Profiles in cowardice: Three years after Jan. 6, GOP leaders won’t hold Trump accountable

Sen. John F. Kennedy wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Profiles in Courage” in 1956, focusing on eight U.S. senators Kennedy felt were courageous under intense pressure from the public and their own party. If you were to write a book about Republican House and Senate members in the three years since the Jan. 6 insurrection, you’d have to title it “Profiles in Cowardice.”

Just weeks before the Iowa caucuses, all the members of the GOP House leadership have endorsed former President Donald Trump. That’s the same Trump who sicced a mob on the Capitol, urging his supporters to “fight like hell.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a presidential candidate, was asked Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” why Republican politicians remain loyal to Trump. He replied that it’s “a combination of two emotions: fear and ambition.” 

RELATED STORY: Three years of Trump's lies about the Jan. 6 insurrection have taken their toll

That fear can be understood given the results of a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published Tuesday. It shows that “Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack then they were in 2021.” That’s despite the twice-impeached former president facing 91 felony counts in four criminal indictments. The poll found:

More than 7 in 10 Republicans say that too much is being made of the attack and that it is “time to move on.” Fewer than 2 in 10 (18 percent) of Republicans say Jan. 6 protesters were “mostly violent,” dipping from 26 percent in 2021. 

The poll also found that only 14% of Republicans said Trump bears a great or good amount of responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack, compared with 27% in 2021. So it’s no surprise that Trump feels comfortable on the campaign trail where he regularly downplays the violence on Jan. 6. Yet nine deaths were linked to the Capitol attack, and more than 450 people have been sentenced to prison for their roles in it. The Associated Press reports:

Trump has still built a commanding lead in the Republican primary, and his rivals largely refrain from criticizing him about Jan. 6. He has called it “a beautiful day” and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as “great, great patriots” and “hostages.” At some campaign rallies, he has played a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by jailed rioters — the anthem interspersed with his recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Just Security reported that special counsel Jack Smith has taken notice of “Trump’s repeated embrace of the January 6 rioters” as part of the federal case against him for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Trump probably should have stuck to the script he read in a video released on Jan. 7, 2021. Trump was under pressure to make a statement after two Cabinet members and several other top administration officials had resigned over the Capitol violence. Trump denounced what he called the “heinous attack” on the U.S. Capitol and said:

“Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem  … America is and must always be a nation of law and order.

"The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay."

pic.twitter.com/csX07ZVWGe

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2021

Of course, Trump couldn’t stick to that script. But the Jan. 6 attack prompted some to prematurely declare the death of Trumpism. In an opinion piece in The Hill on  Jan. 7, 2021, Glenn C. Altschuler, professor of American Studies at Cornell University, wrote:

Trumpism has been exposed for what it is: a cancer on the Republican Party and a real threat to democracy in the United States. It is in our power — starting with Republican politicians in Washington, D.C. and red states, the mass media news outlets, as well as voters throughout the country — to make Jan. 6, 2021 the day Trumpism died.

Initially, Republican congressional leaders showed some spine. The New York Times wrote:

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the two top Republicans in Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, told associates they believed President Trump was responsible for inciting the deadly riot and vowed to drive him from politics.

Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: “I’ve had it with this guy,” he told a group of Republican leaders, according to an audio recording of the conversation obtained by The New York Times.

But within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Mr. Trump because they feared retribution from him and his political movement. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.

Just hours after the Capitol attack, 147 Republican lawmakers—a majority of the House GOP caucus and a handful of Republican senators—voted against certifying Biden’s election. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the current House speaker, played a leading role in the effort to overturn the presidential election results. In a radio interview he even repeated the debunked claim about an international conspiracy involving deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to hack voting machines. 

On Jan. 13, 2021, the House voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection, but only 10 House Republicans supported the resolution. Only two of them remain in Congress. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy read the writing on the wall: He made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago on Jan. 27 to bend the knee to Trump. He realized that he never would become House speaker without Trump’s support. Trump’s Political Action Committee Save America put out this readout of the meeting:

“They discussed many topics, number one of which was taking back the House in 2022,” the statement read. “President Trump’s popularity has never been stronger than it is today, and his endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time.”

The Senate impeachment trial represented a last chance to drive a stake into Trump’s political career because conviction would have kept him from holding office again. Seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump, but the tally fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.
McConnell voted to acquit Trump. In his Feb. 13 speech to the Senate, he said Trump “is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events” of Jan. 6. He suggested that Trump could still be subject to criminal prosecution: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.” 
In 2023, McConnell stayed quiet when asked for reaction to Trump's criminal indictments. But McCarthy and other Republicans joined in defending Trump and criticizing prosecutors. On Aug. 14, 2023, after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced her racketeering and conspiracy indictment against Trump and 18 allies for allegedly trying to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia, McCarthy posted:

Justice should be blind, but Biden has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election. Now a radical DA in Georgia is following Biden’s lead by attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career. Americans…

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) August 15, 2023

Trump has now made the outlandish claim that he’s immune from criminal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election because he was serving as president at the time. In a brief filed last Saturday to a federal appeals court, Smith warned that Trump’s claims “threaten to undermine democracy.”

The events of Jan. 6 were a warning that Trump and his MAGA cultists really don’t believe in the Constitution. McKay Coppins, who wrote a biography of Mitt Romney, wrote in The Atlantic that the Utah senator wrestled with whether Trump caused the downfall of the GOP, or if it had always been in play:

Was the authoritarian element of the GOP a product of President Trump, or had it always been there, just waiting to be activated by a sufficiently shameless demagogue? And what role had the members of the mainstream establishment—­people like him, the reasonable Republicans—played in allowing the rot on the right to fester?

The feckless Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been a weather vane of what’s been happening within the GOP. During the 2016 campaign, he dismissed Trump as a “kook” and “race-baiting bigot” unfit to be president. Then Graham stuck his head up Trump’s posterior once the reality show host became president. On Jan. 6, 2021, Graham declared he had “enough” of Trump and voted to confirm the election results. But in February 2021, Graham made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to make peace with Trump. Graham’s remarks at the time proved to be quite prescient:

"If he ran, it would be his nomination for the having …" Graham told The Washington Post. "Because he was successful for conservatism and people appreciate his fighting spirit, he's going to dominate the party for years to come.” 

Recently, Graham even defended Trump’s presidential immunity claim on CBS’ “Face the Nation”:

“Now, if you're doing your job as president and January 6th he was still president, trying to find out if the election, you know, was on the up and up. I think his immunity claim, I don't know how it will bear out, but I think it's a legitimate claim. But they're prosecuting him for activity around January 6th, he didn't break into the Capitol, he gave a fiery speech, but he's not the first guy to ever do that.”

After Jan. 6, some ultra-right Republicans tried to portray what happened as a largely peaceful protest and absolve Trump of any blame. Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia said many of the people who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 behaved in an orderly manner as if they were on a "normal tourist visit." Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar blamed the violence on left-wing activists, calling it an “Antifa provocation.”

But now the fringe conspiracy theories have moved into the party’s mainstream as MAGA Republicans have gained influence in Congress. As speaker, McCarthy granted then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 42,000 hours of Jan. 6 security footage. Carlson used the footage for a show that portrayed the riot as a peaceful gathering. “These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers,” Carlson said.

Trump claimed Carlson’s show offered “irrefutable” evidence that the rioters had been wrongly accused of crimes and called for the release of those jailed on charges related to the attack, the Associated Press reported. In the December Republican presidential debate, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy pushed the conspiracy theory that the Jan. 6 attack looked “like it was an inside job” orchestrated by federal agents.

Trump has pushed these “deep state” conspiracy theories in filings by his lawyers in the case brought by Smith accusing Trump of attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, The Washington Post reported. The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that 34% of Republicans believe the FBI organized and encouraged the Jan. 6 insurrection, compared with 30% of independents and 13% of Democrats.

In a CNN Town Hall in May, Trump said he had no regrets about what happened on Jan. 6 and repeated the Big Lie that the 2020 election “was rigged.” Trump has also portrayed Ashli Babbitt—the Jan. 6 protester who was fatally shot by police as she tried to force her way into the House chamber—as a martyr. He has cast the jailed Jan. 6 insurrectionists as “patriotic” heroes. That should raise alarm bells because there’s a dangerous precedent. After his failed 1923 Munich Beer Hall putsch, Adolf Hitler referred to Nazi storm troopers killed in the attempted coup as blood martyrs. It took Hitler a decade to become chancellor of Germany in 1933.

RELATED STORY: 100 years after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Trump is borrowing from Hitler's playbook

As we mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump is on a faster track to become president again, aided and abetted by right-wing news outlets and social media platforms like Elon Musk’s X.

Biden understands the growing threat to American democracy. That’s why he’s following up his Friday speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, about democracy on the brink with an advertising push starting Jan. 6. In the Biden-Harris campaign’s first ad of 2024, Biden says: “Now something dangerous is happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy. All of us are being asked right now, what will we do to maintain our democracy?”

RELATED STORY: Trump attorney leans on Supreme Court to repay their debt to Trump

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Sunday Four-Play: Lindsey Graham admits there’s no ‘smoking gun’ in GOP’s fake impeachment push

It’s keenly ironic that House Republicans acted on a raft of sketchy, Rudy Giuliani-exhumed allegations to launch a presidential impeachment inquiry in the very same week that he was ordered to pay $148 million for lying on Donald Trump’s behalf. But that’s the difference between our courts and our Congress. In court, you have to tell the truth.

Of course, every House Republican—to a person—is now doing what Rudy did years ago: Appeasing their ocher overlord by conjuring nonsense in a cynical bid to put the faux stink of corruption on President Joe Biden. We’ll have to wait to find out if those congressional fiends eventually get their comeuppance. In the meantime, we’ve got Sunday show clips! So let’s get on with it, shall we?

1.

It’s been glaringly obvious for some time now why House Republicans are trying to impeach President Biden: It’s because Donald Trump wants them to. They’re wholly in thrall to a lifelong punchline who steals top secret government documents and sounds like Hitler slipped on the basement stairs and can’t get up. 

Fortunately, some still see the current Republican Party for what it truly is: a pathetic cult of personality.

Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen appeared on “The Katie Phang Show” to discuss the GOP’s fake Biden impeachment, and he very quickly got to the crux of the matter.

.@RepCohen on Speaker Mike Johnson's baseless Biden impeachment inquiry: "He went down to see his daddy Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago and he told him: 'Go back to Washington and impeach Joe Biden.' [...] This is juvenile." #katiephangshow pic.twitter.com/4cN99NgaUW

— The Katie Phang Show (@katiephangshow) December 17, 2023

PHANG: “Let’s start first … with the absurd impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Republicans on three House committees have been investigating President Biden and his son for months now with zero evidence of wrongdoing being discovered. Can you share with our viewers why there was a unanimous vote by House Republicans? Did you hear anything from your Republican colleagues on why they would do, across straight party lines, a vote in favor of this baseless inquiry?”

COHEN: “Totally political. Unfortunately, we have a child speaker. He went down to see his daddy, Donald Trump, at Mar-a-Lago, and he told him, ‘Go back to Washington and impeach Joe Biden. That will make me feel good because I was impeached twice, and I want to say he was impeached, too.’ So this is juvenile. It’s unfortunately an inexperienced speaker who’s dealing with an irrational man, and the Republican Party basically is responding to that as well. The MAGA Republicans do what Trump tells them to. So they’re going to do that, and they’re doing that with Ukraine, too. To keep his deal going with Putin that was so successful, him getting elected president, that he’s … [he doesn't want] to give Ukraine any money because he wants Putin to win the war and he wants Putin to help him in 2024. Trump’s looking at 2024 and Putin’s looking at posterity, and working together.”

Wow, that sure makes Republicans sound cynical and soulless, doesn’t it? But when you’re right, you’re right. And Rep. Cohen is most definitely right.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: The fake Biden impeachment rolls along, and J.D. Vance forgets Mike Johnson exists

2.

If anyone knows about selling his soul to appease Trump, it’s Sen. Lindsey Graham. So it’s particularly noteworthy that even he can’t figure out what House Republicans are impeaching Biden over.

Graham joined Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” and was asked to weigh in on the GOP’s disingenuous impeachment push. It looked like he would have preferred to discuss just about anything else.  

WELKER: Grassley said he does not see any evidence that the president is guilty of anything. Do you agree with him? LINDSEY GRAHAM: If there was a smoking gun I think we'd be talking about it. pic.twitter.com/pBESdm7HML

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 17, 2023

WELKER: “Okay, let’s turn to the other big story on Capitol Hill, the impeachment, of course—the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Your colleague Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that he does not see any evidence, quote, that the president is guilty of anything. Do you agree with him? Is there any evidence so far?”

GRAHAM: “You know, I haven’t really been paying that much attention to it. They have to prove that President Biden somehow financially benefited from the business enterprises of Hunter Biden. We’ll see.”

WELKER: “Have they done it yet, in your mind?”

GRAHAM: “If there were a smoking gun, I think we’d be talking about it ...”

Look, it was obvious from the outset that Republicans would try to impeach Biden for something. But this is really a stretch—particularly since Trump continually took money from foreign interests while he was cosplaying as president, and did so out in the open.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: DeSantis-bot glitches out, and ex-Trump aide says the former guy is 'slowing down'

3.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tells the truth on exactly one topic: Donald Trump. And he didn’t start doing that until Trump decided he’d try to garrote American democracy. He was fine with Happy Meal Hitler trying to kill him and turning our country into a WWE cage match, but lying about the election and trying to overthrow the government were the final straws. Which is good, of course. He’s ahead of the curve as far as Republicans go. That said, as the following clip shows, Christie always knew about Trump’s strong affinity for indiscriminate murder enthusiast Vladimir Putin, and he still tried to get Trump reelected.

Go figure.

Christie joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” to warn America about Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rhetoric.

.@GovChristie hits Donald Trump for echoing Vladimir Putin’s criticism of American democracy in an interview with @jaketapper. “It's time to send Donald Trump back to Mar-a-Lago permanently.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/yzXNCeYpBB

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) December 17, 2023

TAPPER: “Gov. Christie, you just heard Donald Trump approvingly quoting Vladimir Putin about American democracy, about the American legal system, attacking the criminal charges against him and the ‘rottenness’ of the American political system, quote, unquote. What’s your reaction?”

CHRISTIE: “My reaction is that he gets worse and worse by the day, Jake. And voters better start paying attention to exactly what he’s saying. He has always been approving of Putin right from the beginning of his presidency. That was something that he and I had regular arguments about going all the way back to 2017. And the fact is that—Vladimir Putin as an expert on democracy? This is a guy who doesn’t even know what democracy is and, quite frankly, has spent most of his life trying to undercut democracy all over the world, and Donald Trump is citing him as his expert witness that he’s being persecuted and is innocent. Look, this is a guy who just believes ‘woe is me, woe is me, I can’t believe that I got caught.’ But let’s remember something, and everyone needs to know this. It’s not going to be Vladimir Putin on the witness stand in Washington, D.C., this spring. It’s not going to be some left-wing prosecutor making the case. Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, has accepted immunity. I did this for seven years, Jake. The reason he’s accepted immunity is because he has admitted he had committed crimes himself, or he wouldn’t need immunity. And he’s going to testify that Donald Trump committed crimes on his watch—a founder of the Freedom Caucus, his former chief of staff who he called the next James Baker. Donald Trump realizes the walls are closing in. He’s becoming crazier. And now he’s citing Vladimir Putin as a character witness, a guy who’s a murderous thug all around the world. It’s time to send Donald Trump back to Mar-a-Lago permanently.”

Hey, thanks for piping up, Chris! Better late than never, right?

Then again, it’s kind of soothing to hear an ex-prosecutor describe exactly how much legal peril Trump is in these days. Hopefully, at least one of the four criminal cases against Trump sees the light of day before he has a chance to send his tank columns into Fulton County, Georgia.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: Biden delivers results, Christie swats at Trump, and Musk tanks Twitter

4.

Speaking of Putin, his American Super PAC—aka the GOP—is doing all it can these days to support his Ukrainian war effort. House Republicans are holding up aid to Ukraine so they can play political games with our southern border—a cynical tactic that could help them get elected, which in turn would help Putin, who would then further interfere in our elections on their behalf, and on and on into infinity. 

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen joined Jon Karl on ABC’s “This Week” to discuss this ongoing betrayal of our ally on Putin’s behalf. 

“This is a pivotal moment in American leadership and history,” Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen tells @JonKarl as negotiations continue over military assistance for Ukraine. “We need to make sure that we help our Ukrainian friends.” https://t.co/zgTIHOEo7W pic.twitter.com/au87GpxIEZ

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 17, 2023

KARL: “What do you think of this idea of having significant changes to the border tied to funding for Ukraine and Israel? Among the changes that Republicans have been demanding are changes to our asylum laws—making it harder for people to declare asylum, restricting that. And even, you know, Republicans want a return to Remain in Mexico, the policy of the Trump administration, which is ‘ask for asylum before you come to the United States and come after, or if, it’s been granted.’”

VAN HOLLEN: “Well, first of all, I think it’s essential that we provide military assistance to Ukraine. This is a pivotal moment in American leadership and history, and we need to make sure that we help our Ukrainian friends against Putin’s aggression—not just to protect their freedom, but because it would send a terrible signal around the world to our allies who would no longer trust us, and to our adversaries, who would be emboldened if we’re not doing that. In terms of border security, I have to look at the details, and the big question, Jon, is, who’s at the table on the Republican side? I don’t mean the individual, but are they really working with the president to try to get border security? Because the president has proposed historical increases in resources for border security.”

KARL: “And they’re asking for policy changes more than resources.”

VAN HOLLEN: “So we have to look at it, you know.”

Well, Republicans ask for a lot of things. Most of those requests are either disingenuous or downright bonkers. After all, Republicans’ proof that Biden favors open borders is that his administration keeps arresting record numbers of border crossers and sending them back. Try to make sense of that one. 

Meanwhile, comprehensive immigration reform would go a long way toward solving our problems at the border, but Republicans prefer they remain unsolved so Fox News can continue scaring its viewers with caravans of brown people. Because if conservatives can’t frighten people, all they’ve got left is a Hitler See ‘n Say as their putative presidential nominee and undisputed standard-bearer.

But wait! There’s more!

That’s all for now! Note: Sunday Four-Play will be on hiatus next week in honor of my annual holiday sugar coma. Hope to see you all again on the cusp of a new year.

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Sunday Four-Play: DeSantis-bot glitches out, and ex-Trump aide says the former guy is ‘slowing down’

If you somehow missed Thursday’s big debate between Govs. Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis, well, don't fret. For one thing, Newsom didn’t debate DeSantis so much as curb-stomp him over and over like an increasingly shopworn series of Cabbage Patch dolls.

Secondly, DeSantis is still running for president, so he’s not going anywhere. Other than nowhere, of course. Unless third place in the Iowa caucuses is now considered some kind of milk-and-honey-festooned promised land.

Yes, DeSantis-bot glitched out several times over the course of the debate. It was like watching a deer caught in a car’s headlights ... then a car’s grille … then a car’s windshield … and finally a car’s trunk, where the Flailing Florida Man struck a dashing pose alongside the still-purpling corpse of Scott Walker. Take, for instance, this exchange, previously highlighted by Daily Kos’ Walter Einenkel:

Wow. That was something, huh? How are the smiling lessons going, Ron? Looks like you’ve finally mastered “constipated prairie chicken.” Next stop: “inflatable car wash dancer.” 

Of course, we may not have DeSantis to kick around much longer, so we better kick him now. (Figuratively, of course.) And this week he’s on the OG Sunday political show, “Meet the Press,” which promises to be a barrel of awkward, off-putting laughs.

So let’s see how that went, shall we?

Off we go!

1.

Have we mentioned how utterly screwed Republicans are on abortion? Oh, yes, we have, haven’t we? Well, they are, because they don’t have anything that approaches a consistent or coherent message. Democrats do: We need to codify Roe and ensure that private reproductive health care decisions are made by women in close consultation with their doctors. Democrats can look voters square in the eye and tell them that simple truth.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates are continually asked where they stand on federal abortion bans, and it’s like asking Louie Gohmert how the CERN supercollider works. Or Legos. Or underpants, for that matter. In other words, they don’t have the slightest clue what to say.

DeSantis appeared with Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” to discuss a campaign that’s shrinking in inverse proportion to his pupils whenever he gets asked about this stuff.

WATCH: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) — who signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida — says he supports federal abortion rules that "would have consensus.” But DeSantis says, "Congress is not going to do any type of abortion legislation." pic.twitter.com/MhFXYMS0zL

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 3, 2023

WELKER: “You signed a six-week ban in the state of Florida, so voters want to know, people of Iowa want to know, where do you stand on this issue? Would you sign a six-week federal ban if it came to your desk? If you were president?”

DESANTIS: “But we signed a legislation to stand for a culture of life that was done by the Florida Legislature. I mean, this was them bringing the will of the people ...”

WELKER: “So is that a yes? Is that a yes?”

DESANTIS: “Well, Congress is not going to do any type of abortion legislation. They haven't done abortion legislation—the only thing that’s impacted abortion on the federal level, I think the last thing is Obamacare in 2010. So we understand that, and so part of me promoting a culture of life is to do things that are achievable and that obviously would have consensus. No taxpayer funding for abortion. We’re going to eliminate the abortion tourism policy of the Department of Defense, and we’re going to protect the rights of states to enact pro-life protections.”

“Come on, now! Congress won’t pass abortion legislation! Nothing has been done on abortion since 2010. And nothing of note has changed since then. Nope. Not a single thing. It’s moot. Next question! Wait, Dobbs? What is Dobbs? Now you’re just making baby noises. Can we get back to my talking points, please? Lavish Broadway musicals have gone woke!”

Good Lord. Honestly, he’d be better off appearing on these shows wearing an “Ask Me About My Boot Lifts” button.

BONUS!

DeSantis has a really hard time condemning Donald Trump’s use of the word “vermin” to refer to one’s political enemies. Must be tough trying to continually walk that tightrope between full-blown Nazi rhetoric and the kind of stuff Hitler just randomly thought of in his shower.

WATCH: Former President Trump has called his opponents “vermin.”@kwelkernbc: Do you condemn the use of that word? Gov. @RonDeSantis (R-Fla.): “I don’t use the term. … He's responsible for his words. He's responsible for his conduct. I'm responsible for mine.” pic.twitter.com/Trgt5UWPH6

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 3, 2023

Geez, Ron, grow a pair. Of eyes, I mean. Can’t you see how hopelessly behind you are? Newsom was right. You need to drop out, ASAP.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: Republicans are completely screwed on abortion, and Trump (hearts) fascism

2.

Master projectionist Donald Trump has lately been trying to claim that President Biden is actually our nation’s biggest threat to democracy—not the guy who literally tried to end America. And he’s giving extremely low-energy speeches to make his point.

Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin joined “State of the Union’s” expert panel to discuss this frothy nonsense, telling host Dana Bash that she’s noticed Trump is “slowing down.” Which is the worst euphemism for “turning into a Nazi Chucky doll” anyone’s ever heard.

Former Trump White House Communications Director @Alyssafarah tells @DanaBashCNN she thinks Trump “is slowing down” and that “there’s a lack of sharpness in what he’s saying.” pic.twitter.com/gJ4Uzy3mwG

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) December 3, 2023

TRUMP (AT RALLY): “But Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. … So if Joe Biden wants to make this race a question of which candidate will defend our democracy and protect our freedoms, I say to Crooked Joe—and he’s crooked, the most corrupt president we’ve ever had—we will win that fight and we’re going to win it very big. Very big.”

BASH: “Welcome back to ‘State of the Union.’ My panel joins me now. Alyssa, this is probably one of the least surprising things you’ve seen Donald Trump do. Right, I mean, if, if—I don’t want to call it ‘evil genius’ because, I don’t—but it’s so classic. To have something wrong with him, a negative, and he says, no, it’s the other guy.”

FARAH GRIFFIN: “And just tries to flip it on its head and you heard the audience eat it up. It’s kind of remarkable—I was watching some of the clips from Trump’s visit to Iowa, and I’m stunned, having spent a lot of time with him in 2020 and years before, he is slowing down. There is a lack of sharpness in what he is saying, and a lack of kind of clarity. There’s another clip where he basically says he’s going to overturn Obamacare but then also says that he’d fix it. Just complete inconsistencies. And for Republicans, our strongest case against Joe Biden is, you know, the age and the decline that some of us have seen. And if I’m being honest, head to head, I’m not sure which is struggling more.”

You’re not sure who’s struggling more? Trump. Trump is struggling more. Biden looks slightly bent over when he walks and occasionally elides or butchers a word or two. He doesn’t continually claim he ran against George W. Bush, brag about passing preschool-level dementia tests, and confidently assert that windmills are murdering whales.

Then again, Farah Griffin is a Republican. Who worked for Trump. Sometimes the deprogramming takes a while to fully kick in, apparently.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: Biden delivers results, Christie swats at Trump, and Musk tanks Twitter

3.

The fake Biden impeachment is still a hot topic over at Fox News, and veteran journamalist Maria Bartiromo is all over it. There’s no need to rehash how empty and cynical this endeavor is. You can simply read this fact check or this Daily Kos liveblog of Republicans’ September impeachment hearing. Or you could just stare into House Oversight Committee Chair Jim Comer’s eyes for 30 seconds and see for yourself that there’s nothing behind them but insensate evil and pingpong balls. 

But Republicans are determined to go ahead with the charade—so long as the people they're accusing aren’t allowed to share their stories with the same public Comer, et al., have been dishonestly working into a lather for the past two years.

James Comer tells Maria Bartiromo that moderate House Republicans are more willing to to vote for a Biden impeachment inquiry now because they went home over Thanksgiving and heard from their constituents at Walmart pic.twitter.com/gavFiabw0Y

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2023

BARTIROMO: “[We want to] understand why you have had to take so long to actually get a vote to impeach, get this impeachment inquiry going. Do you feel that you have the votes within the House right now to get a formal impeachment inquiry?”

COMER: “I do, and I had a reporter ask, well, what’s changed? You know, because the press has been writing we didn’t have the votes forever. And I said, well, I tell you one thing that changed. We were in Washington, D.C., for 10 weeks, and there were about 15 or 20 moderates that they really worry about what CNN says or what the Washington Post writes, and they were getting in their heads, Maria. But a great thing happened during Thanksgiving. The members went home—many of them for the first time and circulated for the first time in over 10 weeks—and they met people in Walmart and people on Main Street, and they’re like, what in the world have the Bidens done to receive millions and millions of dollars from our enemies around the world, and did they not pay taxes on it? So they heard from their constituents—yes, we want you to move forward, we want to know the truth. And we expect the Bidens to be held accountable for public corruption.”

Got that? Those vulnerable House Republicans who represent Biden-leaning districts stopped reading The Washington Post for 10 days and started listening to the constitutional scholars picking out hydrogenated pie toppings at Walmart. Case closed. Joe Biden is as good as gone. Now they can finally go through Kamala Harris’ purse to see how many Sweet ‘N Low packets she’s stolen from IHOP since the inauguration.  

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel tries to appear 'moderate' on abortion, fails miserably

4.

National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby appeared on “Meet the Press” with Kristen Welker to discuss the Israel-Hamas war and a recent New York Times report alleging that Israeli intelligence obtained the battle plan for Hamas’ October terrorist attack more than a year before it occurred.

So why, Welker wondered, didn’t U.S. intelligence have any inkling of this? Isn’t Israel supposed to share intelligence with us?

I suspect you know the likely answer—even if Welker doesn’t. We’ll see if you’ve got your thinking caps on. The big, startling reveal will come … after the jump!

NEW: The U.S. intel community was not aware of Hamas' attack plan on Israel, NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby says. The New York Times reported that Israel received the attack plan over a year ago. pic.twitter.com/MrYJMIZlZ6

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 3, 2023

WELKER: “John, I have to ask you about this New York Times reporting which found that Israeli officials received Hamas’ specific attack plan over a year ago. Was the United States aware of this intelligence, and if not, why not?”

KIRBY: “The intelligence community has indicated that they did not have access to this document. There’s no indications at this time that they had any access to this document beforehand.”

WELKER: “Should they have, given how closely U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials coordinate, or are supposed to coordinate?”

KIRBY: “Intelligence is a mosaic, and sometimes, you know, you can fashion things together and get a pretty good picture, other times there’s pieces of the puzzle that are missing. As I said, our own intelligence community said that they looked at this. They have no indications at this time that they had any advance warning of this document or any knowledge of it.”

WELKER: “John, very quickly, was this a failure on the part of Israeli intelligence and U.S. intelligence?”

KIRBY: “I think there’s going to be a time and a place for Israel to do that sort of forensic work. I mean, Prime Minister Netanyahu has already spoken pretty candidly about this, calling it a failure on their part. They’ll take a look at this at the right time. They need to do that. Right now, though, the focus has got to be on making sure that they can eliminate this truly genocidal threat to the Israeli people.”

Gee, why wouldn’t Israel want to share intelligence with us? What might have happened in the past several years that could have given them pause? It’s a huge fucking mystery, isn’t it? 

This one is a Video Daily Double:

Oh, you need it spelled out? Okay, then.

Foreign Policy, May 2017:

Just days before President Donald Trump’s arrival in Tel Aviv, Israeli intelligence officials were shouting at their American counterparts in meetings, furious over news that the U.S. commander in chief may have compromised a vital source of information on the Islamic State and possibly Iran, according to a U.S. defense official in military planning.

“To them, it’s horrifying,” the official, who attended the meetings, told Foreign Policy. “Their first question was: ‘What is going on? What is this?’”

[...]

[B]ehind the public display of harmony, Israeli intelligence officers are angry and alarmed over the U.S. president revealing sensitive information in a May 10 meeting in the White House with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.

Well, maybe Welker doesn’t read Foreign Policy. Or NBC News. I’m pretty sure People magazine covered it, too, alongside Sergei Lavrov’s favorite braised turnip recipes.

But wait! There’s more!

That’s it for today. Hope you’re all enjoying this joyful War on Christmas season. See you next week!

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Sunday Four-Play: DeSantis-bot glitches out, and ex-Trump aide says the former guy is ‘slowing down’

If you somehow missed Thursday’s big debate between Govs. Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis, well, don't fret. For one thing, Newsom didn’t debate DeSantis so much as curb-stomp him over and over like an increasingly shopworn series of Cabbage Patch dolls.

Secondly, DeSantis is still running for president, so he’s not going anywhere. Other than nowhere, of course. Unless third place in the Iowa caucuses is now considered some kind of milk-and-honey-festooned promised land.

Yes, DeSantis-bot glitched out several times over the course of the debate. It was like watching a deer caught in a car’s headlights ... then a car’s grille … then a car’s windshield … and finally a car’s trunk, where the Flailing Florida Man struck a dashing pose alongside the still-purpling corpse of Scott Walker. Take, for instance, this exchange, previously highlighted by Daily Kos’ Walter Einenkel:

Wow. That was something, huh? How are the smiling lessons going, Ron? Looks like you’ve finally mastered “constipated prairie chicken.” Next stop: “inflatable car wash dancer.” 

Of course, we may not have DeSantis to kick around much longer, so we better kick him now. (Figuratively, of course.) And this week he’s on the OG Sunday political show, “Meet the Press,” which promises to be a barrel of awkward, off-putting laughs.

So let’s see how that went, shall we?

Off we go!

1.

Have we mentioned how utterly screwed Republicans are on abortion? Oh, yes, we have, haven’t we? Well, they are, because they don’t have anything that approaches a consistent or coherent message. Democrats do: We need to codify Roe and ensure that private reproductive health care decisions are made by women in close consultation with their doctors. Democrats can look voters square in the eye and tell them that simple truth.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates are continually asked where they stand on federal abortion bans, and it’s like asking Louie Gohmert how the CERN supercollider works. Or Legos. Or underpants, for that matter. In other words, they don’t have the slightest clue what to say.

DeSantis appeared with Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” to discuss a campaign that’s shrinking in inverse proportion to his pupils whenever he gets asked about this stuff.

WATCH: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) — who signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida — says he supports federal abortion rules that "would have consensus.” But DeSantis says, "Congress is not going to do any type of abortion legislation." pic.twitter.com/MhFXYMS0zL

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 3, 2023

WELKER: “You signed a six-week ban in the state of Florida, so voters want to know, people of Iowa want to know, where do you stand on this issue? Would you sign a six-week federal ban if it came to your desk? If you were president?”

DESANTIS: “But we signed a legislation to stand for a culture of life that was done by the Florida Legislature. I mean, this was them bringing the will of the people ...”

WELKER: “So is that a yes? Is that a yes?”

DESANTIS: “Well, Congress is not going to do any type of abortion legislation. They haven't done abortion legislation—the only thing that’s impacted abortion on the federal level, I think the last thing is Obamacare in 2010. So we understand that, and so part of me promoting a culture of life is to do things that are achievable and that obviously would have consensus. No taxpayer funding for abortion. We’re going to eliminate the abortion tourism policy of the Department of Defense, and we’re going to protect the rights of states to enact pro-life protections.”

“Come on, now! Congress won’t pass abortion legislation! Nothing has been done on abortion since 2010. And nothing of note has changed since then. Nope. Not a single thing. It’s moot. Next question! Wait, Dobbs? What is Dobbs? Now you’re just making baby noises. Can we get back to my talking points, please? Lavish Broadway musicals have gone woke!”

Good Lord. Honestly, he’d be better off appearing on these shows wearing an “Ask Me About My Boot Lifts” button.

BONUS!

DeSantis has a really hard time condemning Donald Trump’s use of the word “vermin” to refer to one’s political enemies. Must be tough trying to continually walk that tightrope between full-blown Nazi rhetoric and the kind of stuff Hitler just randomly thought of in his shower.

WATCH: Former President Trump has called his opponents “vermin.”@kwelkernbc: Do you condemn the use of that word? Gov. @RonDeSantis (R-Fla.): “I don’t use the term. … He's responsible for his words. He's responsible for his conduct. I'm responsible for mine.” pic.twitter.com/Trgt5UWPH6

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 3, 2023

Geez, Ron, grow a pair. Of eyes, I mean. Can’t you see how hopelessly behind you are? Newsom was right. You need to drop out, ASAP.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: Republicans are completely screwed on abortion, and Trump (hearts) fascism

2.

Master projectionist Donald Trump has lately been trying to claim that President Biden is actually our nation’s biggest threat to democracy—not the guy who literally tried to end America. And he’s giving extremely low-energy speeches to make his point.

Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin joined “State of the Union’s” expert panel to discuss this frothy nonsense, telling host Dana Bash that she’s noticed Trump is “slowing down.” Which is the worst euphemism for “turning into a Nazi Chucky doll” anyone’s ever heard.

Former Trump White House Communications Director @Alyssafarah tells @DanaBashCNN she thinks Trump “is slowing down” and that “there’s a lack of sharpness in what he’s saying.” pic.twitter.com/gJ4Uzy3mwG

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) December 3, 2023

TRUMP (AT RALLY): “But Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. … So if Joe Biden wants to make this race a question of which candidate will defend our democracy and protect our freedoms, I say to Crooked Joe—and he’s crooked, the most corrupt president we’ve ever had—we will win that fight and we’re going to win it very big. Very big.”

BASH: “Welcome back to ‘State of the Union.’ My panel joins me now. Alyssa, this is probably one of the least surprising things you’ve seen Donald Trump do. Right, I mean, if, if—I don’t want to call it ‘evil genius’ because, I don’t—but it’s so classic. To have something wrong with him, a negative, and he says, no, it’s the other guy.”

FARAH GRIFFIN: “And just tries to flip it on its head and you heard the audience eat it up. It’s kind of remarkable—I was watching some of the clips from Trump’s visit to Iowa, and I’m stunned, having spent a lot of time with him in 2020 and years before, he is slowing down. There is a lack of sharpness in what he is saying, and a lack of kind of clarity. There’s another clip where he basically says he’s going to overturn Obamacare but then also says that he’d fix it. Just complete inconsistencies. And for Republicans, our strongest case against Joe Biden is, you know, the age and the decline that some of us have seen. And if I’m being honest, head to head, I’m not sure which is struggling more.”

You’re not sure who’s struggling more? Trump. Trump is struggling more. Biden looks slightly bent over when he walks and occasionally elides or butchers a word or two. He doesn’t continually claim he ran against George W. Bush, brag about passing preschool-level dementia tests, and confidently assert that windmills are murdering whales.

Then again, Farah Griffin is a Republican. Who worked for Trump. Sometimes the deprogramming takes a while to fully kick in, apparently.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: Biden delivers results, Christie swats at Trump, and Musk tanks Twitter

3.

The fake Biden impeachment is still a hot topic over at Fox News, and veteran journamalist Maria Bartiromo is all over it. There’s no need to rehash how empty and cynical this endeavor is. You can simply read this fact check or this Daily Kos liveblog of Republicans’ September impeachment hearing. Or you could just stare into House Oversight Committee Chair Jim Comer’s eyes for 30 seconds and see for yourself that there’s nothing behind them but insensate evil and pingpong balls. 

But Republicans are determined to go ahead with the charade—so long as the people they're accusing aren’t allowed to share their stories with the same public Comer, et al., have been dishonestly working into a lather for the past two years.

James Comer tells Maria Bartiromo that moderate House Republicans are more willing to to vote for a Biden impeachment inquiry now because they went home over Thanksgiving and heard from their constituents at Walmart pic.twitter.com/gavFiabw0Y

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2023

BARTIROMO: “[We want to] understand why you have had to take so long to actually get a vote to impeach, get this impeachment inquiry going. Do you feel that you have the votes within the House right now to get a formal impeachment inquiry?”

COMER: “I do, and I had a reporter ask, well, what’s changed? You know, because the press has been writing we didn’t have the votes forever. And I said, well, I tell you one thing that changed. We were in Washington, D.C., for 10 weeks, and there were about 15 or 20 moderates that they really worry about what CNN says or what the Washington Post writes, and they were getting in their heads, Maria. But a great thing happened during Thanksgiving. The members went home—many of them for the first time and circulated for the first time in over 10 weeks—and they met people in Walmart and people on Main Street, and they’re like, what in the world have the Bidens done to receive millions and millions of dollars from our enemies around the world, and did they not pay taxes on it? So they heard from their constituents—yes, we want you to move forward, we want to know the truth. And we expect the Bidens to be held accountable for public corruption.”

Got that? Those vulnerable House Republicans who represent Biden-leaning districts stopped reading The Washington Post for 10 days and started listening to the constitutional scholars picking out hydrogenated pie toppings at Walmart. Case closed. Joe Biden is as good as gone. Now they can finally go through Kamala Harris’ purse to see how many Sweet ‘N Low packets she’s stolen from IHOP since the inauguration.  

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel tries to appear 'moderate' on abortion, fails miserably

4.

National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby appeared on “Meet the Press” with Kristen Welker to discuss the Israel-Hamas war and a recent New York Times report alleging that Israeli intelligence obtained the battle plan for Hamas’ October terrorist attack more than a year before it occurred.

So why, Welker wondered, didn’t U.S. intelligence have any inkling of this? Isn’t Israel supposed to share intelligence with us?

I suspect you know the likely answer—even if Welker doesn’t. We’ll see if you’ve got your thinking caps on. The big, startling reveal will come … after the jump!

NEW: The U.S. intel community was not aware of Hamas' attack plan on Israel, NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby says. The New York Times reported that Israel received the attack plan over a year ago. pic.twitter.com/MrYJMIZlZ6

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 3, 2023

WELKER: “John, I have to ask you about this New York Times reporting which found that Israeli officials received Hamas’ specific attack plan over a year ago. Was the United States aware of this intelligence, and if not, why not?”

KIRBY: “The intelligence community has indicated that they did not have access to this document. There’s no indications at this time that they had any access to this document beforehand.”

WELKER: “Should they have, given how closely U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials coordinate, or are supposed to coordinate?”

KIRBY: “Intelligence is a mosaic, and sometimes, you know, you can fashion things together and get a pretty good picture, other times there’s pieces of the puzzle that are missing. As I said, our own intelligence community said that they looked at this. They have no indications at this time that they had any advance warning of this document or any knowledge of it.”

WELKER: “John, very quickly, was this a failure on the part of Israeli intelligence and U.S. intelligence?”

KIRBY: “I think there’s going to be a time and a place for Israel to do that sort of forensic work. I mean, Prime Minister Netanyahu has already spoken pretty candidly about this, calling it a failure on their part. They’ll take a look at this at the right time. They need to do that. Right now, though, the focus has got to be on making sure that they can eliminate this truly genocidal threat to the Israeli people.”

Gee, why wouldn’t Israel want to share intelligence with us? What might have happened in the past several years that could have given them pause? It’s a huge fucking mystery, isn’t it? 

This one is a Video Daily Double:

Oh, you need it spelled out? Okay, then.

Foreign Policy, May 2017:

Just days before President Donald Trump’s arrival in Tel Aviv, Israeli intelligence officials were shouting at their American counterparts in meetings, furious over news that the U.S. commander in chief may have compromised a vital source of information on the Islamic State and possibly Iran, according to a U.S. defense official in military planning.

“To them, it’s horrifying,” the official, who attended the meetings, told Foreign Policy. “Their first question was: ‘What is going on? What is this?’”

[...]

[B]ehind the public display of harmony, Israeli intelligence officers are angry and alarmed over the U.S. president revealing sensitive information in a May 10 meeting in the White House with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.

Well, maybe Welker doesn’t read Foreign Policy. Or NBC News. I’m pretty sure People magazine covered it, too, alongside Sergei Lavrov’s favorite braised turnip recipes.

But wait! There’s more!

That’s it for today. Hope you’re all enjoying this joyful War on Christmas season. See you next week!

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Sunday Four-Play: Mike Johnson is a skilled (as in sociopathic) liar, and the GOP still loves Putin

Remember “The Dating Game”? It was one of those shows that folks of a certain age would watch when we stayed home from school pretending to be bleeding from our eyeballs with hemorrhagic fever. Even as a kid it seemed odd to me that 1) anyone would go on a beach trip vacation alone with a stranger they’d just met, 2) they’d select their date, sight unseen, based on generic softball questions like “What’s your idea of a fun first date?” and 3) the woman would often look utterly stricken when she finally met her chosen suitor face to face, even though only one of the contestants ever turned out to be a serial killer. (That we know of, anyway.)

I couldn’t help but think of that show after Republicans chose Rep. Mike Johnson to lead the House for however long we have left until the rapture, when God finally calls Randy Quaid and his Igloo cooler full of squirrel heads home. The ordeal felt a bit like an episode of “The Dating Game” where Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, and Johnson were the three eager bachelors and Republicans somehow decided Johnson was their least creepy option.

I can almost picture a beaming Johnson declaring how super hard-core he’s going to love America as soon as he gets it alone: “For our first date, I’d like to fly you to Idaho, force you into a covenant marriage, and stare at you for the rest of your natural life with the baleful mien of a Christmas elf who doesn’t like to make toys but does have an oddly specific penchant for unlicensed taxidermy.”

In other words, Republicans chose this guy with precious little forethought or vetting, and it sorta feels like it could backfire. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. But we already know he’s all-in on forced birth, The Big Liecriminalizing gay sex, and handing Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin, so naturally he’ll be an ideal brand ambassador for the GOP heading into the 2024 election cycle. 

This week on the Sunday shows, Johnson’s name came up more than it ever has before. In addition, Maria Bartiromo of “Sunday Morning Futures” scored an exclusive interview with the man himself. I fully expected her to ask about Johnson’s plan for governing and whether it’s easier for a Christian dominionist weirdo and real-life “Handmaid’s Tale” character to keep a show on Fox News or be elected speaker of the House with the unanimous support of his party, but Johnson was too busy lying to get into too much detail on any of that.

He did have some important stuff to say, though. Mostly lies, but what else is new?

So let’s dive in, shall we?

1.

Normally if I were cueing up a Tim Kaine clip I’d warn you well in advance so you had time to order smelling salts and a home defibrillator on Amazon, but in this case he’s exactly what we need. He’s the man for the hour. And the one after that. And the next one, too. Aaaaand … oh, shit, he’s still going. Oh, no, did he just start in on the macroeconomic implications of corporate sorghum subsidies? Again? We could be here a while. Hope you brought a book.

So you didn’t want industrious, conscientious, and serious leaders like Tim Kaine, eh, America? Well, look what you got instead. Kaine may be as exciting as plain oatmeal, but at least he’s good for you. You went with the Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and they turned out to be actual bombs. 

Kaine joined “The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart” to discuss the yang to his yin, new House Speaker Mike Johnson—who’s also pretty boring, but in that lawful evil way Republicans have always loved. 

"You outlined the positions [Rep. Mike Johnson] had, from election denial to climate science denial to anti-LGBTQ and anti-women's reproductive rights. This is who the Republican Party is now." @SenTimKaine discusses with @CapehartJ the extremism of Speaker Johnson #SundayShow pic.twitter.com/YUqiz7swTj

— The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart (@weekendcapehart) October 29, 2023

CAPEHART: “Before we get into the nitty-gritty, just generally your view of Speaker Mike Johnson, what he represents?”

KAINE: “Well, Jonathan, he is the most powerful Republican in America. He is the face of today’s GOP. He’s second in line to the president, and you outlined the positions he had, from election denial to climate science denial to anti-LGBTQ, anti-women’s reproductive rights. This is who the Republican Party is now, and remember, he received the vote of every member of the Republican caucus to be speaker. So that is obviously a very different vision than Virginians have, a very different vision than Senate Democrats or Republicans have, and so it sets up some challenging times ahead. But all that said, it’s better to have a speaker than not have a speaker, because we have important work to do for the American public.”

It is better to have a speaker than not to have a speaker. That is true. And it was better for the Titanic to have a captain, if only to tell the string quartet where to set up. But Kaine makes some great points, and even more importantly, he offers a living, breathing contrast to today’s GOP, which is exciting in the same way that buying Tylenol in October 1982 was exciting

If you want sober, steady, and policy-focused, you’d do well to elect more Democrats like Kaine. If you want to have a child every 10 months and, seconds after giving birth, be forced to shout, “Thank you, Jesus, may I have another?!” then Mike Johnson is definitely your guy.

Moving on.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: McCarthy still blames Dems for GOP clown show, and Cheney might run for president?

2.

As Kaine said, it is important to have a speaker. Who else is going to try to impeach Joe Biden for no reason? New Speaker Mike Johnson, newly hatched from the Republican-pol pod farm miles below Koch Industries, appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo to further gaslight a weary nation that’s had just about enough of this nonsense already.

Bartiromo asked the question that’s at the top of every American’s mind: Are you going to keep the Biden impeachment charade going through the 2024 election?

"We're the rule of law team," says one of the congressmen who led the effort to install Trump in power pic.twitter.com/wzwIVcCOhn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2023

BARTIROMO: “What about the investigations into the potential Biden family influence peddling, potential bribery? Are you going to allocate the financial resources and human capital needed to do an in-depth investigation? And will an impeachment inquiry turn into an official impeachment?”

JOHNSON: “We’ll see, Maria. I worked on the committees of jurisdiction, and Judiciary is one of those. I think our chairmen have done an exceptional job, you’ve spoken to all of them. Jamie Comer and Jim Jordan and Jason Smith, on Oversight and Judiciary and Ways and Means. They’ve continued those investigations. Even while we were going through the tumult of the speaker’s race, they were still working methodically through that. I’m encouraging that. I think we have a constitutional responsibility to follow this truth where it leads. We’re the rule-of-law team. We don’t use this for political partisan games like the Democrats have done and did against Donald Trump twice. We are going to follow the law and follow the Constitution, and you and I have a suspicion of where that may lead, but we’re going to let the evidence speak for itself, and I look forward to rolling that out over the coming days and weeks and letting the American people see exactly why we’re taking the next steps and where it’s headed.”

Okay, no one has time to fully parse all the lies and barmy nonsense Johnson packed into that short clip. Suffice to say, Republicans have no evidence against Biden. In fact, their one big hearing on the subject was so effing embarrassing, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer recently told reporters, “I don’t know that I wanna hold any more hearings, to be honest with you.” Which is a weird thing to say if, as Johnson claims, they just want to let “the American people see exactly why we’re talking those next steps and where it is headed.”

But flipping reality on its head is kind of the GOP’s brand now. Donald Trump may have extorted a foreign power in order to dig up dirt on Biden, and yes, he tried to illegally overturn the results of a free and fair election and was all-in when his feral mob decided it wanted to hang Mike Pence (he should have known Pence would hang himself eventually), but President Biden loaned some money to his brother. And his brother paid it back! 

Rule-of-Law Party to the rescue!

Sadly, just based on the few clips we’ve seen, it’s clear that Johnson is the kind of liar who can lie straight to your face without flinching. And if I never watched anything on Sunday mornings besides Fox News and Alvin Styczynski’s Polka Palooza, I’d be pretty convinced by him, too. But I watch all the polka shows, and sample more than just one Sunday show, too. So I’m not fooled by him for a second, no matter how many outrageous fibs he tells for Jesus. 

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: GOP still deciding which fanatical, anti-American traitor to anoint as speaker

3.

Top Trump gadfly Chris Christie is back. He appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper to help us ascertain the obvious: Murderous autocrat and war criminal Vladimir Putin’s best friend in America is Donald Trump. And if Trump returns to power, Putin will get pretty much everything he wants (including a U.S. withdrawal from NATO, though Christie didn't specifically mention that part), and Ukraine will be left twisting in a very foul wind.

Yes, Christie is still telling the truth about Donald Trump, which is a big reason why he’s stuck at roughly 3% in the polls. You can’t be a truth-teller and expect to win anything as a Republican.

Chris Christie on Trump calling for Israeli aid to be separated from Ukraine aid: "He wants to separate them to continue to coddle Putin." pic.twitter.com/g2qOjNCrbX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2023

TAPPER: “Let’s turn to the war in Israel. President Biden has proposed a $105 billion foreign aid package, which includes support to both Israel and Ukraine and some other priorities. Donald Trump said yesterday that Ukraine aid and Israel aid should be separate, it should be decoupled. What do you think?”

CHRISTIE: “Well, this is Donald Trump’s, you know, bad worldview. Look, he wants to do it and separate them because he wants to continue to coddle Putin, as he’s done from the minute he became president of the United States and going forward from there. This aid is connected because these attacks are connected. There’s no doubt that Russia, China and Iran, and North Korea are all working together to try to disrupt the world and create violence. We need to support Israel and support them strongly, and we need to support our friends in Ukraine as well. Remember, Jake, we made a promise to them in 1992 when they removed nuclear missiles and returned them to Russia that we would protect them if Russia attacked. We need to keep our promises.”

Wait, did anyone else notice what I noticed? Christie just admitted that Trump has been coddling Putin from the moment he became president. Is that why Christie risked his life to help Trump prepare for the debates against Biden? So Trump could continue coddling Putin for another four years? 

Republicans. I tell ya, man. Even when they’re telling the truth they’re up to their eyeballs in horseshit.

4.

Of course, Donald Trump isn’t the only Republican who wants to coddle Putin. Enabling mass murderers is all the rage in the GOP these days. While they’re eager to send aid to Israel, which was attacked by a terrorist group with a small fraction of Israel’s resources, Ukraine was invaded by the No. 2 military in the world (by beet consumption, anyway), and it’s doing a great job curtailing Putin’s imperial ambitions. In other words, Ukraine is shedding its citizens’ blood for the sake of Europe’s and the world’s democracies, not just for its own interests. If you want to promote democracy and contain brutal autocracy, this is the fight you should be paying attention to.

But as the recent speaker battle proved, these jabronis take their orders from Donald Trump now, and Trump still wants to build a big tower in Moscow. Perhaps to live in, but that remains to be seen.

Sen. J.D. Vance joined host Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” to throw our brave and loyal ally Ukraine under the busski. 

"There's a difference between what should happen, and what can happen" -- JD Vance on his opposition to US aid to Ukraine pic.twitter.com/RZ0ByUFxJv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 29, 2023

BRENNAN: “We just heard the new House Speaker, you have some similarities with him in terms of separating out Israel aid from Ukraine aid. He did say, though, ‘We can’t allow Putin to prevail in Ukraine because I don’t believe it would stop there. We’re not going to abandon them.’ What part of that statement is objectionable to you?”

VANCE: “Well, nothing is objectionable in the sense that if I could wave a magic wand and throw Putin out of Ukraine, I would, but what we have to accept is there’s a difference between what should happen and what can happen. America has limited capacity. Just in the Israeli conflict, for example, there are 300,000 artillery shells the Israelis would love to have access to. They don’t have access to them. Why? Because we sent them to Ukraine. We have a rising threat of China in East Asia. There are weapons the Taiwanese need that we can’t send because we sent them to Ukraine. We have to focus. That’s all I’m saying.”

Uh-huh. You know, when a guy who still supports Donald Trump claims “we have to focus,” it’s almost too much for a single human brain to process. I may have to hook into the Borg hive mind for a few while I try to make sense of it. We have to focus, so let’s make this googly-eyed Adderall golem president again. That sure would help!

Also, we can’t keep sending money to Ukraine. They might win, and where will we be then? So let’s get the Los Alamos National Laboratory started on that magic wand! We’ve got the bad guys on the run now!

These people. Sheesh.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: Matt Gaetz tries to 'splain himself, and Blinken responds to GOP lies about Hamas

But wait! There’s more!

That’s all for this week! Have a happy Halloween! It’s a frightening world out there these days, so maybe take some time to unwind with a few of those “Saw” movies and maybe an “Exorcist” or two.

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

The Ukraine War is core to our American domestic politics

I attempted to run this story last Thursday, but a nasty site bug ate most of it, so readers only saw the first couple of paragraphs. Normally, I go into comments to check reaction and note any corrections, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do so that day. So ultimately, the comments were full of confused “this is the shortest Ukraine Update ever!” Sorry about that. Unfortunately, Ukraine is still a big factor in our domestic politics and the original story is still timely, so we’re running it in full. 

It might not be obvious, but the war in Ukraine has always been an issue of utmost domestic importance to the United States.

Ukraine was at the center of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and featured heavily in internal Republican machinations. Remember, the one change that the Trump camp made to the 2016 Republican Party platform was watering down support for Ukraine.

And then there are the strategic considerations. Russia is a big part of the reason that the United States’ defense budget is north of $800 billion … and fast approaching $900 billion. Not only does Russia’s battlefield defeat have budgetary implications, but it will inform whether we have to fight a hot war against either China or North Korea that would cost trillions of dollars, claim untold lives, and  destroy the world economy.

This is all quite clear to Democrats and old-guard Republicans. But Trump’s MAGA cult has lined up behind their authoritarian pro-Putin leader, rupturing the Republican Party and leading to a seemingly inevitable government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30. [Edit: the shutdown was averted, but only after all Ukraine aid was stripped from the legislation.]

In my list of Republican presidential debate winners and losers Wednesday night, I listed Ukraine as one of the few winners. It started with the running of this excellent ad from Republicans for Ukraine:

It got even better when the moderators adopted the ad’s narrative when asking the assembled candidates about Ukraine.

“So, Governor DeSantis, let me go to you. Experts say President Putin has ordered assassinations across Europe, cheated on arms control treaties with the U.S., and seeks to work with China to force our decline,” former White House press secretary and debate moderator Dana Perino asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “President Reagan believed that if you want to prevent a war, you better be prepared to fight one. Today the Republican Party is at odds over aid to Ukraine. The price tag so far is $76 billion. But is it in our best interest to degrade Russia’s military for less than 5 percent of what we pay annually on defense, especially when there are no U.S. soldiers in the fight?”

DeSantis, hack that he is, had nothing. “It is in our interest to end this war, and that’s what I will do as president,” he answered impotently, spewing empty words. “We are not going to have a blank check.” He then awkwardly pivoted to border border border. But it did open up the field to more forceful defenses.

“[O]ur national vital interest is in degrading the Russian military,” said South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. “By degrading the Russian military, we actually keep our homeland safer, we keep our troops at home.” Former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley added, “A win for Russia is a win for China.”

After tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy claimed that supporting Ukraine was “driving Russia further into China’s arms,” former Vice President Mike Pence made the obvious point that, “Vivek, if you let Putin have Ukraine, that’s a green light to China to take Taiwan. Peace comes through strength.” Remember, China and Russia declared they had a “friendship with no limits” right before Russia invaded. It would take an ignoramus conspiracy theorist like Ramaswamy, who has admitted to not knowing anything about foreign policy until six months ago, to think that supporting Ukraine would bring those two countries further together. They’ve been using the BRICS framework to try and balance out U.S. and Western power for years—since 2001, actually. China and Russia are already allies.

After that exchange, moderator and Fox Business host Stuart Varney teed up a softball for the rest of the pro-Ukraine candidates, asking, “[Former New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie, President Biden’s first two years have brought China, Russia, and Iran closer together. Are we focused too much on Ukraine, and not enough on this threat from the new world order?” Christie smashed it out of the ballpark: “No, they’re all connected, Stuart. They’re all connected. The Chinese are paying for the Russian war in Ukraine. The Iranians are supplying more sophisticated weapons, and so are the North Koreans now as well, with the encouragement of the Chinese. The naivete on this stage from some of these folks is extraordinary.”

He wasn’t done. “And the fact of the matter is, we need to say right now that the Chinese-Russian alliance is something we have to fight against. And we are not going to solve it by going over and cuddling up to Vladimir Putin,” Christie added. “Look, Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was brilliant and a great leader. This is the person who is murdering people in his own country. And now, not having enough blood, he’s now going to Ukraine to murder innocent civilians and kidnap 20,000 children.”

This isn’t hard. Ramaswamy is clearly trying to ingratiate himself with the MAGA seditionist crowd, so perhaps his willful ignorance makes sense. But DeSantis? This is one of the most momentous issues facing the world community today, and rather than deliver a forceful defense of the international rule of law and America’s clear interest in defeating Russia, he pulled a Trumpian “I’ll immediately bring peace” and tried to pivot to something else. His weakness permeates everything he does and says, and he can’t mask it with hateful attacks against trans and gay people. He is a small and scared man, and people see through him. That’s why he’s gone nowhere but down in the polls.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been on an on-again, off-again merry-go-round on whether to include new Ukraine aid in the defense budget, and it is currently out. The House Freedom Caucus’ MAGA-aligned nihilists wanted it stripped out, but there’s no indication that they’ll vote for the clean spending bill anyway, so no one knows how things will proceed without cutting a deal with Democrats.

One person losing patience is Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who must really regret not impeaching Trump when he had the chance. “We’re lined up here against China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran,” McConnell said while speaking at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank on Sept. 27. “That ought to tell you right from the beginning that you’re on the right side. If Putin is to win this, some NATO country will be next. And I think it’s a lot smarter to just stop this invasion, to push him back.”

It’s smart to message the new China-Iran-Russia-North Korea axis. The MAGA cult pretends that focusing on Ukraine and Russia somehow detracts from China, but they are all one and the same fight. Any future Chinese war against Taiwan would feature strong Russian support, if not outright participation. North Korea would similarly need strong Chinese and Russian support for any sustained war against South Korea.

It is U.S. and Western pressure, and the threat to China’s rickety economy, that is keeping them from overtly supplying Russia with military support. But make no mistake, those repressive expansionist regimes are all working to undermine Western democracies and national self-determination. And even if it refuses to provide direct (and overt) military aid to Russia, China has still offered a lifeline and sanctions evasion to keep Russia’s economy from completely collapsing.

At the other end of the Republican spectrum, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has gone off the deep end into nutso conspiracy land. “And over in Ukraine, Charlie, by the way we haven't even talked about this, the country that Mitch McConnell and Schumer and Lindsay Graham and Tom Cotton and everybody can't wait to give another 100 billion dollars to, Ukraine is one of the worst countries on the Earth for child sex trafficking and they're harvesting children's organs over there,” she said on Charlie Kirk’s radio show, amplifying one of the more bizarre Russian-spread conspiracy theories.

At some point, reason will likely prevail and Ukraine aid will pass through both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support. But that doesn’t mean the issue will be domestically dead. Expect the MAGA crowd, fueled by an aggrieved Trump, to keep agitating against Ukraine and building more opposition to further U.S. assistance. How it plays in the 2024 presidential election remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t assume it plays to President Joe Biden’s advantage, particularly given how reluctant he and many of Ukraine’s European allies are to provide Ukraine everything it needs to win quickly and decisively.

Slow-rolling Ukraine aid hasn’t served anyone’s interests except for Russia’s, using the delays to further entrench itself in occupied territory.

Ukraine Update: The Ukraine War is a core American domestic political issue

It might not be obvious, but the war in Ukraine has always been an issue of utmost domestic importance to the United States.

Ukraine was at the center of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and featured heavily in internal Republican machinations. Remember, the one change that the Trump camp made to the 2016 Republican Party platform was watering down support for Ukraine.

And then there are the strategic considerations. Russia is a big part of the reason that the United States’ defense budget is north of $800 billion … and fast approaching $900 billion. Not only does Russia’s battlefield defeat have budgetary implications, but it will inform whether we have to fight a hot war against either China or North Korea that would cost trillions of dollars, claim untold lives, and  destroy the world economy.

This is all quite clear to Democrats and old-guard Republicans. But Trump’s MAGA cult has lined up behind their authoritarian pro-Putin leader, rupturing the Republican Party and leading to a seemingly inevitable government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30.

Sunday Four-Play: Auntie Maxine Waters scorches GOP, and Matt Gaetz makes a startling admission

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy almost certainly missed his calling. He should have been a middle-school teacher. That way, when his unruly charges inevitably shoved a chloroform-soaked rag in his mouth, buried him up to his neck in California clay loam, and slathered his gawping, cow-eyed melon in fruit bat pheromones and expired ghee, at least federal workers would have still gotten their paychecks on time.

But no, he had to go into politics, and now his phantasmagorical fecklessness is on lurid display for everyone to see. And we all get to suffer. So as McCarthy turns Congress into a well-oiled machine with a warning sign on it saying in no uncertain terms that you should never, ever put oil in, on, or anywhere near it, the world continues to turn. But you can rest assured that if Congress needed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the world turning and prevent Lindsey Graham from being flung at Mach 3 into the side of an Ikea, House Republicans would be unable to agree on a framework to do so. 

In fact, Evil Opie is so useless, the government is almost certainly shutting down at the end of the month, and we’re all standing around like it was obvious all along that this would happen. Because while getting liberals on the same page is famously like herding cats, keeping Matt Gaetz, et al., in line is like trying to convince cats to stop licking their balls for 10 seconds and pass an appropriations bill. Nigh on impossible, in other words. 

Then again, stranger things have happened. Stay tuned. Maybe the hardliners in the Freedom Caucus will accede to McCarthy’s demands in exchange for a signed and notarized promise to eat a bug on the playground after school. Though it’s marginally more likely that McCarthy will have a penis drawn on his face in permanent marker the next time you see him. 

So as we steam toward yet another GOP-manufactured crisis, we can only hope that Americans are starting to understand who’s really fucking everything up. (Psst, it’s Republicans. It’s always been Republicans. The call is coming from inside the House!)

Meanwhile, the nattering nabobs keep on natterin’ and nabobbin’—particularly on the Sunday political shows. Which is why we’re all here, aina?

So let’s see what’s on tap this week, shall we?

1.

Of course, it’s hard to argue—or negotiate—with political terrorists, which is precisely what Republicans are. We all witnessed their debt ceiling brinkmanship earlier this year, and now they’re fixing to impeach Joe Biden and shut down the government, largely to appease the Malignant Smegma Golem of Mar-a-Lago.   

It’s hard to fathom what they’re actually trying to accomplish, other than turning the country into an enormous kleptocratic Cracker Barrel. Luckily, though, some people in government still see things clearly. We call these people Democrats.

Rep. Maxine Waters appeared on “The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart,” and she made clear that she’s done with Republicans trying to claim patriotism as their exclusive bailiwick. Democrats may not go around waving—or wearing, or humping, or beating Capitol police officers’ heads in with—the flag, but they clearly love America (and, by extension, the people in it) more than the GOP does.

Don’t believe it? Auntie Maxine explains:

"[The GOP] are not patriots, they are basically, not only disrupting this country, they're destroying it, and they cannot claim patriotism anymore. We, who fight for the people, claim patriotism" @RepMaxineWaters reacts to the budget cuts the Republicans want to make #SundayShow pic.twitter.com/sFtzlaJBt8

— The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart (@weekendcapehart) September 24, 2023

CAPEHART: “Congressman [Brendan] Boyle, the ranking member on the Budget Committee, I think he said in one of the … Congressman Matt Gaetz is proposing cuts as high as 23%—budget cuts.”

WATERS: “Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. And when you take a look at what they’re doing it shows that—you know the Republicans who have claimed patriotism, claimed that they love this country, they don’t care. If they will allow seniors and veterans not to be able to get their disability checks, for example. They don’t care. If they were to allow education to be dismantled in this country—they don’t care. If they don’t care about the people sleeping on the streets, the homeless, and they’re cutting housing vouchers, they’re not patriots. They are basically not only disrupting this country, they’re destroying it. And they cannot claim patriotism anymore. We, who fight for the people, claim patriotism. We’re the patriots, not them. For the Republicans, patriotism is lost. It’s gone.”

Of course, Republicans’ reputation for dewy-eyed patriotism is as unearned as their reputation for growing the economy. Then again, if you define patriotism as lying us into disastrous wars while screwing over veterans and economic success as presiding over enormous job loss and recession, then the Republican Party is for you! If not, you might want to take a moment to listen to people like Congresswoman Waters who aren’t trying to shiv you in the kidneys the second your back is turned.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: Actual Black people react to Trump's 'gangsta' street cred, and Tim Kaine returns

2.

I don’t know if Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would have made a good president—though as the former mayor of a midsized Midwestern town he still has more relevant experience than Trump, who spent the bulk of his tenure shopping for Supreme Court justices who’d make abortion illegal except in the cases of rape, incest, or 468-month-old fetuses named Eric.

That said, Buttigieg is great on the teevee. If he ever gets tired of his transpo gig, he might want to think about advocating for Democrats and Democratic policies full time.

He appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Dana Bash and pointed out Republicans’ hypocrisy when it comes to … well, everything, really. But in this case, complaining about the dire repercussions of budget-slashing and deregulation when they’re the ones out on the wing ripping pieces off the engine

Buttigieg on CNN: "Think about what this means for transportation ... Some of the very same House Republicans who were lining to try to make a partisan political issue of air travel disruptions are proposing cuts that would make it harder to modernize our systems." pic.twitter.com/4bEYSOplsM

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 24, 2023

BUTTIGIEG: “And I would add, the shutdown is being used by some House Republicans as leverage to get budget cuts over and above the deal that was made, which would also have an incredibly negative effect on …

BASH: “They didn’t like the deal in the first place.”

BUTTIGIEG: “Yeah, but think about what this means for transportation again. Obviously, I’m speaking mostly to what’s in my lane, but some of the very same House Republicans who were lining up to try to make a partisan political issue of air travel disruptions are proposing cuts that would make it harder to modernize our systems. Some of the very same House Republicans who were lining up to try to make the pain of the people of East Palestine, Ohio, into a partisan political issue would cut railroad safety inspections. It makes no sense.”

Indeed, Republicans’ complaints make no sense. And at this point, neither does any vote for any Republican ever. They’re like the disruptive student who’s invited up to the chalkboard to teach the class. Well, now they’re teaching it, and so far all we’ve learned is how to write “BOOBIES” on our calculators and how a bill doesn’t become a law. 

They’re not interested in governing. They just want to sow chaos and force John Fetterman to wear a suit. Because that’s what’s really important, isn’t it?

Breaking: Sen. John Fetterman to wear a suit to the Senate but it will be a TAN one.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) September 20, 2023

3.

Brand-new “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker took a break from undermining Western democracy this week to interview Chris Christie, one of Donald Trump’s principal detractors. I’d assumed Christie had entered the race merely to enfeeble Trump, but if you can believe anything he says in the following clip (hint: you can’t; he’s still a Republican, after all), he appears to think he can win, despite national polling that shows him just barely ahead of Azzza Hutchinzzzzzon and Doug Burgum, who is either a current GOP presidential candidate or a new, hearty strain of wheat. (Sorry. After briefly being reminded of the existence of Asa Hutchinson, I no longer have the energy to Google Doug Burgum. Or swallow liquid or soft foods, for that matter.)

The bottom line is, Republicans are making the same mistake they made in 2016. Instead of rallying around a marginally coherent, intermittently lucid candidate like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, they’re splitting the primary vote a dozen different ways, leaving Trump all alone as the prohibitive favorite.

Ah, but Christie doesn’t see it that way.

WATCH: GOP Presidential candidate Chris Christie reacts to the latest NBC News poll, which found him 55 points behind former President Trump. Fmr. @GovChristie (R-N.J.): “If we don’t have a national primary, I don’t spend more than three minutes thinking about it.” pic.twitter.com/HTz3KHgwuE

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) September 24, 2023

WELKER: “Former President Trump is solidifying his lead with GOP primary voters. You’ve been in this race since June, Governor. Why aren’t you gaining more traction?”

CHRISTIE: “Well, Kristen, look, I know you all spent a whole lot of money on national polls, so I don’t mean to go after the polling folks. But the fact is that national polls don’t matter. We don’t have a national primary. If you look at Donald Trump in the latest polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the two earliest states, he is barely at 40 in Iowa and he is under 40, at 34 and at 38, in New Hampshire. That means that between 60 and 65% of Republican voters in those two very important early states want an alternative. And in a place like New Hampshire, I’m in second place behind Donald Trump. So, you know, this whole race is going to change when people actually vote, Kristen. And no offense to any poll that comes out now, but if it’s a national poll, we don't have a national primary, and I don’t spend more than three minutes thinking about it.”

Oh, come on, Kristen. You already know the answer to your question. It’s because Republican voters love chaos, autocracy, and merciless revenge against their enemies, which Trump is offering in spades.

Sadly, tenacious truth-teller Chris Christie appears to be shading the truth here. Yes, Trump polls under 40% in some—but not all—recent New Hampshire primary surveys, and Christie is in second place in at least one of them. But you can be in second place and still be getting your ass kicked. Which Christie is … in the poll he appears to be citing ... by 20 points. 

On the bright side, Welker seems marginally more dignified now that she’s not interviewing a venal tub of McNugget sauce.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: The elephant in the room plops down on 'Meet the Press'

4.

Oh, this is a fun one. Because watching conservatives at each other’s throats is always fun. You might even say these Republicans are in … disarray?

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, an IBS symptom forever in search of a colon to inflame, joined Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” to whine about Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He wants action! And he doesn’t want to have to Venmo anyone in order to get it!

But the best part about this clip? Bartiromo somehow gets Matt to admit the Republican-controlled House is completely useless. We all knew this, of course, but it’s nice to hear it straight from the horse’s arse.

BARTIROMO: To push now to blow up all of the wins that you have had-- GAETZ: Which wins?! Please enumerate them BARTIROMO: How about the fact that McCarthy set up a weaponization committee GAETZ: That's process! pic.twitter.com/3WAI2xpBze

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 24, 2023

BARTIROMO: “Well, [McCarthy’s] doing the four bills next week.”

GAETZ: “Because we’re making him! Because we’re making him!”

BARTIROMO: “But he’s doing it. So to push now, to blow up all of the wins that you all have had now ...”

GAETZ: “Which wins? Please enumerate them.”

BARTIROMO: “Well, okay, well how about the fact that he has set up a weaponization committee to investigate the DOJ, whether they’re involved in a coverup?”

GAETZ: “That’s process!”

BARTIROMO: “Hold on. How about the fact that he has set up the China Select Committee to keep China to account and, of course, he has launched this inquiry into impeachment, potentially, for President Biden. Is that not what you want?”

GAETZ: “None of those things are deliverables. Those are steps in a process. Setting up a committee is an end unto itself only in Washington, D.C. … These committees have done nothing to reduce inflation. They’ve done nothing to actually constrain the Biden government. We can set up committees and have hearings and yell at people, but at the end of the day if we still send the check to fund a weaponized government, having a weaponization subcommittee is little relief to the American people. And if any of this was serious, we would be sending out subpoenas and compelling process the way the Jan. 6 committee did. We should be operating like them. Instead, we’re playing patty-cake with the Bidens. We’re allowing them to get away with it. And we’re funding it. We’re sending the money. If we were serious, use the power of the purse.”

We’re letting the Bidens get away with … that thing we’re sure they did, have no evidence for, and will surely discover just as soon as we impeach the president for high crimes and coffee cup-saluting. Oh, and we’re also taking a hard line against the weaponization of government. And since we know most Republican voters can hold only one thought in their heads at a time—assuming that thought is at least tangentially related to cheesy fries—we're confident no one will notice the irony.

But the big takeaway here? This Republican-led House has been a colossal waste of time.

Thanks, Matt!

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: It's Chuck Todd's last day! And we're ridin' with Biden

But wait! There’s more!

That’s it for now! See you next week.

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE

Chris Christie says he’s going to ‘find’ and ‘confront’ Trump. Good luck with that, buddy

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasn't able to confront his rival presidential candidate, Donald Trump, during the first Republican debate since Trump decided he was too busy being indicted to show up. However, Christie has a plan for how to get his confrontation anyway.

"You think I'm gonna have a hard time finding Donald Trump?” Christie boasted on Tuesday. “You think that over the course of the next couple months I'm not gonna find him and confront him someplace?"

It's a terrible plan if you can even call it one, and it ain't gonna work, but Christie gets to do his tough-guy schtick and maybe egg Trump into angry-posting a bit. And there's an obvious flaw with this “plan”: Trump remains a lifelong coward. He simply doesn't show up where he might be confronted. He holds events at his own resorts, events where you have to pay to set foot on the grounds and where private security and Secret Service agents do not mess around with people who try to sneak in to "confront" a former president. And his rallies are set up with the most loyal of allies and paid for by state Republican parties so that his own campaign doesn't have to pay a dime.

Those Republican Party organizers are not going to let Christie into an event so that he can heckle guest Donald Trump, because that would put them on Trump's enemies list forever. So what's Christie going to do? Is he going to do the classic fake-mustache trick? Disguise himself as a caterer?

Honestly, if Christie really wants to confront Trump, his most likely move would be to simply insult Trump so much and so often as to drive Trump past his usual short-thumbed frenzies on Truth Social and into actually showing up to debate. Christie's whole motivation for running for president appears to be as a foil for Trump, so to Christie, manifesting instances where he can insult Trump to his face might be a campaign-existential goal.

Sign the petition: Denounce MAGA GOP's baseless impeachment inquiry against Biden.

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Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

Trump lashes out at Mitt Romney for proposing plan to stop him from winning GOP nomination

Donald Trump went on yet another rant, this time against Sen. Mitt Romney on his Truth Social platform after the Utah senator wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal on Monday, proposing a plan to stop Trump from winning the GOP presidential nomination. Analysts said the plan was unlikely to succeed.

Late Tuesday night, Trump lashed out at both Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who in May declared that the GOP should come up with another candidate because Trump was simply unelectable. Trump then asked his followers to weigh in and spent hours reposting derogatory comments, in particular about Romney, The Independent reported.

Trump wrote on Truth Social:

”Who is a worse Senator, John ‘The Stiff’ Cornyn of Texas, or Mitt ‘The Loser’ Romney of Massachusetts (Utah?)? They are both weak, ineffective, and very bad for the Republican Party, and our Nation. With even modestly skilled opposition, they’’ll lose their next-Election.  Who could even forget Mitt proudly marching, with full mask, down a once proud Washington, D.C. street with BLM and Rioters? Likewise there’s Cornyn, always quick to surrender to the Dems, giving them anything they want?” 

There’s something funny about Donald Trump calling Mitt Romney “The Loser”… pic.twitter.com/Nsg0E5JiKN

— Benjamin Rothove (@BenjaminRothove) July 26, 2023

In June 2020, Romney tweeted a picture showing him wearing a face mask as he marched in a protest in Washington, D.C., after the police killing of George Floyd.

Black Lives Matter. pic.twitter.com/JpXUFlxH2J

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) June 7, 2020

Romney, a Mormon, became a full-time Utah resident after he lost the 2012 presidential election to Barack Obama. He was elected to the Senate in 2018. He was the only Republican senator to vote twice to convict Trump in his Senate impeachment trials.  

The twice-impeached, twice-indicted (and counting) former president was enraged after Romney published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday headlined: “Donors, Don’t Fund a Trump Plurality.”

Romney wrote:

“Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president. That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr. Trump has the nomination sewn up. For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers—large and small—are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed. That decision day should be no later than, say, Feb. 26, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.”

Romney noted that if candidates stay in the race for a long time, they will split the non-Trump vote and hand the nomination to Trump. That’s because unlike Democratic presidential primaries, a plurality is all that’s needed for GOP winner-take-all primaries. Romney concluded by writing:

“Our party and our country need a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation. Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race. After Feb. 26, they should start doing just that.”

Well, good luck with that plan, Mitt. It’s simply too little, too late.

It didn’t take long for The Washington Post’s Philip Bump to write an analysis on Tuesday titled, “The fatal flaws in Mitt Romney’s plans to stop Trump.” Bump said there were three big problems with Romney’s latest plan to stop Trump. First, Bump said that Romney was wrong about how things worked in 2015-2016. Even though Trump was only getting about one-third of the support in pre-primary polls, it didn’t mean that two-thirds of Republicans opposed him. As the primaries proceeded and candidates dropped out, Trump kept picking up some of the support those candidates had enjoyed, until his nomination was secured.

Second, Bump pointed out that it’s unlikely that the Republicans could replay the scenario that occurred with the Democrats in 2020 when Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democratic candidates dropped out of the race to back Biden after the South Carolina primary. Bump noted that “the Democratic nominating process is more equitable for candidates than the Republican one” and that “the GOP process disproportionately rewards whoever is leading in the polls.” He said that waiting to see which Republican emerges as the most viable non-Trump candidate means letting Trump build up an early lead in delegates.

The third problem with Romney’s proposal, according to Bump, is that Trump “is much better positioned now than he was in 2015 or 2016.” National polling averages show Trump has consistently been at or over 50% since the beginning of the year. And as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign has cratered, Trump is near 50% as the first choice of Republican voters in the early states of Iowa and Nebraska. Bump concluded:

These numbers can shift, but they already undermine Romney’s argument. The idea that there is a plurality of Republicans who oppose Trump might have been true in 2016, but there’s no evidence of that now. Consolidating around one candidate seems, at least at this point, like it would not have much effect on Trump’s march to the nomination.

Matthew Dowd, who served as President George W. Bush’s chief strategist in the 2004 presidential campaign, in an interview Tuesday on MSNBC pointed out another flaw in Romney’s proposal—his emphasis on the influence of megadonors.

"It (the GOP nominating process) is controlled by small donors, and Donald Trump has shown that his ability to raise money, $30, $40, $50 at a time, and he can outraise anybody else," said Dowd. “Mitt Romney wants to signal to megadonors what to do in this process. They really don't control the process. The students are in charge of campus today, and the deans have left town. And that's what Mitt Romney doesn't seem to understand about the Republican Party."

Dowd, who is now a Democrat, did have a suggestion as to what Romney could do if he wanted to make a real difference.

"If Mitt Romney really wanted to have an effect, Mitt Romney could stand up and say, me, and Sen. [Lisa] Murkowski (R-AK) and maybe one or two others, if Donald Trump is the nominee, we're going to become independents and caucus with the Democrats in the Senate in order to hold the MAGA side of the party accountable.

"That would send more shock waves through the system and maybe get people to actually do something about Donald Trump.”

In another Truth Social post, Trump managed to put the shiv into the GOP presidential primary opponent who has been most outspoken in criticizing the former president. He accused former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie of costing Romney the 2012 presidential race by embracing President Barack Obama on the Jersey Shore after Superstorm Sandy struck in October 2012. Trump wrote:

Christie was so star struck with Barack Hussein Obuma (sic), that Romney, who is a terrible politician and horrible representative of the Republican Party, never had a chance of winning the Presidency. Christie sold Romney out, making one of the worst Convention Speeches in History—Virtually not even mentioning Romney by name. Romney sat watching, in a trance—He couldn’t believe it!

Christie helped Trump prepare for the 2020 presidential debates with Joe Biden, only to become very ill with COVID-19 shortly afterward. Trump was carrying the virus during the Sept. 29 debate and was diagnosed with COVID-19 a few days later. Christie’s relationship with Trump further deteriorated after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump has also blamed Christie for recommending the appointment of Christopher Wray to be the FBI director. Trump and his allies have castigated Wray and the FBI for their role in the investigation into his handling of classified documents, including the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, that resulted in a multi-count indictment.

As for Romney, there are already signs that he is going to face a MAGA challenger should he decide to seek reelection to the Senate in 2024. In May, the mayor of Riverton, Utah, Trent Staggs, announced his candidacy for Romney’s seat, according to the AP.

“The only thing I’ve seen him fight for are the Establishment, ‘wokeness,’ open borders, impeaching President Trump and putting us even deeper into debt,” Staggs said in his announcement video that highlights Romney’s votes to impeach Trump, according to the AP.

The AP reported that other Republicans, including former U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz and state Attorney General Sean Reyes, were considering challenging Romney from the right. Romney retains widespread popularity in Utah because his family ranks among the most prominent members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and many Mormons have had reservations about Trump’s moral character.

But let’s not forget that Romney sought and accepted Trump’s endorsement in 2012.

Reminder that Romney gladly accepted Trump's endorsement in February 2012, when Trump's political claim to fame was pushing racist conspiracy theories about Obama https://t.co/NKBbPCFkbC pic.twitter.com/brcVo0htjH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2022

Now Romney is clearly on Trump’s enemies list.

And look at who else has joined Trump in criticizing Romney: U.S. Rep. George Santos, who called the Utah senator “the biggest clown we’ve seen in government.” Certainly takes one to know one.

George Santos on Mitt Romney: “He’s a clown. He’s the biggest clown we’ve seen in government.” Coming from a notorious fraudster and a pathological liar, that’s a real compliment for Senator Romney. pic.twitter.com/clJW2v2Qox

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 19, 2023