Defection and Deflection 🌻 🌻 🌻

Tick Tock: In order to become Speaker, Kevin McCarthy promised his extremists just about everything they demanded.  To fulfil one of those requests he appointed three of his most obstructionist members, Chip Roy of Texas, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, to the powerful Rules Committee. The Rules Committee matters because nothing makes it to the House floor for a vote without first getting its seal of approval. Last night Roy and Norman, voted against the debt ceiling compromise hammered out between McCarthy and President Biden, but Massie, provided the critical vote needed to move the economy sparing legislation on to the floor where it will be voted on today.  No Democrats on the Rules Committee voted in favor mostly because their votes don’t matter because Kevin also promised his caucus that nothing would get voted out of the Rules Committee unless backed by Republicans.  That said while a number of progressives will join Republican hardliners in voting against the compromise legislation when it is brought up on the floor of the House, enough Democrats together with a critical mass of Republicans are expected to vote for the bill, sending it on to the Senate where Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul and probably a few others will pontificate about it being horrible, woke and RINO before it’s brought up for a vote.  The legislation it is expected to pass through the Senate, again with support from both sides of the aisle.  If all goes according to plan, it will make it to Biden’s desk and be signed moments before Janet Yellin’s revised June 5 default deadline.  Messaging about the debt ceiling has been all over the place.  On the one hand, McCarthy is being celebrated by some for brow beating Biden into the deal.  On the other hand, the oft quoted South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace who says she’ll be a no vote, something she frequently says before voting yes, said “Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants.” Pretty impressive that Biden, who Republicans continue to portray as an addled brain, basement dwelling demented fool, managed to pull off a compromise that while not perfect, actually leaves most, if not all of the Democrats’ agenda intact which probably explains why Biden has spent most of the past few days trying to keep a Cheshire cat sized grin off his face and why McCarthy actually complimented him on his negotiating prowess and competence.      

Red Update:  Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  By that definition, its fair to say that the Republican Party’s growing roster of presidential candidates is a mark of GOP insanity because as shown by 2016, the larger the field, the greater the likelihood that Trump emerges on top. Former New Jersey Governor, one time Trump ally, Chris Christie is expected to enter the fray shortly and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who earlier said he wasn’t running appears to be getting ready to toss his hat into the ring too. These candidates and some of the others like Asa Hutchinson aren’t insane, rather it’s likely that they’re counting on one or more of the much hoped for incoming Trump indictments finally damaging the mango maniac enough to make him vulnerable for a take down.  Moreover, they’re likely looking at Ron DeSantis, who was supposed to be the party’s great white hope to achieve that take down as just another crazy man melting under the klieg lights. Fizzling or not, DeSantis does appear to be off his rocker.  His anti-woke, destroy the left rhetoric while appealing to the right is probably not going to pull over Trump’s most loyal base because they already get all that with Trump and why go for Trump light when you can have the real thing, and that language combined with his irrational war on the Mouse and more significantly his six week abortion ban will do little to lure in independents or maybe even the center right. As to Trump, while he’s been directly a lot of his destructive mojo against DeSantis these days, he apparently is holding some in reserve, saving it up for all the FBI agents involved in the investigations into his wrong doings.  He’s told his allies he wants their names pronto because his plan is to fire them or worse as soon as he reoccupies the Oval Office and given what he did to the careers of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Pete Strzok, Lisa Page, and the Vindman Brothers among others, not to mention those proctological IRS audits that Comey and McCabe were mysteriously subjected to, who’s to doubt that he’s serious. Judging by their current war against FBI director Chris Wray it’s fair to assume that Trump’s acolytes will be more than willing to comply with his edict. To that end, House Oversight Chair James Comer, who is furious that Wray hasn’t shared documents “proving” that Joe Biden as the Don of the Biden Crime Family was involved in a ”criminal scheme with a foreign national” when he was Obama’s VP says he’s moving forward with holding Wray, who ironically was appointed by Trump, in contempt of Congress. Speaker McCarthy is fully supportive of Comer’s antics because he needs his vote and continued support. 

The Crazy Chronicles:  Tara Reade, best known as the woman who claimed that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her back in 1993, has defected to Russia.  Reade, whose accusations were widely debunked, has appeared unhinged for a while but naturally she has a following on the far right.  Yesterday she appeared on Russian TV where with red sparrow Maria Butina sitting by her side, she said she had to flee the US for Russia because her life had been threatened.  She went on to talk about her love for great guy Vladimir Putin. Totally normal?             

 

Dances With Wolves 🌻 🌻 🌻

Spin Cycle:  Over the weekend President Biden and Kevin McCarthy reached a deal on raising the debt ceiling in an amount sufficient to push the next debt ceiling cha cha off two years until after the 2024 election. In exchange for raising the ceiling, the two sides agreed on a budget that doesn’t cut non-defense spending but instead keeps it flat in 2024, increasing it by 1% in 2025; keeps veteran’s health care including funding for toxic pit related illness; claws back $30 billion of unspent COVID money but keeps the $5 billion allocated for the development of the updated COVID vaccine and new COVID treatments; cuts only $1.4 billion of the $60 billion increase in IRS funding included in the Inflation Reduction Act: expands work requirements for food assistance by raising existing age requirements from 49 to 54 years, less than what Republicans had included in their House bill and more than what Democrats wanted but Democrats also won expanded benefits for veterans, homeless people and young people aging out of foster care; and speeds up environmental approval of energy projects, giving special preference to projects in Joe Manchin’s West Virginia.  In addition, Republicans failed to put the kibosh on Biden’s efforts to provide student loan relief but got an agreement to end the COVID pause in payments that Biden had already said would end in August. The budget deal does not include the Medicaid work requirements that Republicans wanted, nor does it eliminate clean air energy tax credits.  McCarthy who’s spinning the deal as a major win for Republicans even though he conceded more than he won despite his assertion that he made no concessions plans to bring the deal up for a vote in the House on Wednesday. He’s not going to get his whole caucus on board as some never vote for debt ceiling increases and many on the right including Trump are already complaining about his concessions, the ones he said he didn’t grant.  For their part Democrats except for some on the left side of left are quietly content with the deal, not that most will admit that yet because the deal’s not done until it’s voted on in both Houses and everyone knows that McCarthy’s family and even Mitch McConnell’s includes quite a few Shivs. Despite his smiling demeanor and hockey stick in the air posturing, McCarthy’s remaining days as Speaker could be numbered.

Texas Hold’em: Were it not for the debt ceiling tango, Texas would be front and center in the news right now because over the weekend by a vote of 121 to 23 the state’s Republican led house impeached the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton, who won reelection in November has played fast and loose with the law for years.  He was previously indicted for securities fraud but somehow or other none of his “criming” seemed to matter, nor did it get in the way of his suing the Biden administration for everything that irked the right, not just policies but election denier Paxton also sued to try to upend 2020 presidential election results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin.  What finally got him was his efforts to settle a lawsuit with four former employees of his office who had accused him of using his authority to benefit Nate Paul, a real estate investor who had donated tens of thousands to his campaign.  One of the charges against Paxton involves allegations that real estate investor Paul gave a job to a woman that Paxton was having an affair with, in exchange for legal services. Pursuant to Texas law Paxton has to step down pending the results of a hearing and vote in the State’s Senate.  Paxton’s wife Angela who describes herself as a loyal pistol packing mama is one of the 31 Texas Senators who will determine his fate. Conflict of interest, but it’s Texas so it probably won’t matter.

People and Politics:  Doug Mastriano, the far-right Pennsylvania politician, bigoted election denier who was trounced by Josh Shapiro in 2022’s state gubernatorial race will not be running for Senator in 2024. As a result, Republicans will likely back more mainstream, albeit not too mainstream candidate, hedge funder Dave McCormick who lost to Mehmet Oz who then lost to now Senator John Fetterman during the last cycle in an attempt to unseat incumbent Democrat Bob Casey.  Right now, Casey is polling ahead of McCormick but it’s early, Pennsylvania is considered a swing state and McCormick has bigly bucks.  Things continue to go downhill at CPAC.  Late last week, Bob Beauprez, the American Conservative Union’s long-time treasurer resigned saying that he was not fully informed about money being paid for accused crotch grabber Chairman Matt Schlapp’s legal defense and as a result could not deliver a financial report with any confidence. He compared his role to “that of a mushroom” as in “being kept in the dark and fed lots of manure.”  As to manure and treasurers, George of many names Santos is now serving as his own, which isn’t all that surprising since the person who signed his last financial filings existed only in Santos’ mind.       

 

Failure to Launch 🌻 🌻 🌻

Tick Tock 💣 💣 💣 The good news is that a debt limit deal is in sight, the bad news is that it isn’t done yet and Fitch has put the US government’s AAA on “rating watch negative,” an action that adds to the country’s cost of borrowing.  Kevin McCarthy told his crowd that they can go home for the holiday weekend but that they should be prepared to come back as soon as he calls.  With the devil in the details, Congressional logistics, and getting the votes done in both the House and Senate where at least one Senator, Utah’s Mike Lee, is on the record wanting to blow up any deal and with just a few working days until June 1, it’s still too early to count those proverbial hatching chickens. As of now the compromise which won’t make everyone happy and surely will lose votes on the right and probably some on the left would raise the debt limit for two years while imposing caps on discretionary spending not related to the military or veterans.  That two-year period is key because it pushes off another debt ceiling fight until after the 2024 election.  The deal would shift $10 billion of the $80 billion of the increased funding that was allocated to the IRS over the next 10 years in the Inflation Reduction Act into other discretionary budget items.  The Republicans have been fighting to cut the entire $80 billion, an amount they claim is for funding an IRS militia but that really just staffs the IRS to do what it is supposed to do, so keeping most of it is a win for Democrats as is the shifting of the $10 billion into other discretionary items.  If we’re lucky, we’re at the point in the process where the communications teams take over with each side, most notably the Republicans who are much better at PR, declaring victory.

Tweet Bird: It turns out that launching a presidential campaign on an erratic social media platform run by an eccentric and nefarious billionaire was not such a good idea.  Sure, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis got an enormous amount of press, but that press was mostly focused on Twitter’s glitches and the inability of its Twitter Spaces platform to handle a large media event. In an effort to spin dreck into gold, Elon and Ron both blamed the glitches on what they called the unprecedented volume of people trying to log in.  The problem with that is that the number of listeners wasn’t all that remarkable. Three hundred thousand tuned in to hear DeSantis, but that pales in comparison to the 1.2 million who watched April the Giraffe give birth, the 430,000 who watched AOC play video games on Twitch, the 807,000 who watched Buzzfeed explode a watermelon, the 628,000 who watched Drake play Fortnite or the 700,000 who watched Cristiano Ronaldo accidentally record him in the sauna.  Notably all those other events also involved video, the DeSantis launch was audio only, so when his “interview” finally went live, all users got was audio of DeSantis answering questions from a pre-written script.  Both Biden and Trump called DeSantis’ fizzled launch out as the sputtering failure it was, with Biden quickly tweeting out what he noted was a functioning link to his fundraising site and Trump accurately calling it an all-caps DISASTER. Steve Bannon, who’s rarely worth quoting and who is also rarely correct weighed in also calling it a “complete disaster.” No one heard from Tucker Carlson, but he may be rethinking his plans to launch his new “show” on Twitter’s platform and it’s also fair to assume that at least for now Trump will stick to delivering his pearls of ignorance on Truth Social.  Those who put up with the glitches and stuck around to listen to DeSantis heard him promise to turn the rest of the country into Florida without the benefit of good weather, not counting those hurricanes and floods, because who doesn’t want to see reproductive rights stripped away everywhere, fewer to no books on “controversial” subjects like civil rights, the Holocaust and sexuality, no vaccines for future plagues, and the wholesale deconstruction of the administrative state whatever that really means.  It’s not clear who would win the race to the bottom, Trump or DeSantis, but what’s really scary is that many of those who like Trump’s policies but think that he is too damaged to win the 2024 general election are still pinning their hopes and giving their money to DeSantis. On the subject of banning books, DeSantis says that contrary to reports he hasn’t banned any, and technically that’s true.  He leaves the actually banning and restricting to school boards and right-wing mothers like the one who got access to poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s book restricted.  That mom “apologized” yesterday, not for her action against Gorman’s “triggering” poetry but for promoting the anti-Semitic Protocol of the Elders of Zion. She sounds nice, no?”

Trump Morass:  Because of course, there’s more news on the Trump legal front.  The Washington Post reports that the staff at Mar a Lago moved boxes of purloined documents around the day before the FBI’s scheduled visit something that Jack Smith’s team likely views as suspicious and an indication of obstruction. According to the NY Times, the box shifting reveal comes from a Mar a Lago maintenance worker who volunteered to help move the boxes when he came upon Trump valet Walt Nauta lugging them on his own. The maintenance worker was just being helpful, he didn’t realize that he was abetting obstruction. Worth noting, Trump headed to Bedminster right after the boxes were moved with some luggage accompanying him. Time to look under or even in Ivana’s coffin?  In addition, WaPo reports that Trump who really wanted to keep some of his favorite documents, some of which he like to show visitors, had his team do a few dry runs, kind of like practicing hiding the afikomen in the run up to Passover, only we’re talking state secrets, not matza.  Yesterday, one of Trump’s fan boys Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, the seditious conspiracy convicted Yale Law school graduate who wears an eyepatch because he once accidentally shot himself in the eye, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.  That’s only bad for him if Biden wins reelection because if either Trump or DeSantis win, he’ll likely be pardoned on inauguration day.  DeSantis also says that he’ll be happy to pardon Trump too, a not-so-subtle way of telling Trump that if he, rather than Trump, emerges as the Republican’s 2024 candidate Trump should back him rather than run a third-party campaign.

Enjoy Memorial Day!           

Hostage Crisis 🌻 🌻 🌻

Tick Tock 💣 💣 💣: Egged on by his band of flamethrowers and their idol Trump, Kevin McCarthy is holding all of us as well as the economy hostage.  Sure, he’s been showing up for the requisite negotiating sessions with President Biden, but it’s hard to believe that he’s all that interested or even capable of reaching a reasonable compromise because he knows that reasonable doesn’t fly with his caucus and that, as a result of the deal he cut to become Speaker, they have him by the cojones. One indication that McCarthy and his loons are more into arson than compromise is that after yesterday morning’s meeting with Biden, he met with his caucus and instead of working on them to make some concessions, he auctioned off his ChapStick.  Anyone surprised to learn that the winning bidder was Margie Q who paid $100,000 for the germ invested tube isn’t paying attention to her power and the support she gets from the MAGA small donor community. The ChapStick charade brings to mind Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Okay, maybe my analogy and fears are over the top, but then again, these aren’t your parent’s Republicans, and judging by what’s going on in the Treasury market, where yields on T bills maturing between early and mid-June pushed past 6% for part of the day, I am not the only one worried. The clock is ticking, the ceiling is closing in.  A solution may be reached at the last minute, or then again not.

2024:  As expected South Carolina’s Tim Scott is running for president or vice president, whatever. Trump responded to Scott’s formal announcement by welcoming him to the race, saying that Scott, unlike some of those other wannabees, particularly that other Floridian, is a nice guy which likely means that Trump doesn’t view him as a threat and is happy to see the red field grow because the larger it gets the greater the odds that he’ll emerge as the Republican’s 2024 candidate as all it takes to win all the delegates in most Republican primaries is a plurality of the votes and his base constitutes that plurality. Tomorrow, that other Floridian, Ron DeSantis is expected to make his run official and naturally given his autocratic tendencies and poor social skills, he’ll be making his announcement on Twitter’s audio only livestreaming platform Twitter Spaces alongside his likeminded supporter, the nefarious conspiracy theorist who has welcomed white supremacists, Nazi’s and those other “both siders” back to Twitter, Chief Twit Elon Musk.  Something happened yesterday that epitomizes all that DeSantis stands for: a Florida school banned National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem after a right-wing mother who confused her with Oprah Winfrey because, apparently, to her all Black women look alike, complained that Gorman’s beautiful poem which describes the country as “a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished” was an indoctrinating indirect hate message, whatever that means. That’s what DeSantis has wrought upon Florida and what he wants to bring to the rest of us, that and a war against the Mouse, a 6-week abortion ban, a white history only education system, a vaccine skeptical, anti-science Surgeon General, voter suppression, and so on. On the subject of autocrats, Putin who continues to hold a few Americans including WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich hostage, banned 500 more Americans from visiting Russia, and somehow or other his list includes a whole lot of people, mostly Democrats, never-Trumpers, and Ukraine supporters who’ve spoken out against or ridiculed his bestie Trump but no one in Trump’s orbit. I am guessing that Barack Obama, Seth Meyers, and Steve Colbert weren’t planning on heading to Moscow anytime soon anyway, but Putin isn’t even pretending anymore, he’s all in on Trump and why not, Trump has all but promised to gift him Ukraine on day one should he make it back to the White House.  Moving to the Senate, Delaware Democrat Tom Carper who is 76 years old announced that he won’t be running for reelection.  His seat is expected to stay in Democratic hands but still it’s one more seat that the Democrats now have to work a little harder to defend in a year when Senate Republicans have the edge.   

Trump Morass:  Lots of legal news on the Trump front.  The Wall Street Journal reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith has all but finished obtaining testimony and evidence in his criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of the secret documents he took with him to Mar a Lago and then refused to return.  That’s the case that Ty Cobb one of his Trump’s many former lawyers rather than the baseball player, said should result in him going to jail.  Cobb’s assessment of guilt, which is shared by former Attorney General Bill Barr, could explain why Trump’s lawyers sent a letter to current AG Merrick Garland last night demanding a sit down to “discuss” the “unfair treatment” and “ongoing injustice” of the investigation into Trump’s criminal deeds. By unfair treatment, maybe they’re a bit concerned that the voluminous notes taken by Evan Corcoran, one of his lawyers, which detail how the Former Guy obstructed the investigation into his document grab are now in Jack Smith’s hands or maybe they’re sticking with Trump’s assertion that everything he took was his to take because he says so as he insisted again during his CNN town hall/free rally or maybe Trump’s been triggered by Smith subpoenaing records about his business dealings in seven countries, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, France, China , Kuwait, the UAE and Oman. As to his CNN town hall, during it and in the days that followed, Trump defamed E Jean Carroll again and again so now she’s suing him for $10 million more in damages. And let’s not forget that other New York case, the so-called “hush money” case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.  Yesterday, Trump was told during a mandatory zoom session by presiding Judge Juan Merchan that his access to discovery material will be restricted, that he can only look at documents in the presence of his lawyers and that he can’t talk or post about anything he sees on social media unless, of course, he wants to be found in contempt. Those restrictions have been put in place to protect people involved in the case from being subjected to the attacks that Trump’s usual provocative hate posting engenders.  Over Trump’s objections Judge Merchan also set a trial date of March 25, 2024.    

 

Going for Gold 🌻 🌻 🌻

Tick Tock 💣 💣 💣:  Despite earlier assertions that the debt ceiling negotiations were going well, they hit a major stumbling block on Friday after Republican negotiators called for a bigly PAUSE.  Republicans are seeking serious budget cuts, caps on future spending and work requirements for certain recipients of food subsidies that go far beyond what President Biden and his Democratic caucus are willing to accept. Unfortunately, the impasse isn’t all that surprising because Biden isn’t willing to throw his agenda to the wayside and McCarthy has no wiggle room, there’s little he can concede without losing the support of some members of his caucus who likely would revel in the disaster of the US defaulting of its obligations.  Given the rules McCarthy accepted to become speaker, any one Republican can trigger a vote to send him packing and there likely are a few who’d be happy to do that.  That’s not to say that he couldn’t survive a compromise, with the support of Democratic leadership, a deal could be worked out for a few Democrats to vote for him if his Speakership is put up for a vote again, but it doesn’t appear that McCarthy is ready to go that route yet.  Over the weekend Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin reiterated that she’s not being an alarmist, the debt ceiling really will be “hit” on or around June 1.  Confirming that she’s not crying wolf,  Goldman Sachs puts the disaster date at June 8, hardly a lot of wiggle room. Citing a clause in the 14^th Amendment that states that the “validity of the public debt, authorized by law …. Shall not be questioned” some, mostly on the left have suggested that Biden doesn’t need the debt limit raised to authorize the issuance of more debt.  However, that interpretation is not a certainty, any debt issuance that Biden does by fiat would be challenged in the courts and anyone purchasing the Treasury bills issued after the debt ceiling has been reached would demand a hefty premium in compensation for the added risk. The bottom line, our goose is cooked if an agreement isn’t reached soon.  The President is scheduled to meet with Speaker for the moment McCarthy today.   

2024: Anti-abortion, anti-free speech, anti- book, Mouse baiting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis isn’t the only Republican expected to make his run for the presidency official this week.  South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the Republican’s only African American Senator, will also formally throw his hat into the ring.  Scott who is about as conservative as they come, is well liked by his Senate colleagues, and is expected to receive an endorsement from South Dakota Republican John Thune simultaneously with his formal announcement but it’s hard to see how being liked by some colleagues will be enough to propel him to the Republican candidacy. More realistically, Scott, like his fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, is probably seeking the VP nod or at the very least positioning himself for a 2028 run.  On the subject of Senators, the calls for Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein to resign continue to build.  She’s clearly frail, suffering from an unusually difficult bout with shingles on top of some pre-existing memory loss. She’s not the first and probably won’t be the last Senator to hold on too long and though she probably should step down, it’s worth noting that her continued tenure, as impaired as it is, is far superior to that of Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, who thinks that white supremacism in the military and everywhere else is a good thing. Shifting to the House, 2002 Olympic figure skating gold medalist Sarah Hughes is running for Congress. Hughes, whose come from behind gold medal performance was one of the highlights of the Salt Lake City games, is the real deal, she received her undergraduate degree from Yale, her law degree from University of Pennsylvania, worked as a legal associate for Proskauer Rose and is currently working on her MBA at Stanford.  She was raised in Great Neck which is part of George Devolder “Kitara” Santos’s district but isn’t running to replace him, rather she’s challenging the Long Island seat held by Republican Anthony D’Esposito, another one of the newbie Republicans who won in 2022. In addition to her impressive resume, Hughes has a lot of name recognition particularly on Long island so she’s a good “get” for NY Democrats seeking to regain the seats they lost during the 2022 cycle.   

Trump Morass:  There’s more news on the Trump legal front, largely because there always is.  Last week Timothy Parlatore who had been representing Trump in the Mar a Lago purloined documents case, jumped ship.  Over the weekend in an interview with CNN he revealed that he left over “strategic disagreements” with other members of Trump’s team. He added that those disagreements were primarily with Boris Epshteyn who Parlatore accused of “doing everything he could to try to block us from doing what we could to defend” Trump, his way of saying that Boris stood in the way of searching for and turning over some of the documents that Trump took with him to Mar a Lago. To put it mildly, that’s a bad look for Boris and his boss Trump.  Moreover, it’s hardly normal for a lawyer to throw his former client under the bus unless of course that lawyer wants to distance himself from complicity in criminal activity.  If he hasn’t already, it’s likely that Parlatore will be spending some time with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team.  In other legal news, Fulton County DA Fani Willis announced that her staff will be working remotely during the first three weeks of August.  She also asked judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time. The tea leaf readers believe that these actions indicate that she’ll be bringing charges against those who tried to overturn the Georgia 2020 election during that time period.  It’s hard to believe that she’d be taking such extreme measures unless one of the people she’ll be indicting is Trump.

                           

Who Moved My Cheese? 🌻 🌻 🌻

Mouse Wars:  Next week Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to formally launch his presidential run, because despite all the time he’s spent out of state in vacation hotspots such as Iowa, until now his campaign hasn’t been official. In preparation he has signed a slew of new laws over the past few weeks.  Mostly those laws, specifically those which target the LGBTQ community, reproductive rights, and gender affirming care, advance his anti-wokeness agenda at the expense of real people trying to live their lives as they see fit, but one of the new ones is unusually personal, it allows Florida governors to run for president without resigning, a law he needed to enact because until now Florida law required that running governors step down and he’s not ready to give up his current day job or the residence that comes with it because it’s not like he’d be welcome at any Disney castle right now. Not so coincidentally yesterday, Disney CEO Bob Iger stole some thunder from DeSantis’ plans, announcing that due to “changing business conditions” the Mouse is scrapping plans to build a $1 billion office complex in the greater Orlando Lake Nona area.  The Nona complex was expected to bring 2000 relatively high paying jobs and lots of tax revenue to Florida. Naturally, DeSantis responded by slamming Mickey and Minnie, asserting that they’d cancelled their Florida expansion plans because they’re facing a precipitous decline brought on by all that excessive wokeness.  While Disney, like many other businesses right now, has been belt tightening, it’s more than fair to assume that the Florida cancellation is intended to be a slap at DeSantis, an escalation of the war against Disney that he started after Disney criticized the first iteration of his anti-gay bill, the one that prohibited discussing sexuality with younger kids but has now been expanded to prohibit discussions through high school. DeSantis, who judging by all those forced laughs he was practicing in Iowa, is working on improving his image, part of his effort to put to bed assertions that he lacks charisma and doesn’t really enjoy being around people. That may be an impossible task, at least that’s what his fellow Floridian Donald Trump, who oozes charisma albeit of the darkest kind, believes. Immediately after the Disney announcement, Trump’s campaign ran an ad slamming DeSantis for costing Florida those highly desirable Disney jobs. For his part, while conveniently ignoring all the other Republican candidates in the mix, DeSantis told major donors that only two of the three people running could win the 2024 race. The two he referenced were himself and Joe Biden. Maybe not quite the slam he thought it was. The DeSantis – Trump slap down is a darkly fun distraction, but we shouldn’t keep our eye off the ball as DeSantis isn’t the only one still going after social freedoms.  The mifepristone abortion drug case is still winding through the courts on its way to SCOTUS.  Yesterday, judges on the all too reliably conservative leaning US 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed particularly skeptical of the DOJ’s argument that the FDA’s 20 year old approval should be left intact.  And because why not, more states keep jumping on the anti-trans care bandwagon with the Texas legislature banning gender affirming care for minors.  The Florida version of that legislation also makes it difficult for adults to receive gender affirming care while another law allows doctors and insurance companies to refuse to provide care that conflicts with their personal religious personal or ethical beliefs. #WTF

Weaponization:  Meantime back in Congress, Gym Jordan’s weaponization committee is busy trying to take down another one of those “woke” institutions, the FBI. Yesterday, he platformed three suspended FBI agents who claimed that they had been victimized by their FBI bosses for being whistleblowers, though none of them were victims nor did they qualify as whistleblowers, but they had been suspended and lost their security clearances for not doing their jobs. Each of them is a supporter of the January 6^th protesters, in addition to being sympathetic to their insurrectionist views, they resisted participating in any of their arrests because maybe those nice weapon wielding Oath Keepers and the like were just tourists?  Two of the suspended FBI guys are being financially supported by Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who also worked for former Congressman current Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes back when he chaired the House Intel Committee.  When confronted with that little factoid by several Democratic Congresspeople including Committee Ranking Member Stacey Plaskett and NY newbie Rep Dan Goldman, both quick witted and very articulate veterans of the impeachment trials, Gym Jordan responded so what, they need to eat. Gym also had no problem that one of his so-called whistleblowers had given an interview to Russian’s RT.  Nor did he think that it was necessary to share videos or transcripts of their full testimony with the Democratic members of the committee because neither he nor the so-called whistleblowers trust any of those guys.  The endgame of these hearings is to discredit the FBI as part of a strategy to discount the value of any damning evidence obtained in any of the Trump investigations.  Gym doesn’t operate in a vacuum, elsewhere in Congress Margie Q wants to impeach a whole crowd of senior Democrats, including Biden and Speaker McCarthy said that he thinks that Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff should be expelled purportedly because of what was, or really wasn’t, in the Durham Report but maybe also as payback for the Democrats trying to speed the expulsion of George of many names Santos.    

Tick Tock: Trump continues to burn through lawyers. Tim Parlatore, one of the lawyers defending him against Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the purloined Mar a Lago documents has resigned and it appears that another, Ray Smith III who represented him in litigation aimed at reversing Georgia’s 2020 election results believes he may be a target of Fulton DA Fani Willis’ criminal probe. The clock is ticking on all those investigations given the election calendar.  The debt ceiling clock is also ticking and though both sides have expressed optimism that a solution is reachable, nothing is in writing yet.

Tweety Birds:  Elon Musk who shouldn’t be relevant but is because he owns Twitter and is the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX continues to defend tweeting anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories including claims that the Texas shooter with all those swastika tattoos can’t possibly be a white supremacist.  By the way would it surprise you to learn that Linda Yaccarino, the now former NBC Universal executive that Musk has hired to serve as Twitter’s new CEO is a Trump supporter? Yaccarino was responsible for driving advertising revenue in her prior position, interesting because when Musk bought Twitter, he said he planned to shift from an advertising to a subscription fee-based model.  With the blue check subscription plan swirling the drain he’s apparently moving back to advertising, at least for the foreseeable future.  Yaccarino has her work cut out for her because most of those advertisers she worked with during her NBC days, won’t want their ads to appear aside Musk’s hate messages nor alongside similar messages currently populating the Twitter feed despite their good feelings for her.            

Subsequent Moviefilm Remix 🌻 🌻 🌻

A Tale of Two Durhams: On Monday, Special Counsel/US Attorney Durham finally issued his much-awaited report and depending on where you stand it was either the nothing burger I previously mentioned or explosive.  Contrary to a report by the respected FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz that concluded that the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s Russian connections was legitimate, Durham’s 700-page diatribe, which included no major revelations accused the “sloppy” FBI of confirmation bias for opening the investigation. The FBI investigation ultimately resulted in convictions, guilty pleas and/or indictments for a slew of characters including Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Alex van der Swann, Rick Gates, a bunch of Russian internet trolls and spy Konstantin Kilimnik while Durham only managed to nab one low level lawyer for doctoring an email while failing to get convictions in the two cases he brought to court and his chief assistant resigned years ago in protest so it’s hard to see his report as much more than political posturing. That said, Trump seized upon its conclusions, saying they proved once and for all that he’d been the victim of a witch hunt, the most dastardly one in history, and his usual echo chamber, led by Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz said the report justifies their view that the FBI should be defunded.  And of course, Trump still adores Vladimir Putin and refuses to support Ukraine and sadly is still the Republican’s leading candidate for president, albeit one who it turns out is not polling ahead of Biden but at least according to this week’s Reuters/IPSO poll is trailing him by six points, witch hunt or not.

Election News:  Yesterday, in what was seen as a significant upset, Democrat Donna Deegan comfortably beat her Republican opponent to become the mayor of Jacksonville Florida.  Deegan, a former TV anchor, whose victory flipped the office from red to blue had lots of name recognition which helped but still her victory is considered a slap in the face to Ron DeSantis and an indication that Democrats may not be dead in Florida.  In Pennsylvania, Democrats held on to their one seat house majority, meaning that abortion rights will stay safe in the state at least for now.  Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of North Carolina where the heavily gerrymandered state general assembly, controlled by a Republican supermajority voted to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of restrictive abortion legislation. One of those who voted to override the veto was former Democratic assemblywoman Tricia Cotham who flipped to being a Republican not long after winning her election where she’d run as a pro-choice Democrat.  Her flip gave the Republicans the seat they needed for their super majority. In Kentucky, Attorney General Daniel Cameron who is African American was endorsed by Trump and was also supported by Mitch McConnell beat out Kelly Craft, the former Trump appointed UN Ambassador who was endorsed by Ron DeSantis, to win the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in the fall. Cameron checks all the Republican boxes on policy: he’s anti-abortion, pro-gun and against vaccine mandates. As Attorney General he was responsible for the decision not to prosecute the two police officers who shot Breonna Taylor, a decision which won’t help him with African American voters who might otherwise support him.  Beshear is popular but being a Democratic Governor in a Republican state isn’t easy so winning again, while not impossible, will be an uphill battle for him.  Switching countries for a minute, Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan is headed to a runoff against his main rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Worth noting Twitter’s Elon Musk conceded to Erdogan’s requests to censor certain tweets in the run up to the election, because apparently the Twit is only into free speech that he likes, and he does have a preference for autocrats like Erdogan.   

People News:  Rudy Giuliani is once again front and center in the news and this time it has nothing to do with hair dye but does have a lot to do with accusations of sexual harassment and assault with presidential pardon selling thrown into the mix. The accusations are being made by Noelle Dunphy who Rudy hired in 2019 for a job that she says sometimes required that she wear skimpy American flag attire, or less, while helping the frequently inebriated, Viagra dosed former America’s Mayor do various and sundry distasteful things, some of which she managed to tape him requesting.  Though she doesn’t have tapes of their conversations about the presidential pardons that she says he was marketing at a price of $2 million apiece, proceeds to be shared with Trump, she says that one of those pardon conversations was witnessed by Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian American businessman who was a figure in Trump’s first impeachment trial and who was subsequently sentenced to serve 20 months in prison. Rudy of course denies everything but anyone who saw him in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm would be excused for believing otherwise.  On the subject of unbelievable but true, an intruder broke into National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s house.  He was shown the exit by Sullivan, who then reported the scary trespass to his crackerjack Secret Service protection squad who apparently missed the whole thing.  Fortunately, Sullivan wasn’t hurt but what’s with the Secret Service?  In other #WTF news, a bat wielding deranged guy made it into a local office belonging to Virginia Representative Gerry Connally.  The Democratic Congressman wasn’t there but two of his staff members were attacked and ended up in the hospital.  Both appear to be okay but still.  Talking about battiness, Representative Lauren Boebert, the former owner of a Hooter’s style gun restaurant served her sex offender husband with divorce papers this week, something to do with irreconcilable differences. Naturally, he was holding a gun and a beer when he was served with those papers.  And lastly, led by California Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia, Democrats are forcing a vote on a privileged resolution calling for the expulsion of George of many names Santos.  Republicans, even those in NY State who are on record saying that Santos should resign, are unlikely to vote for the resolution because Kevin needs his vote but still it will be fun to watch them try to justify keeping Santos on board while the oxymoronic House Ethics panel reviews his crimes.

Tick Tock:  President Biden is truncating his travel plans to focus on the debt ceiling crisis.  He’s still going to the G7 summit in Hiroshima but won’t be stopping off in either Australia or Papua New Guinea.  As to the debt ceiling, reports are that some progress has been made and Mitch McConnell who is trying to distance himself from the situation but probably really isn’t says that defaulting is not an option, but it’s not resolved yet and June 1 is around the corner.  

              

Still Crazy After All These Years 🌻 🌻 🌻

Mom’s Day:  Another national holiday, another unhinged message from the Former Guy who wants very much to be the next guy.  Trump’s message which notably failed to mention the mothers of any of his children went like this : “Happy Mother's Day to ALL, in particular the Mothers, Wives and Lovers of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, and Communists who are doing everything within their power to destroy and obliterate our once great Country. Please make these complete Lunatics and Maniacs Kinder, Gentler, Softer and, most importantly, Smarter, so that we can, quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”  Despite all appearances, that’s not a parody post, it’s for real.  Perhaps it’s why Politico and a few other media outlets spent the weekend talking about how much progress their favorite Trump alternative, Ron DeSantis, is making resetting his image, morphing from the sullen anti-social person that he is to a handshaking smoothie.  Spoiler alert, DeSantis is who he is, a Trumpist sans charisma, the politician who has signed a six week abortion ban, who’s had his state legislature alter long standing sunshine laws so that details of his out of state travel can be kept private, who continues to be locked in a war with the Mouse and whose anti-immigrant policies are making it difficult for local businesses to retain agricultural workers who fear deportation.  As to the real Trump, we learned a bit more about that jaw dropping wonderful reception he received from the audience at his CNN Townhall.  It turns out that the audience, already inclined to lean his way, was told that while applause was acceptable, even desirable, negative expressions were not welcome.  As a result. those in the audience who didn’t appreciate his malevolent banter were told to put a cork in it by those nice “both sides” people at CNN.   

Lost and Missing:  Once upon a time there was the Durham investigation, the deep dive that was supposed to prove that the investigation into Trump’s Russian ties was a politically motivated witch hunt orchestrated by Hillary Clinton and her crowd.  Durham, despite his best efforts and the assistance of former Attorney General Barr, never came up with anything explosive.  Still his investigation provided  lot of fodder for Fox and the other right wing media outlets, the same places that went on to push that the 2020 election had been stolen when it wasn’t.  The good news is that US Attorney Durham has receded from public view, the bad news is that he’s been replaced by a bunch of conspiracy pushing Congressional yokels some of whom are now chairing key Congressional committees.  One of those characters is Oversight Committee Chair James Comer who keeps asserting that he has proof that “crime family” kingpin Joe Biden has committed various and sundry crimes.  Thus far he’s uncovered nothing linking the current President to crimes or influence peddling but that didn’t stop him from appearing on Fox this weekend to push his narrative.  Oddy enough he was taken down by Fox’s Maria Bartiroma, who wasn’t even trying to make him look bad.  She merely asked if he had any witnesses ready to testify about Biden’s crimes.  Comer’s response was that he had none at this time because the people who “have very good knowledge with tespect to the Bidens” are either in court, in jail or missing.  Not one to let a “newsworthy” story pass her by Bartiroma rsponded wow, that’s “Absolutely extraordinary…..Just stunning. A stunning breaking news story this morning that some of these people now may be missing.” Bottom line, Comer has bupkis but he does have a platform.

Tick Tock:  The debt ceiling negotiations continued this weekend with some reporting that progress is being made and others, most notably Kevin McCarthy, publicly saying that nothing has been resolved because Joe Biden wants the country to default. Kevin’s deflection aside, it does sound like some progress has been made.  That said, the likely things on the table including the recouping of unspent COVID money, streamling permits and two year’s of budget caps won’t do much to satisfy the don’t raise the debt limit cap unless you slash the budget crowd  that McCarthy will need on board to pass anything without help from Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries so this crisis won’t be over for awhile and when it is McCarthy might be out of a job, replaced by someone even less charming.  In other news, the country wasn’t overtaken by hordes of migrants over the weekend despite all those warning that last weekend’s end of the pandemic  surge would be so bad that we’d wake up as Mexico North.  That’s not to say that there weren’t lots of asylum seekers, just many thousands fewer than were expected.  It’s not clear yet if that’s because of the efforts of the Biden administration or if it’s just that asylum seekers come in unpredictable waves.  Anyway the anti-immigrant crowd doesn’t need a real surge to claim one. 

And:  Over $1 million has been raised for a defense fund for ex marine Daniel Penny who has been charged with manslaughter for using a lethal chokehold to “subdue” and cause the death of homeless man Jordan Neely on the NYC subway.  Everything about this story is so terribly sad, granted no one wants to be or to feel threatened by anyone, mentally ill or not, on the subway or anywhere else, but a chokehold? Post George Floyd, haven’t we all learned enough about the lethality of chokeholds?  There are no heroes here so lionizing Penny, raising millions for his defense and seeing politicians like presidential wannabee Ron DeSantis weigh in on his behalf turning him into this year’s Kyle Rittenhouse and using the opportunity to call Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg a “Soros funded DA” (that dogwhislte intentional of course) is just so disturbing. That’s not to say that Perry isn’t entitled to a defend himself in court, he is but he doesn’t need $1 million to do so. Again, everything about this story is so sad and a man is dead.

 

Spectacle of Lies 🌻 🌻 🌻

Handmaiden to Malignancy:  Never one to mince words, yesterday during a discussion of the Kaitlin Collins hosted Trump town hall, Andrew Weissmann, the former US Attorney and Mueller prosecutor, called CNN a handmaiden to malignancy.  Unfortunately, that’s an apt description.  The town hall was about as awful as expected.  Trump got a free political rally at the expense of democracy.  He lied about all the things he always lies about: he called the 2020 election rigged, E Jean Carroll a whack job and her allegations about him sexually assaulting her a fake story; he again complimented the “smart” Vladimir Putin while refusing to side with Ukraine; he doubled down on how his Mar a Lago document grab was totally legit; he said he’d be inclined to pardon all of the January 6^th rioters; and, my personal favorite, encouraged Republicans to let the government default. He also called Kaitlin Collins a nasty person.  She’s not nasty but she was out of her league, partly because she’s relatively inexperienced, the likely reason that Trump agreed to her serving as his emcee, and partly because she was set up by her ratings hungry bosses to fail. Even the New Hampshire audience, mostly Republicans with a smattering of right leaning independents thrown into the mix, were hand selected to make Trump feel comfortable which explains why they were all in on applause and giggles.  CNN CEO Chris Licht was in on the charade, he met his ratings goal, getting a few more viewers than usual, but only for one night.  Reports are that many inside CNN were furious about his decision to hold the town hall and then distraught about how it turned out, and that’s probably true since a few including CNN’s own media reporter, Oliver Darcy, called it a “spectacle of lies” and Trump a “professional lie machine” who “fired off falsehoods at a rapid clip while using his bluster to overwhelm Collins.” Sadly, Chris Licht isn’t backing down, he’s thrilled with how well the town hall went.  To push that point, last night he had Anderson Cooper defend it on his nightly show and then had It Girl Collins, who followed in what was once Chris Cuomo’s time slot, call her town hall sh-it show “a major inflection point” in the Republican party’s search for its next nominee. If by inflection point, she means, an acceleration in the decline of both CNN and democracy, she’s right. Expectations are that Licht will soon announce that Collins will be taking over the Cuomo slot permanently, or whatever permanently means on CNN these days. Trump who is appealing his E Jean Carroll trial loss, walked away deliriously happy and CNN is now one step closer to becoming Fox. Who knows, maybe a merger or sale is in the works? One more thing, E Jean Carroll’s lawyers say she is now considering suing Trump again for defamation.

Bespectacled Spectacle: That other liar, George Anthony Devolder Santos was indicted yesterday, not for claiming he was a volleyball star, but on thirteen counts related to money laundering, stealing public money, wire fraud and making false statements to Congress.  Those counts include allegations that he misled donors, telling them their contributions would be used for campaign purposes, while instead using some of their money to support his lifestyle.  Remember those photos of him traipsing around with an iconic orange Hermes bag, could be his donors paid for whatever was in that bag too because those making $55,000 per year don’t generally shop at Hermes where a Birkin bag can cost upwards of $55k.  He’s also accused of overstating his income and receiving unemployment insurance while fully employed, particularly ironic because yesterday he was one of the sponsors of legislation seeking to clamp down on unemployment fraud.  As to the overstated income, it looks like more charges could come later, once the DOJ figures out where he obtained the $700,000 that he says he contributed to his campaign from the earnings he didn’t have.  Santos of course pleaded not guilty, posting a $500,000 bond so that he could rush back to DC to vote for that unemployment fraud bill.  While he went the “I didn’t do it, I am just the victim of one of a witch hunt” defense with regard to the DOJ charges, he finally admitted to his Brazil theft, working out a deal with Brazilian prosecutors which means that he won’t be extradited there so we’re stuck with him. 

Supremacy? Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville is all in on white supremacists serving in the military because as far as he’s concerned, they’re just Americans. He didn’t misspeak, when asked about his comment he doubled down, querying what’s wrong with white supremacy anyway.  Tuberville is also holding up all general and flag officer nominations in protest of new reproductive health policies which provide leave and travel allowances for troops and their families who, because they’re based in states which prohibit abortion, have to travel to receive care.  Supreme leader to some, Trump is being investigated for so many things, has been indicted, was twice impeached and has now been ruled a sex offender.  All that probably explains why Republicans, most notably House Oversight Chair James Comer are pushing allegations that President Biden and his family are crime figures.  Despite Comer’s allegations, and he’s made many, so far even he admits that he has nothing tying Joe to anything illegal but that hasn’t stopped him, nor some of his friends at Fox and the Murdoch owned NY Post from talking endlessly about the “Biden Crime Family.”  Admittedly troubled son Hunter eventually may be charged for something, likely related to unpaid taxes or possession of a gun, but the rest is likely just political BS. Last night Title 42 pandemic era border restrictions expired.  That means more of the thousands of migrants hoping to cross into the US will be allowed in at least temporarily.  This isn’t a change in policy, just a return to the rules that governed immigration before the pandemic.  Nevertheless, expect to hear a lot about the marauding dark skinned masses coming to takeover. If you haven’t already, considering reading Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, it’s an allegorical take on how war and climate change are contributing to the worldwide growth in refugees. The bottom line is that building walls is not a solution, not that there are any easy solutions, because people fleeing destitution or worse will keep on seeking better homes. Not all that surprising as we are a nation of immigrants and most of our families didn’t arrive first class with pockets full of cash.  

And:  Remember that poll that everyone was talking about last weekend and on Monday, the one that showed Trump trouncing Biden.  Well, it turns out that it really was an outlier. A new one from Yahoo News/YouGov, released on Wednesday, shows Biden narrowly ahead of Trump. Not totally comforting but still a reminder that polls, particularly at this point in the election cycle should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Pod Mates 🌻 🌻 🌻

Finally, Accountability:  Yesterday wasn’t the best of days for either Donald Trump or George Santos.  Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and fined a total of $5 million.  The jury didn’t find that he had committed rape but did find that he had committed battery defined as sexual contact by physical force, the distinctions between the two offenses are a bit too gruesome to discuss here but suffice it to say the jury did conclude that he did do more than just grab E Jean Carroll by her crotch, maybe because when you’re caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by their pussies, are accused by several women of doing just that and then say that stars can do what they want, jurors take note. Naturally, Trump still asserts that his victim E Jean Carroll is lying, in fact he still claims that he never even met her, a lie easily dismissed by photos of the two of them together. Though a few of the usual Republican suspects, including Asa Hutchinson and Mitt Romney said that being found liable for sexual assault disqualifies Trump for the presidency, most either ran away when asked about it or like Senator Cornyn said that the verdict was only a problem because it made it more difficult for him to win, or like Senators Graham and Rubio attacked the jury alleging that all New Yorkers including the juror who revealed during the voir dire that he’s an avid watcher of right wing media, were biased against Trump. Sex offender Trump, whose lawyer says that he’ll be appealing the “flawed” decision is still scheduled to participate in a CNN townhall tonight where, based on last night’s flurry of truth social posting, he’ll likely continue to defame Carroll assuming of course, that the desperate for ratings CNN hasn’t agreed to avoid the subject of yesterday’s verdict and all those inconvenient sexual assault allegations altogether.

Devolder, Santos, Rivache: Several media outlets report that George of many names Santos has been charged with one or more federal offenses.  Assuming he hasn’t already hopped a plane to Brazil or Moscow, Santos, who when questioned by one reporter claimed that he knows nothing about any of that, a lie of course, is expected to make an appearance in Federal Court in Brooklyn today at which point we will learn exactly what those charges are.  He’s not being charged for lying about being Jew ish, or even for cross dressing in his garish Kitara Rivache ensemble but probably is being charged for some campaign violations, something to do with the mysterious $700k contribution he claims to have made to his campaign from personal funds he didn’t have and for making false statements to federal authorities. Unfortunately, being indicted won’t affect Santos’ House status since he’s already been stripped of his committee assignments, the usual punishment for indicted House members. Following “usual” protocol, as if there is anything usual about the bizarro Santos, and desperately in need of his vote, Kevin McCarthy says that he’ll leave Santos be until he’s actually found or pleads guilty. And to be clear, Kevin really needs Santos’ vote if he hopes to remain Speaker for much longer because the debt ceiling crisis continues to loom and will only be resolved when Kevin moves off of his currently untenable “cut, cut, cut spending” position because there’s no way that President Biden,  the Senate or even Mitch McConnell are going to agree to the wide swath of cuts that he’s holding out for as even Republicans have to bring pork back to their states, and by pork think the farm bill and all the goodies it provides to those states with Senate seats that the Republicans are desperate to flip in 2024.  Yesterday, Biden finally met with the Chuck, Mitch, Hakeem and Kevin quartet to talk about the debt ceiling. After the meeting Kevin, who refused to comment on the Trump verdict because he wasn’t up to speed and hadn’t vetted any talking points with Trump yet, reported that the sides were still miles apart.  Later Biden seemed to indicate that at least four of the leaders in the meeting, presumably one of whom was Senate minority leader Mitch M, recognized that a default would be unimaginably awful while also saying that he would consider allowing a claw back of some unspent COVID money so maybe, just maybe some progress is being made behind closed doors.  Kevin may soon have to decide between his Speakership and national solvency.  A hard call for Kevin.  Maybe if Biden promises to lend him a plane if he’s dethroned, he’ll cave?       

Fish Sticks: Trump may never pay, or at the very least will stall paying, Carroll the $5 million he now owes her, but it does appear that he’s topped up Melania’s account.  The “I really don’t care” former FLOTUS announced yesterday that she’s onboard with her hubs’ presidential redux ambitions and we know she doesn’t work solely for Manolos and Louboutins. Another person who appears to be quite flush is Swanson fish stick heir Tucker Carlson who seems to be willing to jeopardize the $25 million or so remaining on his contract with Fox. That contract which includes a non-compete runs until 2025, but Tucker has no interest in just twiddling his fingers or tanning his testicles until then. Yesterday, he announced, on Twitter, that he’s coming back soon, with a new version of his show, on Twitter, the only platform where he can tell the truth because the “so-called mainstream media is full of propaganda and lies.” Yesterday, Elon Musk, the owner of that “truth telling platform” retweeted some conspiracy theories claiming that last weekend’s neo-Nazi, swastika tattooed Allen, Texas mall shooter wasn’t really an anti-Semitic, white supremacist but that all those heinous social media postings attributed to him and uncovered by the “so-called mainstream media” and the deep state FBI were just Russian disinformation.  Carlson and Musk are two peas in a moldy, infected pod. Fox will try to prevent Carlson from reconstituting his show for as long as possible and Musk says it isn’t a done deal yet but when the show lands it will drive right wing traffic to Twitter, turning it into a Gettr, Rumble or Truth Social while finally driving a critical mass of Twitter’s mainstream users to one of the newer, emerging Twitter replacement platforms.  Check your BINGO card for a Twitter- Truth Social merger, maybe that’s next?

And:  DiFi is back in DC.  Maybe not compos mentis but if she can vote, who cares?  

Death Count 🌻 🌻 🌻

Guns and More: There have been far more mass shootings than days so far in 2023 so it’s not surprising, though totally disheartening and tragic, that on Saturday, the 126^th day of the year the 190^th mass shooting took place with 8 people killed and 7 more injured at an outdoor mall in Allen Texas by a shooter using an AR 15 style gun. Not to worry though, Texas Governor Abbott who won reelection last year in part because of his fealty to the NRA, sent his thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families.  He also asserted once again that the real problem is mental illness, not guns, which must be why he cut $211 million from the budget for mental health services in Texas last year. He’s callously delusional, Americans, even Texans, aren’t nuttier than people across the globe but we’ve got more guns than they do, and we use them so more of us die daily. And so it goes, another day in the USA. In 2021, the last year for which data is available, around 50,000 died from gun related injuries with about 54% of those deaths, suicides because gun owners also kill themselves.  Gun deaths are just part of our problem, another 17,000 of us die annually as the result of DUIs.  I mention that now in honor of the memory of two fourteen-year-old boys, classmates of one of my nieces.  Much loved with promising lives ahead of them, they were killed on Thursday at the hands of a drunk driver whose car barreled into the one they were in.  It wasn’t the DUI driver’s first offense; he has now devastated two families and all the people around them and their sons and has also ruined the lives of his own family.  Just a reminder, don’t be that person, ever.  

Polls Say What?  Sticking with the delusional theme, over the weekend just about every media outlet reported on the results of a recent Washington Post/ABC poll.  That poll,  despite being an outlier, got enormous coverage; it shows President Biden’s approval slipping now down to 36% from 42%, that Americans believe that Trump did a better job with the economy and that Trump would trounce him were the election held today.  The poll also showed a high number of undecideds so the trouncing part, though alarming, should be taken with a grain of salt since it really is early, and Trump’s base has always been more enthusiastic about their guy.  Additionally, despite years of statistics proving otherwise, Americans always insist that Republicans are better for the economy and pollsters keep underestimating the impact that taking away reproductive rights has on voters. Still the poll results are #WTF disturbing because: Trump.  Things are likely to get worse before they get better, assuming that they do eventually get better because we’re about to crash into the debt ceiling, at least that’s what 43 Republicans in the Senate, including Mitch McConnell but not including Senators Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley and John Kennedy, appear to want to see happen.  They’ve all signed onto a letter saying that they won’t support the “clean” debt ceiling lift that Biden and the Democrats are seeking.  In other words, at least for now, they are supporting Speaker McCarthy’s plan, the one which requires Biden to slash and burn the budget in exchange for national solvency.  By the way, recently released Tucker Carlson emails/texts reveal that he’s the one who got McCarthy to make all those concessions that got him his speakership on the 15th vote.   The debt ceiling insanity is all a kabuki dance but given the players, who knows?  We really could end up with a trashed economy, particularly if the always calculating McConnell truly believes that would be good for his party’s 2024 prospects.  One of those that Mitch may be seeking to help is Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz who fled to Cancun during a Texas blackout, thinks that all Black men look alike, how else to explain how his campaign sent out an ad attacking his likely Democratic opponent Colin Allred that included a photo of the far chubbier and distinctly different looking Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. Who knows? Maybe that plays in Texas.  And maybe it doesn’t even matter as the Texas legislature has passed a bill that would allow the Texas Secretary of State who is appointed by the Governor to order new elections under “certain circumstances” in counties with at least 2.7 million people.  Only Harris County, a Democratic stronghold with 4.7 million people, that includes Houston, would be affected by the legislation.  

Legal Machinations:  Contrary to his representation to those Irish golfers, Trump will not be testifying in front of the E Jean Carroll defamation and assault jury so today both sides will present their closing remarks. Additional snippets of Trump’s deposition which was shared with jurors aired over the weekend.  In addition to mistaking E Jean for wife Marla, an indication that she probably was his “type,” he also claimed that she enjoyed the attack, that’s the attack that he said never happened.  It’s expected that the case will go to the jury tomorrow.  We now know a little more about why it’s been taking so long for Fulton County’s Fani Willis to come forward with her indictments. Eight of the sixteen “fake” electors who she’s targeted have accepted immunity deals, meaning that they are now spilling their guts. There are suggestions that Willis is working up a RICO case, something she’s done before.  If so, that could account for her timing extending through to July.

Stand Back and Stand By 🌻 🌻 🌻

Money Can’t Buy You Class:  Yesterday, while golfing in Ireland Trump told reporters that he would be cutting his overseas junket short to fly home to testify in the E Jean Carroll battery and defamation case. He’s lying, unfortunately he will be coming back to the US but he has no plans to testify, at least that’s what his lawyer Joe Tacopina told Judge Kaplan yesterday when he also said that he wouldn’t be presenting a defense or calling any witnesses, because the one witness he had planned to call, a psychiatrist, has called in sick or maybe just saw the light.  While Trump didn’t testify in person and probably won’t, though the Judge said he still could if he really wants to, the jury did get an opportunity to hear Trump’s taped deposition in which he said that “historically it’s true” that “over the last million years” rich stars like him get to do whatever they want to women. The jury also heard from one time NY news anchor Carol Martin, another friend who E Jean spoke to shortly after the assault took place. The case is expected to go to the jury next week and though jury’s can be unpredictable and there’s a chance that they’ll buy Tacopina’s position that E Jean’s contemporaneous witnesses are just anti-Trumper’s out to get him, it’s more likely that they’ll find for E Jean Carroll, agreeing that she was attacked and defamed.  Not that their decision will make much of a difference given that Trump’s base could care less and if the jury awards E Jean some money, big deal, Trump can always ask them to help pay and besides he’s rich or so he keeps telling us while he continues to defame her.   

Still Proud?  Another group of Trump’s fans who could care less about the E Jean Carroll case to the extent that they’ve had anytime to pay any attention to her case are the five Proud Boys who were on trial in Washington.  Yesterday a DC jury returned guilty verdicts on multiple felonies against five of them, finding four guilty of the most serious offense, seditious conspiracy, for their actions before and during the January 6^th attack on the US Capitol.  Notably Enrique Tarrio, who once served as president of the far-right neo-fascist Proud Boys and who shows up in photos alongside quite a few Republican politicians, including Ted Cruz, Trump BFFs like Roger Stone, as well as alongside many members of the Trump family including Trump was found guilty of seditious conspiracy even though he wasn’t in the Capitol that day. That’s a big win for the Department of Justice, not as big a win as finding Trump guilty of something, but still bigly.  As to Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith remains on his case.  According to the NY Times, Smith‘s team now has an “unidentified” Mar a Lago employee cooperating with them.  That witness has provided investigators with a picture of the storage room where some of Trump’s purloined documents were kept when they should have already been returned to the National Archives. They NYT also reports that the Feds are trying to track down some missing video tape of the Mar a Lago environs, because this being an investigation of a Republican president who remains a great admirer of Richard Nixon, of course there are missing tapes.  And maybe because everything Trump touches has a criminal angle the DOJ has also subpoenaed records related to Trump’s involvement in the Saudi Arabia back LIV professional golf venture which is holding some of its tournaments at Trump owned courses.  In response, Republicans led by Senator Chuck Grassley and House Oversight Chair James Comer claim to have proof that the Biden crime family led by kingpin Joe excepted millions in bribes back Joe was VP.  Likely, they have nothing but that won’t stop them from screaming and maybe even launching an impeachment proceeding because why not?       

Clarence and Ginni: Trump isn’t the only one who appears to be wrapped in Teflon, apparently so is Justice Clarence Thomas. Yesterday via ProPublica we learned that he hasn’t just excepted lavish vacation trips to exotic places and a house from his benefactor, billionaire conservative Harlan Crow but that Crow also paid for much if not all of the $6000 per month private school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, who Thomas says he raised “like a son.”  Naturally, Thomas did not report the tuition gift on his disclosure forms though he did once report an earlier tuition contribution of $5000, proof that he knew that was the type of gift that should be disclosed. Billionaire Crow acknowledged that he paid for Thomas grandnephew’s education saying that it wasn’t out of the ordinary since he and his wife are nice people who frequently pay for disadvantaged youths’ educations.  That’s sweet and kudos to Clarence for raising his grandnephew, but since when is a child raised by a Supreme Court Justice disadvantaged and anyway why not be upfront about the gifted tuition, unless of course there was more to the gift than just charity.  Also, why did the Federalist Society’s conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, who chose most of Trump’s judicial nominees, route some payments to Clarence’s wife Ginni through Kellyanne Conway’s polling firm?  According to the Washington Post, in 2012, Leo had Kellyanne bill a nonprofit group that he advised  $25,000 for “polling and opinion consulting” and then had the group pay Ginni. That’s a rather odd way to pay someone for legit services unless of course you are trying to obfuscate the payment and maybe even there were no services.  Not so coincidentally, not long after the payment was made, the Judicial Education Project, the nonprofit involved, filed a brief with the Supreme Court for a landmark voting rights case.  In all Ginni received around $80,000 through this circuitous, hide the recipient, route. No comments yet from Kellyanne who will probably try to tie the payments to a fund for the survivors of her faux Bowling Green Massacre and naturally, no Republicans seem all that concerned about all those Crow gifts to Clarence Thomas instead they are now attacking Justice Sotomayor for not recusing from a case involving Penguin Random House, the publisher of her books because deflection is so much more fun. Worth noting Justice Gorsuch who also had a book deal with the publisher didn’t recuse either.    

2024:  Senator Ted Cruz is up for reelection in 2024 and now has a credible challenger – Democratic Congressman Colin Allred.  Allred is a popular moderate who stands a good chance of unseating Cruz whose popularity has nosedived since his close 2020 election. If you’d like to help unseat Cancun Ted, go to ActBlue.com.  Also, Congressman Jamie Raskin who is now cancer free and let’s all hope he stays that way, is considering running for the Maryland Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Ben Cardin.       

Timebombs:  The debt ceiling still looms though maybe, just maybe there’s a flickering light out there.  The Wall Street Journal reports that though Republicans and Democrats are still sticking to the public position that they won’t cave to each other’s demands, privately they are looking at a short-term increase to buy more time for negotiations.  McCarthy who is facing a lot of pressure from his crazy caucus who could care less about economic consequences of a default also has to keep his big donors happy and few if any of them want to see the economy and their fortunes crumble.  On the subject of conflagrations, the Ukraine situation is not good.  So far, it’s unclear whether the Ukrainians launched those drones that hit the Kremlin or whether the Russians are looking for a false flag justification to do something exceptionally nasty.          

 

Weekend at Bernie's III 🌻 🌻 🌻

Crunch Time:  On Monday Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin announced that the debt ceiling could be reached as early as June 1 which is sooner than had been expected. With no resolution of the differences between Republicans and Biden and his Democratic caucus in sight, that’s a problem of mammoth proportions because just the idea that the US would default on any of its payments is alarming, an actual default would sink the world economy.  It’s also ridiculous as the whole concept of a debt ceiling, something that only the US and Denmark have, is stupid and anachronistic. Stupid or not it’s looming because Republicans who raised the limit three times while Trump was president are doing what they did to Obama back when he was president, using it as a cudgel to force budget cuts and not just run of the mill cuts, huge ones that would decimate Biden’s climate agenda while also taking health care benefits away veterans and the poor and food out of the mouths of the hungry among other things that Republicans hate to spend money on. Sadly, we’ve seen this dance before, the problem is that this time House Republicans are led by Kevin McCarthy an exceptionally weak leader with no wiggle room who sold his soul to become Speaker and appears to care more about keeping his position than anything else.  In a rational world before the music stops, Kevin should grudgingly agree to raise the limit, budget negotiations would begin after the ceiling was lifted, some concessions would be made by Biden and company, and we’d move on.  However, if we’ve learned anything over the past few years it’s that the current Republican party isn’t rational so expecting them to do the right thing is foolish at best and caving into their demands, particularly ones this extreme isn’t really a viable option.  Biden has finally invited McCarthy and his Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell to the White House for a sit down with him, Senate Leader Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries but time is running out which also explains why Jeffries is also proceeding with an alternative plan, one that would involve forcing a clean debt ceiling vote through a discharge petition, but this “plan b” is unproven so it’s success is far from a sure thing.  It would require help from a five House Republicans as well as the support of every House Democrat and that’s just what it would need in the House. The doomsday clock is ticking.

Grab’em and Run: Trump arrived in Scotland yesterday to inspect his golf courses, not what a normal person who is being sued for defamation and assault would do but then again, nothing about him ever even approaches normalcy.  The Scotsman newspaper pointed out that ordinarily a former US president would be greeted with celebration but added not so this time since this is the former guy who “engaged in a shocking attack on democracy.”  Back at home, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina, who tried but failed to get the judge overseeing the defamation/assault case to declare a mistrial, finally admitted that Trump will not be testifying on his own behalf for reasons obvious to everyone.  That said, the jurors may hear a tape of Trump’s deposition, the one where he confused plaintiff E Jean Carroll with his second Marla Maples, which makes his earlier claim that he never would have assaulted Carroll because she “wasn’t his type” that much harder to believe. Yesterday, the jury heard from Preppy Handbook author Lisa Birnbach who Carroll contemporaneously freaked out to right after the “alleged” rape and from another one of his victims, Jessica Leeds, who testified that Trump “grabbed her chest and ran his hand up her skirt” as they sat next to each other on a flight in the 1970s.  Gross and somewhat shocking, but not so much when you consider Trump’s Access Hollywood “grab’em by the pussy” braggadocio.  Juries are hard to predict but all of this is sadly credible because what screenwriter, not that any of them are working right now, could get away with making this kind of sh-t up?  Another wrinkle in this case, that no one could make up involves George Conway, the estranged husband of Trump’s once and possible future advisor, Kellyanne. George met E Jean at a soiree hosted by liberal podcaster/commentator Molly Jong Fast, daughter of Erica Jong the author of 1970’s bestselling, sexual awakening   book Fear of Flying.  E Jean testified that George who has become one of the most outspoken Republican anti-Trumpers encouraged her to take legal action against Trump. Although that might sound odd, it’s actually totally in character for George, who in his past life was so outraged about Bill Clinton’s alleged harassment of Arkansas state employee Paula Jones that he helped drive the events that led to his impeachment. Again, you can’t make this stuff up.

People and Politics:  If Chuck Schumer is to be believed Senator Dianne Feinstein will be returning to the Senate next week. At least that’s what she told him so either someone is pulling a weekend at Bernie’s or she’s really coming back or a little of both.  Democrat Ben Cardin, Maryland’s 79-year- old Senator is throwing in the towel, he announced that he will not be running for reelection in 2024.  The good news is that former Governor Larry Hogan, the one Republican with a chance of winning in mostly Democrat Maryland says he has no interest in seeking the now open seat.  Also not running, is Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin who says that he is not seeking the presidency, at least not now.  Youngkin’s name had been bandied about by the so-called “normies” in the Republican party which isn’t to say that Youngkin is all that normal, he’s just normal when compared to Trump. His name will probably come up again as a possible VP candidate.  Washington State Governor Jay Inslee who briefly ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020, has announced that he’s not seeking reelection for a fourth term. He’s probably not going to disappear anytime soon, a strong advocate for fighting climate change, he’d be a good choice to serve as a cabinet member in Biden’s next administration assuming that is that Biden has another administration. Nikki Haley wants us all to believe that should he win Biden will die almost immediately, leaving us with Kamala Harris because though calling Haley past her prime contributed to CNN’s Don Lemon his job, it’s okay for her to predict Biden’s imminent death while snidely taking a dig at Harris, horror of horrors a “Black” woman who could be president. Then there’s Tucker Carlson, the fired Fox host who some would like to see run for president. Don’t get nervous, as of now he’s not running but we’re now learning more about why he was fired.  According to both the NY Times and Washington Post, some still redacted texts and emails that were uncovered during the Dominion Voting Machine discovery include one in which Tucker “found himself for a moment” wanting a group of three white men to kill a person he described as an Antifa kid during the January 6 “demonstrations.”  Though Fox’s lawyers were aware of the Tucker email, Fox Board members and maybe even some of the company’s executives weren’t up to speed until right before the Dominion case was scheduled to go to trial though the part about the executives not knowing is hard to believe.  Fox panicked that Carlson’s emails would become public during Tucker’s testimony and that panic advanced both the settlement and his firing. It’s also reported that Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch had calls with Ukraine President Zelensky in the weeks before the settlement and that during those calls Zelensky expressed his frustration with Carlson’s frequently expressed love for all things Putin as well as his unrelenting hatred of all things Ukraine and Zelensky. It’s probably not a coincidence that with Tucker Carlson gone from the Fox airwaves, Kevin McCarthy who has wavered on Ukraine aid, made his most pro-Ukraine comments ever when asked about support for Ukraine during a press conference in Israel.  At least for now McCarthy doesn’t have to worry about being called out by Tucker, though he still has to deal with Margie Q and Panhandle Putz Matt and the rest of the pro-Vlad wing of his caucus. And Trump, who remains fully in Vlad’s camp. 

And:  Regarding Trump CNN has decided that now is the time to normalize him because who cares about democracy so they will be hosting him for a town hall on May 10.  Their “it girl” Kaitlin Collins who started her career at the Tucker Carlson founded The Daily Caller rather than a more experienced host like Jake Tapper or Dana Bash will serve as moderator.  What could possibly go wrong?