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DeSantis And Pence Defend Trump -- But Christie And Hutchinson Don't

DeSantis And Pence Defend Trump -- But Christie And Hutchinson Don't

In a typical primary race, candidates would pounce on the opportunity to attack their opponents for being indicted on federal espionage charges.

But the exact opposite is occurring in the 2024 GOP primary: Republican hopefuls are rushing to defend former President Donald Trump after he was indicted on Thursday on seven counts ranging from violating the Espionage Act to obstructing justice, according to multiple reports.

“I think everybody’s still looking at their jersey to find out what team they’re on, and in this case Republicans are staying loyal,” Stu Rothenberg, a political analyst at Roll Call, said in an interview with the American Independent Foundation. “It’s not a change of strategy or approach. It’s just confirming where they’ve been and what they’ve done for a long time.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is a distant second in national GOP primary polling behind Trump, said Trump’s indictment amounts to “weaponization of federal law enforcement.”

“Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?” DeSantis tweeted, questioning why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, haven’t been indicted. “The DeSantis administration will bring accountability to the DOJ [Department of Justice], excise political bias and end weaponization once and for all.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who announced on Tuesday he is taking on his former running mate, said he is “deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward.”

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) said on Fox News that Trump is a victim of a justice system where “the scales are weighted.”

And former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has been more critical of Trump, has so far declined to comment on the indictment.

“Let’s see what the facts are when any possible indictment is released. As I have said before, no one is above the law, no matter how much they wish they were. We will have more to say when the facts are revealed,” Christie tweeted.

So far, only Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued a forceful criticism of Trump.

“Donald Trump’s actions — from his willful disregard for the Constitution to his disrespect for the rule of law — should not define our nation or the Republican Party,” Hutchinson said in a statement.

He added, “This reaffirms the need for Donald Trump to respect the office and end his campaign.”

Republican strategists told CBS News correspondent Robert Costa that the GOP presidential hopefuls don’t think criticizing Trump would be helpful to their campaigns, and that primary voters will instead stand behind Trump.

Indeed, Trump’s poll numbers rose among Republican primary voters after a Manhattan grand jury indicted him for alleged hush money payments he made to a porn star during the 2016 campaign.

Ultimately, while polling shows indictments could be a problem among a general electorate, Rothenberg says it will be hard for Republican primary contenders to break through to change the narrative and win the nomination.

“Republicans believe that Democrats have such ill will and are so willing to lie and cheat and steal to stop Donald Trump and the Republicans that they think anything that Democrats do is politically motivated and immoral and unconstitutional and vile,” Rothenberg said. “So I don’t think things have changed, except Trump’s going to be able to use this to define what the terms of the national debate are.”

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Joe Biden

Biden's Debt Ceiling Victory Destroyed The Right's 'Senility' Smear

It is part of the right-wing canon that President Joe Biden is senile, with his mental faculties deteriorated to the point where he must be confined out of sight in his basement to avoid embarrassing himself publicly. This talking point was always a dubious and opportunistic political attack. But Biden’s successful negotiation of the debt ceiling deal demolishes the claim – and the right hasn’t figured out how to handle that.

Republicans and their allied media apparatus have hyped claims of Biden’s purported dementia since the 2020 presidential race. Trumpists on Fox News and elsewhere frequently highlighted Biden’s speech flubs (he has a stammer) and out-of-context video clips to draw attention to his admittedly advanced age and suggest he was “struggling.” At the same time, they attacked Biden for purportedly “hiding in the basement,” suggesting that Biden was eschewing public rallies not due to the pandemic but rather because his campaign was hiding him from voters to avoid scrutiny of his mental acuity.

Biden’s electoral victory did nothing to quell such attacks, with Fox figures regularly and casually describing Biden as “senile,” and extremely online Republican officials like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis talking on the campaign trail about the need to send “Joe Biden back to his basement.”

The last week has been brutal for this theory, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Biden personally negotiating a debt ceiling deal that right-wing media figures call a “total cave” to Democrats that produced “a typical DC swamp sewer bill.” In March, McCarthy offered to bring the president “soft food” to kickstart negotiations, an obvious crack at his age. But on Sunday, after striking a deal, the speaker described Biden to reporters as “very professional, very smart. Very tough at the same time.” The resulting legislation passed the House on Wednesday night and now moves to the Senate.

The right is having difficulty coming to terms with how, as Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) put it on Twitter, “Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants.”

Some, like Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity, are treating Biden’s purported senility as entirely unrelated to the result. Hannity was discussing foreign policy as the House began voting on the bill, and said of the president, “We all know he's a cognitive mess, and he has no idea that today is Wednesday.” Minutes later, after the bill passed, Hannity complained that Republicans’ “hand was stronger” and expressed disappointment that they didn’t get more out of their hostage-taking. But he did not apparently consider how a president who didn’t know what day it was had managed to outnegotiate McCarthy.

Others, like Fox’s Jesse Watters, are continuing to talk up Biden’s purported mental frailty while ignoring the debt ceiling negotiations altogether. Watters did not mention the debt ceiling deal at all during Wednesday’s show. But he found time to amplify an actor’s claim that Biden has “obviously declining mental faculties” and to claim that Biden is “going to stay at home, he's not going to campaign” for reelection.

And a third group, headlined by Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, is trying to cope with the tension here, albeit without considering that perhaps the problem is that their talking point isn’t true.

It is an embarrassing failure for Bartiromo and company to have spent years telling their audience that Biden is practically a “vegetable,” leaving them woefully unprepared to grapple with evidence of the president’s actual faculties. But don’t expect anything to change – they are all too deeply committed to the bit to alter course at this point.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Ron DeSantis

Could Ron DeSantis Even Win Florida In 2024? Maybe Not

Ron DeSantis apparently wants to be president. His pitch rests on the "Florida blueprint," the stuff he's done as the state's governor. But the assumption that the American majority wants much of the DeSantis program is shaky. It's not even clear that Floridians do.

A Pew poll has 56 percent of Floridians supporting legal abortion in all or most cases. And that was taken before DeSantis actually made abortion illegal. Polls also show most Floridians opposed to permitless, concealed carry of weapons. Thanks to DeSantis, angry shoppers mumbling to themselves at Publix can hide weapons of war in their backpacks.

One doubts that many residents of Florida lose sleep over drag queens. (I don't think about drag queens for months at a time.) But strictly regulating them is a DeSantis obsession that he includes in his blueprint.

Of greater concern are his unhinged attacks on business, and of all businesses, his state's biggest private employer and taxpayer, The Walt Disney Co. As for his jihad against Disney, I simply can't explain it.

Then there's his ban on vaccine mandates. He even mocks Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed program for developing a COVID vaccine, one of the former president's few glories. With the virus largely corralled, there are few mandates anymore. But in the jaws of the pandemic, DeSantis forbade cruise companies operating in his state from requiring proof of COVID shots. Can you imagine the strain on businesses trying to lure older customers to a crowded ship during a potentially deadly pandemic?

DeSantis has apparently never held a serious job in the private sector.

Now onto Florida politics. Florida has not become a solidly red state as pundits confidently declare. Barack Obama won the state twice, and a Democrat just got elected mayor of Jacksonville, the state's largest city. Joe Biden thinks Florida is up for grabs in 2024, and his political antennae are pretty sensitive.

As for DeSantis' commanding victory in 2022, he was running against a ghost candidate and a Democratic Party that couldn't find a pulse. In 2018, he defeated Andrew Gillum, an ethically challenged Democrat who had called for abolishing ICE, the immigration enforcement agency. Even then, DeSantis won by less than a point.

Densely populated South Florida is not the American South. It teems with migrants from the North who may like Florida's lower taxes and its weather in February. And they may dislike left fringe ideas on gender pronouns and such.

I know lots of these people, and one thing they want is access to abortion. And their reasons go beyond wanting a way to end their 16-year-old daughter's unwanted pregnancy. They can afford to do so, even if that means a trip back to New Jersey.

But they do understand that abortion bans force mostly poor women into having children they can't afford. Unwanted children living in poverty are more likely to fall into lives of crime and other dysfunction. These voters know that even in a state with a meager social safety net, the bills come to them.

Meanwhile, Florida is one of only 11 states that hasn't expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, thanks in part to DeSantis. That's even though the state would never have to bear more than 40 percent of the cost.

And who pays for the unnecessary emergency room care — for the sore throats or a couple of stitches? Guess who. By the way, Florida has the most expensive emergency room care in the country, averaging $3,102 a visit.

If Florida Democrats find an acceptable candidate, they might just recapture the governorship. America probably doesn't want to become DeSantis' Florida. Florida may not like that either.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Ron DeSantis

Trolled By Biden, 'DeSaster' Blows His Campaign Launch On Twitter Spaces

Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis attempted to launch his 2024 presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk, but failed as the social media’s live audio platform repeatedly crashed.

The event was supposed to begin at 6:00 PM ET, but started late, never seemed to get off the ground, and sometime around 6:20 just abruptly ended.

The mockery of both Musk and DeSantis was widespread.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss weighed in several times.

“Is Twitter audio conking out because DeSantis has gotten cold feet about running for President?”

“DeSantis announcement still crashing after fifteen minutes–not an inspiring harbinger of his leadership competence as President.”

“It’s twenty minutes in, and still the DeSantis announcement is crashing–anyone have a metaphor to suggest?”

Twitter seemed to be fueled by massive mockery.

“The DeSantis live event on Twitter has already featured reverb, audio cutting out, chatter from the participants as they scramble to fix audio problems, and now another extended period of silence,” reporter Jamie Dupree tweeted. “‘The servers are straining somewhat’ as someone whispers in the background.”

That someone appears to have been Musk.

Attorney Brad Moss appeared to mock both Musk and his SpaceX Starship explosion last month that reportedly “spread particulate matter for miles.”

“Elon’s products usually blow up so this is nothing new,” Moss tweeted.

Democratic political strategist Tom Bonier summed it up as Twitter appeared to pull the plug: “And just like that, the DeSantis launch ended. Without ever really beginning.”

But Musk tried again, and with a far smaller audience, according to the counter on the app, about 205,000 listening. The second time the technical aspects seemed to work better.

Host David Sacks asked DeSantis why he chose to launch his campaign on Twitter Spaces, and the Florida governor replied that just as he bucked convention during the COVID pandemic, he decided to not follow the crowd in launching his campaign.

DeSantis did not mention his coronavirus statistics, including Florida ranking third in total cases and deaths, and in the top 10 for per capita cases and deaths.

Even before the first attempt failed, the Biden Campaign was quick to capitalize on the mayhem, tweeting a link to donate, saying, “This link works.”

But even once the second attempt was live, the discussion was widely panned.

Veteran Republican presidential campaign strategist Stuart Stevens tweeted, “As presidential announcements go, this is the three stoned guys who couldn’t get a date in their dorm room on Saturday night version.”

SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile, a veteran journalist, observed, “DeSantis could have had millions of people watching as he launched if he did this on TV. Instead he got 100k listening to whiny rich guys on this broken down app, which malfunctioned at the start. And many of those people listening are just here for the train wreck.”

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes concluded, “I’m sorry but this is an ASTOUNDINGLY HUMILIATING degree of incompetence. Unspinnable failure. Total and complete. Fully public.”

Making clear DeSantis has made enemies nationwide, the DC Public Library tweeted, “We have better audio and don’t ban books.”

By the end, “#DeSaster” was trending on Twitter.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.