Their followers are no better:
Thankfully, Paul Whelan’s family shows that Americans can still have decency and class:
I honestly don’t know what happened to these Trumpers but they are inhuman. This exactly shows why they cannot be allowed to be in power.
*Ask yourself if Ron DeSantis would say anything less disgusting. I don’t think so.
I have always thought that Trump operates by instinct and impulse but I think these crazy stunts may actually be a strategy:
Former President Donald Trump posed for photos at his waterfront club on Tuesday with a prominent QAnon conspiracy theorist, in the latest in a string of incidents that highlight the GOP candidate’s proximity to fringe figures on the far right.
Liz Crokin, an avid supporter of the far-right conspiracy theory, shared photographs of her and Trump to social media following a Tuesday fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago to combat child trafficking.
“Tonight I had the privilege and honor to speak at America’s Future fundraiser to combat child trafficking. … Some of the topics I discussed were Pizzagate, Balenciaga, and what President Trump’s administration did to combat human trafficking,” Crokin wrote on her Truth Social profile.
The Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely purports that the Clinton family and other prominent Democrats ran a sex trafficking ring through a Washington, DC, pizza joint. It has been widely discredited by law enforcement officials.
Crokin’s reference to Balenciaga comes after the fashion company faced widespread backlash following a recent ad campaign that featured young children cuddling with stuffed animals in fetish clothing.
“President Trump made a surprise appearance and spoke,” Crokin added in a separate post, which contained a video showing Trump delivering remarks at the event.
“You are incredible people, you are doing unbelievable work and we just appreciate you being here and we hope you’re going to be back,” Trump can be heard saying in the clip.
Crokin’s appearance comes two weeks after Trump came under fire for dining with rapper Kanye West and White supremacist Nick Fuentes at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate. Aides to the former president were said to be in the process of implementing more rigorous vetting for the people he engages with around Mar-a-Lago, which has doubled as his private residence since he left office.
I don’t know if he knew the Neo Nazi Nick Fuentes would show up for dinner with Kanye, but we know that he put them out on the terrace where everyone could see them and take pictures. He keeps doing that.
I suspect that Trump is working to make sure the looniest part of his base (which is substantial) is sticking with him. It’s actually a fairly commonplace strategy for politicians to do this sort of hing early in the cycle in order to give them running room to move to the middle. His base just happens to be loonier than usual.
The difference with Trump is that he’s willing to leverage that base against other Republicans in totally ruthless fashion because he has no loyalty to the party. If he has this group in his grip he can threaten to burn down the whole thing, keep them from voting or run as an independent.
I don’t know that he’s thought this through but he almost certainly has advisers who understand the power he has here. Other candidates have had discrete followings within the party but none of them have been as aggressively narcissistic as Trump. The other GOP candidates know he will do it. And he knows they know it. He also knows from ample experience that if he wins the nomination they will all fall in line.
Somebody has to pay and it can’t be Orange Julius Caesar:
After watching Donald Trump lead the Republican Party to a third straight bad election season, his followers appear to be coalescing around a consensus: It’s all Ronna McDaniel’s fault.
Rather than blaming the coup-attempting former president — who made the willingness to spread his lies about the 2020 election a condition of his support — activists, lawmakers and even some fellow Republican National Committee members have instead turned on the RNC chair who is seeking a fourth two-year term.
“To play off of a famous catchphrase, Republicans are tired of losing. And I think that we need to radically reshape our leadership in order to win,” said Harmeet Dhillon, an RNC member from California who counts Trump as a law client, in her announcement on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program that she would challenge McDaniel for the chairmanship.
Dhillon did not respond to HuffPost’s queries. Neither in her Monday appearance on Carlson’s show nor on Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast the next day did she even mention Trump.
“Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining,” she told Bannon, ridiculing the idea that the midterm was a success because Republicans will take control of the House. “We really need a fresh perspective.”
Former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, who this November lost his bid for governor, announced Wednesday that he would not be seeking the RNC chairmanship. “Chairman McDaniel’s re-election appears to already be pre-baked, as if the disappointing results of every election during her tenure, including yesterday’s in Georgia, do not and should not even matter,” he said in a statement, and then added in a tweet: “That doesn’t mean she should even be running again. It’s time the GOP elects new leadership! It’s time for fresh blood!”
McDaniel’s spokespeople did not respond to HuffPost queries.
Other Trump supporters argue that it’s not just McDaniel who needs to be ousted, but also Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, the likely speaker come January. “The GOP needs more Lee Zeldin, Harmeet Dhillon, Thomas Massie, Mike Johnson, Jim Jordan, and less corrupt McLeadership,” wrote former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, whose latter three references are Trump allies in the House.
A common gripe is that McDaniel failed to advocate early voting and absentee voting, giving Democrats a huge advantage heading into Election Day. “I think Republicans have been unwilling, for whatever reason — reluctant, resistant ― to voting early and voting by mail,” said Fox host and informal Trump adviser Sean Hannity.
Fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham complained to former Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway that she was “pissed” and “mad” about losing the Georgia Senate runoff Tuesday. Conway responded that Republicans had to start taking better advantage of early and absentee voting.
“We need to compete not just for votes, but ballots. We need to compete for ballots. If we don’t bank ballots early, we’re going to keep losing,” Conway said.
Ingraham responded that “everyone” had advised against that, including “at the very top of the Republican Party” — to which Conway responded: “Not everyone.”
The exchange, though, elided entirely Trump’s vilification of mail voting during his 2020 reelection bid, when he claimed, without proof, that the process was corrupt. In fact, Conway herself defended that position in a May 27, 2020, session with reporters at the White House.
“They wait in line at Georgetown Cupcake for an hour to get a cupcake. So I think they can wait in line to do something as consequential and critical and constitutionally significant as cast their ballot,” she said. “Next it’s online voting. Then pretty soon we’re just going to have DoorDash and Uber Eats deliver everything we need, including our ballots.”
And you just won’t believe this:
A common gripe is that McDaniel failed to advocate early voting and absentee voting, giving Democrats a huge advantage heading into Election Day. “I think Republicans have been unwilling, for whatever reason — reluctant, resistant ― to voting early and voting by mail,” said Fox host and informal Trump adviser Sean Hannity.
Fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham complained to former Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway that she was “pissed” and “mad” about losing the Georgia Senate runoff Tuesday. Conway responded that Republicans had to start taking better advantage of early and absentee voting.
“We need to compete not just for votes, but ballots. We need to compete for ballots. If we don’t bank ballots early, we’re going to keep losing,” Conway said.
Ingraham responded that “everyone” had advised against that, including “at the very top of the Republican Party” — to which Conway responded: “Not everyone.”
The exchange, though, elided entirely Trump’s vilification of mail voting during his 2020 reelection bid, when he claimed, without proof, that the process was corrupt. In fact, Conway herself defended that position in a May 27, 2020, session with reporters at the White House.
“They wait in line at Georgetown Cupcake for an hour to get a cupcake. So I think they can wait in line to do something as consequential and critical and constitutionally significant as cast their ballot,” she said. “Next it’s online voting. Then pretty soon we’re just going to have DoorDash and Uber Eats deliver everything we need, including our ballots.”
Have I mentioned that they are shameless?
It’s going to take years to wring out Trump’s edict that Republicans should all vote on election day if they want their votes to count. They have indoctrinate the conspiracy theory faction (which seems to make up about 50% of the party) to believe this. A lot of them will never believe otherwise.
The big problem with all this is that early voting didn’t make the difference:
David Dayen, editor of The American Prospect and author of “Monopolized Life in the Age of Corporate Power,” spoke with Jon Stewart to discuss the crypto meltdown.
Dayen summarizes:
As it happens, I was able to discuss the mess at FTX, and the role that politicians and the media played in protecting what we now know to be a fraud scheme, on The Problem With Jon Stewart podcast. Jon and I talked about what happened at FTX, how Sam Bankman-Fried managed to charm elites and buy their silence, and how familiar the whole crypto scam feels, as just a rather dull and well-worn way for financiers to separate people from their money.
Here’s the short version:
“Whatever fun name you wanna put on it, it’s the same damn thing we’ve seen over and over again,” Dayen says. It’s like the South Sea Company from the 18th century, one economic historian put it. Like mortgage derivatives and the S&L scandal (a good friend spent the 90’s closing banks for the FDIC), it keeps happening. The same people who profit from finance industry scamming keep doing it, stop government from preventing it, and ensure no one punishes them for it.
Finance is admittedly way out of my area. I leave finance to David. But I’ll make this observation I have repeatedly over the last eight years:
“It is axiomatic in our current political culture,” says Fraser, “that when we say freedom we mean capitalism.” I would add, that when we say capitalism, we mean, principally, one particular style for organizing a business: the modern corporation.
What Milton Friedman called capitalism in 1962 looks more like an economic cult today. Question the basic assumptions behind corporate capitalism, publicly point out its shortcomings and suggest we are overdue for an upgrade, and the Chamber of Commerce practically bursts through the door like the Spanish Inquisition to accuse you of communism and heresy.
We’ve grown so accustomed to seeing our software updated that it mostly occurs in our lives as background noise. But when was the last time corporate capitalism, the peculiar style dominant today, got an upgrade, a new operating system, reform? One that would bring FIRE monsters of our own creation to heel? Capitalism 2.0?
THE HORROR!
I’m “reading” Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa’s memoir, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator.” Ressa faces criminal charges in the Philippines for irritating the government of President Rodrigo Duterte that could shut down her online news organization, Rappler, and land her in jail for years.
When you try to change a system, she advises repeatedly, the system fights back.
When it comes to reforming kleptocratic capitalism, we have not even begun to fight.
Update: Because fuck them.
The feisty senator from Massachusetts appeared on the How to Save a Country podcast presented by the Roosevelt Institute, The New Republic, and PRX. Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke with Michael Tomasky and Felicia Wong about Democrats making government work for average Americans. It starts with investing in people, by thinking of them as human infrastructure:
Elizabeth: Of the 37 richest nations in the world, the United States comes in at number 35 on what we spend on our children. You don’t build a future doing that. It makes no sense. So part of what I would really focus on is to say, “What is it together that we most want to do?” Because government is the vehicle for letting us do together what none of us can do alone. Why do we have infrastructure? Why do we, why does the government, all of us collectively, pay to pave roads? We pay to pave roads because nobody can just pave the road in front of your house. Then Felicia will do it in front of her house. You’ll do it in front of yours, Michael. I’ll do it in front of mine and we hope we have a road system that then works. Nope. We all contribute and it expands opportunity for all of us, and I feel like that’s what’s really been missing as we’ve become a post–New Deal nation. There’s been this glorification of the individual, and yeah, I love the stories of working hard and overcoming adversity, but in a context of opening those doors so people who want more education and training will have a chance to get it; so that mamas who want to go back to work will have a chance to do that; so the entrepreneur, that kid who’s 23 years old and has $42,000 worth of student-loan debt but really wants to start this business and is willing to live on ramen noodles and share an apartment with seven other people, but gets crushed by having to make a student loan debt payment every month, that we take that rock out of the way and let people do more. For me, that’s the heart of it.
An eye-catching tweet from messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio yesterday contrasts the image Warren wants Democrats to project with the one Shenker-Osorio hears from focus groups. Asked what animal Democrats would be, base and swing voters list sloths, turtles and tortoises, “always with annoyance and dismay.” Perhaps because there are too many Dianne Feinsteins and Joe Manchins in the ranks and too few like Warren, Porter, and Ocasio-Cortez.
About countering that negative impression, Warren emphasizes people need to see more action and less talk from Democrats. In her speeches, Warren says government is about building an economy that delivers for people.
Why did Democrats do so well in the November elections? Warren believes it is because voters saw Joe Biden and Democrats fighting to make their lives better, even if they cannot accomplish everything on their wish list:
Elizabeth: Good policy is good politics. When you do things that people want and care about and that touch their lives, that’s both good for them and they come back and say, “As voters do more of that. We like you. We want you to keep doing that.” I think the best example we’ve got of this is what literally has just happened. Every pundit, every pollster, everybody was saying that the Democrats were going to get wiped out in 2022, and we were going to get wiped out because historically that’s what happens. Democrats did great. The question is why, and I want to put it together this way. I think the reason why is because we showed who we were fighting for, working families, and we actually delivered for them. Two highlight examples are right at the beginning of the Biden administration. Biden was no more than declared the winner of the election before a bunch of economists were in his ear whispering, “Go slow, go small.” And Biden ignored them and he delivered the American Rescue Plan that was all about getting vaccines out and getting test kits out, but it was also about getting money out to little towns and big cities so that they didn’t have to do a bunch of layoffs. It was about extending unemployment. It was about making sure that as we entered choppy economic waters, as Covid began to recede, that families would have a way to navigate. Period number two is August 2022, just this past August. Just this past August, we passed the Inflation Reduction Act. You may remember that in the middle of the Inflation Reduction Act, we have a $35 cap on insulin for seniors, help on paying insurance premiums, a cap on what seniors are going to have to spend on prescription drugs, big, big plan to cut carbon emissions, and, my personal favorite, a 15 percent minimum corporate income tax for billionaire corporations, the Amazons of the world that have been paying nothing. Read the headlines from that time because what every headline says is that this is Biden’s finest moment in his presidency. Then Biden follows this up by canceling student loan debt for 43 million Americans, and his approval rates go even higher. So I look at that and say here are these two time periods where we delivered and people responded.
It’s not enough to chalk up wins and move on. Democrats need to get better at trumpeting their wins so the voters know what’s been done, who delivered for them, and who tried to stop it:
Elizabeth: American voters are actually smart. They get that we may not be able to deliver everything that’s needed in two years, but they sure as heck want to see us fighting for them. I think that’s a big difference here and for me, student loans are the perfect example. President Biden said, “I’m going to cancel up to $20,000 of debt for 43 million Americans.” We’ve already had about 26 million Americans signed up for relief. Nobody’s gotten a dollar’s worth of relief yet, but they see a president fighting for them.
Shenker-Osorio believes Democrats need not to be shy about embracing the word freedom, one the right has claimed as its own. But in her focus groups, freedom is a concept that people across the political spectrum identify with America. It’s not a right-wing concept. It’s a contested value, she argues, and one Democrats need to get off their butts and contest, to fight for.
Warren is on it:
Elizabeth: I’ve been talking about all the economic parts, but democracy, freedom of—abortion is actually a great example here. There were those pundits who were saying just before the election, shaking their fingers at progressives saying you talked too much about abortion. Understand this: Abortion is a kitchen-table issue. It is about freedom and medical decisions that one makes for oneself. It’s about autonomy and respect. It’s also about economic security and making decisions about one’s reproductive life. If we build an economy that has more opportunity, we strengthen our democracy. I never lose the lesson of how coming out of 2008 when so many people lost their homes, so many people lost their jobs, so many people lost their savings. The unemployment rate was artificially depressed for about seven years after that, just a tough slog for families. We struggled, we scratched to try to pull it back together, but a lot of people felt like their government had turned their back on them, had bailed out giant financial institutions, but had not been there to help them. They felt that way and in many ways they were right. I never forget that the next president elected was Donald Trump, that if we build an economy where more people can participate, we expand freedom. If we protect freedom, we build a stronger economy and democracy. These pieces are all related to each other. Shame on us if we don’t make those connections every day. But here’s the thing, I think the American people do make the connections, I think it’s the politicians who are behind, and big applause for you, Michael, for your book and for drawing this out and to everyone who has started to connect those dots, if for no other reason than to encourage our elected officials to talk about these issues and to talk about them in that context.
Paul Wellstone used to say, “We all do better when we all do better.” There’s a lot of layers to that statement, but I’ve always taken part of it as when more people have more opportunities, it makes us a democracy that values each other and values both our differences and our similarities, and that that is how we build the best possible future as a nation.
More stability, more financial security, and a greater sense that government is working for people rather than against them means less of the kind of MAGA-insurrectionist insanity that’s destabilizing the country and threatening everyone’s freedom.
No sloths or turtles, please.
This piece in American greatness is right (as far as it goes)
Reports surfaced two weeks ago that Florida Republicans are considering changing the state’s “resign-to-run” law so Governor Ron DeSantis could throw his hat in the ring for the 2024 presidential nomination without losing his governorship. It is one sign among many that DeSantis, or those close to him, are thinking about taking on Donald Trump in the primary.
A word of warning and wisdom to DeSantis: Don’t do it.
DeSantis is a promising politician with a real future on the national scene. He should want to be president. But not yet. DeSantis needs to understand his true self-interest. Running for president in 2024 isn’t it.
I can save DeSantis and his team a truckload of money and an embarrassing performance in the primaries by stating the obvious right now: There is no way to win against Trump in 2024 for the GOP nomination. Period.
DeSantis, look, you’re a good governor with a bright future but you don’t stand a chance against the most popular Republican candidate of all time. That’s not a slight. It’s just a fact. You don’t want to learn this reality the hard way!
Donald Trump won 74 million votes in 2020—far more than Obama in ’08. Trump won Democrats, nonvoters, and independents in massive quantities. Had it not been for the illegitimate election machinations preceding the 2020 election (mail-in ballot harvesting operation), Trump likely would have won a second term in a landslide. Trump is personally popular in the Rust Belt on a scale DeSantis simply cannot hope to reach in the next two years. Driving through rural Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania one would think The Donald is permanently running for president in each state based on the sheer number of bumper stickers, yard signs, and billboards bearing his name.
DeSantis doesn’t have this kind of support. But he needs it if he wants to be president.
This is correct. And Trump will go to great lengths to destroy DeSantis, whether he wins the nomination or loses. Everyone knows this.
The article goes on to say a bunch of ridiculous nonsense about Democrats and how DeSantis can re-assemble a supposed 2016 bipartisan coalition (hint: it never existed) by adopting Trump’s “policies” as if they are any different than standard GOP boilerplate at this point.
But his advice still stands. DeSantis would be stupid to run in 2024. He’s young and he can easily wait four years. And the smartest strategists have to be saying “let’s let Trump lose 2024” and then we’ll finally be rid of him. There may be no other way to do it. If they try to beat him he won’t bow out gracefully now or ever and he will take his hardcore followers with him. It’s foolish to take the beating he’s going to mete out for so little reward.
But it sure looks like DeSantis is running. Have fun Ron.
She got an exemption from continuous scrutiny because she’s no longer involved in the company. That’s true. She’s relying on her hubby’s graft these days. But she was sure as hell involved in the past:
Ivanka Trump has wriggled her way out of a court order appointing a special monitor to oversee the finances of the Trump Organization and individuals connected to the company, according to The Daily Beast.
The agreement allows Ivanka Trump to keep her own business interests away from the gaze of a retired federal judge who is tasked with keeping an eye on the Trump Organization’s transactions to ensure it doesn’t commit any more alleged fraud.
The company was barred from transferring or disposing of material without giving advance notice to the court and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office after James sounded the alarm over a Trump scheme to form a “Trump Organization II” after she filed a $250 million fraud lawsuit against the Trump family and company.
A jury in Manhattan on Tuesday found two entities controlled by former President Donald Trump guilty of 17 counts of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. The Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. were found guilty of all charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
James in the August lawsuit alleged that Trump and his three eldest children were involved in a decade-long fraud scheme. She is seeking to permanently bar them from serving as an officer or director of a company in New York state.
Justice Arthur Engoron placed the company under court supervision to scrutinize major transactions and ensure the Trump Organization would not shift assets to stash cash away from law enforcement.
Her lawyers made similar arguments in the state’s appellate court, a source told the outlet. She even went as far as retaining her own lawyers and filing an appeal that was separate from the rest of the family.
”Ms. Trump has had no involvement for more than five years… Ms. Trump has had no role as an officer, director, or employee of the Trump Organization or any of its affiliates since at least January 2017,” her lawyers said in an appeal filed Nov. 7.
But the eldest daughter of the former president was “a key player in many of the transactions” under investigation, especially because of her involvement in cutting deals that relied on falsified documents, according to court papers in the Attorney General’s office.
NY AG lawyers also found that she is “responsible for securing loan terms” from Deutsche Bank relying on fake property valuations for the company’s golf course in Doral, Florida. Investigators also claim she “played similar roles” in obtaining money for the company’s projects in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Pagliery tweeted on Wednesday that the latest filings show that Ivanka Trump “keeps distancing herself from her father’s legacy of shame.”
Good luck with that. Ivanka was in it up to her neck and she is facing some serious liability. Of course if she loses the case she can always tap into the billions her beloved Jared is collecting from Middle Eastern tyrants for services rendered. She’ll be fine.
And Germany isn’t fooling around. They’ve been here before:
Authorities in Germany arrested 25 people on Wednesday who are suspected of planning to violently overthrow the government in a far-right extremist plot.
More than 3,000 police officers, including special forces, made 130 early morning searches across 11 of Germany’s 16 federal states in one of the biggest counterterrorism operations in the country’s history.
Suspects from the so-far unnamed group include a nobleman with a historic royal title and various armed forces veterans. It is centered on the so-called Reichsbürger, or Reich Citizens, movement which is motivated by conspiracy theories about the role and legitimacy of the modern German state.
Those arrested will appear in court Wednesday and Thursday. The homes of a further 27 people suspected of being members or supporters of the group have been searched.
“We defend ourselves with all strength against the enemies of democracy,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wrote on Twitter.
She said the group was “driven by fantasies of violent overturn and conspiracy ideologies” and hated democracy and the state. “Further investigations will give a clear picture of how far the coup plans had progressed,” she said.
The German prosecutor’s office said the suspects belong to a terrorist group founded in November 2021 at the latest, which aims to overthrow the government in Berlin and install its own leaders through the “forcible elimination of the democratic constitutional state.”
“The members of the association are aware that this project can only be realized through the use of military means and violence against state representatives,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement early Wednesday. It said there was “the suspicion that individual members of the association have made concrete preparations to forcibly invade” the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, “with a small armed group.”
“The details are yet to be worked out,” it added.
The statement added that the group was motivated by a rejection of the “free democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany.”
Some member’s the group’s “military arm” are former members of the German army, the Bundeswehr, prosecutors said. The German armed forces have been beset by a series of scandals involving personnel belonging to far-right groups.
A spokesman for the German Military Security Service confirmed to NBC News that “an active member of the military’s special forces (KSK) group” was also under investigation. But the spokesman stressed that he is not part of the special forces itself and would not confirm whether the suspect was arrested.
The group is heavily influenced by right-wing conspiracy theories, authorities say, including a belief in a secretive, malign “deep state” running the country as seen in the QAnon movement. It believes that the Federal Republic of Germany is not a sovereign state and its members espouse antisemitic conspiracy theories, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said.
Reichsbürger activists and members of other closely-related groups commonly take part in protests against Covid-19 restrictions. The pandemic was a rallying cause for far-right actors across Europe, adding to baseless accusations of a wider government plot to control citizens.
Prosecutors also said the group believes that “the Alliance,” a group of national governments and intelligence services, including those of the United States and Russia, is active in Germany and about to launch an attack on the “deep state.”
Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has been officially observing the “Reichsbürger” scene since 2016. The agency counts around 21,000 followers, according to its website, with a little more than a thousand of them also considered right-wing extremists.
Authorities said among those arrested was “Heinrich XIII P. R,” named in German media as Prince Heinrich XIII of the House of Reuss, which ruled parts of Germany until 1918. NBC News has not verified his identity.
He is considered to be a future head of state after an insurrection and he heads the group’s ruling council which has met to discuss the planned takeover, prosecutors said.
Prince Heinrich, who still uses his title despite its constitutional irrelevance, is accused of contacting representatives of the Russian Federation both in Russia and Germany in the hope of winning support for the overthrow of the Berlin government.
This seems especially nutty until you reflect that we have a violent insurrection just two years ago and the leader was the lame duck president of the United States. These guys are amateurs compared to that.
This is enough to make me sick. And I mean that literally. If (when) we get hit with another pandemic and — god help us — DeSantis is the president, I’m fairly sure he will gleefully preside over my death:
If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis runs for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, he has an opening to attack former President Trump’s COVID response from the right, Axios’ Caitlin Owens reports.
Why it matters: The federal COVID response has become a red-meat issue for the party’s base. DeSantis’ 2020 actions are very aligned with today’s GOP’s tone.
DeSantis has even said he wishes he’d been more vocal in speaking out against the Trump administration’s calls for lockdowns early in the pandemic.
GOP strategist Alex Conant, who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign in 2016, said: “DeSantis is a conservative rockstar in large part because of how he handled COVID in Florida.”
DeSantis’ hands-off approach to the pandemic — reopening schools for in-person learning earlier than other states, fighting vaccine mandates and refusing to reimpose restrictions during case spikes — was a key to developing his political brand.
Reality check: Florida’s COVID death rate is on the higher end of the spectrum, compared to other states.
Flashback: As much as Democrats have criticized Trump’s COVID response, there’s an opening to attack it from the right.
Trump announced a 15-day national shutdown in mid-March of 2020. That was extended after the virus continued to spread.
He appeared on TV regularly with Anthony Fauci, who remained a face of Trump’s COVID response even as the right grew increasingly frustrated with him.
The other side: Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said Trump and his administration “worked tirelessly to secure medical equipment to save the lives of Americans who were infected.”
“He also fought against any attempt to federalize the pandemic response by protecting every state’s right to ultimately decide what is best for their people.”
The idea here is that Trump handled the pandemic badly because he was too restrictive. Seriously. And I guess that might play very well with the wingnuts. They love dying from COVID. It’s a form of ritual MAGA sacrifice and this makes DeSantis even more MAGA than Trump.
<<< chills>>>
And not in a good way.
The election last night was uncomfortably close and I continue to be freaked out by that. How so many people could have voted for that completely unqualified football guy is shocking to me — but then millions voted for Kari Lake and Blake Masters and Doug Mastriano too. There are a lot of them. A LOT. And if things go even slightly sideways in this country for some reason there is no doubt that in my mind that a few thousand votes could easily swing back the other way and we could be stuck with a full-blown neo fascist government led by Trump or one of his creations.
However, let’s just take a moment to thank our lucky stars that the Democrats have been fighting back and winning in this painfully difficult political battle:
'34 stat is something, but the one that's really remarkable to me is that with Warnock's win this is the first time in over a century (1912) that not a single incumbent Senator lost re-election.
In other words, this is the first time every incumbent seeking re-election has survived since the constitutionally-mandated direct election of Senators. That's incredible.
Originally tweeted by Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) on December 7, 2022.
Yes, the GOP put up a bunch of kooks but that’s nothing new. Let’s give a little bit of credit to the Democrats who kept their heads down, did the work, didn’t dissolve into infighting and got the job done against big odds. Who’d have ever thought that the Dems would be the adults in the room? It must be the young voters who are setting the example.