sooner than you’d like. Old age carries risks. Joints wear out and bones get brittle. Live long enough and cancers of various kinds may catch up with you. Cancer claimed Joel Siberman, a media trainer and friend, one of progressives’ brightest lights, five years ago. But perhaps the most frightening of scaries is mental decline. Particularly from Alzheimer’s. Watching it claim the mind of someone you love is tragic enough. For the first time, the FDA has approved a medication for Alzheimer’s. Not a cure, but a drug shown to “modestly” slow the disease in its early stages (Associated Press): U.S. officials granted full approval to a closely watched Alzheimer’s drug on Thursday, clearing the way for Medicare and other insurance plans to begin covering the treatment for people with the brain-robbing disease. The Food and Drug Administration endorsed the IV drug, Leqembi, for patients with mild dementia and other symptoms caused by early Alzheimer’s disease.
I think this creeps me out more than anything I’ve seen in recent days. A Hollywood desperate to make money at the dying box office is sure to see this and decide that we need more of it: Type the words “sound of freedom” into Twitter (decent people who wish to live good, happy lives should under no circumstances actually do this) and the search will yield dozens of triumphant reports crowing about the improbable victory of a film by that title over the likes of Indiana Jones at the box office this week. That’s not, strictly speaking, accurate – Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had already been out for five days, the first three of which out-earned Sound of Freedom’s opening-day take, when the new independent thriller came to theaters on Tuesday. But for a fleeting moment this past Fourth of July, while the intended audience of Indy’s latest outing was presumably spending time with their families and friends at barbecues or in other social situations, an unoccupied fandom rallied by the star Jim Caviezel claimed the day with a $14.2m gross versus Dial of Destiny’s $11.7m.
The right is relentless. The left needs to be. Several small stories this morning worth attention. Lin Wood retired to avoid being disbarred (NBC News): Lin Wood, a high-profile Georgia lawyer who embraced and promoted former President Donald Trump’s bogus 2020 election claims, told the state bar he was retiring amid disciplinary probes. “I understand that this request is unqualified, irreversible and permanent,” Wood, 70, said in a letter to the State Bar of Georgia seeking to be transferred to “Retired Status.” “I further understand and acknowledge that if granted Retired Status I am prohibited from practicing law in this state and in any other state or jurisdiction and that I may not reapply for admission,” he wrote in the letter, which he posted on his Telegram account.
Not exactly news, but this analysis pulls it all together: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, looking to shift his run for president into a higher gear after an early series of missteps, spent the last two weeks rolling out an immigration policy and holding town halls with voters. But rather than correcting course, he stumbled again this week, raising questions about where his campaign is heading. First, Mr. DeSantis’s team was forced to battle allegations, including from fellow Republicans, that it had shared a homophobic video on social media. Then, a top spokesman for the main super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis acknowledged that former President Donald J. Trump was the race’s “runaway front-runner,” while Mr. DeSantis faced an “uphill battle.” “Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” the adviser, Steve Cortes, said in a livestream Twitter event on Sunday. It was an admission notably at odds with the confidence that the governor’s advisers usually project in public. To top it off — in a visual representation of his recent troubles — Mr.
Law schools that give preferences to minorities and women in admissions and hiring risk getting sued by America First Legal, the conservative legal group warned in a letter to 200 U.S. law schools following last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on affirmative action. America First Legal, a nonprofit group headed by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, said on its website that it sent the letter threatening to sue the law schools if they extend any “discriminatory preferences” based on race, gender or national origin. The group also said decisions based on factors in an applicant’s biography that could serve as a proxy for race—such as socioeconomic status—is also unlawful. The letter, dated June 30 and reviewed by Reuters, came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court held that giving some minority college applicants a boost over others based on their race violated the U.S. Constitution.