Don’t let Mitch McConnell win. Don’t let him destroy democracy

It’s hard to argue that there’s just one person responsible for the Republican Party having gone entirely off the rails of democracy. It’s been in process for decades, after all, arguably predating Richard Nixon’s resignation but definitely fueled by that in the past half-century. But if you want to find the person most responsible for using and abusing the levers of the systems the founders put in place to undermine democratic rule, look no further than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

His handiwork has reduced the Senate to the massive roadblock to progress that it is today. He was the first lawmaker to decide that something as once unimaginable as threatening to breach the debt ceiling could be used as a bargaining chip. He has made the filibuster business as usual for the Senate, forcing every single piece of regular legislation—however uncontroversial—to go through the arduous process of multiple procedural votes just to be considered on the floor. He refused to do one of the most sacred duties of the Senate—seating a U.S. Supreme Court justice—because he could.

The outgrowth of his brazen dismantling of norms is seen in what’s been happening in Wisconsin for the last several years, where a number of appointees of the former Republican governor, Scott Walker, are simply refusing to recognize Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and are refusing to step down, months after their terms have expired.

Vote Forward has an ambitious goal of sending 10 million letters in October to Democratic-leaning voters in the swing states. You can write these on your own time, in the privacy of your home. Click here to sign up or log into your Vote Forward account.

Mary Williams’ term on the Technical College System Board expired in May 2021 and Evers named her replacement. But the former Republican state representative refuses to leave. So do two other members appointed by Walker: Kelly Tourdot and Becky Levzow. Asked about it, Williams said, “All you have to do is see what the Supreme Court did.” When asked why she is squatting in the job when others have left, she answered, “Because everyone’s an individual. Now I’m going to hang up, and I don’t want you to call me again.”

She, and a number of other Republican appointees on her board and others, are taking the route of Frederick Prehn, who has remained on the state’s Natural Resources Board—at the urging of Walker—despite the fact that his replacement was named months ago. He’s sticking because the state Supreme Court’s conservative majority said he could. Sound familiar?

The court ruled that sitting members can stay on these boards until their successors have been approved by the state Senate. Which is controlled by Republicans. There are 164 Evers nominees who have not received Senate votes. Republicans, who assume they will hold the Senate, have been holding off on these 164 nominees on the assumption that they will keep the Senate and that Republican candidate for Gov. Tim Michel will win in November. At which point all of those nominations would be withdrawn.

It sounds very familiar, doesn’t it.

“There’s two different things going on here,” Miriam Seifter, an associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “One is the situation where individuals assert the power to stay in office after the term has expired. The other is the Senate refusing to confirm appointees. If either of those things happen in isolation or rarely, neither one is democracy-altering. If these happen systematically and across the board … you would start to see the constraints of gubernatorial power.”

And you see the erosion of democracy, where the will of the people, the voters, is ignored. “Gov. Evers appointed highly qualified, dedicated Wisconsinites for the (Technical College System) and DNR Boards, and Republicans’ continued efforts to prevent basic, fundamental functions of our democracy is radical partisanship at its most dangerous,” said Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback.

It’s the McConnell playbook in action, and a cautionary tale for 2022. There’s little reason to believe that Republicans in any state in which they gain majorities and take governors seats—and state supreme courts—won’t do the same. There’s little reason to believe they wouldn’t take the next step and do everything they could to make sure that Donald Trump was installed as president again in 2024.

For that matter, there’s little indication to believe McConnell would really fight that eventuality, for all the attacks he’s endured from Trump. When he had the chance to cut off Trump’s path back to the White House with an impeachment conviction, he voted no. He urged his conference to vote no. He would do it again.

This is it. This is the election to stop Wisconsin extremism from infecting more states; to stop McConnell from taking the nation to that level with a Senate majority; to stop the House from going to Republicans who would threaten everything.

That’s why Daily Kos has engaged both broadly and deeply this cycle, with candidate slates at every level. You can learn more about all those endorsements here, and determine if there’s a slate—or even an individual candidate—that speaks to you, your volunteer time, your dollars.

It doesn’t matter how much you give, it matters that you do, and that you engage and help us defeat the fascists.

If you’d like to donate to every single candidate and ballot measure organization Daily Kos has endorsed this year all at once, just click here.

On this week's episode of The Downballot we get medieval on the traditional media for its appalling display of ableism in the wake of John Fetterman's recent NBC interview; recap the absolutely wild goings-on in Los Angeles, where City Council President Nury Martinez just resigned after a racist tirade was caught on tape; dive into the unexpectedly close race for governor in Oklahoma; and highlight a brand-new database from Daily Kos Elections showing how media markets and congressional districts overlap.

Joe Kent’s numerous far-right associations inevitably drag WA Republicans into abyss with him

Hardcore MAGA candidates on the fall ballot present a dilemma for Republican Party officials in blue states: As their nominees, party leaders are obligated to get behind them and offer at least nominal logistical support, but their inevitable extremism threatens to taint every other Republican by association since the bulk of those candidates are furiously working to downplay the GOP’s MAGA radicalism. Inevitably, the extremism wins out.

Exhibit A is Joe Kent, the GOP congressional nominee in southwestern Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District. Kent’s long-running propensity for associations with right-wing extremists—including Proud Boys and white nationalists—wound up casting a shadow over the state Republican Party this week when it was revealed that a neo-Nazi who interviewed Kent for his podcast had also been hired, and then abruptly fired, as a campaign worker by the Washington GOP.

Greyson Arnold, who runs a white nationalist media outlet called Pure Politics (booted from Twitter, but still present on Telegram) based in Arizona, not only interviewed Kent for his podcast in person in a small town in Washington, but actively campaigned for awhile for both Kent and the Republican Party, Daily Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo reports.

The Washington GOP cut Arnold a check for $821.87 on July 15 for his campaign work. But a state Republican spokesperson said he had been fired shortly after being hired.

“When the Washington State Republican Party became aware of this individual staffer’s conduct and views expressed on social media, we terminated the employee,” Communications Director Ben Gonzalez told Petrizzo. “He no longer works for the party. The stated viewpoints in question do not reflect the values of the Republican Party.”

CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski had previously reported that not only had Arnold been photographed with Kent at an April fundraiser, he also canvassed for GOP candidates with Washington State Young Republicans. At a Trump rally in Michigan, he was photographed wearing a Joe Kent shirt. In April, according to the Seattle Times’ Jim Brunner, Arnold also posted a photo taken at a King County Republican Party fundraiser, saying he was there “after a personal invite.” Arnold was also photographed with Kent at his victory party in July.

Arnold apparently traveled to Yelm—a small town south of Olympia—for a Kent campaign event in July to interview him there, and had to ask Kent what town they were in. They eagerly conversed about the “America First agenda”—which Republican officeholders like Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene use to describe their Trumpian caucus in the House, but which also indicates their allegiance to Nicholas Fuentes’ white nationalist organization of the same name, and with which all of them have associated. Gosar in particular has become white nationalists’ favorite Congress member, and Kent told Arnold that he had been getting advice from Gosar while visiting Arizona.

“Paul Gosar has been excellent, obviously immigration—border state down there. He took me down to the border, so I got a firsthand feel of all the crises we face there,” said Kent. “Representative Gosar also has some awesome legislation he’s proposed about getting rid of a lot of the legal immigration.”

On his “Pure Politics” Telegram channel, as well as his now-suspended Twitter account, “American Greyson” (as he refers to himself) has shared posts describing Nazis as the “pure race,” and complaining that Americans should have sided with the Germans in World War II. He also has referenced antisemitic conspiracy theories, claiming there were “Jewish plans to genocide the German people,” and shared a quote saying that the “Jewish led colored hordes of the Earth” were attempting to exterminate white people. Arnold has advocated shooting refugees and killing undocumented immigrants.

Arnold also praised Hitler on Twitter: “He is definitely a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand, the events of Weimar Germany are not taught for a reason,” he wrote.

When the association became public, Kent’s campaign tried desperately to create distance between the candidate and Arnold. Spokesperson Matt Braynard at first told Kaczynski that the campaign “does not do background checks on the thousands of people who’ve asked to take selfies with Joe.”

Then, when the video of the Yelm interview—in which it was fairly clear the two were acquainted, and it’s unclear how or why Arnold would have made it to the locale without help from the campaign or Kent—Braynard retorted: “Joe Kent had no idea who that individual was when he encountered him on the street and Joe Kent has repeatedly condemned the statements that the individual is accused of making.”

The campaign added that Arnold “is not in any way part of our campaign nor would we allow our campaign to be associated with someone who has that background. We also have no record of any contribution from that individual and if we had received one, we’d return it.”

Arnold created a stir in Oregon in 2021 when he interviewed one of the state’s top Republican officials, Solomon Yue, for his podcast. Yue promised on the podcast to use his influence within the GOP to promote “America First” candidates. “If somebody like the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) came to us, asking for favors both in terms of money and in terms of a boots on the ground, I would have leveraged that,” Yue told Arnold. “I would ask, ‘What are you going to give to me in return,’ right? In return, you cannot support, in the primary, you can’t support your incumbents. You have to allow people to decide, and Republican voters to decide.”

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Arnold is one of Fuentes’ top lieutenants in America First. However, in February, Kent got into a well-publicized spat with Fuentes after the latter’s infamous America First PAC convention at which a number of Republicans spoke. Fuentes also caught considerable attention for praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin and comparing him favorably to Adolf Hitler.

These remarks sent Kent—who has continuously embraced the America First label, and reportedly had conversed with Fuentes about social media strategy—running for cover. Fuentes went on his popular podcast and described the call with Kent. One of Kent’s Republican opponents called on him to denounce the association with Fuentes.

Kent, who has a Twitter following of 125,000, claimed his opponents were “spreading lies about me,” and insisted that he condemned Fuentes’ politics. He said he didn’t seek the white nationalist’s endorsement “due (to) his focus on race/religion.”

About a month before the dispute broke out, Kent had been interviewed by David Carlson of the Groyper-adjacent white nationalist group American Populist Union (which shortly thereafter rebranded itself as American Virtue), a kind of competing far-right organization that embraces most of the ideological fundamentals of white nationalism but tries to eschew the incendiary rhetoric of groups like Fuentes.

After the feud broke out with the Groypers—culminating in Fuentes taunting Kent, “You’re not for white people. You’re not for America. You’re not for Christianity. You’re not for our heritage”—Carlson reinterviewed Kent, who repeated his reasons for distancing himself from Fuentes, more for strategic reasons than ideological ones. He told Carlson:

Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group. They have to be very careful about the way they couch that and the way they frame that, obviously in terms of messaging and in terms of getting credibility. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. As far as me running as a candidate, running out there and saying this is all about white people, that does not seem like a winning strategy.

Moreover, Kent’s associations with conspiracists and far-right activists, including white nationalists, are extensive and varied. This is particularly the case with Kent’s long association with Joey Gibson, the founder and leader of the street-brawling group Patriot Prayer, which has an extensive history with a rotating cast of violent extremists and white nationalists. Many of Kent’s early campaign appearances—including a January 2022 rally against the COVID-19 vaccine based on misinformation—featured Gibson joining him on stage as a speaker.

By that summer Kent had formed an alliance with Gibson, both appearing at various COVID-denialist events as speakers, including an “Unmasked Unjabbed Uncensored Rally” at Vancouver’s Esther Short Park in August. Kent also was photographed socializing with Gibson and several of his Patriot Prayer cohorts at an August gathering at Cottonwood Beach near Washougal to honor the memory of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a member of the group who had been shot to death a year beforehand by a Portland resident who was tracked down and killed in short order. Kent also shows up in a Patriot Prayer group selfie taken by one of Patriot Prayer’s more notorious figures, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, currently awaiting trial on multiple felony assault counts.

Gibson regularly promoted Kent’s campaign on social media. After Gibson spoke at a Kent fundraiser 2021, Kent lavished him with praise, explaining that Gibson “defended this community when our community was under assault from antifa.”

Campaign finance disclosures reveal Kent recently paid $11,375 for “consulting” over the past four months to Graham Jorgensen, who was identified as a Proud Boy in a law enforcement report and was charged with cyberstalking his ex-girlfriend in 2018. The charges were dismissed in late 2019. But a judge in Vancouver, Washington, issued an order of protection requiring Jorgensen to stay away from her, records show.

Donald Trump endorsed Kent in June, largely because he had openly condemned the vote by the incumbent Republican, Jaime Herrera-Beutler, to impeach him in February 2021. Within a matter of weeks, he had financial backing from pro-Trump billionaires like Steve Wynn and Peter Thiel.

Kent began appearing on a variety of far-right programs with nationwide reach. He was a guest of Infowars’ Owen Shroyer on two occasions. He started appearing regularly on ex-Trump aide Stephen Bannon’s War Room podcast. On one of those occasions, he promoted his and Gibson’s January 2022 rally against “COVID tyranny” and the “forced quarantine.”

After Kent defeated Herrera-Beutler in the July primary, he began working hard to cover up these connections. He now faces a Democratic opponent, Marie Glusenkamp Pérez, who finished with the most votes in the top-two primary. However, Kent will be favored in a district that has trended Republican over the past couple of decades.

Gluesenkamp Perez said the November race will be “a national bellwether for the direction of our country,” and denounced his ties to far-right nationalists, saying his “unapologetic extremism and divisive approach demonstrate he is unfit for public office.”

For his part, Kent has simply doubled down. Appearing on Bannon’s podcast in August, he declared: “We are at war.”

“The left isn’t the left of 10, 15 years ago,” Kent went on. “These guys don’t care about winning arguments anymore. … It’s a total, full-frontal assault, and they’re going after every one of us.”

“So what we have to do when we take back power … we have to play smash-mouth.”

Establishment Democrats, however, do not appear to be prepared for such tactics, considering that they have been slow to rally behind Gluesenkamp Pérez. The Democratic Central Campaign Committee, for example, has not invested in her campaign even though it’s rated a tossup by many pollsters and would be a prime opportunity for Democrats to take a Republican seat. A number of prominent Republicans have announced their support for the Democrat in the race.

“On the issues of the day, [Kent] is a radical extremist, and he continues to show poor judgment with the people he associates with,” GOP fundraiser David Nierenberg said. “I don’t want to be represented by somebody like that.”

Washington’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, has been campaigning heavily for Gluesenkamp Pérez. Noting the size and energy of her campaign rallies, as well as her quality as a candidate, he told Crosscut’s Joseph O’Sullivan that abandoning the field would be “a mistake.”

“I'd encourage them to consider what folks on the ground here see,” Ferguson said. “And what I see is a race that's winnable.”

Fight the tide of Republican extremism with a better Democrat, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez. Pitch in to her 2022 victory fund.

After an eruption of even more scandals among Republican Senate candidates, FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich returns to The Downballot to discuss the effect these sorts of scandals can have on competitive races; whether Democrats stand a chance to keep the House; and the different ways pollsters create likely voter models.

Trump doesn’t say whether he’ll testify in letter to Jan. 6 committee

Former President Donald Trump, in a winding 14-page letter to the Jan. 6 select committee on Friday, declined to divulge whether he’d comply with the panel’s subpoena and testify before it.

Trump instead used the letter, addressed to committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), to rail against what he called the “unselect” committee’s yearlong investigation, which has amassed a wealth of evidence on the former president’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election that culminated with the Jan. 6 raid on the capitol by Trump supporters. The committee voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena the former president, moving the panel into what’s expected to be its final phase.

“Despite very poor television ratings, the Unselect Committee has perpetuated a Show Trial the likes of which this Country has never seen before,” Trump said in the letter, which he shared on Truth Social on Friday morning.

The former president also criticized the Jan. 6 committee in the letter for not investigating his long-held, baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and repeated his false claims that he won the election over President Joe Biden. The committee has shown evidence that Trump himself knew he had lost the election and had been informed repeatedly by White House, campaign and Justice Department aides that claims to the contrary were false.

Trump also sought to blame the attack by his own supporters on the Capitol — a group he assembled in Washington and then urged to march on Congress — on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser. Trump and his allies have long accused Pelosi, without basis, of somehow resisting the deployment of National Guard troops in advance of Jan. 6. In reality, security decisions were based on what law enforcement agencies said was intelligence that there could be street violence, not a concerted attack on the Capitol. The select committee has shown evidence that some of these agencies downplayed evidence of potential violence against Congress or failed to pass along tips.

Trump also attached to the end of the letter what he called “determinative evidence” that the election was stolen — a compendium of well-worn, discredited claims — and appended a few photos of the huge crowd of his supporters on the National Mall on Jan. 6.

He made no mention of whether he would comply with the committee’s subpoena to testify, leaving the panel’s chances of obtaining his deposition unclear. A legal effort to get Trump to testify would likely take far longer than the roughly two months remaining before the select committee sunsets at the end of the current Congress, and the move to subpoena a former president is largely unprecedented. Trump would be only the fourth president to ever testify before Congress. Only one former president since 1900 has been subpoenaed by Congress: Harry Truman, who defied the summons.

Although he gave no answer in his Friday letter, Trump has offered small signals thus far that he is at least considering speaking to the Jan. 6 panel, including a Truth Social post earlier Friday morning linking to a Fox News article that reported a “source close to the former president” said Trump “loves the idea of testifying” before the committee.

Still, the former president appears unlikely to take the legal risk of testifying at a time when multiple criminal inquiries are pursuing evidence of Trump’s and his allies' efforts to subvert the 2020 election. He has previously declined efforts to testify in congressional inquiries related to his conduct, including the 2021 impeachment inquiry about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and select committee members are skeptical that the former president will comply with their subpoena.

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

Posted in Uncategorized

Pelosi, Dems put politics first in Trump impeachment, new book argues

House Democratic leaders’ political fears surrounding Donald Trump’s impeachment in 2019 prompted missteps that emboldened the then-president as he laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election, according to a new book by POLITICO Playbook co-author Rachael Bade and Washington Post national security reporter Karoun Demirjian.

In “Unchecked,” Bade and Demirjian argue that Speaker Nancy Pelosi prioritized political calculations over a thorough fact-finding effort during Trump’s first impeachment as she charted Democrats’ perilous path to what was thought to be an election-year suicide mission for her most vulnerable members.

According to the book, obtained by POLITICO ahead of its Oct. 18 release, Pelosi squandered multiple opportunities to win support from Republicans who were initially panicked about what Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine would mean for them — allowing them to find an opening to exploit Democrats’ internal wrangling about how to proceed. The result, Bade and Dermirjian wrote, was a president with a clear path to push the limits of his power.

“A clear picture began to form of an impeachment that had been crippled by doubt and exploited by avarice — emboldening the president and weakening the legislative branch,” the authors write in “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.”

When asked for a response to the authors’ assertion, Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill called the book a “futile exercise of whataboutism” that “ignores the stranglehold Trump had and continues to have on the Republican Party.”

Pelosi shunned the idea of impeaching Trump in public and private during most of his term, describing the process itself as detrimental to the country due to its inherent divisiveness. Still, liberal activists and dozens of her members pushed the House to initiate impeachment proceedings stemming from Trump’s efforts to obstruct then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But Pelosi finally embraced impeachment after a whistleblower revealed that, in a July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump implicitly threatened to withhold vital military assistance unless Ukrainian prosecutors announced an investigation into then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The House impeached Trump on Dec. 18, 2019, on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

To be sure, winning over even a handful of Republicans on Trump’s first impeachment would have been exceedingly difficult. GOP lawmakers were generally hesitant to condemn even the president’s most egregious transgressions, and Trump’s grip on them — and their voters — remained formidable. Even Republicans like Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who would become fierce Trump critics after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, stuck with him amid the Ukraine probe.

Pelosi and her deputies were clear-eyed about this reality and often expressed pointed skepticism about rosy predictions that Republican lawmakers would turn against Trump, motivated by conscience and lofty pronouncements from the Senate floor. But they pressed ahead anyway, convinced that a thorough airing of the charges could sway a polarized public and rein in future excesses — another guardrail he smashed through ahead of Jan. 6.

Still, Pelosi and her top lieutenants also understood that impeachment itself is, at its core, a political function, one driven by not just the vague concepts of “high crimes and misdemeanors” but also what the public is willing to accept. It’s impossible to separate, many of them said at the time, the broader politics of the day from more black-and-white questions of constitutional law.

Yet, Bade and Demirjian write, political considerations were a feature but also the dominant aspect of Democrats’ decision-making in 2019. According to the book, House Democrats’ campaign arm poll-tested the idea of framing the impeachment proceedings as a matter of “national security” and ultimately concluded that framing it as such would be viewed more favorably by independent voters.

Indeed, that’s exactly how Democrats framed the necessity, in their view, of removing Trump from office: They argued that his behavior, if left unchecked, would only cause him to continue taking actions that jeopardized national security to boost his own political standing.

But Pelosi was caught between progressives who wanted to leave no stone unturned by pursuing multiple potential crimes by Trump — including Mueller’s evidence, violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause and hush-money payments — and politically vulnerable Democrats who pushed for a more narrowly tailored strategy that would get the saga over with as quickly as possible.

“Pelosi knew that Trump would fight them at every turn of their investigation, as he had in every other probe of his business or personal affairs,” Bade and Demirjian write. “And experience had taught her that the longer it took to investigate the president, the more inured the public became to the shocking nature of his actions.”

The speaker ultimately decided in favor of an inquiry focused exclusively on Trump’s call with Zelenskyy, and pushed to complete the impeachment process before the end of the year — even if it meant not going after key witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton in what would certainly become lengthy court battles.

“It was a message that would resonate with voters, Pelosi argued, and armed with the transcript, a clean kill shot,” the authors write. “If Democrats moved quickly, they might even be able to wrap everything up by the holidays, freeing up all of 2020 for campaigning on the pocketbook issues voters actually cared about.”

In the end, one political truism superseded all the others: What happens in January of an election year will be ancient history by the time voters cast ballots. This was especially true in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic seemed to emerge just as Democrats were licking their wounds from the impeachment trial acquittal.

Soon after, Trump would begin sowing the seeds of what would become his effort to overturn defeat in the presidential election, and by November, impeachment seemed an asterisk in a year that had become chaotic for many other reasons.

Ultimately, Democrats took the White House, even though Pelosi’s House majority shrank slightly after 2020. House managers of Trump’s first impeachment have insisted to this day that their existential warnings played a role in voters deeming him unfit for a second term.

His actions to subvert his 2020 loss, they argue, were evidence that Republicans’ decision to acquit him had left him feeling unchecked.

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

Posted in Uncategorized

Trump’s ambassador to the EU says what we all know about his ex-boss: He’s a ‘dick’

A U.S. ambassador appointed by former President Donald Trump has written in his new memoir that his ex-boss was a “dick” and a “narcissist.” We hope there’s more, because that’s not revelatory news to anyone with a brain in their head.

Gordon Sondland was appointed to his role in 2018, two years after donating $1 million to Trump after the 2016 election. The former hotelier, like all of Trump’s appointees, had zero skills or experience for the job, but that didn’t stop him from taking it.

His new book, titled, The Envoy: Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World, will be published on Oct. 25, The Guardian (which got an advance copy of the book) reports. 

RELATED STORY: Georgia's GOP has challenged 65,000 voter registrations this year, analysis shows

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Barnes and Noble describe Sondland’s book as a “behind-the-scenes look at Trump, his cabinet, and an international diplomacy you’ve never seen before—written by someone with no scores to settle, no hidden agenda, no check to cash, and no fucks to give.”

In the book, Sondland, 64, compares working for Trump to “staying at an all-inclusive resort. You’re thrilled when you first arrive, but things start to go downhill fast. Quality issues start to show. The people who work the place can be rude and not so bright. Attrition is a huge problem. And eventually, you begin to wonder why you agreed to the deal in the first place.”

That said, according to Sondland, he was following Trump’s order in the blackmail phone call of the recently elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He confirmed the whole quid pro quo with Trump and Zelenskyy during his 2019 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in Trump’s first impeachment hearing.

Sondland explained at the time that Trump wanted Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden, and in exchange, Zelenskyy would get military aid to Kyiv and an Oval Office visit, The Washington Post reports.

In his book, Sondland brushes off the whole thing, writing that “Quid pro quos happen all the time,” adding that “studies that show when married men pitch in and clean the bathroom, they have more sex.” Who’s the dick now?

Sondland didn’t earn any friends by testifying about folks such as Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, who was deeply connected to the infamous Trump-Zelenskyy phone call.

Mostly Sondland just drags his former boss, describing an Oval Office with loud country music “blasting from inside” and Trump spending more time “vetting the theme music for his next rally” than preparing for meetings with foreign dignitaries.

“Trump does focus on some details, and this is an important one,” Sondland writes. “Never mind that the Oval Office sounds like a country western bar, and we are supposed to be prepping for a visit with a foreign leader.”

At one point, Sondland writes that he once reminded Trump in 2016, “you were kind of a dick to me when we first met,” and, according to The Guardian, Sondland made reference to the former president’s narcissist tendencies.

Sondland’s testimony during Trump’s first impeachment: 

Donald Trump and his MAGA allies came close to overthrowing our democracy on January 6, and they will try again if they win in 2022. The best thing you can do is to help get out the Democratic vote for the midterms, and we need everyone to do what they can. Click here to find all the volunteer opportunities available.

Want to ruin an insurrectionist's day? Chip in $5 to help defeat MAGA militants running for office in eight battleground states this November.

Trump says Mike Lee ‘abused’ by Romney

Former President Trump slammed Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Wednesday, accusing him of "abusing" his Utah colleague Sen. Mike Lee (R) following news that Romney has refrained from issuing an endorsement in Lee's reelection campaign.

"Mike Lee is an outstanding Senator who has been abused, in an unprecedented way, by a fellow Republican Senator from his own State, something which rarely has happened in political History," Trump said in a statement issued through his Save America PAC.

"Such an event would only be understandable if Mike did not perform his duties as a United States Senator, but he has, and he has performed them well," the former president continued.

Lee, who is in a tight race with Independent challenger Evan McMullin, appealed to Romney on Tuesday evening during a conversation with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, asking his colleague to help him win.

“Well, I’ve asked him. I’m asking him right here, again, tonight, right now. Mitt, if you’d like to protect the Republican majority, give us any chance of seizing the Republican majority, once again, getting it away from the Democrats, who are facilitating this massive spending spree in a massive inflationary binge, please get on board,” Lee said.

In his appeal, Lee mentioned that the contest between himself and McMullin, a former CIA officer, was getting tighter. According to nonpartisan handicapper Cook Political Report, the race is rated "likely Republican." However, recent polling shows that McMullin is closing the gap.

For his part, Romney said he's refrained from making an endorsement because he is friends with both Lee and McMullin, who left the Republican party in 2016 after Trump won the party's presidential nomination, and ran against him as an Independent.

“I’ve worked with Mike a lot and appreciate the work we do together. But both are good friends, and I’m going to stay out,” Romney said in a statement to The Hill.

Romney also caught Trump's ire after he voted to convict the former president of one count during his first impeachment trial and has been a critic of the Trump administration in the past. Trump has called Romney a "super RINO," or "Republican in name only."

On Wednesday, Trump said that McMullin did not represent the values of Utah, "but neither, as you will see in two years, does Mitt Romney, who refuses to endorse his fellow Republican Senator, Mike Lee."

"Mike Lee is outstanding and has my Complete and Total Endorsement. Mitt Romney and Evan McMuffin can count on the fact that they will never have my Endorsement!," he concluded.

Cruz picks up corporate partner for podcast

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is expanding his weekly podcast to three times per week after picking up iHeartRadio as a corporate partner. 

Michael Knowles, the co-host of “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” announced on an episode of the podcast that they received the offer to expand, which he said will take the show to a “huge national audience” on radio stations in addition to the podcast. 

“It will make this show sustainable, not just for the next few months going into the midterms but for the next years,” Knowles said. 

Cruz described iHeartRadio as a “monster” that has 850 stations across the country. He said they were not looking for the partnership, but iHeartRadio saw the podcast and said they want to take it to “the next level," promoting it on their radio stations and podcasts. 

Cruz began the podcast in January 2020 during former President Trump’s first impeachment trial as a forum for him to share his opinions on major political news. 

Knowles said on the show that he will not be able to continue to serve as co-host under the agreement due to his own arrangement working on a radio show for The Daily Wire. Ben Ferguson, a conservative podcaster who works for iHeartRadio, will take his place as co-host. 

IHeartRadio carries podcasts and talk shows for several other conservative hosts, including Glenn Beck and Fox News’s Sean Hannity. 

The podcast episode took place in the midst of a 17-day bus tour Cruz is conducting leading up to the midterm elections next month to campaign for candidates in a wide range of states.

VIDEO: Trump Ready To ‘Run Like The Wind’ And Show the Jackals Who the Lion Is

By Dr. Derek Ellerman

Hoo boy. Donald Trump is known for being flashy, and ever since he formally entered the world of politics, he’s been known for producing (or at least sharing) some incredible, heavy-duty videos. 

Some, in fact, have been made by fans and supporters – and many times, those are just as good. 

While Trump has been flirting with another run for the Presidency – just a few weeks ago at a rally in North Carolina, he vowed “We are going to drain that damn swamp!” – it seems every move he makes begs us to ask the question of ‘will he or won’t he.’

The latest video shared by Trump (apparently produced by an outfit called The United Spot) will no doubt have his supporters raring and ready to go. 

Note: this video isn’t the one I’m referring to, but is hilarious nevertheless:

RELATED: Trump Says Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ Comments About Russia Is ‘Saying Exactly The Wrong Thing’

Enter The Lion

Trump’s video is overlaid with an epic, dramatic speech from Christopher Walken’s ‘Uncle Mike’ character from the early 2000’s film Poolhall Junkies. 

It’s a fairly well-known piece of film lore – legendary quarterback Tom Brady used it in a hype video before the playoffs in 2020.

The speech is a metaphor for the lion as king of the jungle – and he’s still king, even if some of the other, lesser denizens of the jungle need a reminder every now and then. 

Watch: 

Here’s the full monologue that plays throughout the video: 

“You got this lion, he’s the king of the jungle. Huge mane out to here. He’s laying down under a tree, in the middle of Africa, he’s so big, he’s so hot! He doesn’t wanna move. Now, the little lion cubs they start messing with him, biting his tail, biting his ears, he doesn’t do anything.

The lioness, she starts messing with him, coming over making trouble, still nothing. Now the other animals, they notice this, and they start to move in. The jackals, hyenas, they’re barking at him, laughing at him.

They nip his toes and eat the food that’s in his domain. They do this and they get closer and closer and bolder and bolder, till one day…that lion gets up and tears the shit outta everybody, runs like the wind, eats everything in his path, ’cause every once in a while, the lion has to show the jackals who he is.”

The jackals, as the video proceeds, are revealed to be Democrat impeachers Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, (who, it turns out, apparently knew that the first impeachment of Trump was unconstitutional, but went through with it anyway) Nancy Pelosi, and Never Trump Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

The latter have already learned who the lion is – with Cheney losing her Republican primary in a landslide, and Kinzinger getting redistricted out of office by Democrats as their thanks for all his hard work on their behalf. 

Actually, it’s notable in how few jackals are shown. There are hundreds, if not thousands more that could be portrayed in this context. 

RELATED: Trump Celebrates ‘Lightweight’ Never Trumper ‘Liddle’ Ben Sasse’s Resignation From Senate

Amazing Videos

After the recent FBI raid of his home at Mar-a-Lago, Trump released another brilliant video – teasing that “The best is yet to come.” 

The video opens up with an ominous warning from Trump, and even more ominous thunderstorm sounds. 

After going through the economic and foreign policy calamities of the Biden administration, it ends on a positive note – with Trump sounding exactly like a man who is preparing to run for office again. 

Watch:

Trump isn’t the only one putting out melt-your-face videos either.

RELATED: Poll Shows Conservative Latinos With a Massive Swing Toward Republicans

The GOP Learning To Make Sweet Videos

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, seen by many as the eventual successor to Trump, kicked it up a notch in his own campaign for re-election. 

The former Navy man parodied Top Gun to teach conservatives how to deal with a hostile media. 

The results are incredible. 

Watch: 

Not to be outdone by any means, MAGA Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene also took to the skies – but in a helicopter. 

She wasn’t without weapons though, she brought along an AR and invited supporters to win a trip to hunt feral hogs with her. 

If Republicans can keep churning out videos like this, conservatives can say goodbye to Hollywood altogether. 

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McCarthy made fellow Republican cry in post-Jan. 6 meeting: book

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) engaged in an argument after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in which he yelled at Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) about protecting Republicans from former President Trump, making her cry, The Washington Post reported

The Post reported that McCarthy and Herrera Beutler met in his office on Feb. 25 of last year, during which he said he was “taking all the heat” to protect people from Trump and that he alone was holding the Republican Party together. 

The report is based on an excerpt of a new book from Post reporter Karoun Demirjian and Politico reporter Rachel Bade, “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” which is set to be released next week. 

“I have been working with Trump to keep him from going after Republicans like you and blowing up the party and destroying all our work!” McCarthy reportedly told Herrera Beutler. 



Herrera Beutler started crying and apologized for not notifying him in advance that she confirmed to media organizations that McCarthy called Trump on Jan. 6 to urge him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol. 

McCarthy told her that she should have come to him and that “this is no way to thank me.” 

“What did you want me to do? Lie?” Herrera Beutler said. “I did what I thought was right.” 

McCarthy and Herrera Beutler denied the report in a joint statement to the Post, saying that they know it is wrong because they were the only two in the room for the conversation. 

“Beyond multiple inaccuracies — it is dramatized to fit an on-screen adaptation, not to serve as a document of record,” they said. 

Demirjian and Bade said in the book that their reporting was based on conversations with a person who was in the room during the argument and multiple lawmakers who said they heard an account of the argument from McCarthy. 

“McCarthy’s tirade against Herrera Beutler was just the start of what would become a GOP-wide campaign to whitewash the details of what happened on January 6 in the aftermath of the second impeachment,” they wrote. 

Trump staunchly opposed the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, backing primary challengers to those who ran for reelection. Most of those who voted to impeach, including Herrera Beutler, were either defeated in their primary or chose not to run for reelection.

Abbreviated pundit roundup: Analyzing the upcoming midterm elections

We begin with The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson who frames the importance of the upcoming midterm elections:

In four short weeks, the nation faces the most important midterm elections of my lifetime. This year, the choice is between our democracy as we know it — messy, incremental, often frustrating — and a hard-edged performative populism fueled by resentment, misogyny and racism. To have any hope of building a better future, we must make a stand here.

It is hard for me to write those words because one of the first things I was taught as a young journalist was to be wary of superlatives. But the truth is plain — and painful: Democrats must keep control of at least one chamber of Congress, and preferably both, because the Republican Party has become a danger to the American experiment.

More analysis of the midterms from Jeet Heer at The Nation:

[E]ven before the election, it’s clear that MAGA will be in charge of the GOP. This will be even truer if the GOP sweeps the midterms. [...]

Imagine an entire Congress dominated by this faction. It’s a recipe for more government shutdowns, more meaningless investigations like the Benghazi hearings, more spurious impeachments like the 1999 war against Bill Clinton. It also promises that in 2024, secretaries of state like Marchant (if he wins) will thwart the will of the people.

At The New York TimesJamelle Bouie warns of what happens when election deniers “let their freak flag fly”:

Here’s a prediction: If Donald Trump is on the ballot in 2024, there is little reason to think that the United States will have a smooth and uncomplicated presidential election.

Just the opposite, of course. Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state who are aligned with Trump have promised, repeatedly and in public, to subvert any election result that doesn’t favor the former president if he runs again.

Meanwhile, over at The Daily Beast, Kelly Weill analyzes disinformation attempts by Peter Theil:

In the past, much of the network has been limited to news websites. But as the 2022 election season comes to a head, some of those publications have ventured into print.

Illinois residents may not have subscribed to newspapers with titles like the Chicago City Wire or the DuPage Policy Journal. But they’ve arrived on doorsteps across the state, with front-page headlines like“It’s going to be literally the end of days” and “No more boys and girls? Pritzker family leads push to replace ‘myth’ of biology.”

“Despite different names for the publications, all feature nearly identical stories,” the Chicago Tribune reported last month.

The papers, many of which attack Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, are imprints of LGIS, a company Timpone launched with Florida-based Republican strategist Dan Proft. Proft, who did not return a request for comment, runs the “People Who Play By The Rules” political action committee.

On a final note, in case you missed it, here are highlights from yesterday’s Ohio debate between Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance:

And here’s how to watch. more upcoming key debates.