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'I Think I'd Fall Asleep': Right-Wing Media Praise Trump Snoozing In Court

'I Think I'd Fall Asleep': Right-Wing Media Praise Trump Snoozing In Court

Donald Trump’s MAGA media propagandists are so deep in the tank for the former president that they’ve been praising him for repeatedly falling asleep during his New York City hush money trial.

Since April 15, Trump has regularly been in a Manhattan courtroom, where he faces charges of falsifying business records in order to conceal payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say these payments were intended to keep Daniels’ claims that she had an affair with Trump from becoming public during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump, age 77, often mocks President Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” suggesting that Biden is too old and frail to fulfill his duties. But reporters in the courtroom have repeatedly observed Trump appearing to fall asleep during the trial — most recently on Monday morning before opening statements began.

That evening on Fox News’ Special Report, chief political anchor Bret Baier suggested that news outlets are providing too much coverage of the first-ever criminal trial for a former president, and criticized them in particular for covering the spectacle of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s inability to stay awake in the courtroom.

“You know, we cover it every day,” Baier said of the trial, “and we will — all the details of each day in court — but there are some places that are obviously covering it ad nauseum and have gone through every single detail, including four times that he might have fallen asleep, everything that happens inside the courtroom.”

Meanwhile, Baier’s colleagues and their ilk spent last week attempting to turn Trump’s proclivity for nodding off in public into a virtue — apparently unphased by their years of denigrating Biden as an addled old man whose energetic speeches can only be the result of performance-enhancing drugs.

“I mentioned that Maggie Haberman posted this update from the courtroom, ‘It appears that Trump might be sleeping’ — this was on day one,” Republican political operative and Fox host Sean Hannity said on his April 18 radio show. “By the way, I think I’d fall asleep if I was there,” he added.

And Hannity wasn’t the only Trump flunky to attest that they, too, would sleep through a trial just like their beloved former president.

“I'd be falling asleep at that trial too,” Hannity’s colleague Laura Ingraham said on her April 15 Fox show.

“That’s exactly how all of us would act in, like, the ‘Intro to Gender Studies’ class at the University of Missouri,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his radio show.

Others praised Trump for falling asleep in court and urged him to be even more disrespectful during his trial.

“Did Donald Trump nod off for a moment? Good for him. These things are boring,” Newsmax host Greg Kelly offered on April 16.

“Trump appearing to sleep and be bored is exactly the response this Kafkaesque persecution deserves,” Fox host Greg Gutfeld said on the April 16 edition of The Five. “He is America, who, unlike this frothing infantile media, doesn't see this as some mutant form of entertainment and justice.”

“Trump should go to trial, bring a big book, big fat John Grisham novel, just sit there and read,” Gutfeld added. “Just sit there and read. That's the only response this manufactured mayhem deserves — is just contempt.”

Co-host Jesse Watters replied that he was going to send Trump’s team a copy of his new book so Trump “can open it up inside the courtroom.”

On Sunday’s MediaBuzz, Fox contributor Tomi Lahren praised Trump’s “excellent job” and claimed that journalists are “trying to distract from Joe Biden” by pointing out that Trump keeps falling asleep.

“I don't think anybody's buying it,” she said. “Good job media, but I don't think that it's resonating when you've got the current guy, President Joe Biden, in the office, who quite literally falls asleep.”

Less than 24 hours later, Trump apparently once again dozed off in court.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Trump Complains As His 'Few Dozen' Supporters Rally In New York

Trump Complains As His 'Few Dozen' Supporters Rally In New York

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday detailed Donald Trump’s frustration with courthouse security as “a few dozen” supporters “are kept cornered off a bit of a distance” from the former president’s Manhattan “hush money” trial.

Opening statements in the Manhattan district attorney’s 34 felony count case against Trump began Monday morning as prosecutors alleged the former president lied “over and over and over” in an “illegal” conspiracy to hide hush money payments to adult film star Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, the New York Times reports.

According to Collins, Trump is growing increasingly frustrated as he views “this all through the lens of the campaign trail.”

“I think big picture, when you look at what Trump has been saying, his mindset going into this, he’s complaining about the gag order incessantly,” Collins told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. "I’m told privately the idea that he can't directly attack the judges family, the prosecutors in this case — he can go after [Manhattan District Attorney] Alvin Bragg— but not other members of the team … it has been a big thing of his.”

“The other thing: there's a lot of security outside the courthouse,” Collins noted. “Understandably, we saw what happened last week. It is a former president who is going on trial.”


Collins appeared to be referencing the death of Max Azzarello, who succumbed to his injuries on Saturday after setting himself on fire across the street from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on Friday.

Collins continued, “Trump has been complaining that his supporters — when there's only a few dozen, it's not a huge group because we've been live outside the courthouse for several weeks now — that they can't come closer to the courthouse.”


“Because he is viewing this all through the lens of the campaign trail and what that means going into it and the fact that they are kept cordoned off a bit of a distance so people can get in and out of the courthouse has been driving him crazy,” Collins concluded.

Watch the video below, via CNN, or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Elise Stefanik

'Serial Liar' Stefanik Grabs Credit For Infrastructure Funds She Voted To Kill

House Republican Conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) recently patted herself on the back for a $1.8 million federal grant a community within her district received. However, that money came from a bill she and every other Republican opposed.

Local publication North Country This Week — based in Stefanik's 21st House District in upstate New York — reported that the US Department of Agriculture grant went toward the South Raquette Water District in Massena, NY. Stefanik took credit for the funding, telling the outlet that she helped fast-track the grant application through the House Appropriations Committee to quickly get the funds approved.

"Infrastructure has been a top priority for some time and I am able to offer assistance in a very targeted way, whether it be for water projects, sewer projects or supporting our first responders," she said.

"I am proud to announce that I secured $1,857,000 for a Water District Development Project for the Town of Massena in this year’s appropriations process," Stefanik wrote in a Tuesday tweet. "This funding will go toward providing public water service to the residents of Massena."

Stefanik didn't actually vote for those funds, which were part of the Inflation Reduction Act that passed the House of Representatives in 2022. In a now-deleted statement posted to her House.gov website, she called the legislation a "radical spending bill that will raise taxes and crush hardworking families and small businesses."

"[Democrats] have made their priorities clear, and they are not for the American people. I will continue to stand up against reckless government spending and any tax increases," Stefanik said at the time, adding that the bill "also wastes $350 billion on 'Green New Deal' provisions that prioritize large cities over rural communities."

Others on X/Twitter took issue with Stefanik boasting about her district receiving the funds she voted against. In addition to a community note (a public fact-checking feature on the platform) specifying that Stefanik "voted Nay along party lines with every other Republican" against the bill, she was also slammed by various journalists, public figures and commentators for her tweet.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

New York Suburbs May Return Democrats To Power In Congress

New York Suburbs May Return Democrats To Power In Congress

Those days are obviously gone. The recent election of Democrat Tom Suozzi to replace George Santos in Long Island's 3rd district suggests that Democrats and independents in these swing districts now recognize that they must choose sides. And that may end up reversing more of the Republicans' recent advances in these near-in suburbs.

Those gains reflected the social chaos unleashed by COVID and shrieking headlines about crime in the big city. As a result, Republicans in 2022 took five of the six congressional House districts on Long Island and in the lower Hudson Valley. Four had gone for Joe Biden two years earlier.

The New York suburbs, of all places, helped the GOP obtain its thin House majority.

The problem for these voters, however, is that the House is not run by their kind of nice-guy Republicans but the right-wing Speaker Mike Johnson, Donald Trump and a coterie of fringe extremists with near zero interest in these suburbanites' concerns. On the contrary, they're hostile to reproductive rights, national security and health care.

The Republicans' successful pitch to these suburbs centered on crime, immigration and taxes. Crime in New York, never as rampant as the scary reports suggested, is now down. New York was still one of the safest cities in America, but with COVID keeping a lot of suburbanites working at home, many had little in the way of a reality check. In any case, the city is back to gridlock.

On immigration, the Republican House just smothered a bipartisan Senate deal that would have actually curbed the chaos at the border. Trump ordered that the problem not be solved, so he could campaign on it.

As for tax relief, the impotence of the suburban Republicans recently went on full display in their failure to restore any of the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT). In 2017, then-President Trump and a Republican Congress slashed the deduction to $10,000.

One intention was to shake down taxpayers in blue states, where incomes, local levies and the cost of living are high. They were thus forced to pay taxes on taxes they'd already paid.

Limiting the deduction to $10,000 not only affected rich people. A cop married to a nurse on Long Island could easily have a combined income of $200,000 — and state, local and property tax bills well north of $30,000.

Mike Lawler, a Republican representing the lower Hudson Valley, had campaigned on the promise to address this thorn in his constituents' side. He called for doubling the cap on SALT deductions to $20,000 and only for married couples. But Republican House leaders swatted down even that modest proposal.

Other changes since 2022 may blow wind in Democrats' sails. Democrats are unlikely to again forget to campaign, which contributed to the loss of at least two seats. One of the overly confident Democrats neglected to do any background check on his opponent, the wildly fraudulent George Santos.

Come November, Trump is sure to be on the ballot, and you don't have to be a Democrat in these affluent suburbs to detest him. Recent redistricting in New York State also slightly enhances Democrats' prospects. Finally, with inflation down and stock prices up, moods are improving across middle class America. Then there's the abortion issue.

And so exactly what are Lawler and other suburban Republicans doing for their constituents other than helping keep in power the very people who hold their interests in contempt? Little that we can identify.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.