Viva Las Vegas ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Overtime:  Now that was a Super Bowl worth watching.  Far more enjoyable than the Sunday news shows which, as expected, hyped the inappropriately lengthy Special Counsel Hur report that exonerated Biden while gratuitously slamming his mental fitness. Meantime back in the real world, during a campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump the Republican’s likely presidential candidate, said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to those members of NATO who were “delinquent” in their payments. Putting aside the insanity of a once and possibly future president calling for Russia to invade a European country or two, Trump’s delinquency claim, like his continued misunderstanding of how tariffs work, is just plain old stupid. The “numbers” he keeps throwing around refer to the goal that NATO members spend 2% of their GDP on defense rather than any “delinquent” membership dues. In any case, most of those NATO members who he’d gladly hand over to Russia, particularly the European ones, are major providers of aid to Ukraine, not a NATO member, but another one of those countries that Trump would gladly hand over to Putin. As if threatening NATO members wasn’t bad enough, Trump threw in a sweetener, attacking Nikki Haley’s husband for being AWOL from her campaign. Trump knows that Haley’s husband is a member of the South Carolina National Guard, currently on a mission in Africa, but its so much more fun for the twice divorced sexual assailant to cast aspersions on the state of Haley’s marriage than to recognize that her husband is serving the country. Naturally, the only Republicans who spoke out forcefully against Trump’s comments were the usual cadre of never-Trumpers, others like “defense hawks” Senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio went with variations of, come on guys, you know Trump, he was only kidding, it’s a campaign and promising to sell out allies and bashing patriotic spouses is just things that the Orange god does during his rallies. For good measure, to the horror of Swifties everywhere, Trump warned Taylor Swift off, saying that there’s no way she should endorse Biden as that would be disloyal to him because he’d signed the Music Modernization Act which updated digital copyright laws when he was president, asserting that she owed her wealth to him. Swift encouraged her substantial fanbase to register to vote and also endorsed Biden in 2020, it’s not clear whether she will again but Trump is obviously concerned that she will which explains all the Swift bashing coming from him and his like-minded supporters and also explains why the NY Post kept a story about Swift “snubbing” the ailing Celine Dion at the Grammies front and center on it’s website for an entire week.

Foreign Aid: While most eyes were focused on Super Bowl news and the flight path of Taylor Swift’s Las Vegas bound entourage, the Senate was in session over the weekend, passing another foreign military aid procedural hurdle.  Though the Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan aid package isn’t there yet, it’s expected to make it out of the Senate on Wednesday at which point it will head to the House where its fate will fall into the hands of Speaker Johnson who will try to squelch it to please Trump.  Assuming he can, Hakeem Jeffries will try to muster enough votes from both sides of the aisle to get the package up for a floor vote.  By the way, the relatively youthful Speaker Johnson had his own senior moment, conflating Iran with Israel during an appearance on Meet the Press this weekend. Also, though he’d earlier asserted that border legislation was necessary, he now says that it’s not, that Biden can do everything he needs to do by executive action.  And following orders from Trump, called out the “misguided” Border Patrol Union for their support of the Senate’s likely dead border legislation.

 

2024: While the presidential race continues to dominate the news, there are a lot more races to focus on.  Over the weekend, former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan who had teased a possible “no labels” presidential run announced instead that he’s running for the open Maryland Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Senate Democrat Ben Cardin.  Although Maryland is a reliably blue state, the anti-choice Hogan was one of those unique Republican governors who was moderate enough to make it in blue state so if any Republican stands a chance of turning one of Maryland’s Senate seats red it’s him. The Democrats have not yet selected their candidate. Hogan is a big get for McConnell who hasn’t been able to get other popular termed out Republican Governors in blue/bluish states like Vermont and New Hampshire to run for the Senate.  Another state to watch is Montana where moderate Democrat Jon Tester is up for reelection in a Trump plus 16-point state.  Over the weekend, in another win for McConnell’s crowd, Trump endorsed the Republican Senate Campaign committee’s preferred candidate Tim Sheehy instead of Congressman Matt Rosendale.  Tomorrow is election day on Long Island with Democrat Tom Suozzi facing off against Mazi Pilip. You can’t turn on a local station or even watch football in the New York area without hearing a political ad right now.  Pilip’s team has been forcefully attacking the very moderate Suozzi over immigration because that’s all they’ve got and to be fair it’s a topic that resonates.  Suozzi has been playing the abortion rights card while also pointing out that in addition to supporting the Republican’s anti-choice agenda Pilip’s got Santos-like financials.  

Legal Update:  Trump’s next step in his immunity appeal to the Supreme Court is due in today. Assuming he’s plans to appeal, and it’s highly likely that he does because stalling is his super-power, he will first request a stay to keep the brakes on Jack Smith’s election interference case.  SCOTUS could deny the appeal altogether or could decide to hear the case with or without granting a stay.  Something is going on in Florida in Judge “loose” Cannon’s purloined documents case where it appears that Special Counsel Jack has just about had it with her intentionally bad or stupidly bad rulings. Smith has submitted a filing asking her to reconsider a decision she made last week to reveal the names of potential witnesses, saying that she made a “clear error” that could expose those witnesses to threats by a certain Orange guy and his abettors. That filing is more or less a veiled threat to start going after her fitness to oversee the case. And we’re still waiting to hear from NY fraud case Judge Arthur Engoron who’s still canoodling over how bigly to make Trump’s penalty.    

Fog:  Yesterday, Israel’s military rescued Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, two hostages who were being held by Hamas in Rafah. Any successful rescue of hostages is notable but the rescue from Rafah which borders Egypt is particularly newsworthy since the Israeli government has been getting lots of pushback for its Rafah targeted airstrikes.  Now we know that, at least for now, those airstrikes were intended to provide cover for the rescue operation.  Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is back in the hospital, something to do with a bladder infection related to his recent prostate cancer surgery. Not at all good that he’s suffering so much but at least this time he’s being transparent.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow