This Week in Statehouse Action: 2 Lock 2 Down edition

Hello, and happy early Independence Day to all who observe!

(And, of course, as an erudite consumer of this missive, I know you’ll observe in a responsible, socially-distanced way. Because Lockdown 2: The New Batch is going to suck enough as it is.)

As a lot of states whose Republican governors reopened businesses prematurely in the middle of a damn pandemic begin to grapple with the obvious and avoidable fallout, a lot of state-level action right now is extremely coronavirus-related.

… but not all of it.

Body Double: … but some of it!

Campaign Action
  • In Pennsylvania, GOP Rep. (and noted Terrible Human) Daryl Metcalfe is coopting “my body, my choice” as a slogan to justify his reckless refusal to wear a face mask to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
    • Metcalfe has also introduced a resolution calling for the impeachment of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, saying in a statement that Wolf’s businesses closures and other measures he’s taken to combat the spread of the coronavirus have “caused immeasurable harm an hardship for far more Pennsylvanians than the virus!”

I dunno, getting a deadly disease seems like a pretty severe hardship

Double or Nothing: In Kansas, where I’m sure the GOP-controlled legislature is contemplating a measured and reasonable response to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s new mandatory face mask order, one Republican lawmaker is super worried about losing his primary election in August.

Okay, this has all been interesting, but I did promise you non-coronavirus related content.

And, well, tomorrow is an important day.

No, not because it’s Independence Day Eve.

And not because it’s my half-birthday.

(Which it is.)

Election Day is four short months from July 3.

And this is a year that ends in zero.

Which makes this Election Day the final chance for Democrats to flip legislative chambers and put themselves in position in states across the country to prevent another decade of GOP gerrymandering.

Thousands of seats are on the ballot this fall.

And yes, all state legislative elections in each and every state are important.

But because redistricting is at stake, some are a bit more important than others this fall.

Democrats taking a birds-eye view of these elections (c’est moi) have to weigh a number of factors when it comes to prioritizing states, chambers, and seats this year.

  • How many seats do Democrats need to flip to win a majority in the chamber?
  • Do past election results, political trends, or other factors indicate that Democrats can flip that many seats in a single election?
  • Was Democratic recruitment strong?
  • Do legislators in that state impact redistricting (some states, like California, task independent commissions with drawing legislative and congressional maps)?

These are the chief factors I’ve weighed in determining my state legislative chamber priority target list for 2020.

Topmost among those targets are (in alphabetical order, nothing to read into here):

  • Arizona House (Dems need to flip two for a majority)
  • Arizona Senate (Dems need to flip three)
  • Michigan House (Dems need to flip four)
  • Minnesota Senate (flip two)
  • North Carolina House (flip six)
  • North Carolina Senate (flip five)
  • Pennsylvania House (flip nine)
  • Texas House (flip nine)
    • In Arizona, flipping either chamber would break the Republican trifecta. While legislative and congressional maps there are drawn by an independent redistricting commission, Republicans have spent the entire decade trying to undermine and dismantle the body; as long as the GOP has complete control of the state, fair redistricting is in real danger.
    • In Michigan, flipping the House would help stymie ongoing GOP efforts to dismantle or defang the independent redistricting commission the party’s been attacking since voters approved it in 2018.
    • In Minnesota, flipping the state Senate would give Democrats a governing trifecta (governorship, House, Senate) and complete control of the redistricting process.
    • Flipping at least one chamber in North Carolina is essential to preventing another GOP gerrymander of the state. The Democratic governor is generally favored to win reelection here, but it doesn’t matter—the legislature has complete control of legislative and congressional redistricting.
    • While Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is positioned to veto egregious partisan gerrymanders sent to him by the legislature, flipping a chamber in Pennsylvania would give him a redistricting partner, so to speak, which would send him a fair map to approve, levy against the GOP in negotiations, or be considered by the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court in litigation.
    • Flipping the Texas House would break the GOP trifecta in the state and give Democrats a say in the redistricting process for the first time since the infamous DeLay-mander of 2003.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be going in to detail on each of these chambers—challenges, opportunities, available paths to victory, targeted districts, and the like. And I’ll be adding target chambers as the electoral landscape shifts and solidifies as we approach November.

  • But let’s start with the relative layup of the bunch: Minnesota Senate.
    • As ever, much love to the beautiful brains at Daily Kos Elections who crunch the numbers that give us presidential and other statewide elections results broken down by legislative district.
      • And after this crunching, they’ve spit out multiple opportunities for Democrats to win that coveted trifecta this fall.
        • Republicans currently have a 35-32 majority in the Minnesota Senate.
        • In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried just 28 seats in the 67-seat chamber.
        • In the special U.S. Senate election in 2018, Democrat Tina Smith carried 39 out of 67 districts.
        • Democrat Tim Walz carried those same 39 seats, plus two more.
        • Sen. Amy Klobuchar annihilated her GOP opponent and carried a ridiculous 52 of the 67 Senate seats, but let’s look at the closer elections to map out the most viable targets in the fall.
          • Those targets can be found among the eight Smith/Waltz districts currently represented by Republicans.
    • It’s worth noting, though, that only two of those seats supported Clinton in 2016 (SDs 44 and 56).
      • … which, well, is fine, since Democrats only have to flip two for that sweet Senate majority and hot trifecta action.

Welp, that’s a wrap for this week. Thanks for checking in before checking out for the holiday!

Whatever you end up doing this weekend, I hope you enjoy the heck out of it.

You deserve it.

You’re worth it.

Hang in there.

And wear a mask.

Journalism 101 fail: NYT article lets Republicans lie and attack, but can’t find Democrat to respond

What the hell is going on at The New York Times? This question has arisen far too often in the past few years, most recently last week after James Bennet, the paper’s now-former editorial page editor, pitched and then published—without reading it first, allegedly—a fascist op-ed by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. They were rightly reamed for it, with their own 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner and "The 1619 Project" creator Nikole Hannah-Jones leading the way, saying, “As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this.".

So that was a poor decision by the opinion department, but surely the folks in the Times’ news department are doing their level best and practicing solid journalism, right? They’ve learned the hard and necessary lessons from the absurdly irresponsible, obsessive way they covered “her emails” in 2016, while downplaying investigations and actual wrongdoing by The Man Who Ended Up Losing The Popular Vote, right?

Well, from what I saw in a recent Sunday edition, not so much.

Like so many New York stories, we must begin in Central Park. I was sitting on the Great Lawn—appropriately distanced from a few friends, of course—and reading the Sunday Times news section when I started muttering. Then I humphed. Then I just slapped the newspaper with the back of my hand and said, “Sorry to interrupt, guys, but you gotta hear this.”

The article that prompted my outburst was one that I initially figured would be pretty dull. “Trump Wanted a Pre-Virus Convention Crowd, or None At All,” was the print headline (it’s slightly different online). The piece focused on Trump’s threat to move the Republican National Convention from Charlotte, North Carolina (we now know that most of the convention activities, including the nomination acceptance speech, will take place in Jacksonville, Florida). The story focused on the impeached president’s dismay with the Tar Heel State’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who wouldn’t guarantee that Republicans could pack people together on the convention floor and party like it was 2019.

The article’s first quote came from Ada Fisher, a national committeewoman for North Carolina’s Republican Party. Unsurprisingly, she blamed Democrats. “There are a lot of liberal, establishment people here who just don’t like the Republican Party. People didn’t want it to happen just because Republicans were involved. But Charlotte can’t stand to lose $200 million in revenue right now.” Standard Republican boilerplate: The Democrats are a bunch of meanies. She even managed to work in both “liberal” and “establishment” as slurs. Well played, Ms. Fisher.

The next quote was from Orange Julius Caesar himself, who’d informed Cooper how stupendously North Carolina had been treated by the White House; he’d sent lots of tests and ventilators, see, as well as the National Guard. “I think we’ve done a good job!” and “We gave you a lot!” and more of the same. About what you’d expect from Trump.

Republican National Committee chair Ronna (don’t call me Romney) McDaniel’s letter to the convention’s host committee was next; essentially, she blamed the Democrats. If you’re wondering if, at any point in this journey so far, the Times offered any response from North Carolina Democrats, you already know the answer to that.

Two more Republicans weighed in before the final quotes came from the Republican state chair from Connecticut, J.R. Romano, who criticized Gov. Cooper’s supposedly over-aggressive requirements regarding wearing masks and social distancing: “We’re adults,” Romano said. “We all know the risks. If someone wants to wear a face mask, they can. If someone doesn’t, they’re taking a risk. I don’t think they had to make this mandatory.”

It is worth noting that Thursday was the fourth day in a row that coronavirus hospitalizations in North Carolina hit a new high.

I couldn’t believe that Romano’s nonsense was the end of the article. I kept waiting for the pushback, a quote from Cooper, or one his aides or allies, about the need to be careful because of the virus, or how decisions on the convention would be governed by science, or how they’d have to see how the outbreak looks in the coming weeks, or that they’d love to host the Republicans, but social distancing rules will still probably be necessary. Anything along those lines would’ve worked. Anything.

Could the authors really not find a Democrat in the entire state or country to go on record here? How did they submit this piece without making sure they at least found one? Did they even notice the imbalance? Where were their editors? There are multiple layers of editorial oversight, one would imagine, for an article on national politics that runs in the main print section of the Sunday New York Times. Did nobody ask, “Hey, can you find a quote from a frickin’ Democrat?” I’ve never worked as an editor at the Gray Lady, but that question came to mind before I was halfway through the piece.

The article did summarize the respective positions of Cooper and Trump, as well as their conversations, yet only Trump and Republicans were given space to defend their positions. Republicans’ assertions about the motivations of North Carolina Democrats also went unchallenged by the authors, other than a brief mention—far from any Republican statements—that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended mask-wearing and social distancing.

The article was written by Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman. While Karni has not faced significant criticism over her work in the past, Haberman has been called out before for pro-Trump, pro-Republican reporting. Trump has also attacked Haberman, but given that he has attacked the entire journalism profession, such attacks are a badge of honor and don’t mean anyone’s actually been unfair to him or his administration. Haberman’s critics maintain the opposite.

In May 2019, Haberman wrote an article for the Times about Hope Hicks, who had left her position as White House communications director a year earlier, then received a subpoena to testify before the House regarding her former boss and obstruction of justice (remember the Mueller report?). Haberman’s article explored whether Hicks would, you know, actually comply with the law. Yet some folks were concerned that the decision to commit a crime was framed, by Haberman, as “an existential question.”

What gets me is news breaks that this woman is weighing committing a crime before Congress &it�s getting framed by the NYT as some Lifetime drama called �Hope�s Choice.� This is a fmr admin official considering participating in a coverup led by the President. Treat her equally. https://t.co/XcNbSuU4QB

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 26, 2019

Anyway: Here's a dare for @maggieNYT, since she wants to write about what happens when women defy a subpoena. Write a similar story about @xychelsea, who is in jail for defying a subpoena.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) May 26, 2019

There is nothing for Hope Hicks to �decide.� She got a subpoena from Congress. Were she not white, wealthy, and connected, we wouldn�t be having this conversation. She would appear, or she would face the threat of prison like the rest of us. As she should. https://t.co/giDCcvIxvf

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) May 26, 2019

One Vanity Fair headline referred to Haberman as a “Trump Whisperer,” citing her “closeness—and fairness—to the president.” Fairness is a subjective term, but I have a hard time seeing it as fair to Roy Cooper or North Carolina Democrats that Haberman and Karni’s article quoted five angry Republicans, but not one Democrat.

Beyond the problems with Haberman’s reporting specifically, one of the biggest problems with the so-called mainstream media writ large is something called “bothsidesism,” also known as false equivalency. Bothsidesism occurs when reporters cover an issue simply by presenting the opposing views of Democrats and Republicans as equivalent, irrespective of which side is telling the truth.

Laila Lalami, writing in in The Nation, describes bothsidesism as when journalists “give space to both sides of any story, no matter what the facts show, leaving them open to manipulation by surrogates acting in bad faith and, more worrying, making it harder for ordinary citizens to remain informed and engaged.” Nancy LeTourneau, writing for Washington Monthly, notes that “For those of us who are trying to keep the door to being open-minded cracked at least a little bit, this both-siderism has a kind of gaslighting effect. You begin to question whether what you are witnessing with your own two eyes is real.”

At the Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop went in-depth on bothsidesism and the Times during the impeachment of Donald Trump.

As impeachment has progressed, attacks on the “both sides” approach—and the Times, in particular—have intensified. Over the weekend, critics trained their ire on an article in the paper, headlined “The Breach Widens as Congress Nears a Partisan Impeachment,” about a debate in the Judiciary Committee. Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight, noted that the actual words “both sides” appeared four times in the piece. (One of these was in a quotation.) Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU, listed 12 more snippets from the article as evidence of the Times’s inability to handle what he calls “asymmetrical polarization.” They included “the different impeachment realities that the two parties are living in,” “both sides engaged in a kind of mutually assured destruction,” and “the two parties could not even agree on a basic set of facts in front of them.”

Rosen is right that this sort of language is inadequate: Democrats, for the most part, are engaging with the factual record; Republicans, for the most part, are not. These positions are manifestly not equivalent. Treating them as such does not serve any useful concept of fairness; instead, it rebounds clearly to the advantage of the one side (Republicans) for whom nonsense being taken seriously is a victory in itself. The Times is far from the only culprit.

The Times also blew it when covering Trump’s remarks after back-to-back mass shootings in August 2019—one of which was carried out by a racist who specifically targeted Latinx Americans. The initial headline—in all caps (something done relatively rarely, as it indicates special importance)—read “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM.” Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, among many others, pushed back hard on that framing.

Lives literally depend on you doing better, NYT. Please do. https://t.co/L4CpCb8zLi

— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) August 6, 2019

After facing a lot of heat, the headline was changed to “ASSAILING HATE BUT NOT GUNS.” A spokesperson for the Times admitted that “The headline was bad and has been changed for the second edition.” Executive editor Dean Baquet also called it a “bad headline.” The final headline, at least online, reads: “Trump Condemns White Supremacy but Stops Short of Major Gun Controls.” The Confederacy’s Biggest Fan, of course, still liked the original headline best, calling it “the correct description” of what he’d said.

What mattered, in the context of the mass shootings, was that Trump had declared a refusal to support any significant new gun control measures, such as universal background checks, or bans on high capacity ammunition magazines. However, the Times’  first instinct was to praise Trump as an anti-racist unifier. Let that choice sink in.

It’s bad enough when reporters at mainstream media outlets are so afraid of being accused of showing “liberal bias” that they engage in bothsidesism and false equivalency. Regarding the Sunday Times article about the RNC, presenting both sides would have been an improvement, as the authors literally only gave us one side of a political story in which Democrats and Republicans disagreed. Yet what the article on the battle over the RNC convention shares with other New York Times pieces that are guilty of bothsidesism is the willingness to bend over backward to help Republicans. And they call that paper the liberal media.

There are no quick fixes here for The Times. As for constructive criticism, journalists at The Times could do a lot worse than to listen to the aforementioned Professor Rosen. Rosen diagnosed the crux of the paper’s problem a couple of years ago (and is as good a media critic as there is), in a long analysis that’s worth reading. One quote in particular hits the nail on the head.

“Remember when the Washington Post came out with its new motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness?” It put Post journalism on the side of keeping democracy alive. Dean Baquet, executive editor of the Times, made fun of it. ‘Sounds like the next Batman movie,’ he said.”

You know what they say about the fish rotting from the head down? Perhaps the entire staff, top to bottom, could undergo the kind of training they did at The Telegraph (UK), which Rosen also cited as a way to help mainstream media journalists unlearn some of their worst habits.

To paraphrase Ted “Theodore” Logan, strange things are afoot at The New York Times, and not at all in the cool, “I just met George Carlin outside the Circle K” kind of way. In all seriousness, what The Times did here is reflective of what’s been going on for generations. In 1969, Vice President Spiro Agnew drew up the playbook for Republican liars attacking the media in order to intimidate them into providing more favorable coverage; the Koch brothers have kept that tradition alive. In sports, this is called “working the refs,” and Paul Krugman rightly applied the term to the imbalance in how the media covered Trump as compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

To the detriment of American politics, the American people, and our democracy, we’ve had four more years of this media malpractice since then. If mainstream media outlets keep this up, and we end up with four more of Trump as a result, there may not be much of a free media left to cover his second term. It’s on all of us to do our part between now and November to make sure that doesn’t happen.

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

John Cusack Outrageously Claims Military Has ‘Abandoned’ Trump: Says Supporters He Still Has Are Racist

The radically liberal actor John Cusack had yet another unhinged meltdown stemming from Donald Trump and his supporters. In a deranged tweet that was full of typos, Cusack claimed that the president is “playing for an exit strategy” and that the only supporters he has left are racist.

“Trump is playing for an exit strategy—that keeps him from jail- miltary [sic] has abandoned his fascism—all he’s got left is rascists [sic]- He wants something to leverage – to stay out of jail,” Cusack tweeted, noticeably misspelling the words “military” and “racists.”

In another tweet today, Cusack called Trump a “bloated punk,” which just goes to show how deep his hatred for the president runs.

Cusack’s Twitter page is full of disturbing meltdowns against Trump and those who voted for him, indicating all-consuming hatred for the president equivalent to many of his Hollywood cohorts. Back in March, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Cusack called for another impeachment effort against Trump, saying it was necessary to “save lives.”

“We need strikes /  and we need to remove trump from power to save lives Impeach him again / Pressure for 25th,” he tweeted on March 31.

All Cusack is accomplishing with these tweets is showing the world that he is just another Hollywood liberal elitist who has lost all touch with reality.

This piece was written by PopZette Staff on June 13, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Barr says big Democrat fish may be hooked in Durham probe
Derek Chauvin and George Floyd knew each other and ‘bumped heads,’ says former coworker at nightclub
Biden surrogate Terry McAuliffe slips up, caught on camera saying campaign prefers Biden stay ‘in the basement’

The post John Cusack Outrageously Claims Military Has ‘Abandoned’ Trump: Says Supporters He Still Has Are Racist appeared first on The Political Insider.

Democrats Have Forgotten About Social Distancing…When It Comes To Rioters

James Woods, the famed actor and conservative activist, has an interesting point when it comes to public health and rioting.

For all to see on nationwide cable news, looters, arsonists, and vandals seem to be casting aside any notion of coronavirus social distancing with nary an unkind word from Democrats who only a week ago were imposing draconian measures on average American citizens if they dared to not maintain a six-foot perimeter around themselves.

Democrat governors in states such as Kansas and Kentucky (and other Democrats as well) threatened severe penalties against those who tried to go to church, or even visit loved ones, if social distancing was at risk. But today, when up close and personal material carnage and urban mayhem coincide with their anti-American agenda, the Democrat social distancing edicts are as dead as yesterday’s polling data. Presently it’s a free for all on the streets, as rioters stand COVID-ignoring arm to arm in opposing law enforcement personnel who are trying to stop them from burning down large swaths of American cities.

One wonders if social distancing, and other virus regulations, wasn’t just the latest in a line of moves to be conveniently discarded when the need no longer suited the Democrat playbook. This process started almost on the very day Donald Trump was elected president.

First he was an illegitimate president put into office by the Russians. That didn’t work. Then they made that fantasy official with the Mueller probe. Sorry, no banana. Then as soon as that went bust the narrative turned effortlessly to impeachment. They lost that too. Almost the week after the Senate vote that exonerated Trump in January, coronavirus, and its subsequent grabs for state power by various Democrat governors, came into play.

Now as the American people start to ignore virus protocols and go back to business (what’s left of it) and their lives, suddenly (as if on cue) the George Floyd riots appear on the streets of many American cities. The bridges between these attacks on the president and America seem virtually seamless.

Are we alleging a conspiracy? Hardly. The more likely explanation is opportunistic exploitation, good timing, and funding and training already in place to take advantage of probable events. Ask yourself: How many incidents of police brutality happen on a regular basis? It’s not that the police are mindless animals—far from it.

But in any organization there will be moral stragglers. Given the many scores of thousands of law enforcement personnel throughout the nation, some are bound to be bad apples who will act on their brutal instincts. When they do so, as in the Minneapolis case of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, and it doesn’t meet the proper political criterion, the case is ignored. However, when the casting fits the wolves pounce.

There are other interesting clues as well. Professionally-made signs appearing at the riots in mere hours after the Floyd killing, bricks apparently prepositioned in urban locales for the use of rioters, tactical operators ready to dispense cash and on-the-scene direction immediately in evidence and effective at their jobs, and a media narrative that switched from a pandemic that was going to kill us all (hence the need for nanny state regulations), to a virus wiped off the headlines with almost preplanned ease.

Yes, it surely seems like a deep dark NWO/deep state/Atomic Mole People gambit to corrupt our precious bodily fluids. But it’s not. It is the tactical and opportunistic expertise of a cunning enemy and their media acolytes. Next time —and there will be a next time— perhaps we can be proactive instead of constantly reactive.

This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on June 2, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Charlotte Police Department reveals 70% of rioters they’ve arrested are ‘instigators’ from out of state
Obama breaks his silence on George Floyd’s death: ‘Bigotry’ is ‘painfully, maddeningly normal’ in USA
Chilling footage shows Portland mob beat up unconscious man: ‘Black lives matter, f*ggot’

The post Democrats Have Forgotten About Social Distancing…When It Comes To Rioters appeared first on The Political Insider.

Bill Maher Regrets Trump Impeachment: It ‘Turned Out To Be A Horrible Thing’

Liberal talk show host Bill Maher surprised everyone on Friday’s episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” when he admitted he now regrets the impeachment of President Donald Trump, saying that it “turned out to be a horrible thing.”

While talking to leftwing documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, Maher pointed to Trump’s recent firings of various inspectors general, complaining that they got very little media attention amidst COVID-19. He believes that much of this lack of coverage can be traced back to Trump’s impeachment.

“Just the impeachment, you know, I mean, if I could do it over again I wouldn’t because it just emboldened him,” Maher said, according to Fox News. “Now he can conduct this war on accountability and nobody even— it barely made the papers. I bet you people are watching this and going, ‘Wow, I’ve never heard that because the news is all COVID.'”

Moore agreed with him, going so far as to say the removal of the government watchdogs makes Trump “very dangerous.” This comes one month after Maher called for Trump to be impeached for “favoring” states that “are nice to him” during the coronavirus pandemic, according to The Blaze.

“I find one of the most galling parts about this is that the president is favoring certain states over the others. Governors who are ‘nice’ to him, as he calls it, get a lot of attention and all of the equipment they want,” Maher told Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). “To me, this is even more of an impeachable offense than what he did with Ukraine or Russia.”

Maher has long been vocal about his support for impeaching Trump, voicing his support for it in January of 2019. “I don’t know how we get out of this except by getting him out of office,” Maher said. “I wasn’t necessarily for impeachment until recently, but I think you have to go ahead and do it.”

Democrats were so focused on their effort to impeach Trump earlier this year that they almost completely ignored COVID-19 when the virus was starting to make its way to the U.S. Had Democrats not been distracting everyone with their impeachment nonsense, there’s no telling where we’d be with coronavirus today.

This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on May 24, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany breaks down, discusses Ravi Zacharias’ death and his impacts on her faith
Over 600 doctors sign letter begging Trump to end lockdowns, call them a ‘mass casualty incident’
Kamala Harris sponsors bill condemning the use of the term ‘Chinese virus’ as racist

The post Bill Maher Regrets Trump Impeachment: It ‘Turned Out To Be A Horrible Thing’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

Vulnerable Senate Republicans have a ‘morbidly obese’ problem weighing them down: Trump

It's suddenly occurring to vulnerable Senate Republicans that they're pretty much screwed after giving Donald Trump their seal of approval with an impeachment acquittal, and then watching him consign Americans to death and economic doom.

Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who some consider the walking dead at this point electorally, made a big, headline-grabbing show of urgency earlier this week to light a fire under the butts of his colleagues. 

Wanna help restore responsible leadership to the Senate? Give $2 right now to give Senate Republicans the boot.

"It’s unfathomable that the Senate is set to go on recess without considering any additional #COVID19 assistance for the American people," Gardner wrote, keenly aware that House Democrats had already passed a giant relief bill. "Anyone who thinks now is the time to go on recess hasn’t been listening," he added, noting that Coloradans and Americans alike "are hurting."

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, also facing a tough reelection, joined Gardner in expressing her, shall we say, concern. "The fallout from the coronavirus is unprecedented," she tweeted, saying Congress had a "tremendous responsibility" to help mitigate the crisis. "We must not wait," she urged.

It was a notable break from the GOP caucus given that Trump had visited Capitol Hill just a day earlier to counsel unity among Senate Republicans and tell them to hang tough. So much for that—some of them are starting to sort of/kind of act like they want to save their own behinds. Good luck with that after every single one of them cast votes to saddle America with the leadership of Donald Trump.

But Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell couldn't be moved. McConnell has repeatedly signified zero sense of urgency on bringing any more relief to struggling Americans. And Trump's right there with him. Whatever supposed unity Trump went to the Hill to pitch was really just his way of saying, Do what I need you to do—or else

That's why Gardner folded like a house of cards on his empty threat to block the Senate from recessing before they took meaningful action on helping the nearly 40 million Americans who have now filed for unemployment in the past couple of months. 

Cory Gardner�s threat to try to block next week�s recess has been resolved, per John Thune. Gardner had called on the Senate to move ahead with a recovery plan. Thune says Gardner and McConnell have talked about doing �some things down the road.� Senators leaving town for recess

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 21, 2020

Gardner told CNN's Manu Raju they were "close" on "PPP and some other things that will help Colorado," adding the he felt "good" about what they might be able to accomplish. Wow, was that ever an inspiring stand for the people. 

Anyway, vulnerable Senate Republicans are clearly on their own, but it's also clearly not important enough for any of them to grow a spine—just like when they cast their acquittal votes. 

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany Just Buried Hypocrite Chris Cuomo

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany took it to CNN ‘journalist’ Chris Cuomo after the latter mocked President Donald Trump for taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure against coronavirus.

It turns out, Cuomo actually took a form of the drug during his own treatment for the virus.

According to his wife’s blog posts regarding her husband’s treatment, Cuomo took “potentized quinine” a synthetic derivative of chloroquine according to CNN Health, and something she called a “natural antibiotic.”

McEnany called Cuomo out for actually taking a “less safe version.”

RELATED: Tucker Carlson Blasts Chris Cuomo Over ‘Fake’ Stunt, Suggests There’s A ‘Scandal Underneath’

McEnany in Beast Mode

At a White House press briefing Wednesday, McEnany addressed a question regarding the use of hydroxychloroquine and attempted to set the record straight on criticisms, particularly from Cuomo.

“You had Chris Cuomo saying the president knows that hydroxychloroquine is not supported by science, he knows it has been flagged by his own people and he’s using it,” McEnany railed.

“Cuomo mocked the president for this,” she continued. “It turns out that Chris Cuomo took a less safe version of it called quinine, which the FDA removed from the market in 2006 because it had serious side effects, including death. So really interesting to have that criticism of the president.”

That’s when she moved in for the kill, suggesting Cuomo speak to his brother Andrew, governor of New York, who had several on-the-record positive statements about hydroxychloroquine.

RELATED: White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany Shreds Media When Asked About Her Past Statements On Coronavirus

Cuomo’s Own Hoax

This is an incredibly rewarding takedown by McEnany, especially in context with little Fredo’s ‘fake’ stunt he and CNN pulled showing him emerging from his basement quarantine following a coronavirus diagnosis.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson blasted Cuomo for the fake news story.

“CNN, shameless cheese balls that they are celebrated by filming Cuomo rising like a buff cable news Lazarus from the grave and back into ordinary life,” Carlson mocked.

Nobody should take this man seriously – whether it involves “cheesy” skits like this or what he considers fair criticism of the President.

Check out our exclusive interview with Kayleigh McEnany in 2018 in which she predicted the Trump impeachment!

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Polls Show President Trump Has An Edge On Joe Biden In Crucial Battleground States

President Donald Trump has an edge on Joe Biden in key battleground states and also leads with independent voters in those states, according to a new poll released on Wednesday.

Trump Has a Small Lead Over Biden in Battleground States that is Outside the Margin of Error

A CNBC/Change Research poll, taken among 5,408 likely voters in the important battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from May 15 to May 17, showed Trump with an edge over Biden, 48 percent to 46 percent.

This makes Trump’s lead, however small, outside the 1.9 percent margin of error.

RELATED: New Gallup Poll Shows Donald Trump Approval Rating Up Thanks To Independents

Trump Has a Significant Lead with Independent Voters in These States

Among independent voters in those states, Trump has a substantial lead, polling at 41 percent against Biden’s 32 percent.

On who would handle the COVID-19 crisis better, voters are split. However when it comes to who would do better in handling the economy as we reopen the country, Trumps 51 percent to Biden’s 40 percent.

Republicans are more optimistic about recovering from the coronavirus pandemic.  71% of Republicans think the situation is improving, while Democrats and independents tend to disagree. Only 35 percent of independents believe things are improving and that number drops to 12 percent with Democrats.

Democrats and independents were also found to believe more than Republicans that a second wave of the illness would come by the end of 2020.

More Dems and Independent See a Coronavirus Resurgence This Year than Republicans

CNBC reported, “99% of Democrats say that there is at least a 50-50 chance of a second wave in U.S. infections before the end of the year, with 94% telling pollsters that it will probably or definitely happen. On the other hand, 38% of Republicans said a second wave will probably or definitely not appear, with 41% saying there’s a 50-50 chance.”

“More than 8 in 10 independents see at least a 50-50 chance of a second wave this year, with 37% saying there will definitely be one and 19% saying it is probable,” CNBC noted. “If there is a second wave, swing-state voters are divided over who should be blamed. Democrats overwhelmingly said the two people or groups most responsible would be Trump and states that reopened their economies too soon, while Republicans said it would be the fault of China and Democrats.”

RELATED: Thanks Dems! New Poll Shows Impeachment is Helping Trump in Battleground States

In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in all of the battleground states the CNBC/Change Research poll conducted surveys in.

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Republican Elise Stefanik Wants ‘Independent Investigation’ Into Cuomo’s Nursing Home Policies

Republican New York Representative Elise Stefanik is calling for an “independent investigation” into Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s nursing home policies.

Stefanik Think Gov. Cuomo’s Bad Policy Led to More Deaths and Flawed Data

Stefanik said Tuesday that an investigation is necessary after reports suggested that her state was undercounting the number of COVID-19-related deaths in assisted living facilities.

New York leads the country in nursing home deaths, with over 5,000 reported.

RELATED: Federal Intel Boss Confirms Investigation Is Underway Into Whether COVID-19 Outbreak Was ‘Result Of An Accident’ In Wuhan, China Lab

Stefanik told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends“ on Tuesday, “New York has mismanaged how we have approached and how we’ve protected our seniors in our nursing homes. We knew, going into this, that our most vulnerable are our seniors and particularly in those assisted living facilities, whether they’re senior living facilities or nursing homes.”

Cuomo originally required nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients, but the governor reversed that policy in early May.

“New York, when compared to other states, took a number of negative actions that cost over 5,000 lives,” Stefanik said. “They also didn’t fully tell the public how many seniors’ deaths there were coming from nursing homes. So that reporting data, they didn’t count the hospital deaths when there was a positive case that was transmitted because of the senior nursing home.”

RELATED: Hawley: China Must Be Investigated for Role in Coronavirus Pandemic

Stefanik: ‘It’s not just Republicans who are calling for this independent investigation. It’s Democrats as well’

Stefanik also said that she does not believe a fair investigation will happen if directed by current Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“I’ve heard from families who are still grieving for loss of their loved ones and they deserve answers,” Stefanik said. “And it’s not just Republicans who are calling for this independent investigation. It’s Democrats as well.”

“It cannot be conducted by New York’s attorney general either,” she added. “It needs to be an independent investigation.”

“I’m calling for the Department of HHS to conduct this independent investigation, but I think it needs to come from the federal government,” Stefanik finished.

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