Capturing the Narrative  ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Bomb Thrower:  Speaker wannabee,  Jim “Gym” Jordan is now 0 for 2 and likely to be 0 for 3 by the end of day.  On Tuesday, twenty House Republicans voted against him, on Wednesday the NO vote count grew to twenty-two after he picked up two votes but lost four. To the extent that today’s planned vote goes forward, the expectation is that Gym will bleed votes as more House Republicans, emboldened by the “bravery” of Wednesday’s twenty-two, shift their votes to NO.  The persistent and pugilistic Jordan whose surrogates have been waging an intimidation campaign against his detractors, one that has resulted in death threats to some of them and their spouses, may not be willing to concede yet but may have no choice but to step aside, at least for now. Though Republicans let deposed Speaker McCarthy’s go to 15 ballots, they don’t appear to have any interest in doing that for Gymbo, especially given the impending November government funding deadline, the Hamas-Israel war, and the situation in Ukraine, not to mention the impact that looking like incompetent clowns 🤡 🤡 is having on their political prospects. Also worth mentioning, though it failed to ensure him a long tenure, McCarthy’s fundraising prowess garnered him the support he needed to go 15 rounds.  Gym is far from a money magnet, if anything his histrionics and anti-government government stance is off putting to big donors, especially the corporate ones who want lower taxes and less regulation rather than anarchy. Since it’s unlikely that any Republican could win the Speakership right now given the party’s disarray there’s now a better than even chance that Republicans with a boost from Hakeem Jeffries’ Democrats will vote to give additional powers to the little bow tie guy from North Carolina Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry, making him a temporary Speaker.   To the extent that Gym doesn’t wrestle him to the ground, Ohio Republican David Joyce is expected to introduce a measure to allow McHenry to oversee the passage of legislation. Presumably in exchange for supporting McHenry, Democrats will get Republicans to suspend their Hastert Rule, the convention that precludes Republican Speakers from scheduling floor votes on any legislation that does not have majority support within their party even if the majority of the members of the House would vote to pass it.  With the Hastert Rule suspended, the House would be able to pass defense bills, vote on budgets, and keep the government open. Two more things to know: McHenry is hardly a moderate, but he’s viewed as pragmatic and as Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee he understands the importance of paying debt service and keeping the government open; and the Hastert Rule was named for former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert who after retiring from the House pleaded guilty to making hush money payments to underage boys who he sexually molested.  Hastert, Trump, Gymbo, there’s a pattern here.   

Fog of War: On Tuesday evening, a blast tore through the Al Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza.  Within minutes of the explosion, Hamas, those nice guys responsible for beheading Israelis and suppressing their own population excel at PR so they got their message out fast, blaming Israel for bombing the hospital while also claiming that 500 people had been killed. The press jumped on the story, amplifying the Hamas narrative. The first tell that all wasn’t as it seemed was the death count, it’s virtually impossible to have a count so quickly after a bombing and 500 hundred is too round a number to be real. Tragically, there was a deadly blast, and a lot of people were killed though the likely number is probably somewhere around 300, little solace to the families who suffered.   However, to the extent that Israel and its Defense Forces (the IDF) are to be believed, and US military experts believe them as to most Western leaders, it’s more likely than not that the deadly explosion was caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another armed terrorist group. Unfortunately, most of those who believe that the explosion was due to an Israeli airstrike are sticking with that narrative and as a result an already deadly, highly charged situation has gotten worse, in Gaza and everywhere else, as evidenced by the anti-Israel, anti-Jews, anti-American demonstrations that have broken out all over.  The explosion also hurt President Biden’s efforts.  He went ahead with his visit to Israel but his planned stop in Amman Jordan was canceled at the request of the Jordanian government.  The good news, to the extent there is any, is that Biden appears to have brokered a deal that will facilitate Egypt allowing some humanitarian aid into Gaza.  The terribly bad news is that the Israeli hostages, to the extent they are still alive, are still being held by Hamas somewhere in Gaza and the “blame Israel for the blast” narrative is making their already perilous situation worse.

And:  Trump’s trials are progressing, except for the one in Florida which takes one step giant back for every little step forward because Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon. Trump continues to act out.  He reposted New York Attorney General Letitia James’s home address on Truth Social because why shouldn’t her life be put in further jeopardy?  Yesterday, when he didn’t like what one witness was saying about his real estate valuations he acted out in court because that’s what he does.  An email that Fulton County defendant/lawyer Kenneth Chesebro had tried to keep out of the hands of prosecutors made it into the public domain yesterday.  In it Chesebro indicated that he knew his so called legal arguments on how the 2020 election results could be ignored were really political ones.  That’s a problem for Chesebro, whose trial starts soon, because he claimed that he was just a lawyer advising his client Trump on legal issues.  Also,  in case you aren’t already on edge, Trump’s poll numbers are going up.