Smith is the son of Sinclair founder Julian Sinclair Smith and, along with his brothers, controls the company. Sinclair, a publicly traded company, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets. A 2018 study published in the American Political Science Review found that stations purchased by Sinclair “coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics” and undergo “a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage.”
Smith is the executive chairman of Sinclair Inc., reports the startup Baltimore Banner.
[Smith] told New York Magazine in 2018 he considered print media “so left-wing as to be meaningless dribble.” Asked Tuesday during the meeting whether he stood by those comments now that he owns one of the most storied titles in American journalism, Smith said yes. Asked if he felt that way about the contents of his newspaper, Smith said “in many ways, yes,” according to people at the meeting.
Folkenflik again:
Smith said he paid nine figures, a seemingly staggering sum. (Bezos paid $250M for the WashPost.)
Unclear if the undisclosed figure includes the licensing fees required by Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that sold the Sun. Smith will rely on Alden’s CMS and other services.
Smith announced the Sun was profitable and that he’d make it more profitable. He mocked Bezos, saying he didn’t intend to lose $50M a year on the paper.
(The Amazon founder is losing more than that.)
Smith was dismissive of the Sun’s journalism, saying it wasn’t publishing enough stories that readers were interested in, saying there was fraud in local government and schools.
And he pointed repeatedly to Sinclair’s local station WBFF’s flashy reports “Project Baltimore.”
The Sun won a Pulitzer in 2020 for exposing “a lucrative, undisclosed financial relationship between the city’s mayor and the public hospital system she helped to oversee.”
The new Sun owner deflected questions about his own political activities, calling himself apolitical.
Smith has been a major funder of GOP candidates; more recently he has funded far-right outfits like Project Veritas and Turning Point USA & financed local ballot initiatives.
Former Republican campaign operative Tim Miller observes, “This feels like a scene from a bad TV movie. Evil rich guy buys newspaper, announces to staff he doesn’t read and wants more racist cartoons.”
David Simon, former Sun reporter and co-creator of “The Wire,” responded on Formerly Twitter:
editors and publisher for whom the Baltimore Sun was no longer a vehicle to fully cover a distinct metro region, but rather a waystation in which they might sniff up a Pulitzer or two and then depart for higher positions in the newspaper chain, I took the third buyout offered…
….when the bad newspaper chain was driven into bankruptcy by the Wall Street shitheels and predators who could profit even as they were devouring the newsroom, there were fewer people to say anything or remember what a locally run, fully staffed newspaper was….
…to local ownership. But instead of a family with deep civic roots and a sense of noblesse oblige that allowed for an editorial product that was not first beholden to any ideological fervor, the Baltimore Sun is now owned by someone who has delivered a news product…
…to trying to get stuff right, that newspaper has been returned to local ownership so that about 60 or 70 souls can labor to deliver a single, thin edition of a beholden political organ that will not give weight…
For Baltimoreans, the only hope is that the nascent @BaltimoreBanner — an experiment in digital, independent, non-profit newspapering can generate sufficient revenue to begin staffing not only a city desk and some feature and sports coverage, but to begin adding county bureaus..
…a few dollars each month on behalf of an experiment that offers both professional journalism and local ownership and pray like hell that it succeeds and grows into a civic asset of a kind that an entire generation, maybe two, of Maryland citizens have not experienced.
ideological *cant*. In the old days, no one had to rely on a some half-educated autocorrect mechanism. Great newspapers had copydesks full of cranky, wizened troglodytes who saved reporters from themselves at a rate of three to four deadlines a night.
While never a paid employee, I wrote many op-eds for the local paper. I enjoyed having an editor to keep me from making stupid errors of grammar and usage. Since being bought by Gannett, the editorial staff I worked with is gone, the reporting staff has been slashed, the printing plant was shuttered, and my “local” paper is printed in another state.
For local investigative reporting, we now have the free, not-for-profit Asheville Watchdog, a hobby project of a band of retired journalists, mainly “unpaid part-time volunteers.” They include several Pulitzer winners & finalists, many from major Florida outlets and others from The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, and The Financial Times of London.
This is what we’ve come to. Locally, at least, we are blessed.
Tom Keen, businessman and former Navy flight officer.
With few exceptions (Hi, Hillsborough!) Democrats in Florida have not been showing us how it’s done lately. Maybe that’s changing (Daily Kos):
Florida Democrats kicked off the new year with a major victory as businessman and Navy veteran Tom Keen flipped a Republican-held seat in the state House―a development that represents Gov. Ron DeSantis’ second electoral humiliation in the span of 24 hours.
Keen defeated his Republican rival, Osceola County School Board member Erika Booth, 51-49 in Tuesday’s special election for the 35th House District, a constituency in the Orlando suburbs that Joe Biden carried 52-47. The Democrat will succeed Republican Fred Hawkins, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed in June to serve as president of South Florida State College despite lacking any background in higher education.
“Republicans will hold an 84-36 supermajority in the state House,” writes Jeff Singer, with “a similarly lopsided edge in the state Senate.” Keen’s seat will be up for reelection in November, so he had best not get too comfortable.
Keen’s showing comes only a little over a year after DeSantis and other Republicans romped to victory in this district. According to Florida data analyst Matt Isbell, DeSantis carried the 35th District 56-43 in 2022, while GOP Sen. Marco Rubio took it by a 53-46 spread.
Both parties understood that Tuesday’s results could resonate far beyond the Florida House of Representatives, and they spent heavily to win here. Florida Politics wrote Tuesday that Booth had outraised Keen $323,000 to $121,000, but the official campaign committee of Florida House Democrats had outspent its GOP counterpart $541,000 to $207,000 through Jan. 11.
And the race may have been even more expensive than these figures suggest. Isbell estimates that Republicans altogether deployed $1.5 million, while Democrats put in $1.2 million, though he cautions that “so much money is hard to trace.”
That’s an insane amount in total spending for a state house seat where I’m from.
“Obviously, this is not the result we wanted- but I respect the will of the voters,” said Booth. “I congratulate Tom Keen on his win and a race well run.”
These days, that concession from a Republican deserves its own headline. Even if Booth ran on fighting “Sleepy Joe’s” “woke agenda” and on protecting our kids from indoctrination (which puzzlingly has something to do with immigration). She is also committed to election integrity, which during the Republican Iowa caucuses on Monday looked like popcorn buckets and grocery bags.
Digging into the numbers shows Keen overperformed with non-party affiliated voters, winning roughly 65% of the NPA vote, enough to overcome a raw vote lead in the race where Republicans cast some 900 more votes in the contest. Keen also overperformed in Orange County, where he beat Booth by 1,859 votes.
That 65% is the sort of result Democrats see in more urban counties. It’s flipped in “Trump country.”
Remember when Ann Coulter used to ecstatically describe Donald Trump as an “alpha male” who was going to set the country straight? She even wrote a book called In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! Well, she’s been off of him for quite some time because he failed to build the wall. And she doesn’t seem to believe him when he and his henchman Stephen Miller promise to deport millions of people who look like they might not be citizens.
“How many people who voted for Biden in 2020 have since switched to Trump?”
If there are ANY, it’s a lot fewer than:
1) those who voted for Trump but who’ve since died (older white people); 2) immigrants who turned 18 in the last 4 yrs and will vote (minorities); 3) Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020, but have since changed their minds over, e.g. his behavior in the GA runoffs, and the 2022 “red wave” — … losing election after election for the GOP by demanding that Republicans run on the “stolen 2020 election,” e.g. Blake Masters, Kari Lake, Doug Mastriano, Adam Laxalt, Don Bolduc, Joe Kent, etc.
Then she really let them have it:
Trump voters are morons cont’
NYT: <<“I prefer Trump because Democrats are trying to find any way they can to jail him,” she said.>> Dems lie about Trump, THEREFORE he’d make a great president! There aren’t enough drugs in the world that could make me that stupid.
Granted, her reasoning is typically absurd. But it’s interesting to see Trump hit from the right in this way. And frankly, it’s helpful. The idea that Trump was a great president has been baked into many voters’ minds and it’s useful to have someone like Coulter making the case that he wasn’t — even if it’s for the wrong reasons.
Zeynap Tufekci studies authoritarian movements around the world. She took a look at the MAGA movement for the NY Times and it’s quite interesting. (Gift link, here.) An excerpt:
Cheryl Sharp, a 47-year-old sales associate who was among the many Iowans turned away from a filled-to-capacity Trump rally last month, sounded pretty confident she knew why Donald Trump was so appealing to many voters. For her and many others, she said, his most important quality was strength: He had the fortitude to keep the country safe, avoid new wars and ensure the economy hummed along.
“You want someone strong, globally, so that it creates mutual respect with other countries, and maybe a little bit of fear,” she told me. “Yes, it’s true, not everyone likes him. It’s good not to be liked. Being strong is better.” Sharp readily conceded that not everything Trump said was great, but she saw that as part of the right personality to be president. “You gotta be a little crazy, maybe, to make sure other countries respect and fear us,” she said. “And he can run the country like a business, and they will leave him alone.”
Three days later, inside a Trump rally in New Hampshire, Scott Bobbitt and his wife, Heather, also brought up Trump’s strength. “He commands respect and fear around the world,” Scott Bobbitt told me. “Many people may be driven by fear of him because he’ll do what he says he’s going to do, and he’s not afraid to talk about it. And I think that that’s very powerful. That does protect our country, and he’ll stand up instead of rolling over.” […]
In my talks with more than 100 voters, no one mentioned the word “authoritarian.” But that was no surprise — many everyday people don’t think in those terms. Focusing solely on these labels can miss the point.
Authoritarian leaders project qualities that many voters — not just Trump voters — admire: strength, a sense of control, even an ends-justify-the-means leadership style. Our movie-hero presidents, Top Gun pilots and crusading lawyers often take matters into their own hands or break the rules in ways that we cheer. No, they are not classic authoritarians jailing opponents, but they have something in common with Trump: They are seen as having special or singular strengths, an “I alone can fix it” power.
What I heard from voters drawn to Trump was that he had a special strength in making the economy work better for them than Biden has, and that he was a tough, “don’t mess with me” absolutist, which they see as helping to prevent new wars. His supporters also see him as an authentic strongman who is not a typical politician, and Trump sells that message very well to his base.
In New Hampshire, Jackie Fashjian made the case to me that during Trump’s presidency, “there weren’t any active wars going on except for Afghanistan, which he did not start. He started no new wars. Our economy was great. Our gas prices were under 2 bucks a gallon. It’s just common sense to me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
At the same rally, Debbie Finch leaped to her feet when Trump walked into the arena, and like many around us, she started filming. Finch defies stereotypes of Trump supporters: She’s Black and is concerned with racism, which she says greatly affects her life and that of her children. She doesn’t deny there are racists among Trump’s supporters, but as far as she’s concerned, that goes for Democrats, too. She told me she supports Trump because the economy was better under him. She doesn’t care about Trump’s indictments; the justice system has been derailing Black men forever, she says, and she predicts more and more minority voters will cast their ballots for him. (Trump does poll higher among minorities than past Republican presidents in the modern era and his current competitors for the nomination.)
Trump’s vulgar language, his penchant for insults (“Don’t call him a fat pig,” he said about Chris Christie) and his rhetoric about political opponents (promising to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”) are seen as signs of authenticity and strength by his supporters. All the politicians say things like that in private, countless Trump supporters asserted to me and argued that it’s just Trump who’s strong and honest enough to say it out loud — for them, a sign that he’s honest.
…Many Trump supporters told me that had Trump been president, the war in Ukraine wouldn’t have happened because he would have been strong enough to be feared by Vladimir Putin or smart enough to make a deal with him, if necessary. Neither would Hamas have dared attack Israel, a few added. Their proof was that during Trump’s presidency, these wars indeed did not happen. Of course, the more relevant question is whether these wars would have happened during a second Trump term — a counterfactual that can’t be proved or disproved.
They rationalize everything backwards to their support for Trump. It’s a confusing world and he makes it simple for them.
Like many of these right-wing populists, Trump leans heavily on the message that he alone is strong enough to keep America peaceful and prosperous in a scary world. Right after his recent landslide re-election, Orban said his party had won despite everyone being against them, and now he would ensure that Hungary would be “strong, rich and green.” In Iowa, Trump praised Orban himself before telling a cheering crowd: “For four straight years, I kept America safe. I kept Israel safe. I kept Ukraine safe, and I kept the entire world safe.”
As he spoke such words at various rallies, the crowds often interrupted him with applause and cheering. From another politician, such claims might have sounded so implausibly grandiose as to fall flat. But from Trump, these statements often resulted in the crowds leaping to their feet (actually, some rallygoers never sat down) and interrupting him with applause and cheering.
That’s charisma. Charisma is an underrated aspect of political success — and it’s not necessarily a function of political viewpoint. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama oozed it, for example, and so does Trump.
Charisma is so central to politics that Max Weber, a founder of sociology, included charismatic authority (along with legal authority, as in republics and democracies; and traditional authority, as in feudalism or monarchy) as one of three types of power people see as legitimate. Charismatic leaders, Weber wrote, “have a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men,” and is sought as a leader, especially when people feel the times are troubled.
She asked them all about January 6th and democracy and they all had reasons why it wasn’t what we all know it was and why Trump was blameless. I think you have to grapple with the fact that the people who love a strongman are either willing to lie to themselves or are just plain dumb.
It’s easy to see why Trump’s political message can override concerns about the process of democracy for many. What’s a bit of due process overstepped here, a trampled emoluments clause there, when all politicians are believed to be corrupt and fractured information sources pump very different messages about reality?
Politicians projecting strength at the expense of the rules of liberal democracy isn’t a new phenomenon in the United States, or the world. Thomas Jefferson worried about it. So did Plato. Perhaps acknowledging that Trump’s appeal isn’t that mysterious can help people grapple with its power.
To be honest, this piece doesn’t really answer that for me. I have heard all this before from Trump voters for years now. They think he’s “strong” and “tough” and he alone can fix it blah, blah, blah. And I realize that some people think he has charisma. But this cult-like devotion goes far beyond this explanation. They just like him, not his “policies” or his agenda or even what he stands for. He’s all over the place. He’s hardly a stereotypical tough guy — he wears make-up and has the wildest hair-do this side of Ru Paul’s drag race. He’s a sucker for flattery and shows weakness every time he goes on the world stage. He’s a punchline.
I think it’s at least partly explained because some people have no bullshit detector and when they hear him bragging and whining about being persecuted they just believe it because they want to believe it and don’t have any innate skepticism.
They are marks and Trump is a con-man. It’s no more mysterious than that.
There is so much talk about the Trump economy being the best the world has ever seen and it’s mainly because Trump just keeps saying it over and over again. It was good but it wasn’t great and on many metrics Biden’s is better. But, of course, we’ve been hearing nothing but gloom and doom about the economy for the past three years so people aren’t hearing that.
Now that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee — I know, it’s not official, but let’s get real — we can expect to hear a lot about how great the economy was on his watch. Which is strange, because he was the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when he came in.
What’s happening here is that Trump has been given a mulligan for 2020. And to be fair, the huge job losses that took place that year were caused by Covid-19, not Trump’s policies.
What’s really odd, however, is that this mulligan appears to be highly selective.
For one thing, if Trump gets to write off the job losses of 2020, President Biden should be allowed to write off the inflation of 2021-22, which we know was largely caused by the aftereffects of the pandemic. How do we know that? Because in 2023, when the economy finally finished adjusting to pandemic disruptions, inflation plunged without any large rise in unemployment.
Also, when Trump supporters go on about his great economy, they play mix and match. They talk about low unemployment while gas cost less than $2 a gallon. But as the chart below shows, the only period when gas was that cheap was when unemployment was actually very high because of the pandemic. For what it’s worth, the current price of gas — slightly over $3 a gallon — is roughly the same percentage of the average worker’s earnings that it was for most of Trump’s prepandemic time in office.
Yes, on the eve of the pandemic, the U.S. economy was indeed looking pretty good, with both unemployment and inflation low. But that’s also true now.
I was fooling around with the latest YouGov/Economist poll and marveling anew at how bad Republicans think the economy is. But the most spectacular finding is surely this:
68% of Republicans think unemployment is a serious problem in the US.
The unemployment rate last month was 3.7%. It’s been under 4% for 24 straight months. The unemployment rate in 2023 was the lowest in the past half century:
Now, this is average unemployment. Maybe you think there are individual places where unemployment is high, and the survey is picking up those folks. After all, the unemployment rate in Merced is 9%! But that’s not it. In the entire country, only 2.3% of all metro areas have unemployment rates over 7%—almost all of them small farming regions in California.
Nor is it anything else. Unemployment is at historic lows for white people, Black people, and Hispanic people. For men and for women. For the young and the old. By virtually any measure, unemployment is historically low for everyone and has been for the past two years.
And here’s the kicker: 54% of Democrats also think unemployment is a serious problem. That’s not quite as lopsided as it is for Republicans, but it’s still insane. Fox News may be the leader in pushing bad economic news on its audience, but they obviously aren’t the only ones.
Unemployment fell to 3.6% in March of 2022 and has stayed within a tenth of a point of that ever since. The press has had 22 months to let people know this, but to this day the vast majority still think people are struggling to find work. What in the name of God is going on?
58% think the overall economy is poor (vs. 14% for Democrats)
62% think the economy is getting worse (vs. 22% for Democrats)
53% say they are worse off than last year (vs. 18% for Democrats)
50% say they’ve heard mostly negative news about the economy (vs. 23% for Democrats)
48% think the economy is shrinking (vs. 16% for Democrats)
51% think we are currently in a recession (vs. 28% for Democrats)
On a personal level things are quite different:
7% say they are personally unemployed, almost identical to Democrats
6% are unhappy with their jobs, almost identical to Democrats
8% are “very worried” about losing their job, a little less than Democrats
22% say they might have trouble paying bills this month, a little more than Democrats
As usual, what we see in general is that in terms of their personal life, Republicans report roughly the same economic condition as Democrats. But when they’re asked about the overall economy, they’re far more downbeat. The media might be generally too pessimistic about the economy, but Fox News and its pals are obviously in a class by themselves.
The first irrelevant primary is over. More to come, unfortunately.
14% of Republicans came out to caucus last night. It was one of the lowest turnouts in history. Sure, it was cold, but this was low even taking that into account. Enthusiasm? Yeah, sure.
Also:
REPUBLICANS: We need to take extreme measures to make sure our elections are secured!
56,000 Iowans voted for Trump. That’s 0.000168% of the population of the country. But the internet dudes are already picking out drapes for the new concentration camps. pic.twitter.com/EJOwfyiFu7
Sign spotted in Hialeah, Florida came in over the digital transom last night.
At Saturday’s Martin Luther King prayer breakfast here I spotted a local Republican, a former elected, who sometimes commented back in the day at Scrutiny Hooligans (my Asheville group blog, RIP). When in 2011 I posted a piece titled “Colonist or Royalist” likening corporate Republicans and T-partiers to those who backed King George III, the British East India Company, and other elites who “don’t care about your jobs or your economy, and they don’t care about you,” it really got under his skin. Too close to the bone?
“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley said, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Grassley? He’s not eliminating the estate tax to benefit working commoners, but to protect the ownership class from the rabble. His comments prompted an acid-dipped response from Pat Rynard at Iowa Starting Line:
It’s difficult to think of a more condescending, elitist worldview – that if you’re not ultra-wealthy, it’s clearly because you’re wasting all your money on alcohol, frivolous fun and prostitutes (I assume that’s what he meant when he said women). Certainly it couldn’t be because people are struggling to find decent-paying jobs, are straddled with debt from the college education they need to attain better jobs, or are paying outrageous sums for health insurance and medical bills. Nope, it must be because they’re all getting hand jobs from hookers in the back of a dark movie theater while downing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
Filthy peasants.
Grassley’s comments recall what historian Robert Calhoon once wrote about colonists who supported the Crown during the American Revolution. “Historians’ best estimates,” he wrote, “put the proportion of adult white male loyalists somewhere between 15 and 20 percent,” a figure not far removed from the Republican base. As many as 500,000 colonists among a population of 2.5 million never bought the founders’ “created equal” nonsense. They remained committed to a system of government by hereditary royalty and landed gentry. Powdered wigs supported by loyal subjects also carries echoes today. Even after the Treaty of Paris, most loyalists remained on these shores. Their progeny and like-minded continentals who arrived later are with us still. It is a personality type committed to maintaining the “natural” order.
In Iowa and in other Republican primary states to come, cosplaying patriots are lining up to crown a king. Or a dictator. Whatever. Because freedom. (Cue Inigo Montoya.)
Guess I know where I’m buying liquor next time I’m in Miami-Dade.
Protecting Our Freedoms: Defeating MAGA Republicans in the 2022 Midterms – United States In the 2022 Midterms, Americans defied polling, pundits and precedent to stave off the predicted Republican “Red Wave” takeover. Despite significant challenges, Democrats were able to hold the Senate, minimize House losses, and flip or retain key battleground state legislatures and governorships. In this episode, we delve into why conventional wisdom about politics doesn’t just miss the mark, but actively impedes what we must do to prevail against right-wing efforts to seize and hold power. Hear about the research, ad making, organizing and strategy that helped deliver key Democratic victories by reminding us of the collective power we have to decide our own future.
Doesn’t it seem from the press’ perspective that good news for Democrats is always bad news for Democrats?
Fine. Donald “91 Indictments” Trump won the Iowa caucuses Monday night. Handily. As expected. But with lower than expected turnout. Let’s examine why that’s bad news for Trump.
That’s bad news for Trump. Because 32% said he would be unfit for office if convicted of a crime. While it is unclear how many Monday caucus-goers were crossover Democrats there to put their thumbs on the scales, that means as much as a third of Trump’s support could bleed away if he’s convicted of his various charges before the election.
Trump lost the 2020 election by seven million votes. If Iowa’s conservative Republicans are at all representative of the rest of his base, that bleed is enough to lose Trump the presidency again even if the Supreme Court doesn’t deem him disqualified from running.
* 60% said they favor a federal law that would ban abortions nationwide.
* 66% said they did not think Democrat Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020.
* 64% said they decided who to support in the presidential nomination contest before this month.
* 47% said they considered themselves part of the MAGA movement, a reference to Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. 49% said they were not part of that movement.
* 12% said the most important quality a Republican presidential nominee should have is the ability to beat Biden, compared to 43% who said shared values mattered most.
Monday Night Politics coverage from the sidelines featured a selection of Trump supporters who felt Trump had delivered for them. But supporters were noticeably unspecific about Trump’s accomplishments. He delievered a massive tax cut for the rich and his Supreme Court picks overturned Roe. Perhaps that was enough. But beyond that?
Trump won 43% of voters who were looking for shared values — a huge jump from just 5% with the group in 2016 — and won 82% of voters who were looking for a candidate who “fights for people like me.”
Again, sidelines interviews were unenlightening about what values they believe Trump shares in common.
Pollsters seem not to have asked whether attendees would support a candidate who violates the U.S. Constitution.
Trump won the Iowa caucuses, but this is NOT an impressive performance.
Almost as many people chose other Republicans as Trump in a state that isn't at all representative of America as a whole.
Another less-reported detail is that half of those who turned out in sub-zero cold came to vote for someone other than Donald Trump. Michael Tomasky comments on that (New Republic):
Early in the day on Monday, I saw Steve Kornacki touting a poll in which a plurality of Nikki Haley voters said they’d vote for Joe Biden over Trump in November, by 43-29. This is consistent with general polling that suggests that somewhere between a third and 40 percent of Republicans are anti-MAGA. That may be something the Biden campaign can exploit in November to some extent.
Candidates usually get between 92 and 94 percent of the vote of their party members. If the Biden team can keep Trump below 90 among Republicans, that could make a real difference when the votes are tallied in November. Right now, the “Democrats mad at Biden” story line is getting a lot more media oxygen—mostly because those Democrats who are angry at Biden over his Israel policy or those averse to him cutting a deal with Republicans on the border are more vocal at the moment.
But there does exist a quiet and not-so-small army of Republicans who don’t want Trump to represent them. Whether there’s any way for the Biden campaign to tap into that army’s psyche and snap the particular synapse that might make them vote Democratic, I have no idea.
I don’t know either. They might stay home. Or they might fall in line as Republicans will. Tomasky observes:
Businessman turned North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum said last summer that he wouldn’t do business with Trump. On Sunday, Burgum, no doubt taking measure of the drapery in the secretary of the Interior’s office, endorsed him.
We’ll see plenty of that, especially from Republicans with something to gain personally from another Trump presidency. But that general lack of enthusiasm from a broad swath of the GOP base is bad news for Trump.
Stuart Stevens believes Trump is “walking away” with the GOP nomination because he is what most of the party wants, because they are “insane.”
"Donald Trump is walking away with the Republican nomination because Donald Trump is what Republicans want." There is no simpler way to say it and everyone should come realize it now because this is what the party has become. @StuartPStevens has more on @MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/vWBY3Coq9P
Watch for this. If only 12% believe Trump’s ability to beat Biden is what’s most important, will that same bunch believe Trump again when he loses and says election stolen. Assuming he’s not already disqualified?
Keep an eye on how the national press covers this. The White House, as you know, has been under immense pressure to offer concessions to address the continuing large number of migrants coming to the US-Mexico border. Now there’s a bipartisan compromise bill in the Senate. Last night Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that bill in DOA in the House. But Speaker Johnson said something more specific and revealing. He refused to bring up the bill and according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl said “Congress can’t solve border until Trump is elected or a republican is back in the White House.”
Two things to note here. First, Johnson isn’t saying they won’t consider this bill. He’s saying they won’t consider any bill until Trump is elected. Sherman appears to have accepted the GOP wording – that “Congress can’t solve [the] border until Trump is elected.” But there’s more here. Johnson is saying openly that they won’t pass any bill until Trump is elected. In other words, however out of control they claim the border is they want to keep it that way through November to use it as a political issue. There’s a bipartisan deal but House Republicans are rejecting it out of hand. That’s not terribly surprising. But your political opponents seldom state it so openly. It’s an opening for the White House. Let’s see if they take it.
Also keep an eye on the elite DC press. Johnson has just said he refuses to take any action until the election. He’s saying as clearly as he can he wants to hold on to it as a political issue rather than try to pass a bill. Will they keep adopting Sherman’s wording?
In a word, yes.
Why do they want to keep this going. Because this kind of thing thrills their blood thirsty base:
A woman and two children drowned in the Rio Grande on Friday night in Eagle Pass, Texas, after U.S. border agents were prevented from responding, federal officials said Saturday.
In a statement, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said U.S. Border Patrol agents were made aware of the migrants’ distress by the Mexican government but were unable to enter the area from the U.S. side after Texas National Guard troops, under the direction of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, prevented them from doing so.
“In responding to a distress call from the Mexican government, Border Patrol agents were physically barred by Texas officials from entering the area,” the spokesperson said.
The deaths were highlighted Saturday by Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, who said the deceased were part of a group of six migrants in the river Friday night who were in distress.
Mexican authorities recovered the bodies of three of the migrants Saturday, Cuellar said in a statement. Identities and exact ages were unavailable.
“Border Patrol attempted to contact the Texas Military Department, the Texas National Guard, and DPS Command Post by telephone to relay the information, but were unsuccessful,” Cuellar said in the statement.
He continued: “Border Patrol agents then made physical contact with the Texas Military Department and the Texas National Guard at the Shelby Park Entrance Gate and verbally relayed the information. However, Texas Military Department soldiers stated they would not grant access to the migrants — even in the event of an emergency — and that they would send a soldier to investigate the situation.”
I’m sure the Great Pious Christian Mike Johnson prayed for more just like it.
