Latest arrest puts a big Jan. 6 conspiracy to rest. Who will they blame now?

On Tuesday, former Marine, former wedding venue operator, and current hermit Ray Epps was indicted for his actions during the Jan. 6 riot. This single charge should lay to rest an elaborate conspiracy theory that originated with online supporters of Donald Trump and spread across right-wing media. It should … if conspiracy theories were affected by facts.

Epps, a 61-year-old former president of the Arizona branch of the Oath Keepers militia and adamant supporter of Trump, flew from Arizona to Washington, D.C., in response to Trump’s call for a ‘wild’ time. Videos of Epps on Jan. 5 show him shouting for Trump supporters to take the Capitol. On Jan. 6, he marched toward Congress, urging others to do the same.

When the FBI created a website where it posted photos of individuals being sought for their involvement in the insurgency, Epps’ face was one of the first to appear. But when Epps’ photo was taken down and no charges immediately followed, claims emerged that Epps was secretly a government agent who had infiltrated Trump supporters to entice them into breaking the law. Those claims spread from QAnon to right-wing media and may have reached a peak when Sen. Ted Cruz and then-host Tucker Carlson parroted the claim on Fox News.

Carlson’s embrace of the theory, which he repeated on multiple occasions, was enough to generate waves of harassment against Epps from his fellow Trump supporters. He and his wife were forced to sell their wedding-venue business in Arizona and live “in hiding” at a trailer somewhere in Utah. In an interview with People, Epps’ attorney said the couple “received a number of credible and serious death threats, which become worse each time someone on Fox or Tucker Carlson talk about Ray.”

Epps became such a fixture of the right-wing conspiracy landscape that Republican politicians weren’t just mentioning him on Carlson’s show. They were yelling about him in a House hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray.

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“I want to turn my attention now to this fella, this character, Mr. Ray Epps,” said Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls. “We’ve all heard of him. We’ve heard of Mr. Ray Epps. He was number 16 on your FBI most-wanted list. He was encouraging people the night prior and the day to go into the Capitol. And Mr. Ray Epps can be seen at the first breach of Capitol grounds at approximately 12:50 p.m.”

Epps was never on the FBI’s most-wanted list. When it comes to the FBI’s Jan. 6 website, Epps’ photo was removed because he reached out and turned himself in after seeing that the FBI was looking for him. Following that first contact, Epps was told he would likely face charges.

But when Wray refused to say that Epps would be arrested, Nehls responded angrily. “It appears to me you are protecting this guy! I strongly recommend you get your house back in order!”

In July, Epps filed a lawsuit against Fox News and Carlson accusing them of defamation. The lawsuit was filed in the same Delaware court where Fox News ended a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems by reaching a last-minute agreement to pay a $787.5 million settlement. Not long after that settlement, Fox News fired Carlson. But that move didn’t come in time to avoid another $12 million that Fox paid in June to settle a hostile workplace lawsuit by a former employee on Carlson’s show.

Carlson is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

In August, Fox News moved to dismiss Epps’ lawsuit, with a claim that Carlson painting Epps at the center of a fantastical conspiracy theory was “exactly what the First Amendment protects.” According to the Fox News motion, Carlson’s statements were “protected opinions, not assertions of fact.” That motion has not yet been decided. Fox News attorneys asked for a hearing on the motion in a court appearance on Monday afternoon.

While it’s safe to say that statements of fact were hard to find on Carlson’s show—and remain so on the programs of other Fox News pundits—it’s hard to see how viewers were supposed to get that just-an-opinion vibe from Carlson bringing up Epps in nearly 20 different episodes, in which he told his audience there was “no rational explanation” for the failure to charge Epps other than him being a federal agent.

In the indictment filed on Monday, Epps faces a single charge of engaging in “disorderly and disruptive conduct” in a restricted area with “intent to impede and disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business.” He is not known to have entered the Capitol, and no evidence has emerged that he assaulted the police or of any act of vandalism. He was one of several people photographed holding a very large Trump sign which was thrust toward the police line, but he hasn’t been charged with an offense connected to that action. One other man who was charged for being one of those holding the sign was found guilty on nine other counts, but acquitted for his part in holding the sign.

The method in which Epps was charged suggested he had already reached an agreement for a plea. NBC News has reported that Epps will enter his plea over a Zoom call on Wednesday afternoon.

The charges against Epps make him one of just a handful of people to be charged in relation to the insurgency who did not enter the Capitol or engage violently with the police. His wait for this charge is far from exceptional. Over 200 defendants have been charged in the past year, with 42 sentenced since July. There are still many more cases to come. The FBI seems to have simply prioritized those who entered the Capitol, assaulted the police, and engaged in violent conspiracies.

But don’t expect any of that to make it safe for Epps to leave his trailer. Conspiracy theories can always adapt to ignore facts. And don’t be surprised if Republicans in Congress continue to use Epps in their tirades. Unlike Fox News, the speech and debate clause of the Constitution is always there so they can defame and endanger anyone—as the founders intended.

Epps’ actions on Jan. 5 and 6, his ardent support for Trump, and most of all his involvement with the Oath Keepers show that he is anything but a model citizen. And maybe it’s only fitting that the MAGA crowd should turn on one of their own. But in the end, the conspiracy against Epps isn’t about Epps, or even the FBI. It’s about what’s most important to Trump supporters: avoiding any responsibility for their own actions.

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.

Watch Republican congressman tie himself in knots presenting Biden ‘evidence’ on Fox

The far-right wing of the Republican Party has compelled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to call for an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The biggest problem with this move? After nine months of Republican-led House committee investigations into the president and his son Hunter, the GOP has come up with bupkis.

Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo took time away from purposefully misinforming the public about Trump’s false election-fraud claims to discuss the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Her guest was Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith. In a clip tweeted by journalist Aaron Rupar, Bartiromo asks Smith what he thinks is “the most damning evidence that you all have to suggest bribery.” She proceeds to reiterate some vague circumstantial evidence as well as some completely unsubstantiated claims made using big financial numbers.

And Smith responds, “Those are all great questions that we need answers to.”

How about that for mental jujitsu?

RELATED STORY: House Republican admits he can't find any Biden crimes

Gone are the days when Smith was calling the evidence-based impeachment of former President Donald Trump “outrageous attacks from the liberal mob majority that consistently puts politics before people.” He said that Trump’s “impeachment circus should have never been started” and was “a complete disgrace to our country,” but when it comes to Republicans starting their own “circus,” he has no qualms whatsoever.

Here are a couple more times Republicans had a chance to offer up real evidence:

Rep. James Comer has spent most of the Biden administration’s time in office running an investigation into the Biden family—and he’s turned up nothing.

And here’s Florida man Matt Gaetz, who represents the Sunshine State’s 1st Congressional District, arguing that the non-evidence he has is, actually, indeed evidence. You just have to look at it the right(-wing) way.

Sign the petition: No to shutdowns, no to Biden impeachment, no to Republicans

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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.

Another day, another outright hoax promoted on Fox News

Fox "News" is a propaganda outfit intended to manipulate public opinion by bending the "news" to preferentially be whatever the Republican hard right would most like it to be. Sometimes this means reporting real news with a conservative edge to it; sometimes it means peddling hoaxes, often in tacit coordination with the Republicans who invented them to begin with. We're supposed to believe that if Fox only promotes a certain percentage of fake stories, they still retain legitimacy as a "real" news outlet, but there's never a number put to that. Can a legitimate news outlet run one completely made-up story a day and retain legitimacy? Is it fine if the hoaxes run mostly during prime-time hours? Can a network promote $790 million worth of fake news, but not $795 million?

Do tell, American pundit corps, because the rest of us remain mystified.

Over the weekend, Fox News showed us how they operate—again—with nearly three hours of gaudy coverage of a straight-up news hoax. This one was a throwback to the specific Rudy Giuliani-spread anti-Ukraine, anti-Biden hoaxes that got Donald Trump impeached when Trump attempted to solicit support for the hoax from the Ukrainian government in exchange for an end to his holdup of congressionally mandated military aid to the country.

Remember discredited former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, the man ousted from the government after international pressure over what was seen as Shokin's, ahem, lackluster interest in fighting Ukrainian corruption? He's back, thanks to Fox News bobblehead Brian Kilmeade.

That it was left to one of the glassy-eyed “Fox & Friends” hosts to interview the disgraced Shokin should tell you just how little appetite there was among Fox’s "legitimate" news team to appear on camera with the buffoon; Kilmeade certainly has no reputation for "journalism" that could be tarnished. This is the conspiracy that resulted in the complete dismantling of conservative faux-journalist John Solomon's waning career, after all, and there's not many media figures outside the “Fox & Friends” lineup who want to be the next John Solomon.

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In the interview, Shokin regurgitated the same conspiracy theory that Giuliani attempted to import to the United States the moment it appeared that Joe Biden would be Trump's presidential opponent: the notion that he was the victim of a Biden plot to oust him when, in fact, his removal was spurred by an international campaign and by official United States government condemnation of his failures. Giuliani sought to boost the theory with the help of pro-Russian (read: treasonous) Ukrainian oligarchs that Ukraine's post-Shokin anticorruption efforts had targeted. That not a shred of this theory turned out to be true—and a whole lot of it was manufactured outright—was hardly a surprise.

That Trump himself would soon attach himself to the hoax, using the powers of his office to demand the Ukrainian government announce they were "investigating" the false charges, was ... also not a surprise.

Media Matters tallies up the Fox promotion of Shokin's completely hoax-premised claims against Biden, and between "teasing, airing, and analyzing" the interview it amounted to "at least 50 segments across 19 different programs." That's a heavy media push, and it coincides with a new House Republican push to mount an impeachment trial against Biden to act as a counternarrative to Trump potentially landing his ass in a prison cell on a host of federal and state charges.

Why would Fox News be resurrecting a Giuliani-boosted hoax immediately after Giuliani himself has been indicted for attempting to corruptly undermine an American election? What's the "news" value in rerunning one of his most notorious anti-Biden campaign scams?

There isn't any, as the interview itself made clear. But it allowed conspiracy-minded Fox News hosts to run the footage as if the claims were new, and to speculate on whether House Republicans would use Shokin's claims to help justify a Biden impeachment. That is of tremendous use to Republicans, even if Shokin himself remains an utterly discredited fraud-promoting huckster.

That brings us back to our original question, then. What percentage of the Fox News day can be booked with actual, known hoax-pushers before the "journalism" side of the business can be discredited? We've been told repeatedly by other media figures that the "news" side of Fox News is on the up-and-up, no matter how many times their anchors make partisan asses of themselves during "real news" hours. It's up to those media figures, then, to share a number with us. For CNN, for NBC, for The Washington Post, for The New York Times: What percentage of completely fake "news" can your journalism include, per segment or per page, and still retain its “real news” label?

Do tell. The rest of us simply don't seem to understand "journalism" with enough nuance to put some numbers to these things, so stop beating around the bush and just give us your answers, straight up. How many intentional hoaxes are "real" news outlets allowed to promote?

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Joe Biden reminds Fox News’ Peter Doocy that he’s a lousy reporter

On Thursday morning, “Fox & Friends,” a show featuring a handful of people you would be shamefaced to call your “friends,” ran with a video of an exchange between President Joe Biden and Fox News’ nepo-baby reporter Peter Doocy. In the video, Doocy asks the president, “There’s this testimony now, where one of your former business associates is claiming that you were on speaker phone a lot with them, talking business? Is that … wha–” at which point Biden cuts him off, saying, “I never talked business with anybody, and I knew you’d have a lousy question.”

Doocy feigns surprise at being called full of shit, but frankly, Biden was being nice. It was a lot worse than a “lousy” question. Doocy asks why it is a “lousy” question, and Biden rightfully answers, “Because it’s not true.”

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Doocy is manipulating the well publicized and fully available testimony of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer. He’s posing a question that asserts a falsehood. Archer very specifically testified that Biden never under any circumstances—even tangentially—discussed business with his son Hunter, or with Hunter’s associates.

But if you are stuck in the moral spitoon that is the right-wing media world, you’d think that Doocy’s question and its pathological false premise are somehow fact-based. Doocy and his conservative uniform are used as some kind of proof that this lie has been researched. It is the reason Republicans wanted Archer’s testimony done away from the cameras: It’s easier to lie about what someone said when your audience is unwilling to read.

There’s one response that I think sums Doocy up. Mr. President, would you do the honors?

Forever and always: pic.twitter.com/DPcXg3cQAb

— Lucille Bluth’s Martini (@justdrew404) August 10, 2023

Sign if you agree: Fox News is a waste of your brain cells.

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Fox News says House GOP says it has proof of Biden corruption

House Republicans remain in a frenzy of insinuations, half-truths, and outright lies about President Joe Biden’s connection to his son Hunter’s business dealings, and Fox News is, as always, there on the spot to promote the claims. This is all part of the Republicans’ push to impeach the president even though they have turned up no evidence that he has engaged in wrongdoing. Impeachment has been the plan all along, and the strategic distraction is doubly urgent now that Donald Trump is facing so many federal criminal charges.

Let’s take a look at how Fox News uses smoke and mirrors to make it sound like the Bidens’ accusers have far more evidence than they do. Here’s the latest bombshell report from the “news” network. (Unless otherwise indicated, the quotes come from various Fox News personalities.)

“A new set of bank records linked to the Bidens ...” Linked? How are they linked? To the Bidens? Which Bidens?

“Those who contributed to Hunter’s ventures were then seemingly rewarded with access to his father.” Seemingly? The Fox News chyron here reads, “GOP says it has proof of $20M sent to Bidens,” but then we get “seemingly.” Hmm.

“All that flies in the face, Dana, of what the president and his staff have been saying on repeat.” No it doesn’t, unless you have more than “linked to” Bidens other than Joe and “seemingly.” So far, more than 45 seconds into the clip, we have absolutely no solid information, just insinuation.

“The question is, what was Hunter Biden doing to earn access to this money.” Asked and answered, guys: He had the last name Biden and the ability to create what his business partner Devon Archer testified to the House was the “illusion” of access, putting his father on speaker phone when he was with business associates but not talking about business. It’s not laudatory or inspirational, but it is what it is, and it is not Joe Biden being involved in corruption in any way.

“Republicans on the House Oversight Committee say the new records detail a pay-to-play scheme, proof of $20 million sent to the Bidens from foreign business sources.” Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have said a lot of things, many of them verifiably false. They are claiming here to have evidence of the pay, but what’s the play that’s being paid for? And again, “the Bidens” is not the president—if they thought they had him here, they’d be saying it.

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“The committee says Russian, Ukrainian, and Kazakh oligarchs funneled money to companies tied to Hunter Biden. A Russian billionaire sent $3.5 million to a shell company associated with Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer.” Whoa, whoa, whoa, we’ve gone from $20 million to the Bidens to money going to companies “tied to” Hunter Biden in the sense that they are “associated with” Devon Archer? That’s a flimsy connection to Hunter, let alone his father.

“Then-Vice President Biden dined with the billionaire in Washington.” According to Archer’s testimony, Joe Biden attended two dinners, one in 2014 and one in 2015, that included some of Hunter’s business associates. “I believe the first one was, like, a birthday dinner, and then the second was ‑‑ I think we were supposed to talk about the World Food Programme,” Archer said. So over the course of more than a year, Joe Biden went to a birthday dinner for his son and another dinner to talk about the World Food Programme, and did not control the guest list at either dinner. Got it.

“Another example has Ukrainian money going to Archer and Hunter Biden. Later, Burisma put Hunter Biden on the board.” 1.) Does money that went to Archer count in the previously mentioned $20 million to “the Bidens?” 2.) I think it’s well established that Hunter Biden was on the board of energy company Burisma. We all know that because of Trump’s efforts to extort Ukraine into a sham investigation of Joe Biden and because of Trump’s resulting impeachment.

Next we see House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer alleging that, “The process involved a foreign country or foreign national wiring money to a fake company. Then the fake company would then turn around and wire the money to the Biden family members. They did this to hide the source of the revenue because they weren’t supposed to get money from many of these countries.”

“Republicans are trying to draw a line from these payments to the president,” the Fox News guy chimed in. Republicans have been investigating this for the better part of a year and they are still trying to draw a line, any line, to the president.

Now to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy: “This isn’t about Hunter Biden. This is about paying to play for the Biden family. Because the money goes to nine different members, through shell companies, much like the informant said.” So, again, not Joe? It’s not about Hunter Biden, McCarthy says, but he apparently doesn’t feel he can make any direct allegations about Joe Biden.

Back to the Fox News talking head: “The committee says a Kazakh oligarch transferred $142,000 to Hunter Biden for a sports car. Democrats contend there’s no wrongdoing by the president.” Look, I think we can agree that Hunter Biden’s business dealings have sucked. But once again Fox News used a denial of wrongdoing by the president to substitute for any direct allegation that the president engaged in wrongdoing. “The son did this not-great thing. The father denied wrongdoing on his own part.” How are those things linked, except by a desperate desire to mention the father while lacking any concrete allegation to make against him?

“Some Republicans talk impeachment. The GOP says this is just not pay to play but pay to dine, and drive.” Again, what’s the “play” part here? Right now, Republicans have a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden got paid—although even there, they seem to be trying to pin money on Hunter that really went to Devon Archer. They don’t have any evidence that anyone got anything in exchange for their money. They got to hear Joe Biden’s voice on a speaker phone not talking about business, or see him at his son’s birthday dinner. Republicans have claimed that Hunter got Joe to push for the ouster of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin because he was investigating Burisma—but the reality is that Shokin was not actively investigating Burisma at the time he was forced out, and Joe Biden was one of a chorus of world leaders involved in a concerted effort to get rid of a corrupt prosecutor. So the closest thing to a concrete claim of Joe Biden being on the “play” end of a “pay to play” scheme with his son turns out to be false on multiple grounds.

If Republicans had anything on Joe Biden, we’d know about it. They don’t. And, as Marcy Wheeler points out, all of this screaming about $20 million to Hunter and his business associates is happening when we know that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner parlayed his time as a White House adviser into $2 billion from Saudi Arabia. Jared had an official White House role. Hunter never has. Jared delivered for Saudi Arabia from his White House perch. Hunter has never been in a position to do that for his benefactors and there’s no evidence his father did it for him. Jared got $2 billion. Hunter got some unknown slice of $20 million.

Republicans were desperate to impeach President Biden before they ever took control of the House, but their desperation has increased as Trump’s legal jeopardy has become more apparent. They’re looking to impeach Biden in part so they can claim that Trump’s prosecution on dozens of federal criminal charges is some kind of flimsy distraction. In reality, of course, they are the ones trying to cook up a distraction.

McCarthy tells Hannity that Biden investigation is ‘rising to the level of impeachment inquiry’

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is cementing the narrative that he will tell anyone whatever it is they want to hear. Whether or not he can deliver is a different story. McCarthy told Fox News’ Sean Hannity what every Fox viewer wants to hear: He’ll get vengeance for the Donald Trump impeachments by initiating an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden.

“We’ve only followed where the information has taken us. But Hannity, this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed,” McCarthy said Monday.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday night said the House's investigation into the Bidens is "rising to the level of impeachment inquiry." pic.twitter.com/uMFXWA9JSj

— The Recount (@therecount) July 25, 2023

Revenge for twice-impeached Donald Trump. That’s what this is really about, not whether anyone believes President Joe Biden had anything to do with Hunter Biden’s leaked dick pics or whatever it is that House Republicans are “investigating.” McCarthy, however, pretended to Hannity that all of this is a very real scandal rather than the fever dream of Rudy Giuliani.

The “information” McCarthy is referring to, as Mark Sumner wrote last week, consists of: “Seventeen audio tapes that don’t exist; One WhatsApp message that’s a fake; One “informant” who has been dead for over a decade; One “informant” who is on the run from international authorities after skipping bail; One disagreement by a disgruntled IRS employee who thought he deserved a promotion.”

But sure, go ahead and do an impeachment. The government is two months—and just 16 legislative work days—away from running out of funding. How can the American people expect the Republican House to do the work of governing when they have this Donald Trump agenda of revenge to carry out?

Is anyone who doesn’t watch Fox News or exist on a right-wing media diet really clamoring for the impeachment of Joe Biden? Not even close. CNN’s Bakari Sellers sums up what the rest of American is wondering: WTF? “I am not sure where Joe Biden falls in any of this,” Sellers said Tuesday morning. “I think most of America is like, what are we doing? Are you impeaching Hunter Biden? That appears to be decently asinine.”

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Watch AOC let loose on Clarence Thomas on ‘The Daily Show’

This week, longtime “The Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper is taking his turn in the guest host seat. He kicked the week off with a bang, scoring an interview with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her home turf of New York City.

And while the interview began as a conversation about violence and social services in America, it ended up touching on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ ethics failures, the fight for reproductive rights, and Donald Trump being the only person who is crying for Donald Trump.

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After Klepper joked about a theoretical Beyonce Knowles collecting Third Reich memorabilia, Ocasio-Cortez brought the interview back on track and succinctly drilled down to the bottom line:

“Supreme Court justices are required, if they are receiving money from people—they shouldn't even be receiving money from people. This is why we pay salaries to public servants. And if they want to live that kind of lifestyle, then they can resign from the court. They can retire.

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Before Klepper ended the interview, he brought up the orange elephant in the room. Did Ocasio-Cortez think people “were crying,” as Trump claimed, during his recent arraignment on charges of falsifying business records?

“Maybe George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene were, but not me,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She went on to say that Trump’s indictment is a symbol of the deep inequalities in our justice system, as she watches “people get treated far worse for doing far less” than Trump. “If you hurt one person, you get ten years in prison. But if you hurt millions of people, you get your name on a building.”

You can watch the whole interview below, as well as read a transcript of the interview.

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Transcript:

Jordan Klepper: I considered going into the medical profession. I thought I could play a handsome doctor on TV. Didn't pan out. While we were on the subject of national embarrassment, I had to ask the congresswoman about Clarence Thomas and his BFF Nazi, swag collector, Harlan Crow. I want to talk a little bit about Clarence Thomas. You've said you would even draft articles of impeachment for the things that he's done. Has there been any quid pro quo? And I said quid pro quo, partially because it took all that effort to learn what quid pro quo meant back in the Ukraine days, and it feels apropos of now. And I don't think I used apropos correctly.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I think that quid pro quo is this bar that doesn't even need to be met. The justice is required by law to disclose something like that. And he hasn't been.

Jordan Klepper: Can you empathize, though? If Beyoncé came through here, wanted to take you on a sweet vacation, wouldn't you say, “Yes.” And let her show you her Nazi memorabilia.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Tell someone about it. But hey, don't! Don't put Bey's name on that.

Jordan Klepper: I'm not saying she has. I'm saying if she invested in Nazi memorabilia to show that she hates Nazi memorabilia, she'd want to show it off.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: And that whole thing is just, I mean, bizarre. You also don't keep the linens around …

Jordan Klepper:--All the Nazi linens?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah. Who does that?

Jordan Klepper: Don't you think if you had $1,000,000,000 and you bought everything, you'd probably eventually get to Nazi linens?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: This is the distraction of that whole issue.

Jordan Klepper: You're right. We're just focused on that as opposed to all the money that's going over to Clarence Thomas. Although if you're a billionaire, can't billionaires have friends?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: They can. Supreme Court justices are required, if they are receiving money from people—they shouldn't even be receiving money from people. This is why we pay salaries to public servants. And if they want to live that kind of lifestyle, then they can resign from the court. They can retire.

Jordan Klepper: Now I want to talk about the court. It's looking as if the Supreme Court is going to rule on some of the conflicting rulings around mifepristone. Who do you think is going to write the final decision that takes away these vital rights from women? Is it going to be the guy who cried over beer or was it going to be the buddy with the Nazi memorabilia guy?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: You know, my hope is that they—we do not get to that point. But we also have to face the reality that the Supreme Court has chosen to give up huge swaths of their own legitimacy. Chief Justice Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, the Republican Party: In them giving up trying to take seriously the legitimacy, the standards, the integrity of the court, they have given up a very large degree of their authority.

Jordan Klepper: The new news in Florida this week is the six-week abortion ban. How do women approach that or fight back against something like that that's happening in Florida?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Of course, there's the standard, like, vote and mobilize. But I'm going to put that aside for a second. We do not have to accept tyranny, and this is a form of tyranny. It is a form of violence. Women will die. People will die because of this decision. And it will be, by and large, the men who signed these laws that are killing the women that will die by them.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: And we have a responsibility to help one another, whether that is supporting organizations that mail mifepristone, which has significantly reduced risk, certainly safer than medications like Viagra. But ultimately, we cannot continue to accept people in power who will abuse others for their own gain.

Jordan Klepper: Indictment week was last week. It might also be a month from now, too. We could have a lot of indictment weeks. How do you think New Yorkers treated former President Donald Trump?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I think they treated him like a Florida man. He don't belong to us no mo’, okay? You're not from Queens anymore. He's a citizen of Mar-a-Lago at this point.

Jordan Klepper: And you said New Yorkers treated him as such?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah. Why wouldn't we?

Jordan Klepper: Do you think people were weeping when he was booked, as he claims?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Maybe George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene were, but not me. Take it back to LaGuardia.

Jordan Klepper: Take it back to LaGuardia, which is in your district?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yes, it's in my district. And so is Rikers. And so we have, I have to go in every single day watching people get treated far worse for doing far less and then, you know, it's like this red carpet that gets rolled out. I mean, if you hurt one person, you get ten years in prison. But if you hurt millions of people, you get your name on a building.

Jordan Klepper: Congresswoman, thanks for talking with us.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Thanks for having me.

On today’s episode, Markos and Kerry are joined by a friend of the podcast, Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg. Rosenberg was one of the few outsiders who, like Daily Kos, kept telling the world that nothing supported the idea of a red wave. Simon and the crew break down his strategy for Democratic candidates to achieve a 55% popular vote in all elections—a number that a few years ago would have seemed unattainable, but now feels within reach.

Fox News Bud Light advertising far more important than Clarence Thomas’ ethics

At the end of March, ProPublica released findings of an investigation that highlighted the financially swampy relationship between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Texas billionaire, conservative donor, and Nazi artifact collector Harlan Crow. Reports came out showing that not only did Justice Thomas spend an inordinate amount of time with the billionaire—after becoming a Supreme Court Justice—he received possibly millions of dollars in gifts and free travel and lodging for about two decades. 

On top of that, reports came out showing Crow’s generosity toward Justice Thomas included buying up two vacant lots where Thomas’s elderly mother lived, as well as sending $500,000 to “a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas, which also paid her a $120,000 salary.” Clarence Thomas has released an unbelievably weak statement defending the allegations against him, while not denying any of the details in the stories.

It’s the kind of story that, even in passing, anyone would consider to be newsworthy. Polls show that even conservatives agree that the reports about Thomas’ gift and vacation-receiving ways are unethical.

How is the right-wing ministry of propaganda, Fox News, handling the story? What story? Have you not heard that Bud Light did a single online social media advertisement with a trans celebrity?

RELATED STORY: Clarence Thomas allegedly broke one of the few ethics laws that apply to the Supreme Court

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The Washington Post’s Philip Bump analyzed how traditional media outlets like MSNBC, C-SPAN, CNN, and Fox News were covering the news. It turns out that in the case of Fox News, they aren’t covering it all that much. Over a ten-day period after the news broke, Fox News has mentioned Thomas’ name in less than 50 segments, all less than 15 seconds long, according to The Washington Post.

To put this into perspective, over that same period, MSNBC has mentioned Thomas almost 500 times. As for the name Harlan Crow? Fox News has almost never mentioned his name. Here are the ways in which Fox News has framed the myriad stories about gifts, vacations, plots of land, and business start-up monies from Crow to Thomas:

  • April 6: “Clarence Thomas report spurs new calls from Democrats for Supreme Court code of ethics”

  • April 6: “Progressive Democrats call for Clarence Thomas impeachment after reported undisclosed gifts from GOP megadonor”

  • April 7: “Justice Thomas defends trips taken with ‘dearest friends’ after reports say he accepted gifts”

  • April 8: “Democrats press Supreme Court chief justice to investigate Clarence Thomas’ trips with GOP megadonor”

  • April 9: “Report on Clarence Thomas’ travel habits is ‘politics plain and simple’: expert”

  • April 10: “AOC doubles down on ‘ignoring’ abortion rule, Clarence Thomas impeachment: ‘abuse of judicial overreach’”

  • April 10: “Senate Democrats demand Chief Justice Roberts open investigation into Clarence Thomas over ‘misconduct’”

But if Fox News is barely mentioning the Supreme Court story, and talking all the way around the various Donald Trump legal indictments and trials and potential indictments, what are they talking about? According to the analysis, Bud Light. The beer. You see, Bud Light signed a sponsorship deal with internet celebrity Dylan Mulvaney. The deal seems to have included Mulvaney making sure to create product placement social media posts.

Mulvaney’s sponsorship deal led to former celebrities like Kid Rock to start shooting Bud Light cans with guns in protest. Fox News covered that more than 183 times. This coming from the network that spends a considerable amount of of resources trying to torture conspiratorial connections between billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and … everything happening that they don’t like.

Between Clarence and his Big Lying wife, Ginni, these two radical right wing activists have secured their spot in the annals of history under fascism.

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On today’s episode, Markos and Kerry are joined by a friend of the podcast, Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg. Rosenberg was one of the few outsiders who, like Daily Kos, kept telling the world that nothing supported the idea of a red wave. Simon and the crew break down his strategy for Democratic candidates to achieve a 55% popular vote in all elections—a number that a few years ago would have seemed unattainable, but now feels within reach.

Republicans threaten frivolous prosecutions of prominent Democrats in retaliation for Trump charges

One of the key Republican responses to the criminal charges against Donald Trump comes in the form of a threat. (What a surprise.) The argument goes like this, each step dripping with its own form of dishonesty: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s charges against Trump are purely political and/or Trump should simply be above the law. Therefore, a reasonable response would be for local prosecutors in Republican areas to cook up charges against prominent Democrats.

Democrats, the claim is, have forced Republicans to fight dirty. 

RELATED STORY: Trump indictment provides damning 'statement of facts' that lays out scheme to sway 2016 election

Here’s House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer on Fox News

I’ll tell you one of the things that I don’t think’s been picked up a lot that’s going to be a problem: I had two calls yesterday, one from a county attorney in Kentucky and one from a county attorney in Tennessee. They were Republican, obviously, both states are heavily Republican. They want to know if there are ways they can go after the Bidens now. They’ve opened up a can of worms, they’ve set precedents now that we can’t go back on.

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The “one of the things that I don’t think’s been picked up on a lot” part is particularly funny since a lawyer whose firm represents some Trump advisers made exactly this argument in The New York Times last week, when it was just as dishonest as it is coming from Comer. The can of worms is only opened up if you take for granted that Bragg’s prosecution was purely political, and even if you grant that—a big stretch given the documentation on offer—Bragg is the prosecutor where Trump did the thing that is allegedly a crime. How is a local prosecutor in Kentucky or Tennessee going to tie any Bidens to alleged crimes in their county

But note the lack of pretense that this is about anything but retaliation. There’s the cursory gesture at regret that precedents have been set “that we can’t go back on,” but that’s in defense of a claim that this is a precedent for things it is not a precedent for. Michael Cohen went to prison for his role in this scheme and the Trump Justice Department worked to avert further investigations. Whether Bragg can make the case that what Trump personally did was a violation of New York criminal law remains to be seen—again, Trump’s lawyers will have the chance to aggressively defend their client—but the charges against Trump are a far cry from a Kentucky county attorney saying “Can I go after the Bidens for ... something?” (Comer, remember, was whining about the lack of prosecution of Beau Biden before Bragg indicting Trump seemed like a serious likelihood.)

Comer wasn’t the only one making this threat. Appearing on Fox News, former George W. Bush official Ari Fleischer was even more explicit about it as a threat and as retaliation.

“One of the raps against Donald Trump is that he violates the norms, and as a result the Democrats had no choice, prosecutors had no choice. But Sean, what’s happened to Donald Trump is actually the real violation of the norms,” Fleischer said, touching on (and lying about) the impeachments of Trump and framing Bragg’s prosecution as wholly political. The implication is that no amount of wrongdoing by Trump could justify Democrats taking action against him—the reaction to Trump’s actions will always be the more profound violation of norms.

Then Fleischer moved on to the retaliation part.

Here’s what I hope happens, Sean. I earnestly hope that conservative prosecutors in rural areas of America indict Bill Clinton, indict Hillary Clinton, indict Hunter Biden. Their only way and return to the norms is for one side to realize if they go too far the other will match them. And that is not the way we settle our disputes in America, they should be settled at the ballot box, not through the courts, but Republicans cannot unilaterally disarm. You can’t let them try to interfere in the 2024 election by doing to Donald Trump what they’re doing. And I say that as somebody who will criticize Donald Trump when he goes too far. The Democrats are violating the norms and they’re especially doing it through this case, this weak case, in Manhattan.

Bill Clinton? Hillary Clinton? Republicans are also complaining that the crimes Trump is charged with should have passed the statute of limitations, but Fleischer wants local prosecutors reaching back to, what, the 1990s to get Bill Clinton? And it seems safe to assume that if the Justice Department under Trump could not find a way to “lock her up,” there’s nothing to prosecute Hillary Clinton for. Maybe Hunter Biden went on a bender in a county with a Republican prosecutor sometime, but this is a ridiculous idea unless you’re solely motivated by revenge—which Fleischer can confidently assume his audience on Sean Hannity’s show is.

Fleischer, as a Republican of the Karl Rove school, also knows that projection is the way to go, accusing Democrats of trying to interfere in the 2024 election to distract from the fact that Trump’s alleged crimes are about an effort to cover up his sexual encounters until after the 2016 election, and shifting the burden of “violating the norms” from Trump onto Democrats. But we’re not talking about norms here. We’re talking about laws, and whether Trump broke them.

Republicans cannot be allowed to shift the question from where it belongs—can the Manhattan DA prove that Trump broke the law and get a jury to convict him?—to these outlandish “can of worms” retaliation schemes. There are enough ambitious Republican prosecutors in this country that if they thought they could get a court to allow them to charge Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden with a crime, they would already have done it. This isn’t a serious threat of legal action, it’s a media strategy, and it’s the media’s job (outside of Fox News, which is obviously pushing it) to ensure that it fails to gain traction.

Our planned Ukraine episode will have to wait, as Donald Trump is being arraigned in New York City for his role in falsifying records to hide hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. This is the first of a potential slew of indictments coming Trump’s way, and we are here for a celebration of karmic justice—and to talk about what happens to the Republican Party after this.

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As evidence of Trump’s coup plot grows, most Republican pundits are only shouting louder

The evidence that Donald J. Trump attempted to overthrow the United States government on Jan. 6, 2021 is overwhelming, and the House select committee tasked with investigating the coup has been remarkably effective in gathering and presenting it. It's a certainty that Trump gathered the crowd that day, that he was told many were armed, and that he specifically told them to "march" to the Capitol at the exact time Congress was meeting to acknowledge his election loss. His intent was to intimidate Congress into declaring the election invalid. He sat on his behind, watching television, watching the violence play out, and with a tweet attacking vice president Mike Pence specifically, egging it on. He refused to help until it had already been made clear that the violence had failed and both Congress and Pence were safe.

Trump is a stone-cold traitor surrounded by Republicans bent on toppling the government, and the effectiveness of the Jan. 6 committee's explanation of Trump's pathetic but still-violent plot has been enough to rattle anyone in conservative media not explicitly devoted to kissing Trump's ass. And that would be very good news—if the number of media conservatives who condemned the coup to begin with amounted to more than a handful. Everyone else in Republicanism is still riding the ol' fascist trolley, and anyone who thinks a fascist base is going to condemn a fascist leader for attempting to erase the rules preventing him from retaining power needs a refresher on what fascism actually is.

Is the conservative media turning against Trump, then? Not in any real numbers, no. What's changing right now is that some individual media figures are looking to cut Trump loose as too much of a liability even for Trumpism. Most of the movement is not that tactical, however, and those who supported the coup by promoting the invented hoaxes used to fuel it, and who immediately downplayed the deaths afterward—either with new hoaxes or by insisting that "most" of the crowd Trump gathered did not attempt to beat Capitol police officers to death in an effort to hunt down Trump's named enemies—are only shrieking those same hoaxes louder.

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In The New York Times, we get a run-through of so-called conservative reactions to the hearings and, surprise, it's all the usual garbage fire. Radio shrieker Mark Levin says that it wasn't a real insurrection because a real insurrection would have involved Trump arresting Mike Pence. Merely pointing an angry mob in his direction and telling them that Pence was the thing standing between them and victory doesn't count. There's Laura Ingraham, one of the Fox News hosts who thought the violence of the day was extremely bad when it was happening, and were begging the White House to call it off—but who immediately turned around to downplay the same violence to viewers, a process that has become rote whenever the network's hosts have found their own network rhetoric to be in too-close proximity to acts of domestic terrorism.

As for Tucker, what is there even to say? The perpetually whining brat remains as devoted to a fascist remaking of the country as fellow sociopath Steve Bannon, who Carlson hosted after Bannon was found guilty of criminal contempt of Congress. As the House select committee has held hearing after hearing, Carlson's show has gotten more and more vigorous in its condemnations of the committee's very existence.

Carlson's post-Trump-revelations show was a raging trash fire, an absolute parade of gaslighting with mockery for Pence's Secret Service team and every other law enforcement officer on the job that day:

Watch Tucker Carlson literally laugh at DC cop Michael Fanone saying he's "been left with psychological trauma and emotional anxiety" from the Capitol riots. Fanone was nearly beaten to death and suffered a heart attack! This is truly sociopathic behavior here. pic.twitter.com/VA2QN3Rk5T

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 28, 2021

Sociopathic? Maybe. But even back during his CNN days, Tucker Carlson had a thing for mocking injured people—he spent multiple such days sneering about a lawsuit filed after a child had been disemboweled by a poorly designed pool drain. That giddy cruelty is his own little schtick, and possibly the only aspect of his persona that carried over from "smug fraternity kid in bowtie" to "globetrotting white nationalist with penchant for anti-democratic strongmen."

At The Washington Post, Greg Sargent mulls the "fracturing" between those conservatives that are attempting to cut Trump loose and those who are not, and is correct in suggesting that the split is mostly for self-serving reasons.

Two editorials from far-right media kingpin Rupert Murdoch's possessions, in The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, are unambiguous in cutting Trump loose; Trump has proven "unworthy" for office, says the Post. Sargent cites Post newsletter-writer Olivier Knox to note that the split is perhaps between those who fancy themselves part of the D.C. establishment versus those whose public personas rely on demonizing that establishment.

Put more bluntly: As revelations mount about what Trump did not just to assemble the violent mob, but the acts he took to use the resulting violence in his bid to stay in power, it's every conservative pundit for themselves. The question in every pundit’s mind is whether Donald Trump is so damaged—or so close to being indicted—that the movement has to pry him loose and accept the damage.

Much of what passes for intellectual Republicanism still secretly despises Trump, as anyone with a brain and a pulse naturally should, and would absolutely love to cut the ineffectual, unpredictable blowhard away from his base so that the movement could be inherited by an equally mean-spirited but more competent new Dear Leader. From most Republican senators to the editors of the Journal, replacing Trump with a less buffoonish figure would be a dream come true.

For the vast majority of the "conservative" media, however, every possible off-ramp was passed by long ago. The whole point of the newly fascist movement is that their "enemies" are wrong, every investigation of wrongdoing by movement leaders is a fabrication meant to discredit them, and indeed the entire world is allied in conspiracy against them. The news is no longer even news, but a jumping-off point for adding another lie to the big pile.

Fox's Greg Gutfeld makes ridiculous claim that the January 6 hearings are “exonerating Trump”https://t.co/idqPuLxcXG

— Media Matters (@mmfa) July 25, 2022

You're not going to get career talking heads who staked themselves to the notion that four years and two impeachments’ worth of rampant Trump corruption was all a conspiracy by Republicanism's enemies to make the ridiculous public clown look bad to now reverse themselves. They became big-name pundit celebrities by claiming all Republicans are innocent all the time.

Nobody on the Fox News programs is struggling with the question, or doing any nighttime soul-searching on whether the new details of Trump's inaction should finally be the brick that walls him up forever in the mausoleum of failed leaders. Every paycheck for the last four years has been dependent on their own ability to feed their audience whatever that audience wants most to hear, and the Republican base most wants to hear unhinged conspiracy theories about how all of their non-white, non-conservative, non-straight, non-library-hating enemies all plotted to make it look like Trump is a nation-betraying pile of crap, even after far-right cartoonists spent all those years drawing him as conservatism's musclebound and perfect-postured savior.

Republicanism is a fascist movement. There's no getting around that at this point; the party is dedicated to pushing hoaxes and propaganda as a primary means of winning elections, and is especially focused on targeting all Americans who are not them as their enemies. The truth of whether or not Dear Leader incited a violent, armed mob to assault a joint session of Congress rather than abide an election loss is not important, because the Republicans of the House and Senate, the Fox News punditry, and the Republican base would all have absolutely supported Trump's move to seize power if it had worked.

If the mob had found and killed Mike Pence and Trump used the act to declare emergency powers, nullify the election, and remain parked in the White House, every Republican from McConnell to Graham to McCarthy to Sean Hannity would all be defending Trump's position as the only plausible path forward. It would only be "reasonable" for Trump to act to maintain the nation's "security," and if the loser of an election announcing themselves to be the winner has never been done before, at the presidential level, then it would still be declared better than the unrest that would transpire if law enforcement or the military tried to remove him from the building.

We've been here before. We've been here even during the impeachment process launched against Trump for this precise event. Terrible shame, the Republicans all said, but Congress having to flee a violent mob is hardly reason to put a negative mark down in a president's permanent political record. Now let us all move on to hunt down "critical race theory" in all its imagined forms.

Fascist pundits respect power (see: Viktor Orban) and mock perceived weakness (see: Capitol police officers unable to subdue the mob.) The coup attempt is still seen, by them, as a perfectly reasonable bit of politicking, and the main concern even when it was happening was not over whether their dear ally Donald Trump was a filthy violence-provoking traitor using hoaxes to overturn an American election but the optics that would result after it presumably failed. There's nobody on Fox News saying this should never happen again. They're saying it was no big deal to begin with, and why are our political enemies so obsessed with this.

The bad news for Trump is that even pro-fascist conservative pundits are likely to cut Trump loose in the near future. The movement no longer needs him. Anyone looking for promises of vengeance against non-whites, against LGBT children, against school librarians, against pandemic scientists or other movement enemies has a host of Republican governors who have been falling over themselves to prove they could lead such a movement. Florida's Ron DeSantis has literally been copying even Trump's mannerisms in his bid to detach Trump from his base and paste himself into its leadership.

Whether the base will go along is another matter, but ... they probably will. Again, fascist movements celebrate power and mock weakness; all a new leader has to do to beat Trump is belittle him in front of the base that coalesced around Trump specifically because they liked seeing people belittled. Trump's success in creating a movement that is utterly vapid will eventually be his own undoing; these are people with low attention spans. Their focus is on hurting their perceived enemies, not loyalty toward their perceived allies. Anyone who lets them express their constant bubbling rage will do.

Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.

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