It's Not Easy Being Green 🌻 🌻 🌻

The Big Lie: More of the depositions given in the Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox have been released and they provide further evidence that just about everyone at Fox News, including Rupert Murdoch, others in senior management, members of the company’s board and on-air hosts knew that Trump’s claims of voter fraud were false but pushed them anyway, concerned that calling them out as fake would depress ratings and profits by sending Trump infatuated viewers to Newsmax and OANN.   Notably, Murdoch admitted that his hosts, including Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo endorsed the cockamamie assertions about the so-called “Hugo Chavez” Dominion machines flipping votes from Trump to Biden even though he “would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing” all that as he was always “dubious” of Trump’s claims of widespread fraud. Murdoch also said he knew it was wrong to let Tucker Carlson host election conspiracist Mr. Pillow Mike Lindell but did nothing to stop Tucker because the Pillow pusher spends boatloads of moolah on Fox ads.  To make that point clear Murdoch added “It is not red or blue, it is green.” Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, now a Fox board member, repeatedly warned Rupert and his son Lachlan to stop allowing the spread of election lies warning that many of those who thought the election had been stolen did so “because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believe were credible sources.”  Of course, the not so principled Ryan didn’t step down in protest over Fox’s refusal to stop airing election lies, because he too appreciates the value of the “green.” This is all relevant because to prevail in their lawsuit Dominion must show not only that Fox broadcast false information but that it did so knowingly. Though the depositions released to date appear to show that Dominion has done that, the Fox position is that what’s been released so far is one sided. It’s hard to see how there’s a lot of “both sides” here but that’s their public position and proving defamation against a media outlet is hard.  Moving away from who knew what when, the depositions also reveal that in 2020 Rupert Murdoch gave his good buddy Jared Kushner “confidential information” about Biden’s ads, a preview before they became public along with “debate strategy.” According to the NY Times, at most news organizations that would result in an investigation and disciplinary measures, but Fox is Fox and Murdoch does what he wants, so there’s that. Regarding debates, RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel is once again insisting that only candidates who pledge to back the ultimate Republican nominee for president will be allowed to participate in primary debates, though even she has got to know that Trump will only make that commitment with all his fingers crossed and will only stick to it if he wins the nomination. And as hard as it is to envision Trump being the party’s nominee again, the one time and hopefully one term president is rising in most polls widening his margin against Ron DeSantis the unannounced candidate viewed right now as his strongest challenger. Maybe voters aren’t buying into DeSantis’ war against Disney or his turning Florida into a one-party autocracy where only conservative views can be taught in schools and universities or maybe it’s because they saw all those pictures of Trump handing out of date water bottles to people in East Palestine, Ohio.  Or maybe its because polls mean nothing.  Who knows?  Understanding the psychology of Republican voters is something I can’t even begin to understand. Not kidding about that one party thing, apparently a Republican State Senator in Florida is seeking to outlaw the Democratic Party.  He’s introduced a bill that would cancel the filings of political parties that previously supported slavery; that would disqualify the Democratic Party since it supported slavery during the Civil War.  His bill would automatically change the registration of Florida Democrats to “no party affiliation.”  Florida, what gives?

The Injured List:  Senator John Fetterman’s office reports that he remains hospitalized, on a path to recovery. Hopefully 48-year-old Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro is also on a road to recovery.  He revealed yesterday that he “successfully underwent surgery to remove gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumors” and that the “small, slow growing and mostly asymptomatic tumors were discovered last summer.”  He says that his doctors have told him that his “prognosis is good” and that he expects to return to Washington in a few weeks. In other health news, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin is half way through the chemotherapy series that he is undergoing for the treatment of his lymphoma but aside from his head scarf, you’d hardly know what he was going through as yesterday he thoroughly schooled Colorado’s gun loving high school dropout Lauren Boebert during a House Oversight Committee hearing where she was doing her thing extolling Trump, slamming Biden and going after mask mandates and the like. Raskin reminded her about the more than twenty occasions that Trump defended the Chinese government in terms of COVID, saying that if there was a problem with the Chinese government unleashing the virus, “you would have to pin that on your favorite President Donald Trump not Joe Biden.”  In keeping with the China theme, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz also dug himself a bit of an embarrassing hole.  During a House Armed Services Committee hearing about aid to Ukraine, Gaetz who is team Putin asked Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl if Ukraine’s far right Azov Battalion was getting access to US weapons. Kahl answered that he wasn’t aware of such a thing and asked Gaetz for his source.  In response, Gaetz entered into the record an article from the Global Times, a newspaper which the Trump administration designated as a Chinese propaganda outlet. Kahl then dryly responded that “As a general matter, I don’t take Beijing’s propaganda at face value.” Even Gaetz seemed to acknowledge that he’d screwed up. Also admitting his screwed up was Oklahoma Republican Congressman Andy Ogles, whose latest excuse for misrepresenting his academic credentials is that he didn’t know that his major was Liberal Arts rather than International Relations.  By the way, despite claiming to be an economist, during his 17-year journey to getting a college degree, he only took one economics course.  In case you are wondering he got a C in that course and his overall GPA was 2.4.

And:  Though he’s still running the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) Matt Schlapp does appear to be suffering some consequences for allegedly sexually harassing a Herschel Walker aide, well only some.  Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and Ronna McDaniel won’t be attending this week’s annual conference which is being held in DeSAntis’ home state. But not to worry, because Trump, his buddy and fellow election denier/former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, Nikki Haley, Joe Pompeo, Margie Q and Ted Cruz all will be in attendance because what’s a little sexual harassment among friends?  Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her primary, as expected Democratic Congressman Barbara Lee has added herself to the field of Democrats seeking to replace the retiring Senator Diane Feinstein, and Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin formally announced that she’s running for the Michigan Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow. As of now Slotkin appears to have a clear path to the Democratic nomination as several other potential Democratic candidates have announced that they will not be running.  Her path may extend all the way to Washington as one of the most visible potential Republican candidates, Congressman John James who previously lost when he ran against Stabenow in 2018 and Senator Gary Peters in 2020, has announced he plans to stay in the House.