In 2024, the voters who knew the least about politics were some of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters. One pre-election poll found Americans who didn’t consume any news at all said they’d vote for him over Kamala Harris by a 20-point margin, 60%¹ to 40%.
Today, the president’s support among low-knowledge voters has cratered to just 43%, according to a new analysis of data from our January Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll. The share of 2024 voters who now disapprove of the president is well over 55%.
According to our poll, low-knowledge voters backed Trump by a net margin of 11 points in 2024. Now, however, the same low-knowledge voters say they disapprove of the president by 13 points — a 25-point shift away from the president.
High-knowledge voters were roughly evenly split in 2024 (voting for Harris by 2 points, per self-reports in our data), and have moved against Trump at a softer rate, to -14. The two groups are compared in the following chart:
He’s so ubiquitous that even the people who studiously avoid the news can’t help but notice that he’s destroying everything he touches.
Apparently, these low info voters skew younger and poorer and are less ideological making them more likely to be moved by actual conditions on the ground than others. That’s bad news for Trump.
Republican plans for stealing upcoming elections have discreet elements that are all of a piece. We’re seeing another piece this month in North Carolina. But let’s start with last year. The Brennan Center explains:
Since May, the Trump administration has been on a quest to collect complete voter files from almost every state. Most states have refused the Justice Department’s unprecedented demands for the data, which includes driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers. The government has sued more than 20 states over that refusal. But at least 10 states — home to over 37 million registered voters — have provided their full voter lists to the federal government.
The DOJ has asked states to agree to a “confidential memorandum of understanding” in connection with handing over their full voter files. That agreement reveals both the DOJ’s plans to interfere with the states’ authority to run elections and how dangerously insecure the sensitive data will be in the department’s hands. It provides yet more evidence of the administration’s campaign to interfere with upcoming elections.
[…]
The agreement explains that the DOJ plans to conduct its own analysis of states’ voter files and then instruct the states to remove specific voters, which the federal government has never done before. This would turn the American system of election administration upside down. It is the states, not the federal government, that have the statutory authority — not to mention the expertise — to add and remove voters from the rolls. States also have procedures in place to guard against eligible voters being wrongly removed.
North Carolina is making preparations for handing over its files after some tidying up.
In advance of Gov. Josh Stein (D) taking office in January, the Republican-controlled legislature stripped the governor’s appointment powers to the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) and transferred them to the newly elected state auditor, a Republican. Then in the wake of Republican’s losing a months-long court battle over a 2024 state Supreme Court election, NCSBE launched its registration repair project. Its goal is to ensure every registration complies with the identification requirements of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). Judge Jefferson Griffin, the Republican, had attempted to have tens of thousands of votes disqualified based on those voters’ registrations’ alleged lack of complete data:
Today, the State Board of Elections formally launched its comprehensive effort to collect identification numbers — driver’s license numbers (DL#) or the last four digits of social security numbers (SSN4) — for about 103,000 voters missing them on the state’s voter rolls.
The Registration Repair Project aims to ensure that North Carolina’s voter rolls are as accurate and complete as possible, bring them into compliance with recent state court rulings, and settle a pending lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Justice. The State Board unanimously approved the plan at its June 24 meeting.
Voters on this list who have not “repaired” registrations will receive provisional ballots when they attempt to vote.
But the GOP-controlled board was not done. Voters on the rolls whose registrations already contain DLs and SSN4s are now targets. On February 3, NCSBE issued this press release:
The State Board of Elections is sending letters to more than 241,000 North Carolina voters who provided identification numbers when they registered to vote that did not validate against other government databases.
The letters encourage these voters to update their voter records by providing their driver’s license or social security numbers or by ensuring the name on their voter registration matches other official government records. Voters who wish to update their name on their voter registration should contact their county board of elections.
The press release includes this bolded statement:
“This is just another way we are working to have the most accurate voter rolls in North Carolina history,” said Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “This effort does not affect the eligibility of any of these voters to cast ballots in our elections.”
Except 241,000 registered voters receiving those letters won’t know that they are still eligible to vote. The letter itself contains no such reassurance. (And the NCSBE letter went out to over 18,000 voters in my county under the header of the local Board of Elections with neither its prior notice nor approval.)
The letters are already sowing enough confusion among voters that NCSBE needed to post an FAQ about them. The state just wants to be sure you are you, dontcha know?
Count me skeptical
The stated goal of this election “integrity” effort is to clear up “discrepancies” in voters’ files “that did not validate against other government databases” and to “help election officials with future voter roll maintenance, which often relies on database matching.”
The letter explains:
When you included your DL or SSN4 on your voter registration form, that number went through a validation process where the county board attempted to confirm that the number provided, along with your first and last name and date of birth, matched a record in the NCDMV or Social Security Administration databases. Your number did not result in a match, and we are requesting your assistance in resolving the discrepancy.
This mismatch can be caused by differences in how a name is spelled in each record such as adding or omitting hyphens, apostrophes, or spaces, or the use of a prior legal name, such as a maiden name, in one of the records. Your name at the top of this letter shows how it is spelled in our records. The mismatch may also be caused by a date of birth or DL or SSN4 listing a number in the wrong field or transposing numbers in the records.
This letter to previously validated voters does not address which specific discrepancy or discrepancies exist (unless the name of the addressee has changed). It invites voters to resubmit data that the State Board already has in its possession. (Help us out!)
Let me point out that if there is a mismatch between the addressee’s driver’s license number in the voter database and the DMV’s, guess which number is the governing one? Correcting that should require no voter input. And if the glitch is on the DMV end, how does the voter’s input correct that? Yet the NCSBE is asking voters (some with failing eyesight) to squint through the security features on their licenses to read their DMV ID numbers and transcribe them accurately onto a form (or a website). Someone at the state end must then accurately input form data into a computer. That’s not a recipe for correcting errors but for introducing new ones!
The same is true of validating the addressee’s DOB or SSN4 in the voter database against what is in the Social Security database. Guess which one governs? Asking the voter to resupply them is not an effort to correct discrepancies.
By the way, “FRAUDULENTLY OR FALSELY COMPLETING THIS FORM IS A CLASS I FELONY UNDER CHAPTER 163 OF THE NC GENERAL STATUTES.” In this political environment, asking validated registrants to reconfirm data the state has already (in some cases relied on for years or decades — they’re just discovering discrepancies now?) is akin to laying a perjury trap.
It’s a win-win for Republican-controlled states that have not yet surrendered their voter files to the DOJ. Voters who resubmit the requested data facilitate making it easier for Donald Trump’s DOJ to “instruct the states to remove specific voters.” Fail to comply with the request (or do so resulting in more transcription errors) and the alleged discrepancies form the basis for another round of vote challenges after Republicans lose in November.
That’s how I read it.
Expect a round of vote-suppressing fearmongering ahead of November about “unvalidated” voters on the rolls risking arrest for voter fraud if they show up and vote. Because that’s how the GOP rolls.
Pam Bondi is a national embarrassment as an attorney general on top of being an embarrassment to the legal profession:
Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to apologize to survivors of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein who were seated in the House Judiciary Committee room on Wednesday — and instead demanded that Democrats apologize to President Trump.
Ms. Bondi, imitating Mr. Trump’s tactic of going on the attack when facing tough questions, offered few detailed answers, no admissions of fault but many expressions of fealty and admiration for a president who has exercised direct control over the Justice Department’s actions.
Aaron Rupar explains The Bondi Method:
holy shit — Bondi's new tactic is refusing to answer Democratic questions, then using time during the next Republican questioner to smear the previous Democratic member and accuse them of being complicit in violence crimes
Reading from her Book of Insults, Bondi comes prepared, as Glenn Thrush puts it, to “stall-and-brawl”:
The last time Ms. Bondi appeared before a congressional panel was in October, when she stonewalled Democrats for four hours and read from a list of scripted insults in response to their questioning of her conduct.
What a shame The Mistress of Contempt didn’t come dressed and accessorized for the role. Halloween will be here before we know it.
You may have heard that members of Congress may now review the millions of released Epstein documents in unredcated form by visiting the Department of Justice offices. For members’ convenience, the DOJ has provided four, count ’em, four computer teminals for the hundreds of MOCs.
What’s more, we found out on Wednesday that the DOJ is surveilling Congress members’ searches. Fox News and GOP MOCs would screech like banshees for weeks if a Democrat-led DOJ did the same. As is, it will be a one-day story.
CNN: "Another photograph — these are notes AG Bondi brought to the hearing today. This shows a list of Rep. Jayapal's search history. Lawmakers are allowed to go to a DOJ facility to search unredacted files. We have learned from this photo that the searches are apparently being… pic.twitter.com/N9pJ8e6bxL
But the most dramatic exchange I watched came after Bondi’s questioning by Rep. Becca Balint (D) of Vermont (via Aaron Rupar):
BONDI: You didn’t ask Merrick Garland anything about Epstein
BALINT: Weak sauce. Weak sauce.
BONDI: And with this antisemitic culture right now, she voted against a resolution–
BALINT: You want to go there?! Are you serious? Talking about antisemitism to a woman who lost her grandfather in the Holocaust! Really?! Really?! *storms off*
I really thought Balint was gonna invite Bondi to step outside. I’d have paid to watch that. Donald Trump is too stupid and emotionally damaged to waste hate on. On the other hand….
It’s Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Looks what’s become of the country he saved.
An annual meeting of the nation’s governors that has long served as a rare bipartisan gathering is unraveling after President Donald Trump excluded Democratic governors from White House events.
The National Governors Association said it will no longer hold a formal meeting with Trump when governors are scheduled to convene in Washington later this month, after the White House planned to invite only Republican governors. On Tuesday, 18 Democratic governors also announced they would boycott a traditional dinner at the White House.
“If the reports are true that not all governors are invited to these events, which have historically been productive and bipartisan opportunities for collaboration, we will not be attending the White House dinner this year,” the Democrats wrote. “Democratic governors remain united and will never stop fighting to protect and make life better for people in our states.”
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who chairs the NGA, told fellow governors in a letter on Monday that the White House intended to limit invitations to the association’s annual business meeting, scheduled for Feb. 20, to Republican governors only.
“Because NGA’s mission is to represent all 55 governors, the Association is no longer serving as the facilitator for that event, and it is no longer included in our official program,” Stitt wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press.
[…]
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that Trump has “discretion to invite anyone he wants to the White House.”
“It’s the people’s house,” she said. “It’s also the president’s home, so he can invite whomever he wants to dinners and events here at the White House.”
Every Day he becomes more and more puerile. A spoiled, nasty brat who ruins everything he touches.
I’m frankly a little bit surprised that the Republican Governors didn’t elbow each other out of the way to be the first in line to kiss his ring but maybe they too are getting sick of being pushed around by his royal high-ass. A small step in the right direction?
There are people in positions of great power in the U.S. government engaged in evil conspiracies against everything that is good and decent. Their conspiracies are far more extensive and damaging than almost anyone imagined. But there are no evil masterminds behind this. Only amoral, stupid grifters like Howard Lutnick.
During Trump 47’s first year, Lutnick, the Commerce secretary, was an omnipresent spokesman for Donald Trump’s policies, a constant presence on TV, especially the Sunday talk shows.
He was not impressive in that role. Unlike Scott Bessent, he lacked any hint of gravitas. He doesn’t have Pete Hegseth’s hair. Moreover, Lutnick’s Trump boosterism has been consistently and embarrassingly incompetent.
The only waves he has made are a result of his exceptional combination of stupidity and offensive tone-deafness.
Thus he promised to revive U.S. manufacturing by bringing back “the work of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws.” Lutnick, a billionaire, dismissed concerns about chaos at the Social Security Administration by saying that his mother-in-law wouldn’t complain about a missed check. He gave a Europe-bashing speech to a private dinner at Davos so offensive that Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, walked out.
And in Congressional testimony today, Lutnick admitted that he visited Epstein Island, but said that he did so with his wife, nannies and children, and asserted that “We left with all of my children.”
It would be tempting to dismiss Lutnick as a buffoon. Yet despite his intelligence deficit, he sits at the intersection of not one but at least two ugly conspiracies.
Before joining Trump’s cabinet, Lutnick ran the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald — presenting a huge potential conflict of interest that he claims to have ended by turning the business over to … his sons. Cantor Fitzgerald, in turn, is intimately linked to Tether, a cryptocurrency that is highly profitable because it has become a favorite channel for money-laundering by international criminals.
Nor was money-laundering through cryptocurrency the only criminal conspiracy to which Lutnick was, at the very least, adjacent. Lutnick has in the past vehemently denied having any association with Jeffrey Epstein, insisting that he severed all contact with the pedophile ringleader in 2005. But even the highly limited, extremely redacted release of the Epstein files — everything we’ve seen reeks of a major coverup — shows that he was flat-out lying. Not only did he stay in close contact with Epstein, the two men appear to have gone into business together.
But, at this point, who could possibly be surprised? The more we learn, the more pedophilia and criminal use of cryptocurrency look related, even like different aspects of a single conspiracy. Epstein, it turns out, was a major early investor in the crypto industry. In the backrooms of MAGA-land, passing around under-age girls is a lot like passing around insider crypto deals.
In any previous administration, Lutnick’s naked conflicts of interest and his Epstein lies would have led to his immediate departure. But Trump 47 is using his position to massively enrich himself, and whatever the Justice department is hiding, what we already know about Trump’s personal history is damning — “Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
As he points out, he’s not going to resign and Trump won’t fire him because that would admit that “would be a tacit admission that huge conflicts of interest, family business that enables crime and association with sexual predators are bad.” We can’t have that.
And yes, they are monumentally stupid. But then, as Krugman reminds us:
It’s worth remembering Hannah Arendt’s observations about the architects of Hitler’s genocide, which led her to coin the phrase “the banality of evil”. As Arendt noted, the horrors of Nazism were not inflicted by brilliant geniuses, but through the normalization of thoughtless, amoral behavior that eventually turned into evil.
“These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cutthroat practices and the oathbound societies, are to us a pest without mitigation. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they.”NYT editorial 1891
This reminded me of the Samuel Alito interview in Politico Magazine in which he talks about his mentor the late Justice Antonin Scalia who is described like this in the article:
Around 6 p.m., after a bus packed with lawyers had barreled down the Jersey Turnpike, the man of honor arrived: Antonin Scalia, the Trenton native freshly sworn in as the 103rd justice of the United States Supreme Court, with his wife Maureen. Smiling and shaking hands as he clutched his pipe, Scalia, still black of hair and slender of frame at 50, embodied the American Dream: the son of a Sicilian immigrant father and first-generation Italian American mother who vaulted, through innate genius, hard work, devout Catholicism and Tri-State charm, to the top five at Harvard Law; senior legal positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations; law professorships at the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago; the appellate bench; and finally, the pinnacle of his profession, the Supreme Court, where he was the first Italian American justice.
[…]
One of the Tri-State lawyers who waited in line that night was a 36-year-old fellow Trentonian and Italian American, a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law with brown, frizzy hair, and taller than the justice. He wore a grey suit, maroon-striped tie and a lapel sticker, white with blue trim, reading: SAMUEL ALITO.
And?
Rosen: Was it at all a thing for you when [Scalia] was nominated to the Supreme Court, the fact that he was the first Italian American?
Alito: Yes, it was. And it was for millions of Italian Americans. And you can see that in the reaction within the Italian American community to his nomination. Italian Americans, unlike, let’s say, the Irish, were never a particularly cohesive voting bloc. … But everyone was united behind this because it really did represent the opening of a door, symbolically. … He was the antidote to the stereotypes about Italian Americans … prevalent at the time, and [which] continue to this day. If you look at the Italian American characters in, let’s say, movies and on TV, you’ve got the gangsters and the criminals, and then you have kind of the low — the dumb buffoons. So you look at the character that John Travolta played when he was in that — what was the TV show?
Rosen: “Welcome Back, Kotter.”
Alito: Yeah, “Welcome Back, Kotter.” Or Tony Danza in —
Rosen: “Taxi.”
Alito: “Taxi.” Or Henry Winkler in — what was it?
Rosen: “Happy Days.”
Alito: “Happy Days.” You know, that’s the way people, a lot of people, thought about Italian Americans. You know, maybe they could sing and Joe DiMaggio was a good athlete. … But somebody who was a serious intellectual, that was something. And that was a real antidote.
What a wonderful American story, eh?
Of course Italian-Americans are different, right? They aren’t like those Haitians or Laotians or Venezuelans we have today. Except, at the time of the great migration to America from Italy, the right wingers of the day certainly believed they were, didn’t they?
The lack of self-awareness among the avatars of the American right is a thing to behold.
The speech does a few things that every Democrat can emulate, even if they are not as young or as charismatic. It offers a model for a party that is still struggling to find a compelling story about what Trump and Republicans are doing to the country.
Be Fearless
Throughout the speech, Ossoff shows no fear and no caution. He is not worried about who he might offend or how centrist pundits will react.
He just lets it rip.
When talking about Trump’s racist social media post about the Obamas, Ossoff says:
You’re seeing what I’m seeing, right? The president posting about the Obamas like a Klansman.
The context matters here. Ossoff is not a Democrat in a deep-blue seat taking viral shots at Trump to raise money and earn praise online.
[…]
The standard consultant-class advice in that situation would be to sand down the edges—and in a Southern state, to stay far away from race and racial politics. Comparing the president of the United States to a “Klansman” is, to put it mildly, bold.
I am not arguing that every Democrat should throw all caution to the wind. But there is real value in boldness—not just with the base, but with persuadable voters. Fearlessness communicates strength. It distinguishes a candidate from the familiar, mealy-mouthed politicians who try to please everyone and offend no one.
I couldn’t agree more. There is just no margin in trying to be “moderate” when it comes to describing what’s going on in our country. It is what it is and the only way to deal with it is by being brutally honest. MAGA voters will never believe it but it’s clear that Independents and even some Republicans around the margins are seeing it. You will get nowhere with those people by failing to acknowledge reality.
He says that Ossof’s corruption message works because he artfully presents it in a way that shows how it hurts the American people:
Now you remember we were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. You remember that? But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class ruling our country. They are the elites they pretend to hate.
So prices are up. Jobs are going away. Medicaid and school lunches are slashed. Nursing homes are getting defunded. If you’re Steve Bannon, and your pitch was Trump for the forgotten man and woman, how do you sell any of this? Trump was supposed to fight for the working class. Instead, he’s literally closing rural clinics and hospitals to cut taxes for George Soros and Elon Musk. He was supposed to end the globalist, world-police foreign policy. Instead, we’re doing war for oil and nation-building again—and threatening to conquer Greenland. He was supposed to drain the swamp. Instead, this is the most corrupt administration of all time. And everybody knows it.
Pfeiffer:
Democrats need an anti-corruption message not only to damage Republicans, but to show voters that we share their anger at a rigged political system—and that we can be trusted to take it on. That only works, of course, if we also have credible messengers and real proposals to fix it.
He likes the reference to the “Epstein class” which is catching on among Democrats.
And then there’s this which I think is very good
A Patriotic Appeal to Unity
Somewhere along the way, hope for a better future started to sound like nostalgia for a long-gone past. Anyone who suggests that we are not hopelessly and permanently divided is now treated as naïve.
I don’t buy that.
To paraphrase my old friend David Axelrod, voters are looking for a remedy to Trump’s hate and division, not a replica of it. Democrats have to find a way to paint a picture of a better, more hopeful, and less hateful future.
Here is Jon Ossoff’s attempt to do exactly that:
I listened to a speech a few months ago by a senator from Missouri aligned with the president, and what I think I heard him say was that the only real Americans are those descended from the original European settlers. Now, maybe he forgot that the Mayflower itself was full of religious exiles fleeing persecution. But our heritage is not limited to the pilgrims or those who settled the West.
America’s heritage includes the descendants of enslaved people who won liberation from slavery and Jim Crow. It includes the Creek people who lived in middle Georgia for eleven centuries. And it includes immigrants from every region and every continent who came here fleeing persecution or seeking opportunity.
Americans are not a race. We are a people—united not by ethnicity, but by shared convictions. That is what makes us exceptional, and that is what makes America a beacon to the world.
I think people are craving this sort of thing. You can see it in the resistance in Minneapolis and the appeals to love not hate among young people that the country is reeling from all this horror and they are inspired by those who still believe what Ossoff is saying in that speech.
Pfeiffer explains that it’s important to put this in the specific context that Ossoff puts it:
This appeal works precisely because it comes after tough, unvarnished, and fearless criticism of Trump. Aspiring to unity is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength.
I think that’s important. Courage combined with empathy is powerful.
If you get the chance watch the whole thing. It’s very good. I hope that Trump hasn’t succeeded in rigging Georgia so that Ossoff can’t win. In any case, his message is the one that resonates in this moment.
“You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our watch — not on our time, no way,” Raskin said. “And I told you about that, Attorney General, before you started.”
“You don’t tell me anything,” Bondi erupted, before mocking Raskin as a “washed-up, loser lawyer — not even a lawyer.”
Bondi then rounded on Nadler, telling him: “You said the president conspired, sought foreign interference in the 2016 election. Robert Mueller found no evidence, none, of foreign interference in 2016. Have you apologized to President Trump?
“You all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it. I’m not going to put up with it,” she continued.
Here are a few highlights:
Bondi crashes out over Epstein: "The Dow is over 50,000 dollars! I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq smashing records. That's what we should be talking about." pic.twitter.com/wZVxfnaiUr
RASKIN: President Trump may have been a little bit embarrassed by the release of his tax return. If Trump can get $10 billion, how much do you think the claims of these Epstein survivors are worth?
Bondi attacks Democratic members: "I find it interesting that she keeps going after President Trump — the greatest president in American history. This isn't a circus. She keeps going after Donald Trump. She didn't say how much money she took from Reid Hoffman, did she?" pic.twitter.com/2NiFZcjZlV
Raskin: "I want the whole country to look at this. This is the attorney general of the US whose job is law enforcement. We've never had a witness who has misunderstood our rules and been unable to conform his or her conduct to our rules before. Excuse me." pic.twitter.com/DWOSyV5P97
Lieu plays Bondi the infamous clip of Trump and Epstein partying together and asks her if there were underaged girls at any party the two attended together
"This is so ridiculous," Bondi says. "There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime"
Lieu plays Bondi the infamous clip of Trump and Epstein partying together and asks her if there were underaged girls at any party the two attended together “This is so ridiculous,” Bondi says. “There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime” “I believe you just lied under oath,” Lieu replies
This one, though is ad-worthy:
NEGUSE: AG Bondi, that man works for you now, right? The man in that video from January 6 allegedly yelling 'kill them!' at police officers. His name is Jared Wise.
BONDI: He does work for us, yes. I believe he was pardoned by President Trump
NEGUSE: AG Bondi, that man works for you now, right? The man in that video from January 6 allegedly yelling ‘kill them!’ at police officers. His name is Jared Wise.
BONDI: He does work for us, yes. I believe he was pardoned by President Trump
NEGUSE: And you expect hard-working police officers to believe you take law enforcement seriously?
So is this:
Jim Jordan: "You have a right to protest in the street, but that doesn't give you a right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress" pic.twitter.com/OHGZvraxYj
The billionaire owner of a bridge connecting Michigan with Canada met Howard Lutnick, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, on Monday hours before President Trump lambasted a competing span, in the latest flashpoint in the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Canada.
Matthew Moroun is a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, for decades. He met on Monday with Mr. Lutnick in Washington, according to two officials briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
After that meeting Mr. Lutnick spoke with Mr. Trump by phone about the matter, the officials said.
The rest writes itself. Trump puts on public display his failing memory and suggestibility by whomever last whispers in his ear. Every day is Festivus in the Trump White House. Every day “a long list of grievances.”
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale (himself a Canadian) debunked Trump’s post phone call ranting about the new bridge between Ontario and Michigan:
President Trump’s post threatening to block the opening of a major new US-Canada bridge was filled with important omissions and misleading claims.
– Trump professed astonishment that the Canadian government would expect him to support the project. He didn’t mention that he explicitly endorsed the project in a 2017 joint statement with then-PM Trudeau, calling it a “vital economic link” and saying he looked forward to its quick completion.
– Trump, complaining about Canada, said “we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset.” But the state of Michigan already owns half of the bridge.
– Trump said, “I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them.” But Canada paid for the entire bridge construction.
– Trump complained about a Buy American waiver Obama granted the project, then claimed the waiver let Canada “not use any American products, including our Steel.” But the waiver actually allowed Canadian and US steel to be treated equally in consideration for the project, and numerous Canadian officials and Republican former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder say some American steel was indeed used. (Also worth noting the Obama administration said it was granting the waiver out of a “basic notion of fairness” because the project was a “unique circumstance…under which Canada is assuming all financial liability and risk for the construction.”)
President Trump’s post threatening to block the opening of a major new US-Canada bridge was filled with important omissions and misleading claims.
– Trump professed astonishment that the Canadian government would expect him to support the project. He didn’t mention that he…
Tokyo Rose Garden defended Trump’s sudden opposition and failing memory.
Reporter: Trump threatened to block the new bridge, which would connect Detroit to Canada. This was fully paid for by Canada. Why has he changed his mind?
Leavitt: This is just another example of President Trump putting America's interests first. pic.twitter.com/bBjDHjLQCl
You remember that the Moron-in-Chief insisted that these Democrats are traitors deserving hanging? Or at least that his fully corrupted Department of Justice criminally indict them for reminding the military of the training every service member receives that it is their duty not to obey illegal orders?
The move to charge the lawmakers — among them, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — was, by any measure, an extraordinary attempt by Trump appointees to politicize the criminal justice system even for a Justice Department that has repeatedly shattered norms of independence from the White House and followed Mr. Trump’s directives to prosecute his adversaries.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., on Tuesday presented the retributive case to a grand jury and asked for an indictment. Trump boasts that he can identify a giraffe on a page. Grand jurors can identify a kangaroo court from a mile away. Jurors say no … again:
Before Mr. Trump’s second term, it had been exceedingly rare for grand jurors to rebuff requests by prosecutors seeking indictments. It is now happening with increased frequency, as Mr. Trump’s appointees push ahead with questionable cases in an effort to appease him.
On Tuesday, prosecutors presenting the case sought to persuade the grand jurors that the lawmakers had violated a statute that forbids interfering with the loyalty, morale or discipline of the U.S. armed forces, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.
Politico adds that under federal law, a grand jury of “at least 12 of the between 16 and 23 members of the panel must vote to find probable cause to proceed with the charge.”
Pirro’s office had no comment.
In November, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the former Fox weekend co-host, called the video “despicable, reckless, and false.” He decried the “Seditious Six” for encouraging troops to ignore orders. Not to be left unquoted now, Hegseth tapped in for Pirro:
“Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion — which only puts our warriors in danger,” Mr. Hegseth wrote.
