No, the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee is not weird. Not weird at all:
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and US senator from Ohio, attacked teachers who do not have children in newly resurfaced remarks from 2021.
In the resurfaced clip, Vance, who was speaking at a forum held by the Center for Christian Virtue, attacks “leaders on the left” and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, for not having children.
“So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children, that really disorients me and disturbs me,” Vance can be heard saying in the clip.
“Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country, she doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”
The Gallup poll shows that voter enthusiasm is higher than it’s been since 2008. (That was a very good year for Democrats, by the way.)
Guess why?
It’s the Democrats.
Democrats’ current level of enthusiasm is one percentage point shy of the group’s high in Gallup’s trend since 2000. That was the 79% measured in February 2008, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were engaged in a spirited battle for the party’s presidential nomination. Enthusiasm subsided later that year, but by the end of the campaign, consistently more than seven in 10 said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting. Democratic enthusiasm was also elevated during the 2004 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
I’d rather be the Democrats than the Republicans….
I was on the The Nicole Sandler Show show as RFK Jr.’s brain worm. I was going to add photos of the people and articles that I was referring too, because as bizarre at all these stories sound, I WAS NOT MAKING THEM UP!
I decided to just list the articles below in case anyone wants to know more details.
These are Real Headlines Written by Actual Humans about RFK Jr. in a new segment I’m calling RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm News. (The graphic is from an actual article on brain worms from ABC News, Australia that said, “headlines about brain worms can be alarming.” but adds, “..here are ways you can minimize your risks of being infected with one.” )
“As the Director of PPO, McEntee took it upon himself to ensure that all presidential appointees were sufficiently loyal to Trump, conducting loyalty interviews with employees throughout the federal government and monitoring their social media presence.”
Nicole had hoped to have Digby on the show but she was ill. Luckily not with BRAIN WORMS!
I modeled the segment on A Closer Look on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Those are written by my favorite writer, Sal Gentile, who does an amazing job of getting in jokes along with the facts.
He’s said and done a LOT of disgusting things in his short political career. But this may be the worst. He and his republive minions are out there every day on social media pushing the lie that Harris slept her way to the top.
I know I don’t really have to say this but it’s important. She had a relationship with Willie Brown, the Speaker of the state assembly for about a year in the mid 90s when she was a prosecutor in Alameda County. He recommended her for a job on the unemployment appeals board.( I don’t think that’s quite the stepping stone to power people what you to believe.)
Then she went to work for the San Francisco DA’s office and the San Francisco City Attorney, ran for San Francisco DA and she won. Twice. After that she ran for Attorney General of California and she also won twice. After that she ran for the Senate and won and then ran for VP and won. She has been an elected official for over 2 decades. Unless she gave blow jobs to millions of voters, she did not sleep her way to the top. It’s absurd.
NBC News on Tuesday reviewed more than 30 minutes of video from the roughly 48 hours surrounding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, including video that showed Pelosi being led away from the building by her security detail as she pressed her staff members to get the National Guard to respond to the Capitol.
The newly surfaced remarks go further than the public ones she made on Jan. 7, when she said Trump had “incited an armed insurrection against America” and “instigated” an attack that would “forever stain our nation’s history.”
“We take an oath to protect our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she said. “There is a domestic enemy in the White House. And let’s not mince words about this.”
The previously unaired video also shows Pelosi taking responsibility for not pressing law enforcement officials harder about their preparations ahead of the attack.
“Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” Pelosi asked. “They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepared for more,” she said as she was being escorted away by security on Jan. 6. “It’s stupid that we should be in a situation like this.”
Pelosi would not have had independent authority to summon the National Guard, and the Capitol Police Board is in charge of security for the U.S. Capitol. The head of the Capitol Police resigned shortly after the riot, as did the House sergeant-at-arms, and the video shows Pelosi in discussions with her staff about getting resignations from both officials.
“They thought these people would act civilized? They thought these people gave a damn? What is it that is missing here in terms of anticipation?” she added.
[…]
The comments also indicate that Pelosi was skeptical about the motivations of the law enforcement community, which is generally conservative-leaning. (A high-ranking FBI official, for example, was warned in the hours after the attack that many within the bureau were “sympathetic” to the Capitol rioters.)
“Shame on us,” Pelosi said as her security unit whisked her off to nearby Fort McNair, where several congressional leaders ended up on the night of Jan. 6 when the facility turned into a command center for those in the order of presidential succession. “Shame on us. I’m suspicious of them and their motivations, tell you the truth.”
The new video also reveals that Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., made a quip about Trump’s pardoning rioters, a position that Trump, again the Republican presidential nominee, now endorses by referring to Jan. 6 defendants as “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.”
When Pelosi’s daughter asks her early Jan. 7 how she feels about being “done” with Trump after Congress certified his election loss, a tired Pelosi says in the new video that there must be consequences for his actions.
“I just feel sick about what he did to the Capitol and the country today,” Pelosi says. “He’s got to pay a price for that.”
You would think so. We all thought so. But now the Supreme’s have held that he’s immune from being prosecuted for “official acts” and we won’t know what they meant by that probably for years. He could be dead before he is ever held legally accountable.
We have to make sure that the voters hold him accountable and send him packing in a couple of months.
The months long Trump Media stock slide continued Wednesday, as shares of the company majority-owned by former President Donald Trump fell below $20 for the first time since the Truth Social maker went public in March of this year.
As of 12:45 p.m. ET, the stock price of DJT has dropped more than 75% from its intraday high on March 26, the day the company debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Trump Media stock price
Trump Media has also lost more than half its value since its recent surge on July 15, the first trading day after the Republican presidential nominee narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump’s stake is still worth $2.2 billion but he has an agreement that prevents him from cashing out. That agreement is going to expire on September 20th. Golly, what do you think he’ll do???
What a nice little scam…
If he does sell — or if he even appears likely to — investors could lose confidence in Trump Media, a situation the company’s own regulatory filings have acknowledged.
Similar to other meme stocks, investing in Trump Media has come to be seen as a way for Trump’s supporters to back him and bet on his chances of beating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
But the company has noted that its fledgling social media platform Truth Social depends at least partly on Trump’s enduring popularity and reputation. Trump, who holds the most popular Truth Social account, has recently started posting more on X, his former messaging app of choice, and TikTok.
He’s going to make a bundle and his small time investors are going to get fleeced. I guess they don’t care. Anything for Dear Leader.
Shorter JD Vance: Stepmothers aren't real mothers.
Randi Weingarten is a stepmother to her wife's child from a previous marriage. So yeah, weirdo thinks step parents aren't real parents. This is not only wrong, but also cruel. https://t.co/e90Yze7tgs
— New Yorker in DC threads.net/@nykrindc (@NYkrinDC) August 27, 2024
It wasn’t a joke. This is something he obviously seriously believes. He is repulsed by any woman who has not given birth and has been crusading against them for years:
GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance in 2021 made yet more disparaging comments about people without children, this time turning his ire to teachers.
Part of Vance’s remarks were resurfaced on Tuesday by Heartland Signal, a digital outlet based in Chicago. NBC News later reviewed and shared video of the entire event.
During a forum for Republican Senate candidates in Ohio hosted by the Center for Christian Virtue in October 2021, Vance weighed in on the question of how to make schools more responsive to parents.
Vance claimed the left wants “to control what our children learn.”
“I think our conservative idea is that parents and family should determine what children learn, what values they are brought up with,” he said.
Vance went on to call out Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, accusing her of trying to “brainwash” children while not having “a single child.”
“So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children. That really disorients me,” Vance said.
“Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teaching union in the country, she doesn’t have a single child,” he added. “If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”
[…]
Vance’s spokesperson told NBC News the Ohio senator will continue speaking out in defense of children.
“There is no bigger threat to American children than the left wing indoctrination being peddled in our schools by radicals like Randi Weingarten, with the support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” Taylor Van Kirk said.
I’m disturbed and disoriented that this weirdo freak is on a presidential ticket and could easily become president someday.
The Lincoln Project gets very subversive. Trump’s going to be very disturbed:
.@realdonaldtrump, do you know why your campaign is failing? There's spies in your ranks working for people who want to see you lose. We've realized it, when will you? pic.twitter.com/wAbPhAmN64
LaCivita is a real piece of work. He was one of the swiftboat guys back in 2004 and has ascended the ranks of GOP politics ever since then. He’s a character assassin and a dirty trickster which is obviously what appealed to Trump. But he’s establishment too. Trump shouldn’t trust him. Heh.
Over the weekend Donald Trump whined that the Harris campaign was treating him like the incumbent and it’s totally not fair:
Kamala and her “handlers” are trying to make it sound like I am the Incumbent President, so that they can blame me for the failure of the past four years. No, it was their failure! It is one of the worst Presidencies in History, and she is definitely the Worst Vice President.
The fact is that they are framing some of the campaign as a referendum on Trump. And why wouldn’t they? He’s running on the lies about the alleged halcyon days when America was great (2017 -2019) and she’s running on “a new way forward” and “we’re not going back.” If he doesn’t want to be seen as the incumbent maybe he should stop pretending he is one.
From the moment Trump glumly flew off to Mar-a-lago on January 20, 2021 he’s been acting like a president in exile. He’s been running a shadow government, with GOP officials rushing to get his permission before they take any action and everyone clamoring for his dispensation in their election campaigns .One of the most obvious examples of his power with the GOP was his thumbs down on the painfully negotiated bipartisan border bill. He didn’t even pretend that it had anything to do with the policy, he just didn’t want Biden to be able to run on it as one of his accomplishments. He essentially vetoed the bill from his Gilded White House in Florida.
Throughout his time out of office he has run the Republican Party, endorsing candidates, choosing issues and basically acting as the president for his party. He flies around on a plane he calls “Trump Force One” and he uses an ersatz presidential seal at any podium he stands behind. He insists on being called “Mr. President” (never “former“)and everyone around him treats him as if he still is.
And he routinely meets with foreign leaders at his beach club as if they are there for an important state occasion. The events are small and somewhat tawdry (more like people dropping by the see the Duke of Windsor and Wallace Simpson back in the day) but he’s managed to persuade a number of his foreign allies to kiss the ring on the chance that he’ll be back in power soon and will deliver for them.
It’s not usual for presidential candidates to take a foreign trip to demonstrate that they can be presidential on the world stage. (Recall former Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s disastrous trip abroad just before he imploded in the 2016 presidential race.) But having foreign dignitaries come to the US and pay homage to Trump at his Florida resort, as if they are supplicants, is something else again.
Here’s some footage of a visit from Hungarian President Viktor Orban last spring.
President Trump and Melania hosted and Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban at Mar-A-Lago dinner reception yesterday.
Orban, will not meet with Biden during his U.S. visit.
The Hungarian leader has become an European icon for advocating restrictions on immigration. pic.twitter.com/9heDLK6OCs
He’s reportedly been talking to his pal Netanyahu in recent days discussing the situation in Gaza. I think it’s fair to assume that he may be exhorting him not to agree to a cease fire or hostage deal in order to ensure Harris doesn’t benefit from any agreements before the election. After all, as we saw with the border bill veto, that’s his M.O.
And then there is the fact that he claims he is the rightful president having supposedly won the 2020 election. Millions of his followers believe that he won that campaign and that he should be sitting in the White House today — maybe forever. There are even people interviewed at his rallies who think he actually is the current president, pulling the strings from behind the curtain.
This week he performed one of the most audacious presidential acting jobs I’ve seen him do since he went into exile. In fact, when I first saw the footage I thought it must be from when he was in office:
President Trump Lays Wreath At Arlington National Cemetery…This Is How A Feal President Shows Honor and Respect 🫡🇺🇸🦅💪🏻
He is not a real president and he was using Arlington National Cemetery as a campaign prop to hit Harris and Biden for the Afghanistan withdrawal. It later turned out that he was also taking smiling thumbs-up souvenir pics with unauthorized personnel. NPR reported:
A source with knowledge of the incident said the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump staffers from filming and photographing in a section where recent U.S. casualties are buried. The source said Arlington officials had made clear that only cemetery staff members would be authorized to take photographs or film in the area, known as Section 60.
When the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering Section 60, campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside, according to the source.
Trump’s crude spokesman Steven Cheung said it didn’t happen and accused the official of mental illness. Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita called the official a “disgrace.”
This is, of course, just the latest in a long line of Trump’s insults to the military. For someone who loves the idea of being Commander in Chief he sure doesn’t have a high regard for the people who gave their lives in war. (Yes, “suckers and losers“.) It’s something I’ve always found a little bit mystifying. He loves cops. He loves uniforms. But he has absolutely no respect for service members, especially the brass. It’s odd considering that they are required to salute smartly and follow orders. You’d think he’d love that. But I suppose the fact that he issued so many illegal and maniacal orders that they had to object makes him angry.
Trump goes on deranged rant against America’s military generals: “Stupid person. Very stupid. One of the dumbest people I've ever met” pic.twitter.com/g0ux4WJo6U
There are exceptions, of course. The cracked former General Michael Flynn, the disgraced former Admiral Ronny Jackson and certain war criminals he pardoned and invited down to his resort. But for the most part, Trump was always uncomfortable around the military, maybe because it’s not in their nature to sycophantically tell him what he wants to hear. Even when he’s play-acting, as he was on Monday at Arlington, he can’t seem to get it right.
Trump has spent the last four years pretending to still be the president and continuing to dominate our political culture even though he’s really just some rich guy who lives in Palm Beach and likes to run for president. If he didn’t want people to think of him as the incumbent maybe he should have acted like he was for the past four years.
There is more than vibes to demonstrate that Kamala Harris leading the Democrats’ ticket has changed the dynamic of the presidential contest. There is data. Tom Bonier summarizes voter registration changes since the changeover.
The Harris Effect – in the 13 states that have updated voter files since July 21st, we are seeing incredible surges in voter registration relative to the same time period in 2024, driven by women, voters of color, and young voters. pic.twitter.com/x6AGViJdjm
(In a later tweet, Bonier clarifies that he meant “same time period in 2020” above.)
Young Black women are leading the way, seeing their registration almost triple, relative to the same point in 2020. Young Hispanic women aren’t far behind, with a 150% increase in registration. Black women overall have almost doubled their registration numbers from 2020.
These changes are, unsurprisingly, substantially to the benefit of Democrats. Democratic registration has increased by over 50%, as compared to only 7% for Republicans. These new registrants are modeled as +20 pts Dem, as compared to +6 during the same week in 2020.
What’s “wild,” Bonier adds, is that this voter registration spike “even surpasses the post-Dobbs surge.”
Democrats stand to benefit in swing states like Georgia and North Carolina with their large populations of Black voters. Expanded registration by Hispanic women will not only help keep Arizona in Kamala Harris’ column, but play a larger role in Georgia and North Carolina as well.
My back-of-the napkin analysis of Hispanic/Latino voting patterns in my county indicate that nearly 60% of all HL voters are registered Democrat or UNAffiliated, with 60% of voters under 45 registered UNA. 35% vote irregularly, women more than men by about 3 to 2. But of the nearly one-quarter (22%) of registrants who vote consistently, women outperform men by 2 to 1. About 30% register (likely at the DMV or a social services agency) but never vote; this is a turnout challenge for Democrats. Few (mostly older registrants) were born outside the country per available registration data. This is a young cohort, about 70% are 45 and younger.
New registrants overall have a high propensity to vote the first time.
