Month: April 2024

My God:

So they knew they were launching multiple missiles at foreign volunteers? https://t.co/2xZqB9CrMd

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 2, 2024

So in order to kill one suspected “armed Hamas operative” they targeted a convoy of aid workers? This is how it’s being done? They had to kill this one guy so if a bunch of foreign volunteers were in his presence too bad?

Well, I guess we knew that, didn’t we? They haven’t even made any effort to avoid hitting children so why would they care about aid workers whom they clearly see as aiding and abetting terrorists. I suppose the kids are too just by being foolish enough to be born Palestinian.

There is no level of outrage to condemn this strongly enough.

There is no limit to what they will do to lick his boots

This is not an April Fools joke:

A group of House Republicans is pushing to rename Washington, D.C.’s, main international airport after former President Trump.

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., the House GOP’s chief deputy whip, introduced the bill Friday along with six cosponsors. 

“In my lifetime, our nation has never been greater than under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump,” Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital. “As millions of domestic and international travelers fly through the airport, there is no better symbol of freedom, prosperity and strength than hearing ‘Welcome to Trump International Airport’ as they land on American soil.”

A group of House Republicans is pushing to have Dulles International Airport renamed for former President Trump. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images | Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images)

Legislative text obtained by Fox News Digital on Monday showed that, if passed, “the Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia shall after the date of the enactment of this Act be known and designated as the ‘Donald J. Trump International Airport.'”

“Any reference in any law, regulation, map, document, paper, or other record of the United States to the airport referred to in subsection (a) shall be considered to be a reference to the Donald J. Trump International Airport,” the brief bill said. 

Reschenthaler’s bill is also backed by Reps. Michael Waltz, R-Fla.; Andy Ogles, R-Tenn.; Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn.; Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; Barry Moore, R-Ala.; and Troy Nehls, R-Texas, according to the website Congress.gov.

They know this will not happen as long as Biden is in office and the Democrats have the Senate. It’s all about fluffing Dear Leader. But I would imagine it will happen in a heartbeat if he’s re-elected and they have control of both houses.

I think this is a much better idea, don’t you?

Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges. If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison. https://t.co/FrUNOVK7TW

— Rep. Gerry Connolly (@GerryConnolly) April 2, 2024

Were we better off?

Four years ago today

Q: How would governors have known to prepare for the pandemic sooner without federal guidance? They rely on the federal government

Trump: They have experts. How would I have known? pic.twitter.com/GQh5pumzTk

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 2, 2024

Four years ago today, as Americans were dying without PPE and other life-saving supplies, Trump sent out Jared Kushner to attack governors

“Have you looked within your state?” pic.twitter.com/ewdjv5xn0b

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 2, 2024

I know that I felt very reassured to know that Trump’s fey son-in-law was handling the logistics of the pandemic crisis.

Boy, that sounds really bad, doesn’t it? The allegedly reformed Frank Luntz who is on TV all the time as a supposed “Never Trumper” is kindly pointing out a real blind spot in the Biden campaign.

Well, actually not:

It is President Biden’s 10th trip to WI as president and 3rd this year. He was in Milwaukee 3 weeks ago and has announced a trip to Madison on Monday.

That tweet has been up for hours and is still not deleted or corrected despite a correction by the community and tons of push back.

As Trump would say, he’s “disinformating” and I’m pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose. This guy is one of the slimiest GOP operatives of the past 30 years and he’s never really come clean.

And he’s as narcissistic as Donald Trump

Poor little Bobby Jr is upset because social media companies didn’t let him spew his dangerous medical disinformation on their platforms. For some reason he blames Biden for that:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed Monday that President Joe Biden is arguably a “much worse threat to democracy” than Donald Trump ― and repeated it for emphasis. (Watch the video below.)

When CNN’s Erin Burnett on her program “OutFront” mentioned fears over the threat to democracy that former President Trump poses, Kennedy, an independent candidate for president, pivoted to the other main-party opponent he’s running against.

“I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy,” Kennedy said. “And the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history — the first president in history — that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent.”

Kennedy has harped on being banned from social media during Biden’s tenure. He was thrown off of Instagram in 2021 for advancing disproven claims about vaccines but was allowed to return after he announced his long-shot bid for the White House. In 2022, Facebook and Instagram removed accounts of his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, for misinformation.

Burnett emphasized the gravity of Trump’s attempt to overturn a “free and fair election” ― but Kennedy continued to attack Biden.

“Trying to overthrow the election clearly is a threat to democracy,” Kennedy said. “But the question was, who is a worse threat to democracy? And what I would say is … I’m not going to answer that question. But I can argue that President Biden is because the First Amendment, Erin, is the most important.”

Burnett asked for clarity that Kennedy was saying he could make the argument that Biden was the worse threat to democracy.

He’s also a moron.

If you have the time watch the whole thing. To think that this freak could tip the election to the fascist Trump is even more depressing than Trump himself.

Update:

Crazy as a shithouse rat. https://t.co/P0gxK8j3fr

— Michael McKean (@MJMcKean) April 2, 2024

That you should take with the usual grain of salt

Scott Simon Rosenberg says, “with this new track there are now 12 polls taken since late February showing Biden leads (via 538)”:

• 48-45 Quinnipiac
• 44-43 Noble Predictive
• 44-43 Economist/YouGov (March 19)
• 47-45 FAU/Mainstreet
• 44-43 Morning Consult (March 11)
• 46-45 Public Policy Research
• 50-48 Ipsos/Reuters
• 45-44 Civiqs
• 47-44 Kaiser Family Foundation
• 51-49 Emerson
• 43-42 TIPP

As I have pointed out many times. none of this counts with the media until the big boys at the NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, ABC etc weigh in and we haven’t seen any polling from them in a month or so. In fact, it’s really the NYT that sets the agenda. But for the moment it does appear that Biden has started to edge up in the polls. Let’s just wait and see,

I’ve been watching the media for the last few days insist that abortion isn’t a top line issue for anyone according to the polls so the Democrats are really in trouble because the public believes the nation is suffering economically even though their own finances have improved tremendously. Having said that the news out of Florida could make a difference. Marc Caputo reports:

On Monday, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that a ballot initiative for a state constitutional amendment protecting access to the procedure can go to a vote this fall. The Republican Party of Florida opposes the measure, which will be on the same ballot as Trump.

That raises the question: Will Florida’s best-known Republican vote yes or no?

Trump isn’t saying.

A written statement from his campaign on Monday evening avoided taking a position on the Florida initiative: “President Trump supports preserving life but has also made clear that he supports states’ rights because he supports the voters’ right to make decisions for themselves.”

As one Trump adviser who has discussed the issue with the former president put it, “There’s no point weighing in, at least not now.”

Rick Scott is running for re-election and only won last time by 10,000 votes so maybe …

They also ruled that Desantis’ 6 week abortion ban can take effect immediately so until this constitutional issue is decided in November, Florida is going to have one of the most draconian laws on the books and Trump is going to be squeezed.

It’s hard to imagine that Florida is in play now but you never know. Despite the pundits’ dismissal of the issue as irrelevant because it isn’t showing the polls as the most important issue, it’s been pretty damned potent so far. And it does appear that Republicans are going to have to spend money on the state which, considering their anemic fundraising, they really don’t want to do.

Trump now must spend even more he does not have

Donald Trump’s campaign got a kick in the teeth on Monday courtesy of Florida Republicans (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate):

The Florida Supreme Court upheld the state’s right to ban abortion on Monday, with devastating consequences for the women of Florida who will live under one of the most draconian abortion bans in the country. With this ruling and two others issued on Monday, however, the court turbocharged the state’s 2024 election, centering the upcoming vote around abortion rights and other personal freedoms. First, by a 6–1 vote, the conservative supermajority abolished the right to abortion under the state constitution, overruling decades of precedent in the process. Its decision greenlights the six-week ban championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican legislators, effectively ending legal abortion access throughout the entire South when the ban goes into effect on May 1. Next, by a 4–3 vote, the court allowed a ballot initiative that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution onto November’s ballot; this decision gives voters a chance to overturn the six-week ban and establish Florida as the sole haven for reproductive care in the South. Finally, by a 5-2 vote, the court approved another initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana in the state, rejecting DeSantis’ strenuous effort to keep the question off the ballot. The initiatives on abortion and marijuana will require 60 percent approval to pass.

Florida voter enthusiasm just got a shot of nitro down the carburator.

Washington Post:

“Today’s rulings prove exactly what is at stake at the ballot box,” said Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party. “Florida voters understand that voting yes on Amendment 4 in November is our last line of defense.”

The abortion ban ruling will have a dual effect on abortion access in Florida. While the case centered on the constitutionality of the state’s existing 15-week ban, which took effect in the summer of 2022, the court’s ruling will also trigger a far stricter law passed last spring that will outlaw abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they’re pregnant. Florida’s six-week ban was written to take effect only if the Supreme Court greenlit the 15-week law.

Over 84,000 people got abortions in Florida last year, exceeding almost any other state. The amendment will give voters a chance to reverse the ban.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) objected to the language in the proposed amendment, saying it was too broad. But in their ruling Monday, the justices wrote that the amendment’s intent and potential scope were more than clear.

“The broad sweep of this proposed amendment is obvious in the language of the summary,” they wrote. “Denying this requires a flight from reality.”

Ignoring for a moment that Republicans’ flight left the airport years ago, “the trio of decisions constitutes a legal and political earthquake,” writes Stern. “Democrats could not have asked for a better set of issues to campaign on.”

Stern continues:

As governor, DeSantis frequently touts his staunch advocacy for freedom, pitching Florida as a refuge for liberty-loving Americans who just want to be let alone. Monday’s decisions, though, highlight his passion for wielding the machinery of the state to interfere with some of the most private decisions a person can make. In seven months, Floridians will have an opportunity to undo both his assault on reproductive rights and his war against legal marijuana if they can reach the 60 percent threshold. These issues are bound to dominate the discourse leading into the election, and Republicans’ positions on both poll terribly with the electorate. A large majority of Americans support legal access to both abortion and cannabis. Florida Democrats are already planning to put these topics at the center of their campaign. It’s no wonder DeSantis fought to keep them from getting a vote. Individual freedom will be on the ballot in November, decided through a democratic process that the governor tried relentlessly to obstruct.

The Biden-Harris campaign released this statement yesterday declaring Florida Ground Zero for Trump’s MAGA Blueprint:

President Biden’s Opening in Florida – “Team Biden-Harris enters the general election cycle in a position of strength. Because our agenda is strong and a proven winner, because our coalition is broad and diverse, and because of our strong financial footing, we are entering the general election with multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes – something Team Trump is not afforded. That includes investing in Florida as a pathway to victory: a state where President Biden has a compelling story of results, Trump and Rick Scott’s extreme agenda is making Floridians’ lives worse, and the Democratic coalition is growing and energized.

Abortion Rights Will Be Front and Center in Florida This Election Cycle

Florida’s Supreme Court just issued a ruling allowing Ron DeSantis’ near-total abortion ban to go into effect next month, ripping away access to reproductive care before many women know they are pregnant. This new, extreme abortion ban – one that Donald Trump personally paved the way for – will now amount to a ban for the entire Southeast. Women in need of reproductive care throughout the region now face a choice between putting their lives at risk or traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to get care.

As we’ve seen in election after election, protecting abortion rights is mobilizing a diverse and growing segment of voters to help buoy Democrats up and down the ballot. With an abortion amendment officially on the ballot this November in Florida, President Biden and Vice President Harris and their commitment to fighting back against Donald Trump and Rick Scott’s attacks on reproductive freedom will help mobilize and expand the electorate in the state, given the overwhelming majority of Floridians support abortion rights. And Florida Republicans will be forced to defend their cruel, indefensible support of this abortion ban.

The rulings mean Donald Trump will have to spend more time and more money he doesn’t have in Florida. He’ll have to work for it. And he’s not one for working.

Biden-Harris released a new ad taking the abortion fight to Trump. The bans are as much a loser for women as they are for him.

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RFK Jr. claims he’ll make North Carolina’s presidential ballot

Claiming you have enough signatures to get onto the ballot by petition is not the same as an official determination by the state Board of Elections. Still, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign on Monday announced it had what it needed in North Carolina.

WRAL:

Kennedy’s We The People Party must collect 13,865 valid signatures before May 17 to be on the ballot under North Carolina election law. The campaign said it has collected more than 23,000 signatures, giving them a buffer in case some of the signatures are not counted.

The signatures have to be validated by elections officials before they become official. If validated, North Carolina would be the largest state that Kennedy has gained access. Kennedy is already on the ballot in Utah and has collected the needed signatures in New Hampshire, Nevada and Hawaii.

An individual candidate must collect more than 83,000 signatures to be on the ballot in North Carolina. But a party has a much lower threshold — 0.25% of the total number of voters who voted in the most recent general election for governor, which would be 13,865 — to place a nominee on state ballots. All the signatures must be from registered voters and at least 200 must come from at least three separate congressional districts in the state.

If Kennedy qualifies, it remains to be seen how this will impact the presidential contest in the state. There is a lot going on here. A lot of moving parts. The Biden campaign last week announced it was opening 10 field offices across the state. It is expanding its state staff. After a rere joint appearance with President Biden last week, Vice President Harris will return on Thursday for her fourth visit to the state to open an office in Charlotte.

Meanwhile:

Trump’s campaign has not announced when it will open field offices in the state. The Associated Press reported last week that some Republican Party leaders in battleground states raised concerns about a “skeleton” campaign, quoting Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

While former President Barack Obama was the last Democrat to win North Carolina in 2008, party leaders are trying once again to put the state in play. In 2020, Trump won the state by about 1.34 percent, which was his smallest margin of any state he won that year.

Political strategist and CEO of TargetSmart, Tom Bonier, notes that youth voter registration in the state is on a streak, even if Nate Cohn questions whether they will vote BIden.

Wow, in NC young voters are accounting for a larger share of new registrants than they did at this point in the '20 and '22 cycles. pic.twitter.com/wXvzULsyIA

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) March 31, 2024

It's 55% unaffiliated, Nate.

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) April 1, 2024

From my front-row seat, I’m trying to ignore polls. Some of the fundamentals — blocking and tackling — are more important. Trump fatigue is setting in. A reporter at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vice-president announcement found more Republicans than disgruntled Democrats supporting Kennedy. Anybody-but-Trump Republicans may find the anti-vaxxer candidate an appealing alternative.

Plus, Trump’ support in North Carolina’s metro areas is collapsing, according to Carolina Forward:

For over 15 years now, a majority of North Carolina’s counties have been shrinking in population, and many more are essentially stagnant. This is not a prediction or even a trend – it has already happened, and is accelerating. While North Carolina is also one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, the large majority of this growth has accrued to just a handful of urban and suburban counties – all of which are voting Democratic by increasing margins in each election cycle.

According to the U.S. Census, fully 41% of all of North Carolina’s eye-popping population growth as a state from 2010 to 2020 accrued to only two counties: Wake (22%) and Mecklenburg (19%). We have covered this phenomenon in detail here, here, here and here.

This would not be an issue if North Carolina’s heavily Republican, majority-white rural counties were also growing by leaps and bounds. But they are not – in fact, the opposite is happening. Nor are there clear opportunities for finding new GOP voters. The largest county where Republican margins are increasing even modestly is Davidson county, which ranks #17 in the state for population.

It gets worse for the GOP:

North Carolina Republicans are seeing a rapid implosion of their brand in not just North Carolina’s cities, but also its booming suburbs, which together are the source of nearly all the state’s growth. Worse, there is no clear way for them to address it. A brief recap of the two largest counties in the state demonstrates this in stark relief.

• Across Mecklenburg county, Republicans once routinely won and held legislative seats. Today, the party is almost extinct. The list of defeats is a who’s-who of the state political battles of the 2010s: Bob Rucho (who quit); Dan Bishop (also quit); Scott Stone (defeated 2018); Bill Brawley (defeated 2018, and again in 2022); Andy Dulin (defeated 2018); and Jeff Tarte (defeated 2018). Perhaps the most famous example, though, is Pat McCrory, who was the last Republican to win the mayorship of Charlotte for the foreseeable future. In 2023, the Republican mayoral candidate was defeated by 52 points.
• In Wake county, the situation is similar. Republicans have experienced a die-off of legislative candidates: Paul “Skip” Stam (quit); Nelson Dollar (defeated 2018); Marilyn Avila (defeated 2016); Tom Murry (defeated 2014); Chris Malone (defeated 2018); John Adcock (defeated 2018); Gary Pendleton (defeated 2016); Tamara Barringer (defeated 2018); John Alexander (quit). Wake Republicans are no longer capable of meaningfully competing at the county level in Wake, prompting the legislature to change the county’s electoral system instead.

After the 2024 election, there may no longer be a single Republican in Mecklenburg county’s state legislative delegation. Only two Republicans represent Mecklenburg in the state legislature today: Rep. John Bradford (HD-98) and Rep. Tricia Cotham (HD-105). Cotham, of course, was not elected as a Republican at all. Her race, while competitive, is quite likely to flip Democratic this fall. Bradford announced he was quitting the legislature altogether in 2023. Bradford’s seat, House District 98 (once held by Thom Tillis), is also a likely Democratic flip this fall.

And it’s not helping that the North Carolina Republican ticket will include the fringiest of the fringe candidates.

Biden winning in this state will take shaving the GOP margins not just in urban areas but in red, rural counties. TBD.

Update: Misattributed original photo. Swapped it out with another.

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Did you know that President Trump paid off Diller family’s mortgage!

Man of the People. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/skkUa8CDb4

— Freedom 🇺🇸🦅 (@PU28453638) March 28, 2024

That was a lie. Meidas Touch reports:

David Zere, host of the MAGA Real America’s Voice show Breaking Point, kicked off a firestorm of social media misinformation Friday when he falsely claimed that disgraced former President Donald Trump had paid off the mortgage for the family of slain NYPD officer Jonathan Diller.

Trump used the wake for Officer Diller, who was killed at a traffic stop on Monday, as a photo op, posing for cameras in front of a line of NYPD officers and railing against crime in the U.S. 

“We have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently. This is not working. This is happening too often,” Trump said, despite violent crime rates being lower now than they were during his presidency.

Zere said in an interview with Jack Posobiec prior to the wake, “The story here is that Trump gave a donation to Tunnels to Towers, I believe he paid off the mortgage for this family.”

Trump himself never claimed he would be donating to pay off Diller’s mortgage, but the lie quickly spread on social media following Zere’s interview. Students for Trump Chair Ryan Fournier posted, “[Trump] has a huge heart and I’ve seen it time and time again.”

Other MAGA accounts chimed in to praise the former President for his supposed act of charity for the fallen officer’s family, calling him a “man of the people” and saying “this is our President who cares.”

In reality, Tunnels to Towers Foundation, a non profit that provides “mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children, and [builds] specially-adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders,” quickly announced it would be paying off Diller’s mortgage to provide relief for his family. 

The charity put a button link for the public to donate to Diller’s mortgage on the home page of its website:

David Zere then issued a clarification, responding to a Tunnels to Towers post on X promoting their campaign for Diller’s family, saying he “may have been mistaken” about Trump donating to help Diller. However, other major accounts, like Fournier, at the time of writing have not taken down their posts crediting Trump, despite receiving a fact check from X Community Notes.

Neither Zere’s retraction, nor the Community Notes fact check can stop the spread of misinformation once it takes hold in the MAGA corners of social media. The image of Trump as the benevolent dear leader is strong in the minds of his supporters. 

But as the family of slain Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick pointed out, Trump has spent the last year on the campaign trail praising January 6th insurrectionists who attacked police officers. In recent months he has taken to calling them “unbelievable patriots” and “hostages.” 

Trump has said many times during this campaign that he is seeking immunity for police officers, just as he seeks it for himself. He claims that you just have to put up with the occasional “bad apple” or rogue president in order to allow them to properly do their jobs, which basically means he believes they and he should be able to defy the law if, in their judgment, it’s what they need to do. In other words, it’s not just immunity he seeks for Trump and police, it’s also impunity. With his promises of pardons for the J6 criminals on day one of a new presidency, it appears he now wants the same for his followers

If Trump once again incites his followers if he loses the election (which I think is very likely) there may very well be plenty of police who fight on their side this time. That’s undoubtedly in the back of his mind these days when he stages a performance as he did at that funeral last weekend.

It appears to be on the table:

Rep. Don Bacon on Sunday warned that “it’s possible” that Speaker Mike Johnson could face a vote to oust him if he moves to pass Ukraine aid in the House.

“I’m not going to deny it,” Bacon, R-Neb., said when asked by moderator Kristen Welker on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” whether it’s possible Johnson could lose his speakership over Ukraine aid.

“We have one or two people that are not team players. They’d rather enjoy the limelight, the social media,” Bacon added, though he did not name any members.

“It’s a very narrow majority, and one or two people can make us a minority,” he said.

Bacon favors some support for Ukraine and highlighted his partnership with Reps. Jared Golden, D-Maine, Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Ed Case, D-Hawaii, on a Ukraine aid bill.

“We put a bill together that focuses on military aid — a $66 billion bill that provides military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan,” Bacon told Welker, calling for a “bicameral, bipartisan solution.”

“If we do this bill, and I think we will, there’s enough support in the House to get this done. And I want to make sure that we have support in the Senate,” Bacon said.

Should the Democrats bail out the Republicans in the name of preventing dysfunction? I don’t think so. We’re in an election year! Let the Republicans stew in their own toxic mess. But I won’t be surprised to see the so-called “frontline” Dems in swing districts decide it’s in their best interest to show themselves as “moderates.” Maybe they’re right. But it’s going to leave a bad taste in the Democratic base’s mouth if they do it and it will make no difference in the long run. Johnson isn’t going to remain as speaker or minority leader. Marge Greene will exert her will sooner rather than later.

The good news (maybe) is that they may get the Ukraine funding done. At least I hope so. It’s dire.