Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Some House Democrats and House Republicans are coming together toward a common opponent: far-right “pro-Putin” hardliners in the House Republican conference, who appear to be led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Congresswoman Greene has been threatening to oust the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Last month she filed a “motion to vacate the chair.” If she chooses to call it up she could force a vote on the House floor to try to remove Speaker Johnson.
House Democrats say they are willing to vote against ousting Johnson, as long as the Speaker puts on the floor desperately needed and long-awaited legislation to fund aid to Ukraine and Israel. Johnson has refused to put the Ukraine aid bill on the floor for months, but after Iran attacked Israel Johnson switched gears. Almost all Democrats and a seemingly large number of Republicans want to pass the Ukraine and Israel aid packages.
Forgoing the possibility of installing Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, which is conceivable given Johnson’s now one-vote majority, Democrats say if Johnson does the right thing, they will throw him their support.
“I think he’ll be in good shape,” to get Democrats to support him, if he puts the Ukraine aid bill on the floor, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) told CNN Thursday. “I would say that there’s a lot of support for the underlying bills. I think those are vital.”
“If these bills were delivered favorably, and the aid was favorably voted upon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene went up there with a motion to remove him, for instance, I think there’s gonna be a lot of Democrats that move to kill that motion,” Congressman Krishnamoorthi said. “They don’t want to see him getting punished for doing the right thing.”
“I think it is a very bad policy of the House to allow one individual such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an arsonist to this House of Representatives,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) told CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane, when asked about intervening to save Johnson. He added he doesn’t want her “to have so much influence.”
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, one of several Republicans who won their New York districts in 2022, districts that were previously held by Democrats, opposes Greene’s motion to vacate – although he praised the Georgia GOP congresswoman.
CNN’s Manu Raju reports Republicans “say it’s time to marginalize hardliners blocking [their] agenda.”
D’Esposito, speaking to Raju, called for “repercussions for those who completely alienate the will of the conference. The people gave us the majority because they wanted Republicans to govern.”
Rep. Mike Lawler, like D’Esposito is another New York Republican who won a previously Democratic seat in 2022. Lawler spoke out against the co-sponsor of Greene’s motion to vacate, Rep. Tim Massie (R-KY), along with two other House Republicans who are working to block the Ukraine aid bill via their powerful seats on the Rules Committee.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a former Navy pilot, blasted Greene.
“Time is of the essence” for Ukraine, Rep. Sherrill told CNN Wednesday night. “The least we can do is support our Democratic allies, especially given what we know Putin to do. To watch a report and to think there are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right that are pro-Putin? That are pro-Russia? It is really shocking.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), as NCRM reported Thursday, had denounced Greene.
“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it,” he said, referring to the Ukraine aid bill Greene and her cohorts want to tank. “I mean that’s a strange position to take.”
The far-right hardliners are also causing chaos in the House.
“Things just got very heated on the House floor,” NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin reported earlier Thursday. “Group of hardliners were trying to pressure Johnson to only put Israel aid on the floor and hold Ukraine aid until the Senate passed HR2.”
HR2 is the House Republicans’ extremist anti-immigrant legislation that has n o chance of passage in the Senate nor would it be signed into law by President Biden.
“Johnson said he couldn’t do it, and [Rep. Derrick] Van Orden,” a far-right Republican from Wisconsin “called him ‘tubby’ and vowed to bring on the MTV [Motion to Vacate.]”
“No one in the group [Gaetz, Boebert, Burchett, Higgins, Donalds et al.] was threatening Johnson with an MTV,” Tsirkin added. “Van Orden seemed to escalate things dramatically…”
Despite Greene’s pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine positions, her falsehoods about “Ukrainian Nazis,” and Russians not slaughtering Ukrainian clergy, reporters continue to “swarm”:
Watch the videos above or at this link.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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Trump Media share price shows steep decline following its peak in late March
Trump plans to water DJT stock by issuing millions of new shares. It’s part of a new Trump scheme to make money for himself and his bankers from a failing company that rang up just $4.1 million in revenue last year and lost more than $58 million.
At its peak, the market valued the company at $8 billion, which, in market terms, is a delusional fantasy. It’s true value is zero, especially if Trump is incarcerated.
The stock watering plan also reminds us that savvy investors and investment bankers make money when stocks fall and rise. Profiting off a loser company is a lucrative but risky and sophisticated game, not one to try at home. Unless you want to be wiped out financially right down to losing your house, since the potential losses to you are unlimited.
Here is how it works: By Issuing millions more shares of DJT, the Trump company ticker symbol, the company will collect cash to keep it going since it isn’t earning a profit or taking in much from customers. The new shares dilute the stock the way a bar watering the gin makes it less potent.
Shorts borrow shares from investors and sell them, paying a fee to the investor. If the stock price falls, the shorts buy back the same number of shares at the lower price, return them to the person they were borrowed from, and keep the difference in price between the sale and re-purchase.
People who hold shares are called longs. They have a long, or ownership position.
Watering helps those who short stocks, called shorts, in two ways.
Shorts borrow shares of stock, paying the investor a fee for the loan of their shares. The shorts then sell the borrowed shares.
Note: If you own a stock brokerage account that allows you to buy on the margin, the investment house can loan out your shares without you knowing it. The brokerage assumes the risk of making you whole if things go awry.
The first way that shorts benefit from stock watering is that millions of new shares become available to sell short. Right now, there are hardly any shares left to borrow and sell short.
For example, if a short sold at $26, roughly the DJT price Monday, and bought it back for $1 later, the profit would be $25 per share less than the fee paid to borrow the shares. In this scenario, the short seller makes a bank vault of cash while the loyal Trump supporter who held onto their shares gets wiped out.
While that’s a nifty and lucrative result, what happens if the stock price rises? Should the stock price rise, say to $51 from $26, the person with the short position would lose $25 per borrowed share. Ouch.
Second, issuing more shares lowers the value of each existing share, putting more downward pressure on DJT.
DJT trading began three weeks ago. DJT shares peaked March 26 at $79.38 and started falling. On April 15, the day Trump’s first criminal trial began in Manhattan, DJT shares traded at about $26. That means the stock has already lost more than two-thirds — down 71%, closing today at $22.84 — from its peak value. Ouch for real.
Trump owns 58 percent of the pre-dilution shares. But he can’t sell his shares for five months under a so-called “lock up” intended to reassure investors that the company isn’t a pump-and-dump scam to run up the share price so the insiders can cash out, leaving the buyers with losses when the stock collapses.
But Donald can still cash in and walk away with a fortune, perhaps several billion dollars, since at its peak, the company was valued at about $8 billion for reasons that have nothing to do with market fundamentals like profits and expectations of future profits.
How would that work?
Donald can pledge his DJT shares to an investment bank. The bank then loans Donald cash secured by those shares.
CEOs have done this for decades, pocketing cash without selling their shares — or having to tell investors! In those deals, the CEO or founder could borrow as much as 90 percent of the share value. If the stock rose, the investment house got the first 35 percent or so of the increase. If the stock fell, as we see with DJT shares, the investment house also makes money because it shorts the stock.
After the price collapses, the investment bank closes its short position by buying back cheap shares, and Trump’s loan is paid off.
The bankers keep the fat fees charged for arranging the deal plus any surplus on the short.
In this case, the investment bank might loan Trump only half of the value of his shares. In that scenario, it would double its money because when the bank closes its short position, its gross profit would be twice as much money as it loaned Trump. And then there are the fees the bank collects for arranging the deal.
It’s a win-win for Trump and the bank — and nothing but losses for people who went long, buying and holding DJT shares as they fell from almost $80 to zero.
At the upcoming April 22 hearing before Justice Arthur Engoron on Trump’s putative bond in the persistent fraud case, New York Attorney General Letitia James should ask if Trump hypothecated his DJT shares and collected cash through a loan against them.
If he did — and I think that is highly likely — this could seriously complicate collecting the nearly half a billion dollars Donald owes in disgorgement and interest. Trump can delay payment while he appeals, but he has no chance of reversing the finding of fraud, only of persuading a court to shave back the size of the award. That, too, seems unlikely for anything but a modest amount of what he owes.
Whether it’s cheating at golf, cheating novice roulette players at the Trump Castle casino, cheating illegal immigrants out of their wages in building Trump Tower, cheating on his wives, cheating insurance companies, cheating on damages from 9/11 — he suffered none but collected big time — cheating on his income taxes, cheating on his property taxes, or trying to cheat by stealing an election and overthrowing the government, remember that Trump is always and everywhere looking to make money for himself with no regard for who gets hurt.
Reprinted with permission from DC Report.
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President Joe Biden
A new Civiqs poll for Daily Kos shows why the issue of abortion is so perilous for the Republican Party, with voters viewing themselves as significantly more aligned with Democrats on the matter.
By 15 points, registered voters say their opinion on abortion is closer to that of Democrats in their states than Republicans, at 48% to 33%, according to the poll released Wednesday.
President Joe Biden also fares eight points better than Donald Trump on the question of how voters think the candidates' abortion views track with their own, with 44 percent choosing Biden compared to 36 percent picking Trump.
Democratic lawmakers likely performed slightly better than Biden on the abortion measure partly because voters generally view Trump as more socially liberal on abortion than most Republican lawmakers overall.
For instance, a December 2023 Data for Progress poll found that roughly two-thirds of voters believed congressional Republicans would take action to pass a national abortion ban if they took control of Congress in 2024, ranking only second to the belief that they would build a wall at the southern border. Meanwhile, only 48 percent of voters said Trump would pass a national abortion ban as president, putting the issue seventh on his likely to-do list.
The disparity between how voters view Republicans lawmakers versus Trump on abortion is exactly why the Biden campaign hammered Trump’s pretzel twisting on abortion last week after Arizona’s Supreme Court ordered the enforcement of a draconian Civil War-era abortion ban.
The Biden campaign’s rapid response team also made an explicit effort to link Trump to anti-abortion zealot House Speaker Mike Johnson, deploying roughly 18 tweets in a 24-hour period featuring the two men together.
Notably, the Civiqs poll also found that independents view Democrats as more closely aligned with their abortion views than Republicans by 12 points, at 41 percent to 29 percent. Biden and Trump run about even among independents, with 35 percent saying their views track more closely with Biden's, and 36 percent choosing Trump.
The bottom line: Any time candidates of either party talk about abortion or the topic dominates the headlines—as happened last week—it’s a win for Democrats and Biden.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
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Arizona House Rep. David Livingston celebrating defeat of abortion ban repeal on April 17, 2024
Republicans in the Arizona legislature weren't afraid to do an endzone dance after voting to keep a Civil War-era law on the books that effectively bans all abortions in the Grand Canyon State.
According to Talking Points Memo reporter Kate Riga, Rep. David Livingston (R) "applauded his supporters" in the gallery overlooking the House of Representatives and raised his fists in a celebratory fashion after the vote to repeal the law failed on party lines. House Majority Whip Teresa Martinez (R) reportedly mouthed the words "we got you" to others in the gallery who were advocating for repeal, and even gave them a mocking thumbs-up gesture.
"They were posing for their far-right base," Assistant House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos (D) told Talking Points Memo.
Wednesday marked Democrats' fourth unsuccessful attempt in two weeks to repeal the law, which was passed when Arizona was still a territory that had not yet officially joined the U.S. and before women had the right to vote. The state already had a strict 15-week abortion ban in place before the Arizona Supreme Court recently ruled to uphold the far more stringent law from 1864.
"In light of this Opinion, physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal, and that additional criminal and regulatory sanctions may apply to abortions performed after fifteen weeks’ gestation," Justice John Lopez wrote on behalf of the GOP-aligned majority.
The 1864 law, which remains on the books, allows for the punishment of abortion providers who help individuals terminate their pregnancies. Any provider who performs the procedure faces a prison sentence of anywhere from two to five years under the 19th century legislation. Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) clarified her office would not prosecute abortion providers under that law.
"Make no mistake, by effectively striking down a law passed this century and replacing it with one from 160 years ago, the Court has risked the health and lives of Arizonans," Mayes stated, adding that the "decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn't a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn't even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state."
That 1864 law is likely to mobilize large amounts of Democratic voters to turn out in the 2024 election in the Grand Canyon State, which may end up deciding partisan control of the House, Senate and White House in November. Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake — who ran a failed campaign for governor in 2022 — previously praised the anti-abortion law as "great," before eventually condemning it as "out of step with Arizonans." She has called on Governor Katie Hobbs (D) and the GOP-controlled legislature to pass a work-around.
If Republicans aim to recapture the U.S. Senate, they'll need a net gain of two seats in November. This will require flipping seats like Arizona's, where outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) declined to seek another term in office. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), the likely Democratic nominee, is currently leading in polls with RealClearPolitics showing him ahead of Lake by an average of six points.
Arizona narrowly went blue in 2020, with President Joe Biden taking the state's Electoral College votes with less than 11,000 total votes. That margin could widen with abortion rights on the ballot, as that issue has led to stunning Republican losses even in red states like Kansas, Kentucky and Montana in 2022, and Ohio in 2023.
Click here to read Talking Points Memo's full report.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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President Vladimir Putin, left, and former President Donald Trump
"Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it's infected a good chunk of my party's base." That acknowledgement from Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was echoed a few days later by Ohio Rep. Michael Turner, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. "To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle."
It has been two months since the Senate passed, by 70-29 (including 22 Republicans), a $95 billion foreign aid bill that included $60 billion for Ukraine. The Republican-controlled House, by contrast, has been paralyzed. This week, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Ukraine will lose the war if the aid is not approved.
The Republican party is now poised to let a brave, democratic ally be defeated by the power that the last GOP presidential nominee save one called "without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe." One member of Congress has sworn to introduce a resolution to vacate the chair if the House speaker puts aid for Ukraine on the floor, and the entertainment wing of conservatism — most egregiously Tucker Carlson — has gone into full truckling mode toward the ex-KGB colonel in the Kremlin.
It's worth exploring how the Republican party, the party of "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," became the party that now credulously traffics in blatant Russian disinformation while it flirts with betraying an important ally — along with all of its principles.
Trump's particular preferences and ego needs play a starring role in the GOP's devolution. Cast your minds back to 2016 and the revelation that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee. To rebut this damaging development, Fox News conjurers got busy inventing a tale about CrowdStrike, the company that documented the hack, alleging that the servers had been mysteriously moved to Ukraine so that the FBI could not examine them. Trump raised the CrowdStrike issue in his infamous call with Zelenskyy.
This was bonkers. As the Mueller report made clear, the FBI did get all the data regarding the DNC hack. There was never a shred of evidence that the servers were moved to Ukraine, and in any case physical control of the servers was unnecessary. But what was Zelensky supposed to say? He promised to look into it just as a courtier to a mad king will say, "Yes, your majesty, we will look into why your slippers are turning into marshmallows when the sun goes down."
Because Trump regarded any implication that he had received assistance from Russia as impugning his victory, he latched onto the idea (perhaps whispered by Putin himself in one of their many private conversations) that, yes, there had indeed been foreign interference in the election, but it was Ukraine boosting Hillary Clinton, not Russia aiding Trump. Now, it's true that Ukraine's friends reached out to Clinton, but why wouldn't they? Trump's campaign manager was Paul Manafort, a paid agent of Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Putin Ukrainian leader.
Trump nurtured his misplaced grudge for years. Recall that when Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump's initial response was that it was a "genius" move. "You gotta say, that's pretty savvy."
A non-sociopath would say it was raw aggression of the worst kind. A normal Republican of the pre-Trump mold would have been outraged at the attempted rape of a peaceful, democratic neighbor.
Most Republican officeholders are not sociopaths, but they take their marching orders from one and have adjusted their consciences accordingly. The talking point Sen. J.D. Vance and his ilk favor is that they cannot be concerned about Ukraine's border when our southern border is also being invaded. Of course it's absurd to compare immigrants looking for work or safety to tanks, bombs and missiles, but that's what passes for Republican reasoning these days. In any case, it was revealed to be hollow when Biden and the Democrats offered an extremely strict border bill to sweeten aid for Ukraine, and the GOP turned it down flat.
Russia's fingerprints are all over the Republicans' failed attempt to impeach (in all senses of the word) Joe Biden. Their star witness, Alexander Smirnov — who alleged that Hunter and Joe Biden had been paid $5 million in bribes by Burisma — was indicted in February for making false statements. High-ranking Russians appear to be his sources.
Whether the subject is Ukraine, Biden's so-called corruption, or NATO, Putin seems to have pulled off the most successful foreign influence operation in American history. If Trump were being blackmailed by Putin, it's hard to imagine how he would behave any differently. And though it started with Trump, it has not ended there. Putin now wields more power over the GOP than anyone other than Trump. GOP propagandists indulge fictions that even many Russians can see through: Ukraine is governed by Nazis; Russia is a religious, Christian nation; Russia is fighting "wokeness."
Republicans are not so much isolationist as pro-authoritarian. They've made Hungary's Viktor Orban a pin-up, and they mouth Russian disinformation without shame. Putin must be pinching himself.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
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Donald Trump's first criminal trial may contain a few surprises, according to the former president's ex-lawyer, and star witness, Michael Cohen.
Ahead of the trial's jury selection — which began Monday, April 15, — Cohen shared with Politico that Americans may already know Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments — but that's not the whole story.
During his conversation with Cohen, Politico chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza mentioned that "credibility is one part of this trial," but, "The other c-word that comes up is 'corroboration.'
Lizza asked the former Trump attorney, "What can you tell us about that? Is this a stronger case when it comes to corroboration than people understand on the outside?"
Cohen insisted, "If it wasn’t, Alvin Bragg and his team of prosecutors would never have brought this case."
In fact, when Lizza asked Cohen whether he thinks the public will "be surprised" by the corroborating evidence, the star witness replied, "I do."
He emphasized, "In fact, most people don’t really know anything. They only know what the headlines have been. And as you know very, very well, headlines do not necessarily tell the story."
Lizza also noted one obstacle in the DA's case against the ex-president "seems to be how Bragg connects the misdemeanor of falsifying business records that recorded what were actually hush money payments — the payments to you to reimburse you for the payments to Stormy Daniels — to another crime that Trump was trying to commit, which then makes this a felony."
The Politico reporter asked, "Do you think Bragg has strong evidence on that portion of the case?"
Cohen replied, "Let me say it to you this way — it may not be satisfying to you, and I do certainly appreciate the attempts to drill down despite me telling you I cannot go into into this case: Alvin Bragg would not have brought this case — he would not have that as an element of this case — if he did not believe that he would be able to prove this at trial to a jury of 12."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Expose Of Stefanik's Privileged Life Blows Up Her 'Humble Origins' Myth
Rep. Elise Stefanik
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has often painted herself as someone who came from a humble working-class background but pulled herself up by the bootstraps.
Stefanik, who Donald Trump is reportedly considering as a possible running mate in the 2024 presidential race, acknowledges that she attended Harvard University. But she paints her Ivy League education as an example of beating and overcoming the odds — not an example of privilege.
In an article published on April 14, however, Daily Beast reporters William Bredderman and Jake Lahut stress that Stefanik has had a much more comfortable life than she claims.
"If Stefanik was supposed to remember where she came from," Bredderman and Lahut explain, "she seems to have forgotten — to the point of making blatantly misleading statements, beginning in her first congressional campaign — how her family's wealth has given her a leg up, from providing her with an expensive private-school education to her parents buying her a $1.2 million D.C. townhouse when she was just 26. Instead of acknowledging those advantages, Stefanik has repeatedly downplayed her wealth, including in a statement to The Daily Beast."
Bredderman and Lahut add that Stefanik's "humble origin story falls away under a little pressure."
"From the start, she has maintained that she saw her parents 'risk everything' to establish Premium Plywood Products when she was a child," the reporters note. "But even the story she has told of the company's founding is incomplete. While every business venture involves risk, the Stefaniks didn't shoulder it alone: less than two months after incorporating Premium Plywood Products in late 1991, public records show they secured a Small Business Administration-guaranteed loan worth $335,000 — roughly $755,000 in today's money."
According to Bredderman and Lahut, Stefanik's "private education at Albany Academy for Girls offered a crash course in the ways of the New York capital’s moneyed elite."
"The children of political tycoons, from former President Theodore Roosevelt to former Gov. Mario Cuomo, have sent their children to its all-male counterpart across the street, The Albany Academy, where students pay the same tuition — $25,600 for the most recent academic year," Bredderman and Lahut report. "After graduating from Harvard in 2006, Stefanik decamped to D.C. to serve in then-President George W. Bush's administration — a role one of her Ivy League mentors helped her land. She would work her way up into the White House Chief of Staff's Office."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
'New York Times' Poll Reverses Itself On Trump Gaining Minority Support
A newly released New York Times/Siena poll shows a wholesale reversal from its previous February poll that suggested President Joe Biden was bleeding support among Latino voters.
The Times/Siena poll released Saturday showed Biden gaining significant ground with minority voters, including opening up a 9-point lead over Trump with Latinos, 50 percent - 41 percent. That's a 15-point turnaround since February, when theTimes/Siena survey gave Trump a six-point advantage among Latino voters, winning 46 percent of the group to Biden's 40 percent.
Biden's growth among nonwhite voters—including a net 10-point gain with Black voters—has effectively erased Trump's lead among registered voters overall in the latest Times/Siena survey, with Biden at 45 percent to Trump's 46 percent. The Times' February poll gave Trump a five-point advantage overall, at 43 percent Biden -- 48 percent Trump.
Taking the poll at face value, Trump's Latino support is still historically high at 41 percent, while Biden's is historically low at 50 percent. The high-water mark for any Republican presidential candidate is President George W. Bush's 40 percent share of the Latino vote in 2004.
In 2020, Biden won Latino voters 59 percent -- 38 percent, so the incumbent still has considerable room to grow support among the group while Trump may already be close to hitting his ceiling.
Last week, we covered polling from the Pew Research Center that draws into question whether Trump—as many outlets including the Times have reported—has really made significant inroads with Latino voters and, if so, whether those gains would be enough to swing an election given Biden's relative strength thus far with white voters.
Biden's continued strength with white voters puts the onus on Trump to win over a historically high share of voting groups that don't typically lean Republican...The conventional wisdom over the past few months has been that Biden is in trouble because he's bleeding support among Latinos (and potentially Black voters, too).
But with current polling showing Biden and Trump relatively evenly matched at this stage of the contest, it's entirely plausible for the Biden campaign to woo back some voters who are more naturally predisposed to voting for Democrats.
Biden now appears to be doing exactly that: consolidating support among Latino and Black voters as he gains ground on Trump.
And as we noted in Friday's piece, the same Pew Research Center polling suggests Democrats haven't suffered a significant falloff in support among Black and Latino voters during the Trump era. In fact, Pew's data called into question the entire premise that some sort of racial realignment has taken place among voters over the past several years.
The Times/Siena poll isn't the only survey showing Biden cutting into Trump's lead since the State of the Union address in early March. In The Tilt newsletter Saturday, the Times' Nate Cohn found Biden gaining an average of +1.4 points on Trump in 16 polls taken before and after the fiery speech.
While none of these revelations feel like tectonic shifts in the presidential contest, they do appear to reflect the Biden campaign's increasing advantages over Trump when it comes to electoral fundamentals such as fundraising, time spent campaigning, and investments in advertising and organizing.
An old adage comes to mind: The only nonrenewable resource in a campaign is time. And while Biden continues to campaign across the country, Trump will be spending the lion's share of his time in a courtroom over the next half-dozen weeks.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
Gov. Chris Sununu
Namby, meet pamby. I’m talking, naturally, of Chris Sununu, governor of New Hampshire, who slithered into a Zoom call on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday to explain why he will be voting for Donald Trump for president come November. Not because Trump doesn’t have any responsibility for the attempted coup and attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He does. Sununu thinks that all the insurrectionists “must be held accountable and prosecuted.” Except one: the man he’s voting for in November.
Watching him answering the questions of Stephanopoulos was like watching something with more legs than two crawl out from beneath a wet rock on a rainy day. Sununu, who supported Nikki Haley in the primary until she dropped out, doesn’t see anything wrong with now supporting Donald Trump for president. To explain why, he attacked the “wokeness, the fact that folks in Washington, liberal elites in Washington, want to stand on the shoulders of hard-working American families that built this country, that defended this country, and tell them how to live their lives.” Apparently, Sununu has recognized that sounding exactly like Marjorie Taylor Greene will help you as a Republican in America, even up there in the Granite State.
Stephanopoulos should have asked Sununu just what he meant by that statement. Telling people how to live their lives isn’t “woke,” it is part of the business of government. If you earn money, you pay taxes. If you form a company and the company earns money, you pay corporate taxes. If your company is publicly traded, so individual American citizens can invest in it, can give you money so that you can spend it to help your company earn more money, you must register that company with the SEC, you cannot spend your investors’ money on yourself and your own lifestyle, and you must return some of the profits you earn to your investors. If you drive on Interstate highways, you must follow the speed limit. If you manufacture cars, you must install seat belts and airbags in those cars to keep safe the people who drive them. If you buy a firearm at a firearms store, you must pass a background check to make sure that you are not a felon with no right to buy or own a firearm.
Sununu has learned the lesson all Republicans have learned, that it is not necessary to make sense and to tell the truth. When asked by Stephanopoulos if he indeed believed “that a president who contributed to an insurrection should be president again,” Sununu was ready with a lie: “As does 51 percent of America, George. I mean, really.”
Trump lost the election of 2020, 51.3 percent of the vote for Biden, 46.9 percent for Trump. He lost the electoral college by 74 electoral votes. Here is how Sununu explained what happened in the last election: “I hate the election denialism of 2020. Nobody wants to be talking about that in 2024. I think all of that was absolutely terrible, but what people are going to be voting for, what I -- what -- the reason I’m supporting not just the president, but the Republican administration. That's what this is.”
Stephanopoulos didn’t ask him how it is that the “nobody” Sununu identifies as not wanting to talk about election denialism does not include the man he says he’s voting for, Donald Trump, who has made denying the truth of the 2020 election the centerpiece of his campaign.
Listen to Sununu, until now considered one of the so-called reasonable Republicans, as he summed up why he’s voting for Trump: “States rights come first, individual rights come first, parents rights come first.” That’s the Trumpian Republican Kool-Aid right there in a single sentence. That is the reasoning behind the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe and created the nightmare women are facing in states exercising their “states rights” around the country. That is the rhetorical sewer from which the book bans and Black history denialism has emerged over the last several years.
And it’s coming out of the mouth of Chris Sununu. Sununu said previously that Trump should drop out of the race if he is convicted of a crime. Does he think that now? “No, no, no, of course not. That is not to be expected at all. There is clearly politics to bear in some of these cases, that is undeniable. The average American just says it’s more of reality TV in prosecution of him at this point. He plays that victim card very, very well. His poll numbers only go up with this stuff. So, to think of this as some kind of deal breaker, again, I’ll go back to where I started, that people are saying, yep, if he’s convicted, I’m walking away. That’s just not going to happen. If he’s going to be the standard bearer of it, we’ll take it if we have to. That’s how badly Americans want a culture change.”
Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Mike Pence are the only two prominent Republicans who are not named Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger who have announced they will not vote for Donald Trump, and only Kinzinger has said he will instead vote for Joe Biden.
And to think that these are the reasonable Republicans among us.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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Anti-missile system operating against Iranian drones,seen near Ashkelon, Israel on April 13, 2024
Iran has launched a swarm of missile and drone strikes on Israel from Iranian territory, marking a significant military escalation between the two nations. Israel and Iran have been engaged in a so-called shadow war for decades, with Iranian proxies like Hezbollah rocketing Israel from Lebanon and Syria, and Israel retaliating by launching air strikes on Hezbollah missile sites. Israel has also launched strikes on Iranian targets in other countries, most recently an airstrike on part of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, which killed several top Iranian “advisers” to its military, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior officer in Iran’s Quds Force, an espionage and paramilitary arm of Iran’s army.
After the strike on part of its embassy in Damascus on April 2, Iran announced that it would retaliate against Israel. Tonight, that retaliation began at just before 2 a.m. Israeli time, as Iran launched what appears to be a sustained missile attack on Jerusalem. CNN and MSNBC are showing images of multiple explosions in the skies over Jerusalem. It’s hard to make out what’s happening, but it looks like Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system is hitting multiple Iranian missiles, causing showers of missile shrapnel, some of it on fire, to cascade down on Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
Israel has scrambled its fighter jets, which are circling above Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and some of the fighters appear to be engaging Iranian targets, which could include Iranian cruise missiles flying at relatively low altitude and Iranian ballistic missiles arcing down from high altitudes. Air raid sirens have sounded all over the Jerusalem area sending Israelis into air raid shelters.
Iran announced earlier that they have also launched a drone attack on Israel. Drones fly much slower than cruise and ballistic missiles, so they are not expected to reach Israeli airspace until later. The United States has announced that our military forces have shot down some of the Iranian drones, probably from U.S. military sites in northern Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. It is about 1,000 miles from the areas of western Iran where its missile bases may be located to eastern Israel, such as Jerusalem.
Israel just announced that Iran launched more than 200 missiles of various kinds at Israel. Iran has apparently launched its missiles in a coordinated fashion, so that they arrived in Israel airspace in a swarm. It takes about two hours for a cruise missile to travel from Iran to Israel, but only 12 minutes for a ballistic missile to fly the same distance. From what I could see on CNN, it appeared that Iran had succeeded in achieving its aims of swarming Israel’s Iron Dome air defense. Israel has not announced how many Iranian missiles got through its defenses, but an IDF spokesman said Israel intercepted “the vast majority” of Iran’s missiles.
There have been no reports of Hezbollah launching its missiles on targets in Israel in coordination with the Iranian attack. However, Hezbollah announced earlier this evening that its forces had launched missiles at an Israeli barracks in the Golan Heights at about midnight Israel time. Hezbollah is known to have thousands of ground-to-ground missiles along the border with Israel. Their missiles can reach Haifa and other cities in northern Israel. Israel has part of its Iron Dome missile defense system defending northern Israel, but Hezbollah has enough ground-to-ground missiles that it, too, could launch a swarm attack on Israel.
Israel has closed its Ben Gurion Airport and other airports in the country and banned gatherings of more than 1,000 citizens. Israel put a deadline of 48 hours on the closures, but that could change. Airspace in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq is closed, according to Flightradar24, a website that tracks flights of aircraft around the world in real time.
President Biden met tonight with his national security team in the White House Situation Room. Biden put out a statement that U.S. support for Israel is “ironclad.”
The danger of an attack of this size anywhere in the Middle East, but especially by Iran on Israel, is that hostilities could spread rapidly around the region. There is a possibility that Israel will launch a missile or air attack on targets in Iran, including its missile launch sites and command and control centers. That has not happened yet, however.
Air raid sirens have gone silent in Israel at this hour, according to the New York Times.
At a rally in Pennsylvania tonight, Donald Trump announced his support for Israel, claiming it was under attack “because we show great weakness.”
Trump provided no explanation how “weakness” in the United States could affect the actions of the Iranian regime in Tehran, 6,300 miles away, or what that “weakness” might consist of. House Republicans have held up for months the passage of a bill that would fund support for our ally, Ukraine, which is running out of ammunition and other supplies in its war against Russian aggression. The bill is being held up in part on the orders of Trump himself, who has told aides he does not want President Biden to have a legislative victory during the campaign for president.
There’s showing some weakness for you.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.
- The Anguish And Courage Behind Schumer's Break With Netanyahu ›
- What Biden Must Do Now To Curb Israel In Gaza And Protect Innocent Civilians ›
President Joe Biden
Barack Obama got it right. He refused to be held captive to his party's left wing. He adopted a strenuous policy of border enforcement, even as some Latino activists threatened to withhold their support for him. He had tense relations with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, but when anti-Israel protesters interrupted a Biden fundraiser over the Gaza conflict, Obama reprimanded them: "Here's the thing, you can't just talk and not listen." And the hall broke into applause.
Should Biden worry about keeping members of the Democrats' perpetually unhappy left on his team come November? Not to the extent that it costs broader public support — or goes against U.S. interests. The far left's power comes not in its big numbers but in its members' ability to bully Democrats into taking positions that cost them elections.
It's happened time and again. During the 2000 presidential campaign, prominent leftists urged followers to vote for spoiler Ralph Nader instead of the moderate Democrat Al Gore. A handful of Nader votes in Florida delivered the presidency to George W. Bush. In 2016, Bernie Sanders and many followers slashed the tires under Hillary Clinton's campaign, thus helping elect Donald Trump, who had cleverly egged them on.
Many of the disrupters waving Palestinian flags feel genuine despair at the Gaza horror. They have much company in this. But a lot of what they're after is attention. Getting pats on the head on social media is more important than helping defeat Donald Trump.
Exactly what was the point of pro-Palestinian demonstrators' disrupting an Easter Vigil mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral other than to get on the news? They know where the cameras are.
Come November, the hard left may deprive Biden of some needed votes. How much wiser to concentrate on Nikki Haley Republicans in the battlegrounds where moderate Republicans reside. And the Biden campaign is reportedly doing that.
According to a February Quinnipiac poll, 37% of Republican-leaning voters who supported Haley said they'd vote for Biden. That doesn't include the percentage of Republicans who would simply sit out an election that has Trump on the ballot.
Biden can't emphasize enough his support for the border enforcement bill that Trump had killed precisely because it would have worked, thus depriving him of a potent campaign issue. Any notion that this stance would turn off Latino voters is belied by polls showing Trump actually gaining some support among them as well as Blacks. And that's despite Trump's talking about mass deportations.
Perhaps Blacks and Latinos want different things from their political leaders than having their identities massaged. Other polls show illegal immigration — as well as crime — rank high on the list of these voters' concerns.
No surprise there. Poorly controlled borders intensify competition for workers without college degrees. These jobs are in construction, manufacturing, restaurants and hotels, retail — positions that are heavily occupied by people of color.
Contained in Obama's message to the anti-Israel left was the reality that the conflict in Gaza is complicated. But when you get down to the Squad level on the left, the problem isn't so much what many believe as their lack of depth in understanding the issues.
Trump Republicans can't help but love them. Here are would-be Democrats helping a candidate who, as president, introduced a ban on Muslims even entering the country — and says he would restore it in a second term.
Haley voters could well be the key to a Biden victory, especially if the president doesn't torment them with woke nonsense. Biden needs to keep Democrats united as is politically doable while getting the never-Trump Republicans to actually cast a vote — if not whole-heartedly for him, at least for the democracy.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
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