Category: RNC

ICYMI: Biden strongly condemns Hamas, says it doesn’t represent Palestinians

Posted on by kos

President Joe Biden condemns Hamas terrorism

Today, President Joe Biden spoke to the nation about Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel and about the U.S. response to the ongoing violence. Biden stridently condemned the “pure unadulterated evil” of the Hamas attack, referring to it as a “slaughter” and a “massacre.” He noted that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people, said that Palestinians are pawns being used as “human shields,” and said, “This is terrorism, but sadly, for the Jewish people, [it] is not new. … We must be crystal clear. We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel.”

War Update: Israel, Ukraine, Russia, and Republicans

Russia is using the war in Israel to inject dangerous and false propaganda into the debate, and pro-Putin Republicans are gleefully taking the bait. “[An] account with over 350,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter) not only blames the Hamas attack on the U.S., but insists that it was all somehow done on orders from Barack Obama,” writes our own Mark Sumner. “Expect more such conspiracy theories, many more false claims, and for the worst of Republicans to continue using the dead in Israel for political gain.”

RNC chair's partisan remarks on Israel tragedy ignite controversy

War is breaking out, civilians are being massacred, but don’t worry—the Republican National Committee is thrilled. “I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates to contrast where Republicans have stood with Israel time and time again, and Joe Biden has been weak,” said RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel.

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GOP knocks itself out in Round 1, names Trump undisputed champ

Posted on (Updated by Kerry Eleveld

When Donald Trump first entered the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he was more of a punchline than a candidate because no one imagined he could win.

Now, Trump is all anyone ever talks about because nearly everyone, save several of his Republican challengers, believes he's inevitable. While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis briefly offered the GOP a glimmer of hope that the party could have its MAGA cake and eat it too, chastened Republicans are already talking like losers, according to a Politico Magazine piece by Jonathan Martin.

“We’re just going to have to go into the basement, ride out the tornado and come back up when it’s over to rebuild the neighborhood," said one Republican strategist, who declined to be named.

But the problem isn't that the twice-impeached, criminally indicted former president is unbeatable, it's that Republicans are too craven to go all in on beating him. Literally three people are officially in the race and many Republicans are all but throwing in the towel. It's like a disease—no one is willing to stick their neck out, particularly after they all watched erstwhile GOP rising stars like former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming get drummed out of her leadership role and then her seat for possessing the rarest of Republican qualities: a spine.

The only Republican members who are willing to go on the record against Trump talk in code. Take GOP Rep. Mike Lawler from upstate New York, who flipped a Biden district last cycle and knows a Trump nomination would doom his reelection.

“Whoever the nominee is going to be needs to be forward-looking and they need to be focused on the American people, not the grievances of the past, and it certainly can’t be about the 2020 election,” Lawler said, trying to thread the needle of making an anti-Trump pitch that avoids summoning his wrath.

Trump is also shaping the Senate Republican field without lifting a finger, as potential candidates wait and wonder whether an alternative will emerge. If Trump looks inevitable, "it makes it harder to get in," one would-be GOP Senate candidate said because Trump's a killer in the suburbs.

For years, Washington journalists consistently reported that many, if not most, congressional Republicans secretly loathed Trump during his tenure. Despite these many colorful reports, Cheney remains the sole Republican who was willing to lambaste Trump, vote for his impeachment, and still run for reelection. Every other Republican Trump critic (of which there were few) either receded into the woodwork to salvage their political careers or retired from Congress.

Even the Republican National Committee (RNC), whose primary job is to help Republicans win elections, is cowed by Trump. The RNC is currently putting the finishing touches on an examination of why Republicans so severely underperformed in the midterms, and the report never once mentions Trump, nor does it name any his losing candidates.

Naturally, Trump is turning that cowardice against the RNC, threatening to not participate in the GOP debates. During a recent dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump verbally polled members of the Florida congressional delegation who have endorsed him about whether he should dignify the first debate with his presence.

It's all a ridiculous bluff—Trump would never let a bunch of challengers soak up the limelight of a nationally televised debate. He's simply using the threat to bully the RNC, which has already made peace with being exceedingly weak for yet another cycle.

One of the only Republicans willing to broadside Trump is former rival-turned ally-turned enemy Chris Christie, whose main calling card as a potential GOP 2024 candidate is simply the fact that he's the only one willing to take on Trump.

“I think that the majority of the party doesn’t want him,” Christie told Politico, pegging Trump as a surefire loser. But asked if Republicans had tired of losing yet, Christie responded, “I think we’re going to find out.”

At a speech in New Hampshire last week, the former New Jersey governor tested the presidential waters, asking attendees whether they were content to fold already and let Trump walk away with all the chips.  

“What you need to decide is: Are we just going to put this race on autopilot, ‘he’s ahead, let him win, let’s see what happens, how bad can it be?’”

Bad is, of course, a relative term. Some MAGA cultists clearly thought Jan. 6 was swell and still do—though they wouldn't be wasting their time at a Christie event. Trump is their guy.

But presumably, many Republican elders think Trump's death grip on the party has been bad for business—at least electorally speaking—even if they like his tax cuts for the rich and Supreme Court packing.

Christie's pitch is precisely geared toward that donor class and a mix of conservative swing voters, anti-Trumpers, and even Trumpers who don't want to keep losing elections in perpetuity.

Whether Christie can secure the funding he needs to launch a presidential campaign will be at least one test of Republican resolve to leave Trump in the rearview mirror. To date, that resolve has proven pathetically weak.

The past week seems to have packed in a month’s worth of news. Markos and Kerry tackle it all, from Joe Biden’s big announcement to Tucker Carlson’s early retirement from Fox News.

Embedded Content

‘Embarrassing,’ ‘stupid’: Republicans blast national party as if it bears no relation to them

Posted on (Updated by Kerry Eleveld

Senate Republicans have finally located their problem, and it's the Republican National Committee. After the RNC last week endorsed the Jan. 6 insurrection as "legitimate political discourse," many congressional Republicans are pretending like the national Republican Party bears no relationship to them.

"I'm not a member of the RNC," Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas said Sunday when asked whether GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois deserved to be censured by the RNC for participating in the Jan. 6 probe. Within the text of that censure resolution, the RNC endorsed the violent Jan. 6 assault that resulted in death and destruction as "legitimate political discourse."

"It could not have been a more inappropriate message," said Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the uncle of RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. Romney said he had texted with McDaniel after passage of the resolution and described her to CNN as a "wonderful person and doing her very best." But as for the resolution, Romney added, "Anything that my party does that comes across as being stupid is not going to help us."

Stupid is apt—but let's not limit the moniker to McDaniel and the national party alone. Republicans, eyeing an election cycle that should absolutely favor them based on historical trends, had the chance to bury Donald Trump last year during his second impeachment trial and leave much of his political baggage in the rearview mirror. Instead, they breathed new life into him, and now they're pretending like the RNC is solely responsible for his drag on the party.

The RNC censure resolution came at the end of a week that was kicked off by Trump dangling pardons for Jan. 6 convicts during a Texas rally the weekend before. Trump then called on Congress to investigate his former vice president, Mike Pence, for failing to unilaterally "overturn" a free and fair 2020 election.

But the RNC's endorsement of the Jan. 6 violence was just the latest in a years-long parade of Republican efforts to appease and coddle Trump. He has continually demanded absolute fealty from Republicans every step of the way, and they have acquiesced time and time again. With its censure resolution, the RNC was once again mollifying Trump by pursuing his political vendetta against Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger, both of whom voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6 attack.

Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, also one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, told CNN the House GOP caucus avoided the topic of the censure altogether in its conference meeting Tuesday, suggesting the whole episode was just too cringey to touch.

“It was pretty damn embarrassing,” Rice said.

But Senate Republicans are especially prickly on the matter, particularly those who had a chance to impeach Trump for inciting the attack on the U.S. government and explicitly declined to take it.

"It's just not a constructive move, when you're trying to win elections and take on Democrats, to take on Republicans," said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, as if no one could have imagined Trump would inspire internecine mayhem when he voted to let him off the hook for Jan. 6.

Asked if McDaniel should step aside, Thune pretended the RNC had nothing whatsoever to do with congressional Republicans. "Oh, I don't know. Ultimately, it will be up to the RNC," he said of McDaniel's fate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina rolled out the same talking point Senate Republicans have been parroting every time Trump pulls them into some new controversy—2022 is all about the future for Republicans, folks.

"I think all of us up here want to talk about forward and not backward," Graham said. "We want to talk about why we should be in charge of the House and the Senate, and when you're not talking about that, that takes you in the wrong direction."

And by talking about why Republicans should be in charge, Graham means deliberately not releasing a 2022 agenda so voters will have exactly no idea what Republicans plan to do if they retake control of the upper chamber.

The frustration among most Republicans was palpable.

"I think the RNC should be focused on electing Republicans," said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri.

Even House Republicans, led by Trump hack Kevin McCarthy, sought to distance themselves from the RNC's unforced error.

Asked about the RNC resolution, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise told CNN, "My focus has been on what we need to do to take back the House."

The House GOP campaign chief, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, added, "We're focused on winning the majority next fall."

It wasn't exactly a full-throated stand for American democracy, but hey, Republicans want control of Congress so they can end this scurrilous investigation into the worst homegrown attack on the Capitol in U.S. history.

"We ought to capture the Jan. 6 committee and convert it to our purposes: pursuing the extent to which federal involvement might have animated violence," Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, floating a totally unsubstantiated right-wing conspiracy theory.

To be fair, some Republicans did join the RNC in defending the insurrectionists.

"There's no doubt that there were tens of thousands of people engaged in peaceful free speech that the press and Democrats try to demonize falsely," said Sen. Ted Cruz, who voted against certification.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who also voted to throw the election, called the Jan. 6 panel "illegitimate," presumably while pumping his fist.

"They're not following their own rules. And I think, frankly, it's, it harkens back to the House Committee on un-American affairs," said Hawley, engaging the "un-American" topic on which Republicans have become bonafide experts.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, firmly ensconced in his disreality bubble, couldn't dig out of his conspiracy rabbit hole long enough to take note of the RNC aligning itself with Jan. 6 terrorists.

"I did not pay any attention to that," said Johnson, who's up for reelection this year.

But Johnson was upstaged by House GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who coughed up an entirely fictional explanation of the RNC's resolution.

“What they were talking about is the six RNC members who Jan 6th has subpoenaed, who weren't even here, who were in Florida that day," McCarthy said—something that was never even mentioned in the censure resolution.

Asked McCarthy about “legitimate political discourse.” “What they were talking about is the six RNC members who Jan 6th has subpoenaed, who weren't even here, who were in Florida that day." He says those who caused damage “should be in jail.” (RNC resolution doesn’t mention that) pic.twitter.com/k4qsLWAOv5

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 8, 2022

Donald Trump, serial grifter who never gives back, has soaked up more than $100 million in donations

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Donald Trump has amassed a $105 million war chest since leaving office but hasn't dropped so much as a dime on boosting GOP candidates or funding outside efforts to overturn the 2020 elections, according to Politico.

Nope. That's for losers and suckers, and Trump is just a good old-fashioned grifter. Consequently, he has directed nearly all the money he soaked up through his political action committees (Make America Great Again PAC, Save America PAC, and the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee) to pay his own personal and business expenses almost exclusively. That includes paying for travel expenses, more fundraising appeals, the salaries of personal and political aides, and legal fees he racked up trying to mount an impeachment defense and overturn the 2020 results. Trump did make one external donation of $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, which was founded by several of his former aides after he lost reelection. 

But when it comes to high-profile efforts to overturn 2020, like the Arizona fraudit or helping Republican candidates—zip! They're on their own. In other words, the vast majority of Trump's fundraising appeals have nothing to do with where he is actually directing his money. Those Arizona-style audits that more than half of Republican voters actually think could change the 2020 outcome are just window dressing to Trump. They're going nowhere and he isn't wasting a dime on them—but they sure are lucrative.

Another popular fundraising theme for Trump is that he's going to ensure Republicans win back Congress next year. But apparently the sum total of his efforts include dooming the Republican candidates who are perhaps best-suited to win in general elections. 

A Trump spokesperson now claims he recently made donations to his chosen candidates that haven't yet shown up in campaign filings. And despite telling all the GOP campaign committees earlier this year to cease and desist from using him or his likeness to solicit donations, Trump is now taking credit for their fundraising hauls.

“In addition to the RECORD BREAKING money raised over the last 6 months to my political affiliates, I am pleased to see the entire party benefit from ‘Trump,’ Trump said in a statement after the GOP's national committee and two congressional campaign committees raised close to a combined $300 million in first six months of the year.

Interestingly, though, the statement from the National Republican Senatorial Committee hailing its $51 million intake made no references to Trump. 

“The more voters learn about the disastrous impacts of the Senate Democrats’ socialist agenda, the more the momentum builds to elect a Republican Senate majority in 2022,” NRSC chair Rick Scott said in a statement.

Gee, it almost seems like Senate Republicans don't want to be associated with Trump. Rest assured that Trump is lying awake at night smarting over the fact that the GOP committees have raised even a single cent that he believes belongs to him exclusively.

What Trump has lavished money on is attorney fees—the many, many lawyers involved in defending and advising him in everything from his second impeachment to the Russian investigation to a host of personal lawsuits.

Rudy Giuliani, however, the face of Trump's legal resistance following his 2020 loss, appears to have come up dry. The $75,000 Trump shelled out to Giuliani went exclusively to his travel expenses, not legal fees. Sorry, Rudy.

Trump Lawyer Jenna Ellis Quits The Republican Party During Live Broadcast

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Jenna Ellis, the former attorney for President Trump, quit the Republican Party during a live broadcast on the conservative news platform, “Real America’s Voice.”

Ellis said she is making the move because, in her mind, it’s clear the GOP does not – and did not – support the former President enough.

“Sure, the Republicans claim to be keeping Democrats in check, but only a handful of outsiders are actually speaking up,” she claimed. “The rest are compromising on everything.”

“The infrastructure bill, for example,” Ellis continued. “Or the second impeachment hoax, where [Senate GOP Leader Mitch] McConnell actually stood up and ranted against President Trump for his own political gain, not for the truth.”

The former Trump attorney’s announcement seems to have been spurred on by a recent spat with the Republican National Committee (RNC).

RELATED: Trump Lawyer Jenna Ellis Demands RNC Chair Resign – Claims They Abandoned Trump Then Lied About It

Jenna Ellis Quits The GOP

Late this past weekend, Jenna Ellis accused the RNC of lying about a story claiming the group’s chief counsel questioned electoral fraud claims.

The in-fighting exploded following a report regarding a new book by Michael Wolff which, in one excerpt, claimed Ellis received a forwarded note from RNC chief counsel Justin Riemer.

In emails obtained by The Hill, Riemer questioned colleagues who were backing Trump’s claims of election fraud during the 2020 election.

“What Rudy [Giuliani] and Jenna are doing is a joke and they are getting laughed out of court,” Riemer reportedly wrote in emails obtained by the Washington Post.

“They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing,” he continued.

Ellis allegedly showed the message to the two people she was having dinner with at the time, one of whom was another attorney for the former President, Rudy Giuliani.

The book claims Giuliani was so incensed by the message that he called Riemer and delivered a profanity-laced demand to resign.

“Who the f*** do you you think you are? How can you be going against the president?” the book claims Giuliani said. “You need to resign and resign tonight … because you are going to get fired.”

Giuliani then purportedly called McDaniel to ensure he had been fired.

The RNC issued a statement insisting the story “is simply false.”

Ellis, however, said it was true and that she had the receipts to back it up. She demanded McDaniel resign.

RELATED: Trump Easily Wins CPAC Straw Poll – Warns Biden Bringing America ‘To the Brink of Ruin’ In Fiery Speech

Ellis Calls Out The RNC

The RNC, well after the incident in question took place in November, continued to raise money off Trump’s claims of election fraud.

Jenna Ellis, in her on-air speech in which she quit the Republican Party, addressed the perceived hypocrisy.

“What happened to the millions raised by the RNC in November and December of 2020?” she asked. “The Trump team never saw a dime of that help.”

“All of them, including Ronna McDaniel, should resign now,” she continued before announcing her departure.

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“Until they do, as of today, I am resigning from the party,” she declared. “A compromised, corrupted majority is not a majority worth being a part of.”

Riemer, who is still with the RNC despite Giuliani’s attempts to get him fired, insists that the committee did everything they could to support Trump without dabbling in election fraud conspiracies.

“Any suggestion that I did not support President Trump or do everything in my power to support the RNC’s efforts to reelect President Trump is false,” Riemer said in a statement to the Washington Post.

“I will say publicly now what I then said privately: I take issue with individuals who brought lawsuits that did not serve President Trump well and did not give him the best chance in court,” he added.

Regardless of Riemer’s assertion, which might very well be accurate, it’s clear the RNC tried to discredit the story only for the truth to have come out in an embarrassing fashion.

“If we genuinely want to create a more perfect union, we have to stand up for our principles against a corrupted machine of self-serving politicians in Washington,” Ellis said.

McDaniel, who is the niece of anti-Trump Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), has since purportedly blocked Ellis on Twitter.

 

 

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The post Trump Lawyer Jenna Ellis Quits The Republican Party During Live Broadcast appeared first on The Political Insider.

Lisa Murkowski Censured By Alaska GOP After Turning On Trump – Primary Challenger To Be Recruited

Posted on by LifeZette

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has just been censured by the Alaska Republican Party after she voted to impeach former President Donald Trump last month.

Murkowski Gets Bad News

The Alaska GOP also announced plans to “recruit” a primary challenger if Murkowski runs for reelection, but the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) won’t be helping them if they follow through with this.

National party chair Ronna McDaniel had told Fox News back in January that “the RNC stays neutral in primaries for a very good reason. Because somebody has to be there to pick up the pieces of difficult primaries and help bring the party back together.” 

After Murkowski was censured, a RNC official doubled down in saying that the party committee remains neutral in Republican primaries.

Related: Manchin and Murkowski Solid for President in Senate Impeachment Vote

Murkowski Censured By Alaska Republican Party

On Saturday, the Alaska Republican Party passed a resolution that officially censured Murkowski for her impeachment trial vote, as well as multiple other votes that Alaskan Republicans were angry about.

The resolution stated that these other votes included her opposition to repealing the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, voting “present” rather than in support of the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and her support for the confirmation of Rep. Deb Haaland as interior secretary earlier this month.

The resolution added that Murkowski has “repeatedly spoken critically of President Trump throughout his term in office” and that “the Alaska Republican Party hereby separates itself from Sen. Murkowski’s conviction vote of President Trump.”

It then said that “the party hereby will recruit a Republican primary challenger to oppose and prohibit Sen. Murkowski from being a candidate in any Republican primary to the extent legally permissible.”

Trump To Campaign Against Murkowski

This comes days after Trump pledged to campaign against Murkowski next year if she decides to run.

“She represents her state badly and her country even worse. I do not know where other people will be next year, but I know where I will be – in Alaska campaigning against a disloyal and very bad senator,” Trump said.

Related: Trump Pledges That He Will Campaign Against Lisa Murkowski In 2022

This piece was written by James Samson on March 16, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
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HR 1 Could Depend on Manchin and Sinema
Meghan McCain Smacks Down Joy Behar After She Tries To Defend Andrew Cuomo Amidst Sexual Misconduct Scandal

The post Lisa Murkowski Censured By Alaska GOP After Turning On Trump – Primary Challenger To Be Recruited appeared first on The Political Insider.

NYT Report: Anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger ‘Unwelcome In His Own Family’

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

A New York Times report indicates that anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger (IL) has not only been censured by his own party but is being shunned by members of his own family.

Kinzinger has been on the offensive of late, urging the Republican party to cleanse itself of former President Donald Trump.

He is one of only 10 Republicans in the House to have voted in favor of impeachment earlier this year.

The Times, in a piece they title ‘Adam Kinzinger’s Lonely Mission,’ notes that the anti-Trumper received a two-page, handwritten letter from 11 members of his family.

“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” they wrote. “You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”

RELATED: Gaetz Challenges Anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger: ‘F***ing Bring It’

Adam Kinzinger Wants to Rescue the GOP From Trump

The profile by the New York Times references Adam Kinzinger’s quest to “restore the Republican Party” following the successful four-year term of former President Trump.

Kinzinger views the party as having relied exclusively on the politics of fear.

“We just fear,” he said. “Fear the Democrats. Fear the future. Fear everything. And it works for an election cycle or two. The problem is it does real damage to this democracy.”

Kinzinger seems unaware that the Democrats’ entire platform in 2020 was running on ‘fear’ of Donald Trump. And now he is doing the same.

The Times notes that Kinzinger’s opposition to Trump dated all the way back to 2016 and led to a testy exchange – through a medium – between the two.

Trump reportedly spoke with Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Illinois, about Kinzinger’s re-election bid.

He “poked his finger in his (Porter’s) chest and told him to deliver to Mr. Kinzinger a vulgar message about what he should do with himself,” they write.

“When Mr. Porter relayed the comment to Mr. Kinzinger during a conversation on Election Day, Mr. Kinzinger laughed and invited Mr. Trump to do the same.”

RELATED: Of The 10 Republicans Who Voted To Impeach Trump, 7 Are Already Facing Primary Challenges

Kinzinger’s Shame

The La Salle County GOP, which censured Kinzinger last month, believes his anti-Trump stance has more to do with seeking attention than it has to do with advancing the party’s platforms.

“There doesn’t seem to be a camera or a microphone he won’t run to,” said county GOP Chair Larry Smith. “He used to talk to us back in the good old days.”

Now, Kinzinger has formed a new PAC which he claims is fighting to “take back” the Republican party from Trump.

Adam Kinzinger, in announcing the PAC, took aim at pro-Trump Republican congressman Matt Gaetz (FL), to which the latter did not take very kindly.

“He wants to target my America First politics, referencing me by name,” Gaetz wrote on social media. “My response: F***ing bring it.”

Aside from being censured in Illinois, Kinzinger is one of several Republicans who voted to impeach Trump that is now facing a primary challenge.

Diante Johnson, an organizer with Black Voices for Trump last year and a field organizer with Trump’s 2016 campaign, has expressed interest in challenging Kinzinger in 2022.

“Kinzinger has said he is at peace with the possibility that he could lose re-election over his Trump stance,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

A recent poll from Axios-Ipsos shows Republican voters are siding with Trump over his intraparty opponents who supported the impeachment drive, signaling trouble for those facing primary challenges.

The post NYT Report: Anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger ‘Unwelcome In His Own Family’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

RNC Says They Will Be Neutral If Trump Runs In 2024 – But Polls Show GOP Voters Definitely Won’t

Posted on by Becky Noble

The Republican National Committee (RNC) says it will not actively back former President Donald Trump should he decide to run again in 2024 and will remain neutral in the contest.

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in an interview with the Associated Press that, “The party has to stay neutral. I’m not telling anybody to run or not to run in 2024. That’s going to be up to those candidates  going forward. What I really do want to see him do, though, is help us win back majorities in 2022.”

RELATED: Matt Gaetz And Liz Cheney Trade Barbs In Battle For Future Of The Republican Party

There Are Visible Differences In The GOP

2020 Senior Advisor to the Trump campaign Jason Miller says that is exactly what Trump wants to do.

Miller says the president, “made clear his goal is to win back the House and Senate for Republicans in 2022.” 

But there are some visible fissures in the Republican Party. All is not well for 2022.

A perfect example of that is the recent sniping between Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY).

Gaetz, a strong and vocal supporter of Donald Trump, flew to Cheney’s state of Wyoming to campaign against her, after she voted to impeach President Trump.

When Gaetz announced he would go to Wyoming to help “inspire” voters to oust Cheney, her office responded with snark, stating, “Rep. Gaetz can leave his beauty bag at home. In Wyoming the men don’t wear make-up.” 

There has been a lot of speculation as to what Donald Trump’s future plans might be, aside from helping the GOP in 2022.

Indications are that Trump won’t just be helping the GOP, but trying to reshape it as well.

There has been talk of Trump starting a third party. Donald has even come up with a name for it, the “Patriot Party.”

Reports indicated that Trump was using the specter of a third party to hold Republicans in line on the upcoming impeachment trial. 

Instead, The Donald has apparently decided to primary challenge “Never Trump” Republicans.

It was also reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was “pleased” about impeachment, saying he thought that it might help to “purge” Trump from the Republican Party.

What McConnell and the rest of his crowd don’t seem to realize is that he may very well “purge” Republican voters, angry at the party for dissing Trump. 

A poll from Axios shows that Republicans side with Trump over McConnell – big time. 

There has also been belief that Trump may start a media outlet to rival Fox News.

Trump has been highly critical of the conservative news channel since the early call for Arizona for Joe Biden on election night.

RELATED: McConnell Turns On Trump Again: Says Trump Responsible For Capitol Violence

America First vs. America Last

The divide within the Republican Party may be just this simple, but simple isn’t always without casualties. There is clearly now a Trump wing of the party which includes guys like Matt Gaetz.

That fact makes the Mitch McConnells and the Liz Cheneys of the party crazy.  

Gaetz’s America First vision of a strong economy, peace, low taxes and regulations, and less government interference – the things that Trump ran on in 2016 – have more of an attraction to average Americans.

What Trump called the “America Last” agenda consists of sending American troops hither and yon for indefinite periods of time, not standing up to the liberal Democrat agenda, and voting to impeach a president that his supporters feel is the only one listening to them.

The Cheney/McConnell types support the latter vision.

And they seem to be hanging on for dear life to the idea of Democrat “unity.” The definition of which is usually means ‘Republicans shut up and cave to Democrats.’ 

RELATED: Supreme Court Dismisses 2 Emoluments Lawsuits Against Trump

The Numbers Are In Trump’s Favor 

A Rasmussen survey released on Tuesday said that 56% of Republican voters “believe that Trump should either probably or definitely run for president again in 2024, or at least be a political power figure.

Fifty-three percent believe a third party is a good idea.

The aforementioned Axios poll has a whopping 92% of Republicans agreeing that Trump should be the GOP candidate for President in 2024.

The post RNC Says They Will Be Neutral If Trump Runs In 2024 – But Polls Show GOP Voters Definitely Won’t appeared first on The Political Insider.

Registered foreign agent Pam Bondi and her large lobbying fees attacks Biden for … corruption?

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Former Florida Attorney General and corrupt government official Pam Bondi was one of the speakers on Tuesday night’s fear and terror revisionist history broadcast by the RNC. As with every single person speaking for the Trump administration, the cosmically lazy writing of their personal narrative brings to mind the phrase “the banality of evil.”

Bondi spent her convention time telling viewers that Joe Biden had only enriched his family during his many decades in public office. She said this while the chyrons below her literally promoted the next three speakers for the RNC being Tiffany Trump, Eric Trump, and Melania Trump. The irony of Pam Bondi telling anyone anything about other people being corrupt was not lost on anyone with at least three brain cells to rub together.

More specifically, Pam Bondi’s Fox News’-level expertise on the matter of corruption, according to her, makes her uniquely qualified to point fingers at Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Of course, Pam Bondi’s job for the past year or so has been to act as a lobbyist for foreign business and government interests. She gets paid to bring political power and influence into our government on behalf of people and organizations that are not citizens of our country. That’s what she does. For money. In fact, according to the Foreign Agent Registration form, filled out by the White House, Ms. Bondi has pulled in almost $1.5 million in lobbying fees from these foreign entities over the past year.

Of course, the government interest for whom she works on behalf of, Qatar, was just implicated, along with Russia, by Trump’s own Department of Justice in an enormous corruption scandal involving the 2018 World Cup.

According to the prosecutors, representatives working for Russia and Qatar bribed FIFA executive committee officials to swing votes in the crucial hosting decisions of world football’s governing body.

After coming from her work on behalf of the government of Qatar to help with the sewage plant that is the Trump White House, Bondi was somehow able to leave this past March to restart her work with that government. In an utterly unsurprising turn of events, Donald Trump’s supposed executive order banning former administration officials from lobbying on behalf of foreign governments doesn’t apply to Bondi. Pam is right when she says she’s knows all about corruption.

The Trump onslaught begins—4 unadulterated days of brainwashing his cultists

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Instead of waiting until his culminating nomination speech on Thursday to make a splash at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump showed up Monday shortly after the convention's start to deliver a lie-laden rant lasting longer than his Democratic rival's 26-minute acceptance speech last week.

By conventional standards, Trump’s timing was a strategic error. The whole point is for the nominee to build anticipation throughout the week and then deliver a triumphant address on Thursday that draws in maximum viewership. "From a purely tactical perspective doesn’t every additional, unfocused Trump speech like this one in North Carolina, cheapen what his campaign would prefer to be the BIG SPEECH night on Thursday?" wrote NBC reporter Garrett Haake Monday as Trump was chipping away at objective reality from the podium. 

But that assumes Trump is running to win. In traditional U.S. presidential campaigns, major-party nominees generally start with base support of at least 40% and then they work toward winning over swing voters, independents, and perhaps a swath of disaffected members of the other party to reach 50 plus one on Election Day.

Not Donald Trump. As we have seen over and over again, Trump's campaign is much too incompetent and too disinterested to win over new voters. In reality, Trump is chiefly interested in cementing his base voters because his strategy is to lose by just a narrow enough margin to steal the election by claiming it was ridden with fraud.

Trump's strategic goals, therefore, don't rely on any buildup to Thursday. Rather, his strategy depends on saturating his cultists with propaganda that ensures they show up to vote and then automatically distrust any result that doesn't result in Trump's reelection. In other words, he's both brainwashing and preprogramming them.

On Monday, for instance, Trump fed his cultists patently false absolutism that if he lost reelection to Joe Biden, then the election was necessarily "rigged."

"The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election," Trump said. Never mind that Trump is losing in basically every reputable national poll along with most battleground state polls.

Trump also delivered a gusher of disinformation during his inaugural convention speech. "Most of the country is doing very very well," he claimed as reported U.S. deaths surpass at least 175,000 and total unemployment claims top 57 million. He told the crowd that Democratic governors were shutting down their states solely to hurt his reelection bid. He also mythologized that before the coronavirus "we were really coming together"—except for that whole impeachment proceeding over one of Trump's other attempts to steal the election.

This is a classic propaganda campaign designed to thoroughly brainwash his followers—the more they buy into his demented reality, the quicker they'll dismiss any fact-based reports that don't comport to Trump's fantasy world. In fact, that's why polling already shows that by a 3-to-1 margin Republican voters believe the battle against COVID-19 is "going well," while among all voters six in 10 say it is going "badly."

It's not the wow factor of a big speech that infects the minds of these GOP voters—it's the repetition, the bombardment, and the saturation that they succumb to, mostly because they need to believe in something. In deeply uncertain times, Trump offers them the “snake oil of certainty,” as Brené Brown calls it. 

And apparently, the media is going to fully help the campaign mainline Trump's disinformation straight to the public. After restricting Democrats to two hours of coverage a day during their convention, cable news outlets mostly took Trump's speech in full.

"I’m a little confused why Trump is being granted a full-day convention to just give a steam of consciousness rant of outright lies," wondered Jesse Lee, vice president of communications for the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Meanwhile, before Trump even set foot on stage, he started dialing up his alternative reality wherein he's always being victimized and other people are always getting better treatment.

"Incredible that @CNN & MSDNC aren’t covering the Roll Call of States," Trump tweeted as both networks took part of the congressional hearing on U.S. Postal Service delays during the truly lackluster roll call. "Fake News! This is what the Republican Party is up against. Also, I’d like to hear the remarks of the Delegates from individual States, rather than @FoxNews anchors. Ridiculous!"

CNN and MSNBC ultimately both took major portions of Trump's speech, as did Fox News of course. So even as Trump complained about slighted, he actually got more than his fair share—all part of the brainwashing.