Category: 2020

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Refuses To Defend Ilhan Omar: ‘She Doesn’t Belong In Our Party’

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Collin Peterson took a swipe at Congresswoman Ilhan Omar saying “she doesn’t belong in our party.”

Peterson was addressing past comments in which Omar dismissed the 9/11 terrorist attacks as “some people did something.”

He had previously come to her defense.

In an April interview, Peterson had explained where Omar might have been coming from.

“I think she was trying to say that some people in her community feel like they’re being targeted,” he said.

When confronted more recently, the Minnesota Democrat walked back his comments.

RELATED: Omar Calls For ‘Dismantling’ Police One Day After Cops Ambushed – Says Biden Will Be ‘Responsive’ To Idea

Ilhan Omar ‘Doesn’t Belong In Our Party’

In a video obtained by the New York Post, Peterson is questioned by a tracker for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

“Do you have any comment as to why you defended Ilhan Omar?” they ask.

Peterson responds by saying the Minnesota Squad member doesn’t belong with her Democrat colleagues.

“I don’t defend her,” he said. “She doesn’t belong in our party.”

Contrary to the above tweet, it is plainly obvious what prompted the broadside.

Did Collin Peterson suddenly develop the moral courage to denounce the radical Omar?

No, of course not.

He’s trying to save his skin. Peterson, a 16-term incumbent, is in a district that President Trump won by over 30 points in 2016.

He’s currently in a dog fight with Republican Michelle Fischbach to retain his seat. Last month, a poll showed Fischbach with a 10-point lead.

RELATED: Ilhan Omar Claims Violent Riots Are Simply An ‘Uprising’ Against American Oppression

Is It Peterson or Omar Who Doesn’t Belong?

The Democrats have gone so far astray, playing footsie with radical socialists, that it’s difficult to say whether it is Omar or Peterson who doesn’t belong in the party.

Peterson, who opposed the impeachment of President Trump and is considered a ‘pro-life Democrat,’ is practically a dinosaur.

Presidential nominee and presumable party standard-bearer Joe Biden aligns himself more with Omar.

Omar believes Biden “is going to be responsive to the policy positions we are advocating for.”

Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, is practically a Senate member of the Squad, ranking as the most liberal Senator of 2019.

In reality, it may be Peterson who is on the outside looking in at the most radical, pro-socialist, anti-American version of a party in the history of the United States.

The post Minnesota Democrat Rep. Refuses To Defend Ilhan Omar: ‘She Doesn’t Belong In Our Party’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

Senate Republicans privately more worried that Trump talked to Woodward than about his deadly lies

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Three days into the revelation that Donald Trump willfully lied to the American people about the deadly coronavirus from the absolute beginning of the crisis, and Senate Republicans are still hiding out, avoiding the press, pretending like they missed the biggest news of the week entirely.

"Haven't seen it." "Didn't read it." Or, in the case of Sen. Susan Collins, pretending like she's invisible. Collins "walked quickly into Thursday's morning series of votes, flanked by an aide who shielded her from a reporter who yelled a question in her direction about Trump downplaying the threat of coronavirus," The Hill reported. CNN adds she refused to take any questions on Wednesday or Thursday. At least her fellow vulnerable colleague, Iowa's Joni Ernst, took the question. She waffled it—"I haven't read it, I haven't seen it, so give me a chance to take a look"—but she answered the damn question.

We'll never get out of this crisis without taking back the Senate. Donate now to help make that happen.

Same with Arizona's Martha McSally and Colorado's Cory Gardner. Not reading or paying any attention to any news at all has become quite fashionable among Republicans. If you haven't read it or listened to the tapes with your very own ears, it didn't happen. At least that's Texan John Cornyn's take. He said he didn't have "personal knowledge" and didn't "have any confidence in the reporting," so he couldn't weigh in on it.

Others decided their best bet was going all in with the Trump excuse that he was trying to avert a national panic. Because if there's anything the guy who screams about antifa and Mexicans and Black Lives Matter protesters coming to rape and pillage and loot in the suburbs wants, it's not to cause a panic. North Carolina's Thom Tillis endorsed Trump's excuse. "When you're in a crisis situation, you have to inform people for their public health but you also don't want to create hysteria." When Tillis was pushed and asked if Trump should have been comparing the virus to the flu when he knew that it was far deadlier, Tillis wouldn't answer.

Trump's little golfing buddy, Lindsey Graham, piped up: "I don't think he needs to go on TV and screaming we're all going to die." Georgia's David Perdue agreed. "I understand trying to manage the psyche of the country and also look at the actions that he took. […] I look at what he did—and it was certainly a strong response." In no universe whatsoever was it a strong response, but that's a popular lie among Republicans. "Actions speak louder than words," said Louisiana's Bill Cassidy, another Republican up for reelection. "The President tends to speak loosely. We know that. That's just his pattern." And of course there’s Sen. Mitch McConnell, who combined the professed ignorance and defense of Trump into one: "Well, I haven’t read the Woodward book, but we all knew it was dangerous. The president knew it was dangerous and I think took positive steps very early on, for which he should be applauded, not criticized," he said.

Anonymously, Republican senators were less bothered by Trump's lies to the American public about a pandemic that has gone on to kill 200,000 Americans than about the fact that he would talk to Bob Woodward. "Most of us say, 'What the hell is he doing talking to Bob Woodward at 11 at night?'" one of them told The Hill.

Remember back in March, when McConnell talked about how Trump's flat-footed response to the pandemic was the fault of House Democrats and impeachment? How he said that it "diverted the attention of the government?” Yeah, that. The refusal of McConnell and fellow Republicans to actually look at the evidence, to put country over party in the impeachment, has led directly to this: 200,000 people dead. McConnell's continued insistence on putting party over country means that six months into the pandemic, he's abandoned it.

Senate Republicans don’t want to talk about what Trump knew about COVID-19 and when he knew it

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

Donald Trump knew. He knew in February how dangerous, how deadly coronavirus was going to be and he deliberately played the severity of it down. Some of the revelations from the Bob Woodward interviews now surfacing are old news. Everyone watching knew he's been lying through his teeth from January onward about the disease and the crisis surrounding it.

No one knew better than the people closest to Trump, including Republican senators. When they voted to acquit Trump on February 5, they knew. They knew that he had obstructed justice, they knew that he was a liar and a cheat and they knew this epidemic had reached our shores and that Trump was likely the least capable person imaginable to deal with what was coming. They let this happen. And now that it's all out in public, not a one of them wants to talk about it. Especially Mitch McConnell. "I didn't look at the Woodward book," he told MSNBC's Kasie Hunt. "I will later. But I haven't even seen what you're referring to yet."

It's about basic decency. It’s about the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Donate now to help save the nation.  

That must have been the talking point sent out to the conference. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Kennedy and Shelley Capito and Rob Portman—not a one of them would comment. They "haven't seen" it, "haven't read it," practically stopped up their ears when it was read to them. Florida man Sen. Rick Scott is the only one ready to make himself complicit by willfully burying his own head in the sand: "I have not read it. I don't want to read it. I think the president did the right thing by stopping flights from China."

You won't be shocked to find out that the Republicans up for reelection in a matter of weeks haven't been rushing out with statements. Remember what Sen. Susan Collins said in April? She said "the president did a lot that was right in the beginning." That's what she said. In the beginning, when he was telling Bob Woodward that he understood the disease was transmitted through the air, that he knew how deadly it would be, that he was deliberately downplaying its dangers. That he was setting up the deaths of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Americans. He "did a lot that was right," she said.

Here's what she said last week. Last. Week. "[H]e has also done some things right. […] On January 31st, he ended travel to and from China, where the virus and the pandemic originated. He was roundly criticized for that, but it saved lives." She said that. Just like Rick Scott. We haven't heard from her today, though. We haven't heard from most of them.

All these deaths, they're on Trump's head. But not on Trump's head alone. Every single one of those Republican senators who voted against his impeachment bear responsibility. They could see what was coming. They knew Trump would be just as likely to do precisely what he did—try to figure out a way to profit from it, lie about it, blame everyone else for it, and fail to protect the people who elected them.

The most important accomplishment of impeaching Trump was its impact on Joe Biden

Posted on by Ian Reifowitz

Impeaching The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote was incredibly important, and not only because it was the right thing to do. Yes, he committed crimes and abused the power of his office, and yes he deserved to be impeached and removed from that office—the record of every Republican Senator other than Mitt Romney will be forever stained by their votes to acquit. History will remember their cowardice.

Beyond the morality, impeachment has had a clear, long-lasting political benefit, one that will pay dividends for Vice President Joe Biden this November. Thanks to impeachment, everyone knows that the charges Trump leveled against Joe and Hunter Biden on Ukraine—the ones he tried to blackmail that country’s president into investigating, or least announcing an intention to investigate—are utter malarkey.

Trump always feared running against Biden, and he acted corruptly in a failed bid to get enough dirt to derail the former VP’s quest to win the Democratic nomination. The impeachment process shone a bright light on Trump’s actions, and on his lies about Biden, ensuring that the smear campaign ultimately backfired.

Since the end of the impeachment trial, Trump and his minions have continued to bleat on with their completely invented and thoroughly debunked stories about the Bidens. I won’t dignify them by repeating the specifics here. Recently, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who heads the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have been “investigating”—i.e., trying to keep the story in the media—this bullshit.

Never mind that by falsely smearing Biden over Ukraine, Johnson and his fellow Republican senators are all but doing the work of Vladimir Putin for him, as this Associated Press article explained. 

But the stark warning that Russia is working to denigrate the Democratic presidential candidate adds to questions about the probe by Johnson’s Senate committee and whether it is mimicking, even indirectly, Russian efforts and amplifying its propaganda.

The investigation is unfolding as the country, months removed from an impeachment case that had centered on Ukraine, is dealing with a pandemic and confronting the issue of racial injustice. Yet allegations about Biden and Ukraine remain a popular topic in conservative circles, pushed by Russian media and addressed regularly by President Donald Trump and other Republicans as a potential path toward energizing his supporters.

[...] “Particularly as a public official and somebody who’s responsible for keeping the country safe, you should always be suspicious of narratives that are trying to sort of damage or target the electoral process in your country,” said former CIA officer Cindy Otis, a foreign disinformation expert and vice president of analysis at Alethea Group. “You should always be suspicious of narratives that foreign countries are pumping out.”

As Daily Kos’ Kerry Eleveld pointed out, Johnson even admitted that his so-called probe would “would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden.” It amazing; these Republicans always manage to say the quiet part out loud, which I guess is helpful. Nevertheless, to paraphrase what Otter said to his nemesis (and professional Republican, according to the character futures provided) Gregg Marmalard in Animal House, “Gee, you’re dumb.”

YouTube Video

Then the Orange Julius Caesar himself got into the act. On August 16 he retweeted material that our own intelligence agencies had previously identified as Russian disinformation—part of its effort to directly influence the presidential election by “denigrating” Biden. As CNN put it: “By retweeting material that the US government has already labeled as propaganda -- and doing so with the 2020 Democratic National Convention kicking off on Monday -- Trump demonstrated once again that he is willing to capitalize on foreign election meddling for his own political gain.” Here’s Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner:

The President of the United States should never be a willing mouthpiece for Russian propaganda. https://t.co/9y6L6uMKbM

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) August 17, 2020

Then came the four-day marathon of lies known as the Republican National Convention. Former Florida (where else?) Attorney General Pam Bondi went before a national audience and, once again, did Putin’s bidding by lying about the Bidens and Ukraine. The truth? When Joe Biden sought the removal of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shukin he did so, as Greg Sargent of the Washington Post noted, “because the prosecutor was corrupt.” Sargent added some more important facts: “This was U.S. policy, backed by international institutions. GOP senators had no problem with it in real time. As The Post’s fact-checking team puts it, Bondi’s story is ‘fiction,’ and in reality, Joe Biden ‘was thwarting corruption, not abetting it.’” Bondi told some other lies about Hunter Biden, which the WaPo fact-checking team also debunked. 

When these latter day Marmalards now issue their breathtaking press releases or repeat Russian disinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine, the media—thus far at least—has been taking them for what they are: Utter horseshit. I won’t say the media has learned their lesson, but unlike 2016, when “but her emails” was literally the most reported story of the campaign, this year everyone who isn’t directly sucking at the Trump teat is treating these debunked charges with the (lack of) seriousness they deserve. 

For that, we can thank the impeachment of Donald Trump, which exposed the lies against the Bidens for what they are. The impeachment process inoculated the media and the American public by preparing them for what Trump is now trying to pull on this matter. So thank you Nancy Pelosi, thank you Adam Schiff, thank you Val Demings, thank you Jerry Nadler, and thanks to the rest of the Democratic impeachment team. I’m sure Joe Biden is thanking you as well.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)

The Things Not Said: What Do Democrats Have to Hide?

Posted on by RealClearWire

In the case of the Democrats, a kind of poetic justice was achieved last week when a virtual convention nominated a virtual candidate for what promises to be a virtual presidency.

COVID-19 made both major parties opt for political conventions that don’t put delegates and others at risk with large in-person gatherings, but for Democrats, lessening the risk of disease also meant lessening the risk of the public finding out that there is less than meets the eye to Joe Biden and his candidacy.

What was obvious from start to finish was that a pre-recorded, pre-scripted, pre-ordained infomercial gave Democrats the perfect opportunity to divert the attention of America away from their doddering candidate and their socialist policies into a fawning celebration of phony feel-good sloganeering and Trump hatred.

What Biden and Democrats Didn’t Say At the DNC

While the actual words spoken at the convention were for the most part snooze-worthy, what was left unsaid is like the proverbial nine-tenths of an iceberg lurking beneath the water. If and when the USS Biden crashes and sinks, it will be because of all those things Democrats don’t want to talk about, starting with the fact that 59% of voters expect Kamala Harris to finish out the four-year term of a presumptive President Biden, if not be the virtual president from the start.

Maybe that would be a good thing since so many people suspect Biden has cognitive issues, but it raises the specter of another word never heard at the Democratic convention, not even in the speech of leftist Sen. Bernie Sanders, and that is “socialism.”

That’s because most Americans do not support fundamentally transforming the American economy from its capitalist roots into a socialist “paradise” like Venezuela. Most Americans don’t, but Harris does — at least in part. She co-sponsored Sanders’ single-payer “Medicare for All” plan that would cost $32 trillion before she realized it was a political millstone around her neck.

She also famously pledged “to invest $100 billion of federal money into housing assistance for black families as part of an effort to close the racial wealth gap in the United States.” Wait! Isn’t that illegal discrimination and a blatant violation of equal protection under the law? Yes, it is.

Which brings us to another word not heard much if at all during the Democratic convention — the United States Constitution. Of course, you can’t talk about the Constitution when you intend to violate the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. You can’t talk about the Constitution when you intend to silence the speech of conservatives in a blatant power grab.

You can’t talk about the Constitution when you oppose the Electoral College and when you want to force nuns to subsidize birth control and abortion.

It’s also hard to talk about the Constitution and its promises to “insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty” when you are allowing mob rule in major cities. I’m not sure how the Democrats can sweep this under  the rug, but let’s remember that as a party they oppose the use of force by police, Homeland Security or the National Guard to protect our people, our homes and our businesses.

RELATED: Kamala Harris Acceptance Speech Shows Duplicated Videos of Supporters

And because Democrats know that the vast majority of Americans have an uncanny interest in the safety of themselves and their families, this convention never got around to a discussion of the anarchy in Portland, Seattle and elsewhere.

Barack Obama Takes the Gloves Off

There was plenty of talk about the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic impact of a massive lockdown, with speaker after speaker blaming President Trump for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Former President Obama, taking the gloves off, was representative of the general theme:

“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe: 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.”

This was a shameless politicization of a national emergency — and a national tragedy — and again what mattered more than what was said was all that was left unsaid. Did anyone hear a Democrat politician blame China for unleashing the virus on not just the United States but the entire world?

In complaining that Trump was too slow to react to the virus, did any Democrat mention that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Biden were all critical of Trump’s decision to shut down air traffic from China last winter? Did any of them have the courage to talk about how China used the virus as a political and economic weapon against the United States?

For that matter, did anyone mention how Biden had dismissed the threat of China to the United States back in May 2019 when he said this while campaigning in Iowa City: “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”

Really? This is the man to whom Democrats want to entrust not just our economy but our national security?

Joe Biden’s Record on China

Of course, Biden has good reason not to mention China because when you think about Biden and China, you have to talk about Hunter Biden as well — the former vice president’s son who accompanied his dad to China on Air Force Two and emerged with a $1.5 billion investment deal.

And the last thing you want to talk about if you are Joe Biden is Hunter Biden — although it can’t exactly be avoided, can it? Hunter even got a moment on stage Thursday night when he and his sister, Ashley, introduced their dad. Good for him, but that’s not the last you will hear of Hunter, even if Democrats hope it is.

You can bet that Trump will talk about Hunter Biden when he shares the stage with Joe Biden during the presidential debates, and not just because of China. Remember Ukraine? Apparently, the Democrats have forgotten all about it.

You would think that when you are running against only the third president to be impeached, you would find some way to embarrass him by talking about it. But talking about impeachment means talking about Ukraine, and talking about Ukraine means talking about Burisma Holdings, and talking about Burisma (the corrupt Ukrainian energy company) means talking about (yep!) Hunter Biden, who wound up with a lucrative spot on the company’s board of directors despite having no knowledge of Ukraine or energy.

It ultimately would mean talking about how Joe Biden was in charge of Obama’s foreign policy in both China and Ukraine, and how Biden extorted the president of Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was investigating both Burisma and the younger Biden.

So, yeah, the less said about Ukraine, the better.

But when you come right down to it, Democrats didn’t want to talk about anything of substance during their four-day coronation. Green New Deal? Better not tell voters you want to take away their SUVs, raise their taxes and shut down 10 million jobs.

Foreign policy? Besides liking China and loving Iran, what does Biden have to talk about? If he talks about the Mideast, he has to acknowledge that Trump’s hard-line support for Israel and opposition to Iran are paying huge dividends in the form of a new peace deal that could be the first of many.

RELATED: Van Jones Lets Slip: ‘As Long As Biden Didn’t Embarrass Himself, We Were Going To Come Out Here And Praise It’

And there is one other issue that may be the most glaring omission in the list of things not acknowledged: the #MeToo movement that empowered women to come forward and speak out against their alleged abusers.

You would think with a woman selected to be Biden’s running mate, he would want to emphasize how he is a longtime supporter of women’s rights, including the right to be safe from abuse. But that is a “touchy” issue — literally.

It’s not any secret that Joe Biden has a history of unwanted touching. He apologized for it, sort of, after a former Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in Nevada accused him of inappropriate intimacy.

“So I invaded your space. I’m sorry this happened,” he told various unnamed women while appearing on “The View” back in April 2019. “But I’m not sorry in the sense I think I did anything that was intentionally wrong or did anything inappropriate.”

That is essential Biden. He never quite gets around to admitting anything. Did he or did he not, for instance, intentionally plagiarize Neil Kinnock when he ran for president back in 1988? I think the answer we got from Biden then should perhaps be reserved as his epitaph: “I’ve done some dumb things, and I’ll do dumb things again.”

Maybe the dumbest thing Biden ever did was win the nomination this time around, because nothing will be hidden from view in the next 71 days. Joe Biden and the far-left agenda he now represents will be an open book.

Starting with the GOP convention tonight, you can expect to hear the words China, Ukraine, Mideast and Hunter repeatedly. If the Democrats think they have this thing won, they had better come out from under their cone of silence and look at the iceberg up ahead.

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com to read his daily commentary or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter or Parler @HeartlandDiary.

The post The Things Not Said: What Do Democrats Have to Hide? appeared first on The Political Insider.

Republicans think 175,000 dead Americans is okay, and that’s not all

Posted on by kos

The sorry, sad state of the morally bankrupt Republican Party: 

57 percent of Republicans think 176,000 coronavirus deaths (and counting) is acceptable. Holy shit. pic.twitter.com/dd737aoOmj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 23, 2020

By double-digit margins, Republicans think 175,000 Covid-related deaths (and counting) are “acceptable.” These are the same Republicans who now think that Russian meddling in our politics is okay, that “family values” was a cynical joke on our moral discourse, that “law and order” was something that mattered, that no one stood above the law, that leading the world in pursuit of shared democratic ideals is best replaced by boyish fandom of murderous despots, and that the entire purpose of the Republican Party is nothing more than the singular worship of their idiotic man-boy president. 

Oh, and the response to anything is whine, whine, whine:

.@GOPChairwoman responds to @CBSNewsPoll showing 57% of Republicans say the number of those dead from #COVID19 is acceptable at 175,000: "I think that is a really unfair poll..Republicans do not want to see people suffering from this pandemic." pic.twitter.com/E43B4p9rck

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 23, 2020

Republicans literally are okay with people suffering during this pandemic because they—like their dear leader—are utterly devoid of empathy for their fellow neighbors. It’s the reason so many still resist wearing face masks, putting everyone around them at risk. It’s the reason Republicans continue to support their president despite knowing what they know now, which is exactly what they knew then:

Ted Cruz knew. Rand Paul knew. Nikki Haley knew. Marco Rubio knew. Kellyanne Conway knew. Mike Pompeo knew. Glenn Beck knew. Rick Perry knew. Susan Collins knew. They all knew. pic.twitter.com/73XyJkiNkv

— act.tv (@actdottv) August 21, 2020

Nothing about Donald Trump has been a surprise. Everything that has happened was predictable. We didn’t know we’d suffer a global pandemic, but we knew Trump would be tested during his first term—every president is—and that he would fail spectacularly. 

What wasn’t predictable was how quickly his whole party would become as sociopathic as Trump himself, how quickly they’d acquiesce to his rampant lawlessness. The party that once went into hysterics because former President Bill Clinton had a quick chat on an airport runway with Attorney General Loretta Lynch is now silent as the curent attorney general acts as Trump’s private lawyer. The same party that went into hysterics and filed multiple lawsuits over former President Barack Obama’s executive orders now turns the other way as Trump escalates the same practice. 

And a whole party that once declared fealty to “law and order” is totally mum as Trump literally thumbs his nose at the Supreme Court. What army do they have, anyway? 

USCIS makes it official. They will ignore SCOTUS ruling and, "will reject all initial DACA requests from aliens who have never previously received DACA and return all fees." Furthermore, renewals will be limited to one year. https://t.co/RUIZ3LXw3n

— Ali Noorani (@anoorani) August 24, 2020

There is a single constitutional remedy for such defiance of our nation’s laws: impeachment. But Republicans decided that they were okay with Trump’s lawlessness, and he’s returned the favor by making an even greater mockery of the very institutions that make our democracy work. 

It turns out they're quite fragile, indeed. All it takes is one despot and an enabling party to watch those institutions crumble. Turns out, the only thing keeping them in place was a belief in our democratic system. Republicans don’t care for our system. Or democracy.

The “party of life” never was, but at least now everyone can stop pretending. Their opposition to abortion has nothing to do with “life,” and everything to do with controlling women. 

The “party of national security” is a laughable joke. Russia strongman Vladimir Putin pulls the strings. 

The party of “law and order”? Trump has literally argued that as president, he is above the law, and Republicans have been happy to play along. 

Tax cuts is all that’s left of what Republicanism was all about. The rich and powerful still get their payday. They always do. Nothing like global economic devastation to redistribute even more wealth to the top 0.01%. 

But the stuff that was supposed to trickle down to the masses? All of that is shredded, in tatters, as the Republican Party devolves into an outright cult of personality and Q-inspired conspiracy mongering. 

When Anti-Trump Neil Cavuto Tried To Use Democrat Talking Points Jim Jordan Wasn’t Having It

Posted on by John Hanson

Fox News host Neil Cavuto and Republican Congressman Jim Jordan had an exchange on Friday that revealed how some members of the media seem to take Democrat talking points to heart more than they should.

And that member of the media in this case would be the anti-Trump Cavuto.

Cavuto Asks Jordan About Trump And USPS

Cavuto asked Jordan, “What did you make of what the Postmaster General was saying on the whole mail-in ballot issue. He says ‘Because I think the American public should be able to vote by mail.’ He says ‘we’ll deploy processes and procedures that advance any election mail, in some cases first class mail.”

“Do you think that adequately addresses the concerns some Democrats had and many in your own party, that he was sent there by the president to make that next to impossible?” Cavuto questioned.

RELATED: Al Gore: Trump’s Overhaul Of USPS Is The President “Putting His Knee On The Neck Of American Democracy”

Jordan replied, “Well the real concern is when you go with live ballots sent out to everyone as some states are doing that haven’t done this before. You need no better example than the sponsor of today’s legislation. The Chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, Carolyn Maloney, her election was on June 23rd but it took six weeks to determine who the winner was.”

“So that’s the concern the president has,” Jordan continued. “That’s the concern I have. That’s the concern I think lots of Americans have.”

“This is not about the postal service,” Jordan added. “This is about politics.”

 

Cavuto and Jordan further discussed the mail-in ballot issue, but Cavuto kept circling around and pressing the GOP congressman on the same Democratic talking point – that President Trump was somehow trying to sabotage the election by manipulating the postal service.

Cavuto Asks Again

Cavuto said, “Nevertheless Congressman, the president did say earlier this week that he opposed election aid for states and an emergency bailout for the postal service, citing among other things that it might restrict many Americans of their ability to vote by mail. but he also said that voting by mail, has repeatedly made the claim that mail-in ballots can lead to widespread fraud.”

“So do you believe this is as much about his trying to stymie the process than enhance it?”

“No, I think this is the Democrats playing politics,” Jordan replied, repeating himself, since apparently Cavuto didn’t take the hint the first time.

Jordan continued, “Neil, ask yourself this question and your viewers: Why are we voting on the bill today but not having the hearing on the legislation and hearing from the postmaster general until Monday? Normally it’s the other way around. Normally you want to get all the information from the person in charge, the Postmaster General.”

Jordan then went down the list of empty Democratic attacks on President Trump.

“First it was the Russia investigation,” Jordan said. “The first big committee hearing, this Congress? Michael Cohen, then he came in and lied seven times. Then it was the fake Ukraine impeachment.”

“Now this is just the latest effort of the Democrats to go after the president,” Jordan finished.

Cavuto Asks A Third Time

But Cavuto wasn’t finished.

The Fox news anchor pressed forward, “I understand where you’re coming from Congressman, but if you’re the President of the United States and you’ve long expressed reservations about an overwhelmed system dealing with what could be 100 million mail-in ballots. Do you think he would welcome cutting financing for the post office to make that next to impossible?”

“Of course not,” Jordan replied.

Cavuto added, “That’s what Democrats are charging. Is that not odd to you? Is it not odd?”

“It’s not true,” Jordan shot back. “No, it’s like so many things the Democrats have said. It’s not true.”

“I’ll tell you what is a concern,” Jordan said. “Do you really think if you mailed a ballot to every single voter 150 million ballots, do you really think we’d know the outcome and have all those ballots counted on election night? ”

And A Fourth Time…

But Cavuto STILL wasn’t done. So he rephrased the question.

To ask it a fourth time.

“No, I understand and maybe I wasn’t clear on my question, Congressman,” Cavuto said. “But the timing of cutting aid would actually fit in with that notion that it’s going to overwhelm the system, that we will, ahead of time, make things more difficult. That’s what Democrats are going to argue because of the coincidental timing.”

RELATED: Chris Wallace Suggests Trump May Have A Point About Mail-In Voting Fraud

Jordan was having none of it.

“But we aren’t cutting aid,” Jordan said. “The CARES Act that we passed clearly back in March, the first big stimulus to deal with the coronavirus situation had a $10 billion line of credit. They got $14 billion they’re sitting on and they are, as I said earlier, actually bringing in more money now than they were at this point last year.”

“So it’s just not based in reality, the Democrats’ claims,” Jordan finished.

Why Was Cavuto So Hung Up On This?

Cavuto’s question to Jordan was a fair one, even if the charge isn’t true, because it is in the news and part of our current national discussion.

But to ask the same question four times? Because maybe Cavuto didn’t like the answers he was getting?

And is it a journalist’s job to get the right answers – the truth – or only the kind of answers he or she likes?

Neil Cavuto should strive to be more fair and balanced.

The post When Anti-Trump Neil Cavuto Tried To Use Democrat Talking Points Jim Jordan Wasn’t Having It appeared first on The Political Insider.

Republicans make it official with convention non-platform: They’re the Party of Trump

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Last week, Democrats held a remarkably successful remote convention, showcasing the fights for racial justice, health care, and human decency. Coming up this week, the Republican National Convention will confirm that the Republican Party is a Donald Trump cult of personality. Of course the RNC won’t support racial justice or health care or human decency, but it’s also unlikely to showcase even the basic competence involved in putting on an innovative and watchable political convention during the coronavirus pandemic. That’s appropriate, since Trump is responsible for so much of the pandemic’s devastation in the United States.

Most of all, this RNC will showcase what the Republican Party is today: the Trump Party. Instead of a platform outlining the party’s policy agenda, Republicans are just signing on for blanket support of Trump. This is it: “be it RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” 

No, convention platforms are never directly translated into law, but that is nonetheless a stunning abdication of any attempt by the broader Republican Party to assert an agenda beyond Donald Trump’s passing whims.

The RNC speaker list also highlights Trump’s total ownership of the party. Trump himself will reportedly speak every night, and the rest of the speakers announced thus far—a fairly short list—are heavy on Trump family members and lackeys. This is how deep into the Trump family the lineup goes: Not just Don Jr., but girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle. Not just Eric, but wife Lara. Even largely forgotten daughter Tiffany Trump will speak. Favorite daughter Ivanka is a given, despite the ethics conflict her alleged work in the White House presents—in that capacity, she isn’t supposed to engage in politics.

Since this is the Trump Party, though, ethics issues are not just being ignored but gleefully trampled. In addition to Ivanka’s appearance, Team Trump is violating the Hatch Act’s prohibition on using the government properties like the White House for political purposes, planning for Melania Trump to speak from the Rose Garden, which she just had redesigned in some very interesting timing, while Donald Trump speaks from the White House and fireworks are set off over the South Lawn. “Some of Mr. Trump’s aides privately scoff at the Hatch Act and say they take pride in violating its regulations,” The New York Times reports. The Hatch Act is, let’s be clear, not some kind of gentle guideline. It is a law. Which Trump aides are proud of breaking.

Other speakers will include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem; Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (another significant ethics issue); Sens. Tim Scott, Rand Paul, Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton, and Marsha Blackburn; Reps. Jim Jordan and Elise Stefanik; former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley; and former Florida attorney general and Trump impeachment lawyer Pam Bondi. The St. Louis couple who achieved notoriety for pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters passing by their giant mansion in a gated community will be there, as will Andrew Pollack, the father of a Parkland shooting victim.

Ernst is notably the only Republican senator currently facing a tough race who is scheduled to speak at the RNC.

Trump mounts major offensive against Biden but it just shows how weak his case is

Posted on by Laura Clawson

The Trump campaign is working hard to get inside former Vice President Joe Biden’s head on the day he accepts the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden is one of the many Democrats who live rent-free inside Trump’s head, so his campaign is hoping to return the favor with a campaign event outside Biden’s Scranton, Pennsylvania, birthplace and a digital ad campaign focusing on Biden’s son Hunter.

Trump plans a detailed anti-Biden speech in Scranton as part of the effort to win Pennsylvania, a state crucial to his 2016 Electoral College victory but one in which he trails in current polling. Biden’s birthplace already made an appearance in the Democratic National Convention, when Sen. Bob Casey cast Pennsylvania’s votes in the nominating roll call in front of it.

The Biden campaign dismissed Trump’s trolling, with a spokesman saying he “put the health of countless families across the Keystone State in danger and plunged the strong economy he inherited from the Obama-Biden Administration into a tailspin.” Now, “[t]his sideshow is a pathetic attempt to distract from the fact that Trump’s presidency stands for nothing but crises, lies, and division.”

The Trump campaign’s ad focused on Hunter Biden is part of a high seven-figure digital advertising buy that will include 96 hours straight of YouTube advertising time as well as major ad buys on sites like Fox News, The Washington Post, and the Daily Caller. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler tweeted about the campaign, writing that “the Trump campaign has taken over the @washingtonpost home page with ads that take you to a series of YouTube videos that make claims that we have fact-checked as false.” Not that the Post’s letting that stand in its way, apparently.

Attacks on Hunter Biden continue to be the Trump campaign’s way to try to make Joe Biden look corrupt—there was a whole impeachment around those efforts, you may recall—and to make Biden look weak on China. A Biden campaign spokesman responded with a reminder of some of the facts around Trump’s relationship with China: “Trump begged Xi to help him win re-election, drove American manufacturing into a recession, struck a weak trade deal with China that they are not even living up to, and even gave his explicit support for concentration camps there. That's precisely why China's officials are openly pulling for him to win re-election.”

Other Trump campaign digital ads will try to portray Biden as senile. 

Imagine if the Biden campaign thought all it had against Trump was his kids’ business dealings and his mental sharpness. That wouldn’t be a very strong case—and yet even on those fronts Trump has chosen for battle, the case against Trump would be far stronger than the case against Biden.

Trump’s campaign IS the cesspool of corruption and incompetence we thought it was

Posted on (Updated by kos

Olivia Nuzzi’s stunning look inside the Trump presidential campaign confirms everything we’ve been saying, for so long—that it’s a disorganized disaster of a mess, riven by internal discord and rival factions, with no guiding strategy that could plausibly give the incumbent president a path to reelection. 

We’ve seen and discussed it before, but Nuzzi offers new insight. About the nepotism and grift that infects the campaign? 

“The campaign was spending all this money on silly things. Brad’s businesses kept making money,” the first senior White House official told me. “Everyone was like, What does he even do? He’s just milking the family, basically. And nobody could understand why Jared and the family were putting up with it. That was the talk all the time. Why? Why Brad? He’s not some genius. And I guess people just came to the conclusion that, well, who else would be campaign manager? We’re kind of stuck with this guy.”

Note, the campaign is still spending money in silly things, like TV ads in the Washington DC market so that Donald Trump can see himself as he wastes entire days staring slack jawed at the TV screen. And are the partners of the two Trump siblings still making $15,000 every month in a nepotistic fleecing of campaign donors? There are no indications that has changed. 

We know that the campaign has no message, and continues to have no message, comically fumbling the response to the Kamala Harris VP rollout. Indeed, this is the campaign that expended serious resources to build a case against Hunter Biden’s work in the Ukraine—an effort that led to a historic impeachment of the president, only to see a bored Trump toss it aside with little use. Also, remember Obamagate, the single most horrible scandal in the history of America? That one lasted like three days. Meanwhile, Trump can’t pivot away from “the best economy in the history of the world” (it wasn’t), even after his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic drove it into a ditch. 

So, having “rebooted” the campaign by ditching Brad Parscale and installing Bill Stepien instead as campaign manager, how has that campaign message changed? Nuzzi asked: 

But while replacing Parscale with Stepien has the look of a reboot, at the strategy level it does not seem much has changed or is likely to. Asked how the campaign can formulate a coherent message, given what life is like for most people across the country today, senior adviser Jason Miller said, “It’s very direct: President Trump built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and he’s doing it again.”

Oh well. 

Finally, we’ve seen how Trump’s actual actions only serve to shrink his potential base of support, further alienating key demographic groups that have abandoned him, like those suburban college-educated white women who delivered the House to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in 2018. (38 of the Democrats’ 41 House pickups were in suburban districts.) 

This is an ongoing Trump feature, from attacking Supreme Court decisions popular with those suburban swing voters (like protecting abortion rights, protecting young immigrants, and defending LGBTQ rights), to demonizing the Black Lives Matter movement, to defending Confederate monuments. So, what is the campaign doing to expand its base and win? Reading the Nuzzi piece, apparently nothing more than engage in wishful thinking. Take this passage, for example: 

“I don’t think we’re gonna lose this campaign,” said Bob Paduchik, Trump’s 2016 Ohio state director and a senior adviser to the 2020 campaign. “I don’t think we’re losing this campaign.” He told me the polling averages didn’t show Biden winning Ohio. I said that was wrong. Well, Paduchik said, the RealClearPolitics average didn’t show Biden winning. I told him that was wrong too — that I happened to be looking at that particular website as we spoke. Even Rasmussen, Trump’s preferred polling outfit, had Trump down by five, I said. “No,” Paduchik said, Rasmussen didn’t have a poll like that. When I said it sure did, that I was looking right at it, Paduchik said he couldn’t speak to that poll since he hadn’t reviewed it himself. Either way, he said, the polls were silly, based as they are on the premise that they measure how people would vote if the election were held today. “Well, the election is not today!” he said. “We haven’t had our debates and our convention yet. It’s sort of a fantasy guess.”

This newfound belief that the debates will bail Trump out is a new level of wishful thinking. Debates don’t mean shit. Hillary Clinton wiped the floor with Trump, for all the good it did. Conventions also don’t do much to move the numbers in any lasting way, but they’ll be even less relevant in this year’s online format. But when you don’t have a message or an organization or a viable strategy to win back lost support, then wishful thinking is the final fallback. 

There’s one final fascinating piece of news in Nuzzi’s piece, one that we hadn’t really seen before, and that is whether the Trump campaign is truly as organized as it claimed it is. We saw a hint of this during the hilariously botched Tulsa rally, when the campaign claimed it had 1 million people clamoring to attend. In the end, about 6,000 did. The expected overflow area outside the convention hall was dismantled even before Trump took the stage. (Herman Cain, one of Trump’s few Black friends, died because of that rally.)

The embarrassingly empty overflow area outside Trump’s failed Tulsa rally.

But that failure could easily be placed at the feet the pandemic. The campaign could be as organized as it claimed to be, and yet still fail to get a crowd because death is quite the demotivator, right? In Pennsylvania, a must-win battleground state for Trump, and one he won by a sliver in 2016, the Trump campaign claims 1.4 million volunteers and an unprecedented ground game. As Nuzzi summarizes it, “The campaign says it’s the greatest ground game to ever exist, that while you don’t see enthusiasm for the president reflected in the rigged polls, you do see it when you talk to his real supporters where they live in Real America. In fact, they talk about surveys of enthusiasm not just as though they are more reliable than real polls but as though they are the polls — as though the traditional kind simply don’t exist, or matter.”

Nuzzi sets out to find this ground game in action, attending trainings and gatherings advertised by the state’s campaign. It’s a hilarious stream of empty rooms, closed doors, and puzzled campaign staff. Like this vignette: 

“What event?,” Kevin Tatulyan, an Allegheny County Republican official, asked as he waved me into the room.

“What event?,” Dallas McClintock, the regional Trump-Pence field director, asked.

One of the women, with lilac-colored hair, whipped her head toward McClintock.

“It’s your email here!” she told him, pointing to the advertisement I’d mentioned.

“My email?,” McClintock said in disbelief.

“Yeah!” she said.

He scrunched up his face.

For the next several minutes, the staffers tried to sort out how, with fewer than 100 days until the election, they had unknowingly advertised official campaign events that didn’t exist to potential campaign volunteers in the most important swing state in the country.

They squinted at their screens and asked questions.

“What time?”

“Where did you learn about it?”

“What was the address?”

The second event had been listed with an apparent misspelling in the street name, a detail that prompted the girl with the lilac hair to laugh.

“Sounds right,” she said dryly.

Trump thrives on good news and rose-colored information. Like a typical despot, he doesn’t want to hear the truth, so his staff tells him what he wants to hear. And they tell him those things were he’s sure to consume them—in the media. 

So is the Trump’s campaign entire narrative about its massive ground game a fiction, designed to appease their boss? Nuzzi’s dive into this little slice of Pennsylvania certainly suggests so. Of course, we can’t and shouldn't assume that’s the case anywhere. And in any case, is anyone really staying home this November? I doubt it’s possible to suppress this vote with “good news”. 

And even if Pennsylvania’s Trump operation is a mirage, that doesn’t mean it’s equally ineffective elsewhere. Remember, we’re not playing to win the presidency anymore. This is another 2018—we’re playing to deliver maximum electoral pain to the Republican Party. 

What this does suggest is that a Republican Party that has surrendered to Trump, both out of fear of his tantrums, and hope that his rabid foot soldiers can bail them out, may have miscalculated to a degree that we hadn’t even dare consider. If the vaunted Trump ground game is a fiction, our down ballot opportunities may be even greater than we hoped. 

I’ve said before, we are lucky that Trump is as stupid and ineffective as he is. The dumbass even admitted to gutting the USPS for electoral gain last week, like a cliche movie villain’s monologue. Now no one can pretend that Trump’s efforts aren’t nefarious, even those who wanted to like Fact Check. His penchant for surrounding himself with morons and refusal to follow federal law when making decisions has ensured that the damage he could cause was limited at best. (A quote in Nuzzi’s piece illustrates this perfectly: “What Trump does is take people who are mediocre talent at best, who know they could never have the position they have if it were not for Trump, and it creates this instant loyalty to Trump.”)

Among those unqualified people? Jared Kushner reigns supreme (of course). 

Trump has epically messed up the country, but it could’ve been worse. And now he’s bringing his special kind of incompetence, the kind that bankrupts a casino,  to his reelection campaign. 

That incompetence is a silver lining in what has been among the bleakest four years in our lives. It means we are on path to ridding ourselves of Trump and his party. Because at this point, we’re not fighting for November, we’re fighting for the next generation.