Category: Covid-19

Hollywood A-Lister Judd Apatow Calls Trump ‘A Mass Murderer’ Who ‘Should Be Impeached For Murder’

Posted on by LifeZette

The A-list Hollywood director Judd Apatow, known for such hits as The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, launched a truly outrageous attack on Donald Trump on Tuesday, calling the president a “mass murderer” who “should be impeached for murder.”

Apatow Calls Trump A Mass Murderer

“Donald is a mass murderer. Any comment which doesn’t make that clear is lying about what he is doing. He has chosen to misinform people to help him politically which is killing tens of thousands more people,” Apatow tweeted. “He is a mass murderer by choice. He should be impeached for murder.”

Apatow said this in response to a tweet from journalist Sam Stein, who was “triggered” by Trump’s optimism about the coronavirus having an affect on “virtually nobody” without comorbidities.

RELATED: Judd Apatow Calls For President Trump And Republicans To Be Prosecuted Because ‘They Are All Murderers’

Apatow Blames Trump For COVID Deaths

Apatow has made a name for himself in the past few months as one of the most anti-Trump people in Hollywood by repeatedly blaming the president for American COVID-19 deaths.

He is somehow blaming Trump for these fatalities despite the fact that the virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe.

“Trump has no issue killing anyone to get re-elected. Make sure your voter registration is current,” Apatow tweeted last week.

That hateful tweet was in response to an ABC News that accused the president of trying to use the vaccine as a “political weapon” as part of the wider “wars on science.”

Apatow Claims Trump ‘Normalized Being Insane’

Earlier this year, Apatow seemed to indirectly blame Trump for his own craziness, claiming that the president has “normalized being insane.”

“He normalized being insane but we will vote Trump and all Republicans out in November. They care more about their power than helping people,” Apatow tweeted back in May. “None stand up and say the President is inept and that is a dereliction of duty. As a party they are responsible for thousands of deaths.”

RELATED: Judd Apatow Outrageously Says President Trump ‘Normalized Being Insane’

If you ever find yourself questioning whether Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, just take a look at Apatow’s Twitter page.

This piece was written by PopZette Staff on September 22, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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The post Hollywood A-Lister Judd Apatow Calls Trump ‘A Mass Murderer’ Who ‘Should Be Impeached For Murder’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

Chris Rock Says Democrats ‘Let The Pandemic Come In’ While They Were Obsessed With Impeachment

Posted on by John Hanson

Comedian Chris Rock said that Democrats are responsible for the spread of COVID-19 because party leaders “let the pandemic come in” while they were busy pushing to impeach President Donald Trump.

Rock told The New York Times that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in particular was to blame.

RELATED: After Re-Election, Trump Should Clean House, Restore Order, And Then Worry About the Niceties

Rock Said Democrats ‘Let The Pandemic Come In’

“It was totally up to Pelosi and the Democrats,” Rock said “Their thing was, ‘We’re going to get him impeached,’ which was never going to happen.”

“You let the pandemic come in,” he added. “Yes, we can blame Trump, but he’s really the 5-year-old.”

Democrat leaders did not show much interest in taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously during the pandemic’s early months. When concerns were being raised about COVID-19 in January, congressional Democrats were busy with staged photo-ops with the articles of impeachment.

In early February, as pandemic concerns were taking shape, Speaker Pelosi infamously tore up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address on live television.

Rock Compares Trump To Child Ruler In The Movie ‘The Last Emperor’

In that address, Trump promised that the White House “will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.”

In his Times interview, Chris Rock, showing little respect for the President, compared him to a child ruler.

“Did you ever see that movie The Last Emperor, where like a 5-year-old is the emperor of China?” Rock said. “There’s a kid and he’s the king.”

“So I’m like, it’s all the Democrats’ fault,” Rock continued. “Because you knew that the emperor was 5 years old. And when the emperor’s 5 years old, they only lead in theory. There’s usually an adult who’s like, ‘OK, this is what we’re really going to do.’”

RELATED: Michael Moore Says Trump Is Like Osama bin Laden – ‘He Is A Mass Killer’

Rock also revealed that he didn’t believe Barack Obama’s presidency did much good for black Americans.

“Obama becoming the president, it’s progress for white people,” Rock said.

“It’s not progress for Black people,” he added.

The post Chris Rock Says Democrats ‘Let The Pandemic Come In’ While They Were Obsessed With Impeachment appeared first on The Political Insider.

Ilhan Omar Demands That President Trump Resign For Downplaying COVID-19

Posted on by LifeZette

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) just called for President Donald Trump to resign once again, this time because he downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic while simultaneously admitting in interviews with Bob Woodward that he knew the virus was “deadly.”

Omar Demands Trump Resign

“Over and over again, Donald Trump downplayed the threat of COVID-19 — all while knowing how dangerous it was,” Omar tweeted on Thursday. “Almost 200,000 people have paid the price for his lies with their lives. If he refuses to resign, we will vote him out.”

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

Omar posted this alongside a tweet of Trump’s from March 2020. In this tweet, the president pointed out that the common flu had killed more Americans than coronavirus.

“So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu,” he tweeted. “It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”

Biden Also Downplayed COVID

Trump has said that he downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic because he did not want the public to panic. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden did the exact same thing back in February, something that Omar is conveniently ignoring.

“Barack [Obama] and I, when we were — as president and vice president – we took on the virus that was threatening all of Africa and, uh, the rest of the world,” Biden said as he forgot the name of the Ebola virus. “And we set up a mechanism that worked.”

“But I want to take a moment to say it’s not a time to panic about coronavirus, but coronavirus is a serious public health challenge,” he added.

Omar Has Previously Called For Trump To Resign

This is far from the first time Omar has called for Trump to resign. She first called for his resignation in November 2019, during the House impeachment investigation into his alleged efforts to have Ukraine interfere in the election.

“The President of the United States broke our laws and betrayed our country,” Omar tweeted at the time. “He needs to resign.”

RELATED: Ilhan Omar Continues Funneling Money To Her Husband’s Firm, Despite Ongoing FEC Complaint

This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on September 11, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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The post Ilhan Omar Demands That President Trump Resign For Downplaying COVID-19 appeared first on The Political Insider.

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

Posted on by Joan McCarter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The statements being made about Trump’s handling of the pandemic demand to be met with outrage

Posted on by Mark Sumner

In a convention where a genuine fact might die of loneliness, the biggest lies are all about COVID-19. That’s quite a claim at an event where a parade of wealthy Republicans is taking the stand to claim different varieties of victimhood, and where speakers are painting a vision of what will happen when Trump departs the White House that would make Hieronymus Bosch run screaming. However, while lying about the economy is bad, and lying about Donald Trump being a “uniter” is simply ridiculous, lying about how we ended up as the worst of the worst when it comes to reacting to COVID-19 is dangerous.

It’s dangerous not just because Trump continues to promote quack “cures,” continues to override experts on both policy and treatment, and continues to undercut the need for action. It’s dangerous because the way the RNC is presenting Trump as someone who “understood the threat” while Democrats and the media “downplayed the danger” is such an obvious 180-degree inversion of reality that just presenting it displays an amazing contempt for facts, science, and history that isn’t even history yet. It’s not just that Donald Trump is covering up failure. He’s covering up genocide.

The chart at the top of this article hasn’t been updated in weeks, but it’s still a guide to some of the statements that Trump was making even as COVID-19 marched across the nation. Far from taking COVID-19 seriously, Trump was playing golf, making flu jokes with Sean Hannity, and generally basking in the warm afterglow of Republicans handing him a free pass by not calling so much as a single witness to his impeachment hearing.

It wasn’t until the near end of this chart that Trump showed up in the (then unmutilated) Rose Garden with an array of Big-Box CEOs to announce a national testing strategy that would involve tens of thousands of parking lot testing centers coordinated by a website to route patients and provide results. The website was a lie. Those centers never appeared. And it wasn’t until July that we learned that Trump killed the whole idea of having coordinated testing as attempted genocide against states governed by Democrats. Trump’s “political instincts” were that it was better to continue downplaying concerns about COVID-19, keep the federal government out of the testing business, and let citizens of Blue states simply die. Trump dumped the whole idea of launching a testing plan. 

It wasn’t difficult to see the impact that a national program of testing and case tracing could have. Not only did South Korea use that strategy to wrangle an early epidemic there into one of the great success stories of the pandemic, but even nations as hard hit as Italy were able to use testing in conjunction with a tough national lockdown to stop the virus in its tracks. At one point, Italy had far more cases and far more deaths than the United States. Now it has a fraction of either, and the rate of new cases there is lower than many individual states.

Donald Trump’s response to COVID-19 wasn’t just the worst on the planet. It wasn’t just malignant incompetence. It was intentionally bad. Trump did less than he could have done on purpose, in the hopes that he could make political gains by pointing fingers at Democratic governors as Americans died. And he did. Trump went to war with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, refused to talk to him, failed to provide requested assistance, and saying “I want them to be appreciative” before providing any help. He did the same with attacks on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. And on other Democratic governors who were complaining as Trump refused to start a testing program, refused to support a national lockdown, refused to centralize purchases of protective gear and medications, and actually confiscated materials purchased by blue states to send to his favored red states.

Trump’s handling of COVID-19 hasn’t been bungled or mishandled or poor. It’s been murder. It’s been deliberate. It’s been death-as-a-political-strategy. And now the Trump convention is running film clips from Thailand as part of a propaganda piece claiming it was Trump who took the virus seriously, Trump who took action, and Trump who whatever. 

This level of propaganda might not quite match that of the Nazis … but it’s getting damn close. Not only should Trump’s actions in canceling a national testing strategy be the subject of a second impeachment, they are crimes against humanity deserving of a trial before the world. That the media is sitting quietly by as Trump claims to be the hero of the crisis he created, should be the focus of outrage.

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

Posted on by kos

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

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

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 23, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

— act.tv (@actdottv) August 21, 2020

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

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

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

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

— Ali Noorani (@anoorani) August 24, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump killed plans for a national testing strategy, because COVID-19 ‘hit blue states hardest’

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Thursday, Vanity Fair published a detailed analysis of how the planned federal testing program headed up by Jared Kushner disintegrated into a puddle of mismanagement, hubris, and finger-pointing. As much as any other story over the last three years, it’s instructive in showing how the Trump White House acted as if it were both above the rules and smarter than the experts. Like so many other things that have happened under Trump, it’s ultimately a story about how unwillingness to accept responsibility for anything dooms everything.

Only the utter abandonment of any effort to execute a coherent national testing strategy—a decision that all its own is principally responsible for consigning 160,000 Americans to their deaths—turns out not to be the worst aspect of this story. The worst part is that Trump, Kushner, and everyone involved knew that hundreds of thousands of Americans would die if they failed to act, but they still refused to act out of a political calculation. That calculation was that American deaths in blue states would be good for Trump’s election chances. The worst thing is that Americans did not have to die in vast numbers. The United States’ worst in the world results on COVID-19 were not an accident.

On the day he announced his coronavirus response team, Trump added management of testing for the disease onto the stack of things that son-in-law Kushner was supposed to squeeze in between solving Middle East peace and providing kill lists to authoritarian dictators. Kushner responded by forming a crack team of old college buddies and real estate pals who WhatsApp’d their way to a national testing strategy with the help of advice from billionaire bankers and the occasional health expert. The end result was a plan that recognized that the United States needed a coherent national testing strategy, that states shouldn’t have to compete with each other for protective gear, and that a national contract-tracing database was required to make testing effective.

Then the White House set out to execute that plan. Step one: Illegally purchase over a million Chinese-made COVID-19 tests that turned out to be “contaminated and unusable” in a $52 million taxpayer-funded boondoggle. Step two: Decide that paying any real attention to COVID-19 might be bad for the stock market and just say f-ck it about the whole thing. Seriously.

Trump’s “political instincts” were that it was better to simply continue downplaying concerns about the virus and to keep the federal government out of the testing business. Because, of course, testing for COVID-19 might find COVID-19, which would be “bad publicity.” Besides, Dr. Deborah Birx was backing up Trump, showing models that suggested the virus would just magically disappear with the summer. Trump decided to dump the whole idea of launching any testing plan, forget about contact tracing, and abandon any pretense of a national strategy.

But even that isn’t the worst thing. 

As a member of Kushner’s team made clear, Trump didn’t just decide that turning up cases of COVID-19 by testing for them would lead to bad publicity—he decided that, because it was hitting blue states the hardest, he should just let it burn. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states,” said the source, “that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”

Just to repeat that: Trump deliberately decided to let Americans die, in huge numbers, not because there was nothing that could be done, but because it was decided that it would “politically advantageous” to have people dying in states with Democratic governors.

There are acts that go beyond the need for impeachment. There are acts that are so inhumane that they go beyond comprehension. There are actions for which even imprisonment seems inadequate. 

But let’s start with impeachment. The imprisonment can come later.

Obama To Biden: We Always Took Responsibility For Our Mistakes

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Former President Barack Obama had a sit down with Joe Biden where the duo spoke about how their administration always took responsibility for their mistakes.

Biden posted a video to his Twitter account of the socially-distanced meeting along with the caption “44 + 46,” a reference to their possible presidential line numbers.

The video is a teaser of the conversation between the previous president and vice president.

In the clip, Biden and Obama criticize President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Can you imagine standing up when you were president and saying ‘it’s not my responsibility. I take no responsibility.’ Literally. Literally,” Biden asked.

“Those words didn’t come out of our mouths when we were in office,” replied Obama.

RELATED: Biden To Muslim Voters: I Wish We Taught Islamic Faith In Our Schools

Blamed Benghazi on a YouTube Video

Now, when you’re dealing with two skilled and accomplished liars in Biden and Obama, there is a lot to unpack in their comments. Even with just a couple of short sentences.

Let’s begin with Biden’s claim that Trump hasn’t taken responsibility for the pandemic.

While it is true that the President said he doesn’t “take responsibility at all” over four months ago when it was clear that Democrats had impeded congressional efforts to address COVID-19 by hosting an impeachment circus, more recent comments have differed.

In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, he said: “I take responsibility always for everything because it’s ultimately my job, too. I have to get everybody in line.”

As for Obama saying of shirking responsibility that “those words didn’t come out of our mouths” – what absolute gall.

This was an administration – from Obama to Biden, down to Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice – who refused responsibility for the Benghazi terrorist attack in 2012 that killed four Americans, instead deliberately crafting a lie to the public involving an obscure anti-Muslim YouTube video.

At first, they tossed Rice under the bus, forcing her on news stations to repeat the lie over and over again. Clinton would later be tossed under the bus as well.

It took several weeks for Obama to suggest he took any responsibility for the lives lost in Libya, and only did so as the controversy refused to subside and he faced election against Mitt Romney.

Biden, on the other hand, continued to lie.

RELATED: Meadows Expects Indictments From Durham Investigation Into Spying On Trump – ‘Time For People To Go To Jail’

Doesn’t Stop at Benghazi

When did Obama and Biden take responsibility for spying on Trump’s presidential campaign? We must have missed it.

Some Obama-era officials may have no choice but to accept responsibility for the biggest political scandal of our time according to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

In discussing the investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham into the origins of the Russia collusion probe, Meadows said he “expect(s) indictments.”

“It’s all starting to come unraveled,” he said. “It’s all unraveling. And I tell you, it’s time that people go to jail and people are indicted.”

Aside from that, Obama and Biden took responsibility for everything else.

Just kidding.

One of Obama’s favorite targets for finger-pointing was his predecessor, former President George W. Bush:

And, of course, Obama blamed Fox News for everything that ailed his failure of a presidency. He blamed Russia for Hillary’s 2016 election loss. Not the fact that he was essentially on the ballot for a third term by proxy.

Despite their claims in the Biden video, passing the buck during difficult times was a hallmark of the Obama presidency.

The post Obama To Biden: We Always Took Responsibility For Our Mistakes appeared first on The Political Insider.

Former Ohio Republican governor to speak at the Democratic convention

Posted on by kos

Ohio has burrowed itself deep in impeached president Donald Trump, who may or may not be hiding in his bunker at this time. It’s not a state that will decide the presidency. Trump won it by eight points in 2016, and if he loses it this year (and chances are growing by the day), he will already have lost Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and several other states—giving presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden more than enough electoral votes to end our long national nightmare. Yet his campaign has now made Ohio the second-largest recipient of advertising dollars, behind only Florida. 

So how do you think Trump will react when he finds out that former Ohio two-term Republican governor John Kasich is scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention? Hilarious, right? 

The Daily Beast has leaked details on Democratic plans for the mostly online convention, which includes the information on Kasich’s participation. The Associated Press has more information on the Kasich coup, and adds this hint: “Kasich is among a handful of high-profile Republicans likely to become more active in supporting Biden in the fall.” The Biden campaign, feeling secure in its base, is clearly focused on expanding his potential base of support, and the never-Trump crowd, while small, could have a big impact in close races up and down the ballot. 

Ohio is a perfect example, a state in which Trump’s standing has fallen more precipitously during the coronavirus pandemic (and because of it) than most places. 

Civiqs Results

As noted in a previous analysis, Trump’s general election matchup numbers are closely correlated to his approval numbers. His 47% approvals here means he’s getting between 47-49% in the head-to-head matchups versus Biden. That’s enough for victory, but barely. Trump is hanging on for dear life in a state that he comfortably won in 2016, and which shouldn’t be in play given its demographics—mostly white, mostly non-college.  

Meanwhile, Kasich left office a popular politician, with a 52-36 rating the last time Quinnipiac checked in before he was termed out of office in 2018. But even then, there were storm clouds that hinted at a party split: “Ohio Gov. John Kasich gets a 52-36 percent job approval rating, doing better with Democrats than he does with his fellow Republicans, Democrats approve of Kasich 57-33 percent. Republicans are divided as 46 percent approve and 44 percent disapprove.” You see, he had run against Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, and Trump hit him for, among other things, giving his state’s residents health care via Obamacare Medicaid expansion. 

pic.twitter.com/ZQ0osiFEJQ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2016

The campaign eventually ended, but the feud never did. For example, here was a typical interaction between the two, in 2018:

pic.twitter.com/wqtmN9SwhT

— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) August 13, 2018

Pretty good, right? Kasich also attacked his party for looking the other way as Trump made a mockery of party orthodoxy, steel and aluminum tariffs, as well as for tolerating Trump’s attacks on national institutions like the FBI and the Justice Department. After the 2019 Dayton mass shooting, Kasich called Trump “sensitive” and “thin-skinned.”  

Kasich spent some seconds this year “running against Trump in the GOP primary,” but no one took that seriously. The Republican Party is the Party of Trump, and vice versa. There’s no longer any room for Kasich-style moderate fiscal conservatives in the GOP. We don’t want them either! But at least this year, those never-Trumpers realize the damage that Trump is doing to the country. As Kasich told the Washington Post, “[The Republican Party] coddled this guy the whole time and now it’s like some rats are jumping off of the sinking ship. It’s just a little late. It’s left this nation with a crescendo of hate not only between politicians but between citizens. ... It started with Charlottesville and people remained silent then, and we find ourselves in this position now.”

Kasich may be the highest-profile Republican to flip to Biden right now, but there is definitely something happening among Republicans. Look at Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans: 

Civiqs Results

So 87-9 seems ridiculously high, right? Except that during the impeachment hearings, that number was 91-6. That means that in just a few short months, Trump has lost a net-seven points of support among Republicans. 

Don’t scoff. Every Republican that gives up on Trump is one less vote. They may vote for Biden and say the heck with it, they’ll vote for Democrats in critical Senate and House races. Or maybe they stay home in frustration, which is almost as good. 

Every Republican defection makes it harder for Trump to bounce back. How is he going to expand his coalition if he can’t even hold on to his own core base? 

Kasich isn’t a play to win Ohio. We don’t need Ohio. Let Trump piss his money away on a state that is irrelevant to whether he wins or loses. While there are two Republican-held House seats that could be in play, control of the U.S. House isn’t at stake. 

But there are Republicans who aren’t happy being associated with a racist sociopath who is putting our children at risk to boost his reelection chances, and Kasich is a signal to them freeing them from Trumpism. There are alternatives. Because this thing, whatever it is that Republicanism has become? It really hasn’t quite worked out well for the country now, has it.

But even if Kasich doesn’t swing a single vote—which is quite possible—the inevitable Trump tantrum will be reason enough to stand up and clap. You know it’ll be glorious.