They didn’t even show Florida, which is a real shocker:
It’s about time the MSM took notice of this phenomenon. There’s been a ton of talk about the Biden “uncommitted” vote because of Gaza but very little about the fact that Trump’s getting a smaller percentage of the GOP vote than Biden gets from Democrats. And a bunch of these races have happened long after the other candidates have dropped out:
A month after Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican race, former President Trump is still dealing with a contingent of voters showing up to cast primary ballots for candidates who aren’t him.
Why it matters: PresidentBiden has more successfully unified his voters despite never facing a strong primary opponent and an organized protest vote over the war in Gaza.
-In 10 recent primary contests, more than one-quarter of GOP primary voters cast a ballot for a non-Trump candidate.
-“Joe Biden has a real golden opportunity to capture all those disaffected people who voted for Nikki Haley,” said Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson.
Driving the news: In the key battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, 20.8% of Republican primary voters cast a ballot for a candidate other than Trump.
-Haley, the former UN ambassador who suspended her campaign a month ago, drew more than 12%, or 76,000 votes, in Wisconsin, which Biden won by just over 20,000 votes against Trump in 2020.
-“Those are significant numbers,” longtime Wisconsin Republican strategist Bill McCoshen told Axios.
-“Will those voters come home in November? I think it’s possible they will, history suggests that most of them will, but I think it’s also a signal to the Trump campaign that his pick for a VP could be very critical to bringing these voters back.”
-Trump saw a larger share of protest votes in Wisconsin than Biden in the Democratic primary, where 8.3% of voters, or about 48,000, supported the “uninstructed” vote in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
The big picture: In another key presidential swing state, Arizona, Haley won about 18% of the vote in the GOP primary last month, despite having suspended her campaign about halfway through early voting.
[…]
It’s possible that some of the non-Trump votes in recent contests were from voters who cast a ballot while Haley was still in the race — and are planning to back Trump in November.
But the sizable shares of protest votes could also be a sign of Trump’s vulnerabilities ahead of an election that’s likely to be decided by the margins in a few key swing states.
Yes it could. It’s possible that there are more disaffected Trump voters than are being measured in the opinion polls. These are real elections and while they can’t tell us exactly what’s going to happen in November, they are certainly a clue. The Trump campaign should be worried.
When voters learn more about independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he’ll take votes away from Donald Trump in the general election, a pollster told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday.
Sarah Longwell of the Republican Accountability Project said she recently administered two focus groups on Kennedy’s candidacy.
“I specifically did former Biden voters, who were leaning toward RFK, and Trump voters who were leaning toward RFK, and it’s crazy because it’s like a Rorschach test,” Longwell said, continuing:
He’s such a wildcard that, the Dems will tell you they love his positions on conservation and the environment. He’s really good on those. And Republicans will tell you they love the way he’s beating up on Democrats as what they perceive to be a Democrat, because his last name is Kennedy, and they love his position on being anti-vax. And so, right now, and because he’s a Kennedy, there’s from the Dems a sense of, he is a Democrat.
So he’s pulling from both right now, but comments like this, ultimately, if I were Donald Trump, I would be very concerned that when voters become more educated on who RFK is, that he will pull much more from the MAGA anti-vax right.
The “comments” Longwell referred to came in the form of a statement Friday where Kennedy tried to explain his stance on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. In it, he claimed the rioters received “harsh treatment” through the “vigor” of their prosecutions and “long sentences.” He also claimed the rioters had no weapons, but court records show authorities confiscated everything from guns to Tasers.
Longwell added, “Here’s the thing: I think that anybody who splits the broad anti-Trump coalition is dangerous. And, so, if you asked me my preference, it would be that RFK wasn’t in there. But I do think once Dems are done, sort of educating people about this guy, he will take more from Trump than from Biden.”
I’ve always felt that way (but I wouldn’t put money on it.) He’s a conspiracy theorist nutcase and while there are some of those in the Democratic coalition, the GOP is the party making a profit at it.
Keep in mind that there’s a whole GOP sub-cult around JFK Jr that believes he actually survived the plane crash and is making a dramatic return to American life. If they’re daft enough to believe that I could easily see them thinking that RFK Jr is JFKJr or that he’s planning to bring him into the cabinet. Or something. In other words, these nuts are far more likely to be right wingers and they are far more likely to think RFK Jr is their guy. If the left turns on Biden I would expect them to go to Jill Stein as they always do. They are still at least somewhat tethered to actual politics.
On the other hand, the RFK brain trust certainly sees lefties as a target:
Are you better off than you were four years ago? That question is circulating on social media and cable news every day now in response to the Trump campaign foolishly asking it, apparently expecting that everyone is mathematically illiterate and won’t think back to the spring of 2020 when thousands of people were dying in the COVID pandemic. You’d think the last thing they’d want anyone to remember is Donald Trump appearing on television every day yelling at reporters and telling people to take snake oil cures or inject disinfectant. It was a nightmare from which the country has not yet fully recovered and his abominable performance during that horrific crisis marked the worst days of his presidency.
You’ll remember that he was careening madly from day to day, completely out of his depth, making everyone even more frightened and nervous than they already were. We know from reporting in real time and later from books and interviews that Trump was really only concerned about how the pandemic was going to affect his reelection campaign and as a result he tried various PR approaches, from denying it was happening to demanding that we stop testing because it was making “his numbers” look bad to declaring that less than a hundred thousand deaths from the virus would be a big win. (The American death toll stands at well over a million.)
One of the more inane attempts to shape the narrative was when he tried to adopt the mantle of “wartime president” to rally the country around the commander in chief and send him to a second term by acclamation. Salon’s Bob Cesca wrote at the time:
As of the past several days, Trump’s been marketing COVID-19 as an “invisible enemy.” He can’t stop repeating the bellicose platitude that America is at war against the virus, even though he spent the first two months of this catastrophe telling us it was no big deal.
Yet during the Sunday edition of the Trump Show, the president said, “In a true sense we’re at war.” On top of not understanding the definition of “war” or “true,” Trump is also struggling to present himself with a patina of unity and cooperation (which he and his people routinely contradict with obnoxious cracks and tweets about his political opponents), while conspicuously thanking “first responders,” as in the days and weeks following 9/11.
Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation. … Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It’s the invisible enemy. That’s always the toughest enemy, the invisible enemy.
No one bought that line because it was clear that he was in over his head and once he made the most famous gaffe of his presidency — the suggestion to scientists that perhaps humans could inject or ingest disinfectant to kill the virus — he stopped appearing at the daily briefing. But despite the fact that he loves to fatuously portray himself as the “peace president” he clearly liked the idea of being a wartime leader and thought it would be useful to his campaign. The only war he’s ever been interested in waging, however, is the culture war.
That May he launched an all out attack on former president Barack Obama, with a convoluted conspiracy theory he called “Obamagate” (original as always) having something to do with the Russia investigation which nobody could ever figure out and demanding that he be jailed for his alleged crimes. He even had his Attorney General Bill Barr assign U.S. Attorney John Bash to look into the matter and then Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., agreed to hold hearings although he didn’t follow Trump’s orders to subpoena Obama to appear. Nothing ever came of it because it was nonsense but it did distract for a time from his miserable failure to lead the country through the pandemic.
Recall that he also launched a series of assaults on blue states demanding that governors would have to “negotiate” for aid by giving up sanctuary cities. As I wrote at the time:
He and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even cooked up a plan to deny pandemic aid to liberal-leaning states, literally calling it “No Blue State Bailouts.” Republican governors are now following his lead and doing the same with the Democratic mayors of major cities. After years and years of bellowing about “local control,” they are now overruling mayors’ stay-at-home orders in an effort to force people back to work.
Essentially, Trump declared war on his political opponents in 2020. It wasn’t successful for him at the time but that’s not stopping him from giving it another go and this time it’s scorched earth. Over the weekend he shared a video made by Tom Klingenstein, a very wealthy financier and the Chairman of the Claremont Institute. Back in 2021, Klingenstein took up the banner when Trump went into exile at Mar-a-Lago and started a Super Pac to fight what he calls the “Woke regime.” He characterizes it as a cold civil war which the woke regime is winning because the right is too afraid to fight.
Until now, his work has mostly been focused on the idea itself but now he’s taken it to a new level presenting Donald Trump as the only man who can lead us with a piece he calls “Trump’s Virtues” which Trump shared on Truth Social to a rapturous reception:
Leni Riefenstahl wouldn’t be impressed with the aesthetics but her client would certainly admire the message. A small sample:
We shouldn’t much care whether our commander-in-chief is a real conservative, whether he is a role model for children or says lots of silly things, or whether he is modest or dignified. What we should care about is whether he knows we are in a war, knows who the enemy is, and knows how to win. Trump does.
His policies are important, but not as important as the rest of him. Trump grasps the essential things. He understands that the group quota regime is evil and will not stop until it destroys America. He is a fighter—bold, brave, and decisive—who has confidence in himself and his country.
His enemies hate him with an indescribable fierceness. “Another Hitler,” they say, “elect him and he will be a dictator.” We should take this hysteria as reason for hope. The America-haters rightly fear that he and his party are on the threshold of a successful counterrevolution.
Trump hates his enemies every bit as much as they hate him. His enemies are America’s enemies.
Those enemies are everyone who doesn’t support Trump and they must be destroyed. The man who made that video surely believes all this and Trump’s followers love the message and are inspired by it. The rest of us are simply left stunned by the idea that any of this could possibly be defined as “virtuous.”
Republicans’ impeachment probe of President Biden is unraveling because of a lack of evidence — but their work could become the basis for federal investigations and even prosecutions of the Biden family if Donald Trump wins re-election, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Trump has vowed retribution against his enemies if he wins in November. House Republicans have struggled to show Biden has done anything illegal, but people close to Trump are still plotting to use the Justice Department against Biden and his family.
A source close to the Trump campaign said that “everything you have seen from the Biden DOJ,” in terms of the charges against Trump, “you can expect to see from the Trump DOJ.”
One Trump ally argued that there is precedent for a second Trump administration to investigate and prosecute the Bidens: the current federal charges against Trump.
Reality check:Those charges stem from allegations that Trump led a conspiracy to try to overturn the 2020 election, and that he illegally kept classified documents and then schemed to conceal that he’d taken them.
Biden was found to have some classified documents from his vice presidency, but cooperated with authorities in returning them.
The special counsel who investigated Biden’s case, a former Trump appointee to the Justice Department, decided not to prosecute.
Driving the news: House Republicans have alleged that Biden should be impeached because he illicitly benefitted from lucrative foreign deals arranged by his son Hunter.
Despite their difficulty proving that, Trump has said he thinks Biden should be prosecuted anyway — because Trump is being prosecuted now.
“By weaponizing the DOJ against his Political Opponent, ME, Joe has opened a giant Pandora’s Box,” Trump posted on Truth Social in January.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a fundraising email last month that “when President Trump returns to the White House, it’s critical the new leadership at the DOJ have everything they need to prosecute the Biden Crime Family and deliver swift justice.”
Comer also said on Fox News recently that if Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department won’t accept criminal referrals from House Republicans, “then maybe a Donald Trump Department of Justice will.”
Ther’s more at the link, but you get the gist.
They’ll find a ham sandwich to prosecute even if they have to bake the bread, slaughter the pig, grow the lettuce, and assemble the sandwich. It’s who they are. It will be the most productive work the GOP has done in years.
You think the skies will go dark for four minutes today? How about for four years or permanently?
For your Robert F. KennedyJr.-leaning friends. RFK Jr.’s New York director hates Democrats and Joe Biden so much that she dreams of seeing the 2024 presidential election decided for Trump in a GOP-led House.
#Spoiler4Trump Rita Palma, NYS director for RFK Jr’s campaign, gives away the playbook for the campaign’s mission — it’s shady AF‼️@ritamollerpalma openly admits the plan is take electoral votes from Biden in blue states, in order to force a contingent election so that the… pic.twitter.com/EqBwQPvJVh
Whether or not this plan is far-fetched, it reflects nihilism masquerading as progress. Not unlike making America great again by demolishing the republic and replacing it with a Gileadish autocracy. How d’ya like that, libs?
Somewhere in my dusty memory is a plot line in which someone plans their own suicide to look like a murder and configures the evidence to implicate a former lover(?). To hate someone that much….
* What happens when you’re running out of the hotel to chase an eclipse.
4 years ago today — April 7, 2020 — Trump held one of his covid trainwreck pressers and rolled out the talking point that coronavirus testing was causing causes and not, you know, the virus, which at that time was spreading out of control (🧵) https://t.co/DhcSelmRzi
Trump says he made over $50 million and maybe he did. But I think I’d wait for the fundraising reports to come in before treating that as a confirmed number. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but he tends to exaggerate a little bit.
On the other hand, those crooked gazzilionaires really might have added a zero to their checks when they heard this:
Donald Trump promised to keep billionaires’ taxes low at a fundraising dinner Saturday night in Palm Beach, Fla., held at the home of billionaire John Paulson.
A Trump campaign official told NBC News that the former president “spoke on the need to win back the White House so we can turn our country around, focusing on key issues including unleashing energy production, securing our southern border, reducing inflation, extending the Trump Tax Cuts, eliminating Joe Biden’s insane [electric vehicle] mandate, protecting Israel, and avoiding global war.” NBC News requested to have a reporter present at the fundraiser, but the campaign refused.
[…]
Some billionaires who abandoned Trump in the wake of Jan. 6 and who supported his opponents in the primary have come crawling back to the former president in hopes of keeping their tax burden low.
Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz — who apologized after Jan. 6 for supporting Trump, telling CNBC, “I’m sorry I did that” — recently hosted a breakfast at his Palm Beach mansion attended by Trump and several other billionaires, including Steve Wynn and Elon Musk, according to The Washington Post. Oracle’s Larry Ellison is also considering cutting Trump’s campaign a check, while billionaire heirs Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein told the Financial Times that they intend to donate to the former president’s campaign.
“While Donald Trump has been busy awarding himself golf trophies at Mar-a-Lago and palling around with billionaires, Joe Biden has been crisscrossing the nation connecting with voters and outlining his vision to grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime
He means it. He said this earlier:
Trump in leaked footage at wealthy fundraiser: You’re all wealthy people. You have so much money… We gave you the largest tax cuts in history pic.twitter.com/vDFuQM7nUx
Here’s what Donald Trump says when he thinks you’re not watching: He says he’s going to cut taxes for his rich friends, all while cutting Social Security for everyone else. @BernieSanders and I are mad as hell about it, and together, we’re going to stop him. pic.twitter.com/QYcBILQkzY
Trump told a rally audience last week that he would be coming up with a policy on abortion in the next week. (And yes, everyone made the same joke about “infrastructure week and health care reform in two weeks” joke when he did it.) But he does have to come up with something because his own people are waiting for the magic words he’s been promising that will put this whole thing to rest. Unfortunately for him, it’s not possible:
Former President Donald Trump is vowing to solve the abortion dilemma that has dogged Republican candidates since the fall of Roe v. Wade with his singular dealmaking acumen.
The presumptive Republican nominee, who has pledged to make a statement on abortion this week, has said for months that if elected he would “come together with all groups” and “negotiate something” that would “make both sides happy,” suggesting that “15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.”
“We’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” he said.
The tactic has drawn praise from conservatives including Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former counselor, who called it “a reasonable conversation starter.”
“It reflects consensus,” she said of a 15- or 16-week ban, citing her own firm’s polling. “People recognize that the lack of compromise, moderation and reasonableness is on the side of the professional, political left, and the Democrats.”
But Trump, who has blasted other Republicans for speaking “inarticulately” on abortion, is running headlong into the same problem the rest of the party has encountered: There is almost certainly no deal the opposing sides of the abortion wars would accept.
“You’re getting the worst of both worlds” by pitching a 15-week ban, said a GOP political strategist who has worked on several presidential campaigns, including Trump’s failed 2020 bid. “Pro-life groups still aren’t going to be happy, and you’re still supporting a nationwide limit that Democrats will attack,” said the strategist, granted anonymity to speak critically about the former president’s rhetoric.
I’m not sure where Kellyanne gets the idea that there’s consensus on the 15 week ban but …. there isn’t. Good luck with trying to sell a national ban in the swing states that still have abortion rights.
Good luck with this. Trump instinctively understands that this is a dangerous issue for him but there’s no way out.
It’s even more ghastly when you read the whole thing.
I just thought I’d put this up as we go into the final week before the 2016 Stormy Daniels election fraud case begins on the 15th.
Think about what he said and the fact that dozens of other women have accused him of the same thing and that he’s even been held liable for defamation and sexual assault for over 90 million dollars. The man is a reprehensible reprobate on a level we’ve never encountered in presidential politics — and we’ve had some real beauts when it comes to womanizing. This man is truly disgusting.
