Tag: gop
Michael Whatley

GOP's North Carolina Senate Pick Backed By Election Denier, Alleged Spouse Abuser

Republican Michael Whatley is turning to election deniers and alleged domestic abusers to help raise money for his U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina.

According to an invitation posted on Instagram, Whatley will headline a September 25 fundraiser in Pinehurst, NC, co-hosted by Mike Hardin, the District Attorney of Moore and Hoke Counties who has been accused of emotionally and physically terrorizing his estranged wife.

Victoria Hardin said in May 2024 court filings that her husband pushed her to the ground and bruised her arm a few weeks after she asked him for a divorce. She also alleged that he hacked into her password-protected electronic devices, impersonated her in text messages, and withdrew $173,000 from their joint bank account without consent.

“Ms. Hardin had hoped that the parties would be able to resolve the legal matters arising from their separation privately and cooperatively,” Victoria Hardin’s attorney told the news outlet The Assembly. “Unfortunately, that was not possible. The pleadings and motions Ms. Hardin filed speak for themselves.”

Mike Hardin denies all of the allegations.

Another co-host of the fundraiser is Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who advised President Donald Trump on his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Mitchell reportedly participated in a phone call in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 ballots that would change the election results in that state.

In 2021, Mitchell was forced to resign from her law firm because of the call. The call was central to a criminal indictment brought against Trump in August 2023.

Whatley served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from March 2024 to August of this year. It is widely believed that Trump handpicked Whatley for that role because of his willingness to embrace election fraud conspiracies.

“Regardless of how these lawsuits come out around the country with the presidential race, we do know that there was massive fraud that took place,” Whatley said in a November 2020 radio interview. “We know that it took place in places like Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia.”

The fundraiser will also feature Republican Rep. Richard Hudson, who currently serves as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Both Hudson and Whatley have come under fire for supporting odious figures in the past, most notably failed gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who has a long record of racist and misogynistic remarks.

Tickets for the fundraiser range in price from $250 to $14,000.

Whatley’s likely Democratic opponent is former Gov. Roy Cooper. An Emerson poll from August found Cooper leading Whatley 47 percent to 41 percent with 12 percent undecided. It is expected to be one of the most expensive U.S. Senate races ever.

Reprinted with permission from American Journal News.

Donald Trump

What Presidents Must Do When Violence Erupts -- And What Trump Did Instead

On the evening of April 4, 1968—barely two hours after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony in Memphis—President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed the nation from the White House. His words were brief, solemn, and unmistakably presidential:

“America is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King.”

Johnson condemned the assassination in unambiguous moral terms. He called on “every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence.” And then he offered a prayer that King’s death would “strengthen the determination of all men of good will to work for understanding, and for justice, and for the rule of law.”

In the same breath, Johnson turned his remarks outward. He urged Americans to “stand against the poison of hatred which has led to this tragedy.” And he reminded a country reeling from yet another political murder that “we can achieve nothing by violence. We can achieve everything by working together.”

The Johnson who delivered those words was in profound political trouble. Just a week earlier, battered by public opposition to the Vietnam War and facing revolt from within his own party, he had stunned the country by announcing that he would not seek reelection. The very man who now appealed to nonviolence had spent much of the previous year clashing bitterly with King over the war in Southeast Asia.

By any cynical calculus, Johnson might have tried to spin the assassination into political advantage. He might have underscored the rupture between himself and King, or cast the tragedy as vindication of his own beleaguered presidency. Instead, he rose to the occasion.

And, not incidentally, the Democrats lost the bitterly divided election to Richard Nixon, who ran on a program of law and order. (Nixon too was appropriately mournful, suspending all political activity in the two weeks after the assassination.) Historians often point to this moment as marking the country’s political transition—from the broad consensus of the Great Society to the bitter polarization of the Southern strategy and its aftermath that afflicts us still. Yet Johnson, the consummate political animal, chose a higher road.

The following day, Johnson spoke again, this time in longer form. His message was consistent:

“Together, a nation united, a nation caring, a nation concerned, and a nation that thinks more of the Nation’s interests than we do of any individual self-interest or political interest—that nation can and shall and will overcome.”

Johnson passed the test of presidential leadership. It is, in truth, not a very high bar: every American president, faced with a national tragedy born of violence, has understood the duty to call for unity and reject violence.

Nearly 100 years earlier, Lincoln set the template in his second inaugural, conjuring “malice toward none” amid the carnage of civil war. Chester Arthur, elevated by Garfield’s assassination, called for calm. John F. Kennedy, after the murder of Medgar Evers, urged reconciliation.

Bill Clinton, in the wake of Oklahoma City, urged Americans: “Let us teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.” It was classic presidential cadence—words that sought not only to soothe the nation but to call out the better angels of our national character. These are the moments when Americans look to the president not as a partisan combatant but as a custodian of the national soul and a healer of bitter divides.

That is, until Trump.

After last week’s shooting of Charlie Kirk, Trump delivered what was likely the pettiest and most hateful presidential response to a national tragedy in American history. Instead of rising above partisanship, he canonized Kirk as a martyr for “truth and freedom.” He rattled off a list of supposed right-wing martyrs without acknowledging that political violence has touched all sides. He cast his own base as uniquely persecuted and left deliberately unmentioned the victims of hate crimes and political violence outside his camp. So in the days following the assassination of Minnesota Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband earlier this year, Trump couldn’t even bother to offer condolences to Governor Tim Walz, saying, “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”

Worse, Trump moved directly to assign blame: not to the shooter, not to the broader forces of hatred, but to his political adversaries. “Radical left” forces, Trump declared, had created the climate that encouraged this violence. In one press exchange he went further:

“We have radical left lunatics out there, and we just have to beat the hell out of them.”

The words, far from a call to calm and shared purpose, were an incitement to further confrontation. They came from the same place as his refusal on January 6, 2021, to condemn the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on his behalf. His instinct then, as now, was not to quell chaos but to feed it. Where other presidents have instinctively sought to dampen the flames, Trump reaches for gasoline.

Other presidents have stumbled at critical junctures. Nixon in the heat of Vietnam, Grant amid Reconstruction violence, Hoover during the Depression. But Trump’s embrace of hate and division is unerring and bottomless. He never fails to take the worst choice.

Trump is a dark figure, and this is a dark moment for America. Never before has a commander in chief so thoroughly conflated the nation’s needs with his own political fortunes, so reflexively exploited tragedy to sow greater discord. At a time when the country needs a call to unity, he supplies a fresh wave of division.

And he is not alone. Trump’s champions amplify his message. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a favorite of the Trump right, echoed the line almost verbatim: “Charlie Kirk’s death is the result of the international hate campaign waged by the progressive-liberal left.” In the U.S., figures like Laura Loomer and others in Trump’s orbit repeated the script: blame the opposition, stoke grievance, sow chaos all while ignoring the political violence committed against their so-called enemies. It is a vile lie, but one that patriots are forced to fight against day after day.

The presidency has never been the province of saints. Johnson himself, brilliant and venal, lied relentlessly about Vietnam. Nixon resigned in disgrace. Grant’s administration was mired in scandal. Yet when tragedy struck, even flawed presidents understood the difference between personal ambition and national duty. Trump is the singular exception. He is simply incapable of unifying the country he proclaims to want to make great again. His compass points only toward division, hatred, and self-interest.

The question for the country is how to respond when the highest officeholder is the one modeling the worst instincts. Americans cannot rely on the president to supply the words of unity that once seemed automatic. That responsibility falls to us, and to leaders outside the Oval Office on all sides of the political spectrum who are willing to say plainly that violence is never an answer.

We already have our hands full trying to parry Trump’s weekly outrages against the Constitution.

But this is the added tragedy of the Trump presidency: in the moments when America most needs a voice of unity, it receives only the echo of its own divisions, amplified and distorted by the man charged with healing them.

And so we are left with the questions that Johnson and other presidents answered correctly without hesitation: Will America stand united against the poison of hatred? Will it reject violence as a political tool, even as it embraces diversity of thought? Will it choose the difficult path of working together? The answers, this time, must come not from the president, but despite him.

Reprinted with permission from Harrylitman.

Spencer Cox

Utah Governor's Soothing Remarks On Kirk And Radicalization Enrage Bannon

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) admitted Sunday that right‑wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot at a university in Utah on Wednesday, had “said some very inflammatory things, and some corners of the web that’s all people have heard.”

During an appearance on CNN Sunday morning, Cox told host Dana Bash, "But he also said some other things about forgiveness. He said some amazing things about when things get dark, putting down our phones, reading scriptures, going to church, talking to our neighbors. He said that we have to engage and that's what I appreciate most about Charlie Kirk."

The governor said there are elements who benefit from radicalizing the nation, and added, "I'm not one of those."

"We need to find out how this happened and we need to stop it from happening."

Cox made these remarks in response to Bash's question about MAGA commentator Steve Bannon calling the governor "a national embarrassment in a time where we need action."

Bannon and other conservative activists have also been critical of FBI Director Kash Patel's handling of the investigation into Kirk's murder.

"He tells us to sing Kumbaya and hold hands with Antifa. This is a time to declare Antifa a domestic terrorist organization and have the FBI go kick down some doors," Bannon said of Cox during his recent podcast.

Reacting to his comment, the governor said, "Well, again Mr. Bannon is angry and rightfully so. And I'm not saying we have to just sing Kumbaya and hold hands. What I'm saying is we actually should disagree. I think Charlie represented that better than anyone."

Cox has kept a notably measured tone in public remarks since the killing of Kirk, resisting the rush to assign blame even as tensions soared. From the outset he called for unity and responsibility rather than inflammatory rhetoric, urging people to think deeply about how political discourse has deteriorated.

At a news conference Friday, after authorities announced that a suspect was in custody, Cox acknowledged his own sorrow and anger, but repeatedly emphasized the need to “turn down the temperature.”

Meanwhile, conservative social media accounts are criticizing the governor for his Sunday remarks. Liberal commentators, on the other hand, pointed out that MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd was fired for making a similar remark.

Some MAGA accounts went on to call the Utah governor a "closet liberal."

RedWave Press, a conservative digital platform, wrote on the social platform X: "PATHETIC: Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R): 'Charlie [Kirk] said some very inflammatory things and some corners of the web that’s all people have heard.' How is preaching Biblical values 'inflammatory?' This makes my bl00d boil!"

Author Shannon Watts wrote: "Matthew Dowd was fired for saying this."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Trump's Icky Birthday Message To Epstein Is All Too Real

Trump's Icky Birthday Message To Epstein Is All Too Real

As it turns out, all of President Donald Trump’s Truth Social temper tantrums about his lewd birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein might have been done in vain.

On Monday, after receiving the Epstein estate files, the House Oversight Committee's Democrats posted what they claims to be the actual birthday card that Trump sent to Epstein.

“We got Trump’s birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein that the President said doesn’t exist,” the committee minority wrote on X.“Trump talks about a ‘wonderful secret’ the two of them shared. What is he hiding? Release the files!”

Part of alleged Epstein "birthday card" from Donald Trump released by House Oversight Committee Screenshot from NBC News

The card, which features a silhouette of a woman’s torso drawn over an alleged conversation between the two longtime friends, first surfaced in July when the Wall Street Journal got wind of an album of vulgar letters that Epstein received for his 50th birthday.

“We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” the card denoted above another line in which Epstein agreed with Trump.

Just above Trump’s signature, which oddly resembles pubic hair, Trump reportedly wrote, “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

When news first broke, Trump worked overtime to denounce and delegitimize what the Journal claimed were his own words.

“This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he told the publication. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women. It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”

Soon after, Trump—who has previously sold his sketches for tens of thousands of dollars—filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. While it’s unclear how the lawsuit will hold up following this latest development, Trump’s messaging around the Epstein scandal has been transitory at best since his name became attached to it.

From insisting that he would be a driving force in releasing the files to saying that the files themselves are a “hoax” created by the left, Trump’s stance has been anything but consistent.

“From what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given. But it's really a Democrat hoax because they're trying to get people to talk about something that's totally irrelevant to the success that we've had as a nation since I've been president,” he said last week.

Trump’s denial has even pushed some of his GOP supporters, like Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, to break with the president.

“We campaigned on transparency issues like ‘release the Epstein files,’” Greene said to reporters last week. “And all of a sudden there’s this hard stance coming from the Republican leadership and many of the members and the administration, and I’m shocked by it. I think it’s a major misstep. It is an uncalculated error that is going to have ramifications directly in the midterms.”

In step with Epstein survivors, even the most loyal MAGA politicians have found themselves opposing the president because of his refusal to be transparent.

“The truth needs to come out,” Greene said. “And the government holds the truth.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

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