February 3, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- Rightwing Heads Exploding

New monthly employment numbers were released today showing a surprisingly-high 353,000 new jobs were created in January. The stock market is currently setting new all-time highs. The American economy has recovered from COVID far faster and far better than all other major countries, in fact. Inflation has come back down, gasoline prices are down, and wages are up (growing faster than inflation). Signups for Obamacare hit another record this year (outpacing last year's record by five million!) and America has the lowest uninsured rate in history. Domestic oil production is also setting records. So what are conservatives obsessed with in reaction to all this good news? Taylor Swift. No, really....

The right is losing its collective mind (what remains of it, that is) over ever-wilder conspiracy theories they have ginned up against Swift and her paramour Travis Kelce. We dove into this whole subject yesterday, so we won't rehash it all except to note the most amusing of the pearl-clutchers on the right. Newsmax host Greg Kelley had a rather unique take on Swift's legions of fans:

Hoo boy. Has he never seen a Trump rally? You want to talk about some Grade-A idolatry? At least Taylor can sing....

The proof of precisely how much projection this truly is came in a Rolling Stone headline, in fact: "Trump Allies Pledge 'Holy War' Against Taylor Swift." Holy war? Seriously? That smacks more of Biblical idolatry than anything Taylor or Travis have done -- but they don't see such obvious irony.

A while back, when her "Eras" tour began, many news organizations started putting reporters on the "Taylor Swift beat." She was newsworthy, as was the phenomenon of her fans' devotion. She singlehandedly boosted not just local economies with her tour, she added billions to the American economy as a whole. She is a billionaire in her own right, and she has earned every dollar of it with her sheer talent. But while this media scrutiny has provided a steady stream of stories on Taylor's doings, the past week saw an explosion of coverage, as heads began exploding in the conservative universe. Here's just one example, from today's offerings: "Pentagon To MAGA World: You Need To Calm Down Over Taylor Swift." From the article:



But then absurdity is the bread and butter of the rightwing, these days. Case in point: we've been waiting all week for the Senate negotiators to release the text of the deal they are trying to strike on border security and immigration issues, which was the Republicans' "ask" in a larger bill that will provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Again: this entire effort has been driven by Republicans. They have President Joe Biden in a unique position, since Biden is pushing hard for the military aid. So he's ready to accept things that Democrats abhor, in exchange. Republicans will get many of the items on their wish list for border control and immigration -- an agenda they've been fighting to pass for years now. Democrats are just going to have to hold their nose and vote for it to get the Ukraine and Israel aid passed.

In fact, Republicans have been screaming that there is a crisis on the border pretty much since Biden took office. "Crisis! Invasion!" they cry. Immediate action is required, and a border bill must pass in order to solve the crisis. Except that now Donald Trump has weighed in and told his lackeys in Congress to kill the deal -- since if it passed it would be a political feather in Biden's cap. Trump wants the crisis to continue unabated for another entire year, just so he can campaign on how terrible it all is. Which, you've got to admit is cynical, hypocritical, and more than a little bit absurd. But that's today's Republican Party for you.

Not every Republican has fallen into line with Trump's attempt to kill the bill. Senator James Lankford, who has been the chief GOP negotiator trying to put the deal together, had some sharp words for his fellow Republicans:



While Trump is urging Republicans to tank their best shot at getting border policies that they wrote passed, the House is about to impeach the secretary of Homeland Security, for the "high crime or misdemeanor" of not being a Republican. Rather than actually working to get their own policies passed and implemented by a Democratic president, they instead are happy to just toss red meat to the MAGA base with a completely baseless and absurd impeachment. Articles of impeachment passed out of committee by a party-line vote and it is rumored that they'll get a floor vote in the House next week. However, it may not actually work -- already one Republican representative has publicly said he's going to vote "no," which means if two others join him the impeachment will fail. So we'll have to see how it all plays out -- maybe Speaker Johnson won't even bring it up for a vote, if he realizes it's going to fail?

Even if the House does impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the Senate would be under no obligation to hold a trial -- they could just send it to a committee (to die) or even pass a motion that just dismisses the charges without even bothering with a trial.

It was a rather quiet week for Trump's legal problems, as we all await action from the appeals court which heard Trump's immunity appeal almost four weeks ago. This was supposed to be an expedited ruling, but instead is just playing into Trump's plan to delay all his trials until after the election, so it is more than a little disappointing.

It was reported this week (in campaign finance filings) that Team Trump spent a whopping $55 million on his legal fees last year. Trump himself seems to be peeved with the $83.3 million jury judgment against him in his second E. Jean Carroll lawsuit, and is now seeking new lawyers to represent him in the appeals. But he's not exactly making a good case to entice good legal representation, posting: "Any lawyer who takes a TRUMP CASE is either 'CRAZY,' or a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT." Um, seriously? Calling your lawyers "CRAZY" before they even sign up to work for you? That doesn't seem to be a big argument in his favor, does it?

The other big news from one of Trump's criminal cases is the deepening of the mess surrounding Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis. She admitted, in an extensive court filing this week, that she had been having a romantic relationship with one of her team of prosecutors. They both avoided having to testify in his divorce proceeding this week (he reached a settlement just before the deadline), but that's not going to be the final word on the issue. Nobody knows how this is all going to shake out, but people are already speculating that this pretty much guarantees that Trump's RICO trial (the most extensive of the charges against him) will likely not even begin until after the election. It's an open question whether Willis will still be working on the case when (if?) it ever does get to court, which is pretty disappointing (since she is an expert at RICO cases).

And we end with some breaking news (which was reported while this was being written): President Biden ordered the U.S. military to strike back at Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, in response to an earlier attack in Jordan that left three American servicemembers dead. Biden was present at Dover Air Force Base while the remains of the soldiers were returned to America, and the counterattacks began shortly thereafter. This is a developing story, so we expect further details of the attacks to emerge soon.





It certainly isn't a unique situation, since plenty of shameless Republicans have been attempting the same snow job, but in this case it was the Democrat's response to it that was impressive indeed.

Here's the setup to the story (which is worth reading in full, as she continues squirming for quite a while as the reporter presses the issue rather hard):



Strange how those memory lapses work, isn't it? DeFede went on to ask about other projects she had touted where the money came from bills she had voted against, but it seems she couldn't remember any of the details.

Wasting no time at all, the Democrat who is challenging Salazar for her seat cut an ad highlighting the blatant hypocrisy:



That's the way to hit back! Point out the lie right away! Don't let Republicans get away with this con job -- turn it into campaign fodder instead!

For doing so with lightning speed, Lucia Báez-Geller is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Well done!

[Since she is a candidate for office, our standing policy is not to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to search Lucia Báez-Geller's contact information out for yourself if you'd like to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We hate to say it, but is Nancy Pelosi losing it?

Last Sunday, Pelosi was being interviewed on CNN and had a rather odd take on the protesters in America who are pushing Democrats to call for a cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinians. Here is the story, for those who didn't notice it at the time:



When reporters contacted her office for some sort of explanation, their response was to point to a social media post from a Columbia University political science professor which just said that Putin "benefits from" the war in Gaza -- which is a completely different thing than "financing American protesters."

Then a different video appeared, of Pelosi being harassed by protesters at her own house (as she's trying to get into her vehicle), where she had another rather strange reaction:



So which is it, Nancy? Are Palestinian protesters operatives of China, or of Russia? It'd be pretty hard for them to be both at the same time, right?

Pelosi has offered zero evidence for any of this, it should be noted. Which is why we asked whether she is losing it or not. This seems nothing more than free-floating paranoia, in fact. Maybe it is time for her to step down from her seat in Congress?

We say this in sorrow, we should add. Pelosi was the strongest and most effective speaker of the House in a very long time and we have always been a big fan of hers (for the most part). But to toss around accusations of foreign influence about people exercising their First Amendment rights is a little beyond the pale, at least without any sort of evidence to back such a serious allegation up.

For doing so -- and for apparently being confused as to which foreign country she's making the accusation about -- Nancy Pelosi was our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Contact Representative Nancy Pelosi on her House contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]




Volume 738 (2/2/24)

There are two big themes this week, neither of which addresses the Republican heads currently exploding over Taylor Swift (we felt this was unnecessary, since we trust the Swifties to easily handle ridiculing the tinfoil-hattery being thrown her way right now). Besides, it's just too easy a shot, at this point.

Instead, we are concentrating on the stench of hypocrisy emanating from Republicans over the border deal they've been pushing for years -- and are now disavowing, now that Trump has taken a stand against it. And then we'll move on to a few cheerful takes on the economy.

Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly.



An ideological 180

Put Republican hypocrisy on full display.

"Republicans are apparently suffering from topical amnesia right now, as they have begun to parrot Donald Trump in claiming that 'no new laws' are needed for President Biden to control the southern border. That's strange, because that's not what they all used to say -- while Trump was president. Here is Ted Cruz, from 2019, for instance:"



"That was four years ago, again: while Trump was president. Now Cruz is singing a different tune, saying no new legislation is even necessary. Donald Trump snapped his fingers and demanded that the emerging Senate deal be killed -- so he can campaign on the issue and deny Biden a legislative victory -- and Cruz dutifully pulled an ideological 180 on the issue. Strange how that works, isn't it?"



From the horse's mouth

Cruz, of course, wasn't the only Republican saying they needed a new law back then.

"You want more proof? Here is Donald Trump himself, while he was president, from 2018:"



"Trump himself wasn't just calling for new legislation, he was openly admitting the border was in crisis on his watch. This is also something that has gone down the Memory Hole for Republicans now, as they insist the border problems began under Biden. They didn't. That's a fact even Donald Trump used to admit."



White House chimes in

Speaker Mike Johnson is leading the pack of Trump sycophants in Congress, as he announced the Senate border deal would be dead on arrival in the House. White House spokesman Andrew Bates pointed this out in a strategy memo that got leaked to Politico. Here's his talking point:





Strongest in the world

This is taken from Joe Biden's official statement after the jobs report came out today:





Things are getting better

This one was inspired by Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg's newsletter (which was excerpted in an article in Salon, to give full credit where it is due).

"America has the best job market since the 1960s. Joe Biden has seen almost 15 million new jobs created under his watch -- the highest number of any American president ever. The stock market is setting new all-time records. Our G.D.P. grew a robust 3.3 percent last quarter, consumer sentiment is rising, and the COVID inflation spike has ended. Prices are falling and wages are increasing. We have the lowest rate of uninsured Americans in history, and five million more people signed up for Obamacare this year than they did last year -- both of which were all-time highs. Domestic oil production is at a record amount -- in 2023 the U.S. produced more oil than any country has in any year in history. Things have gotten a whole lot better under Joe Biden as he's worked to solve the economic mess Trump left behind. The American economy is booming right now, and more and more people are seeing the good effects of it."



Renewable energy taking off

This is just one of 30 (!) things Joe Biden has done or is in the process of doing that were itemized in an exhaustive list from Politico (which is well worth reading in full).





Donald Herbert Hoover Trump

Joe Biden is apparently making a pretty good case for himself in speeches he's been giving to donors. He is reportedly drawing a stark contrast between his leadership and what the country could expect if Donald Trump gets a second term. And he's taking a page from Trump's "playground bully" playbook, just to get under Trump's skin.

"President Biden is pointing out that Donald Trump is now rooting for an economic crash to happen, just to improve his chances in the election. Biden called this 'close to un-American,' which seems pretty accurate. And Biden also used a term to describe Trump being only the second president in history to actually lose jobs during his term -- a name that Trump already dislikes. So don't just use Trump's name, folks, call him what he really is: 'Donald Herbert Hoover Trump.' Especially because it annoys him so much!"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 27, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- Staggering GOP Hypocrisy On Full Display

A staggering amount of Republican hypocrisy is now on full display in Washington. Pretty much ever since Joe Biden took office, Republicans have been screaming: "Border crisis! It's a crisis! This crisis needs immediate action!" This has been reinforced in an enormous way by the rightwing media echo chamber, who features the "Border Crisis!" storyline on a nightly basis for its audience. Scary images of border-crossers are shown, the word "invasion" is tossed about willy-nilly, and the fearmongering of immigrants is paramount.

This week, a deal seemed to be nearing completion on some new border policies, worked out between Senate Democrats and Republicans. This deal may be unveiled next week (but then they've said that before so we'll have to see if one does actually emerge). The deal is part of a package that also contains military aid for both Ukraine and Israel. The Biden administration has been pushing hard to get this done, and is reportedly going to have to accept stipulations in the border deal that will be (to put it mildly) unpalatable to some Democrats. In simplistic political terms, the military aid will be a win for Biden while the border portion of the bill will be a win for Republicans. This is especially true because it would be the first border compromise which will not even address the problem of the "Dreamers." That's another political blow for Democrats.

In reality, however, the fact that a border deal could even be reached would be a big political plus for Biden -- even with the provisions that some Democrats are going to howl about. It would tend to defuse the issue a bit, heading into the general election campaign. Biden could (rightfully) claim that he supported the bipartisan deal in the spirit of "getting something done," which fits into his whole political persona very nicely. The deal would also have to be given some time to see if it is working, which would damp down all the "Border crisis!" hyperventilating from the right.

This is why -- sight unseen -- Donald Trump is coming out strongly against cutting this deal (whatever it might contain). He knows it would be an asset for Biden in the campaign. He knows it would tend to defuse the issue in the public's eye. And -- horror upon horrors! -- it just might be successful in alleviating the problems at the border. That would really take the issue off the table in the campaign, and for Trump (and the Republican Party writ large) the border is their number one issue teed up for 2024. So it's not too surprising to see Trump try to tank the deal before it is even unveiled. Trump is telling the Republicans to just wait until he takes office and then they'll be able to pass legislation to make the border "perfect" (as he puts it).

Republicans, cowed as they are by the fear of Trump siccing his MAGA base on them, are already getting pretty squishy on the whole subject. They are even openly admitting why this is -- to give Trump a big issue to run on. As Mitt Romney admitted to reporters yesterday:

Even Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (who doesn't normally knuckle under to Trump as much as other Republicans do) appeared to go all squishy on the border deal, although to be fair he later tried to walk that impression back.

But now the chances for the deal actually making it through both the Senate and the Republican House seem to be shrinking -- which is exactly what Trump wanted.

So let's review:

• President Joe Biden takes office.


• "Crisis! Border crisis! Invasion! Open borders! CRISIS!!! AHHHH! Run for your lives!" (repeat ad nauseam)


• Biden wants something from Congress (Ukraine aid) and so he signals he'd be open to a border deal largely written by Republicans -- even one that doesn't address the Dreamers.


• Democratic and Republican senators huddle, and hammer out a deal -- one which will tie Biden's hands as president in multiple ways and will advance the GOP's priorities on the border.


• Trump (and other Republicans) realize that if a deal is reached, it might take the issue off the table for the upcoming election.


• Trump tries to kill the deal, sight unseen.

What happens next is anyone's guess, but what is crystal-clear is the breathtaking hypocrisy shown by Republicans. They might be on the brink of intentionally ignoring a crisis they've been screaming about, for purely political reasons. If they do so, they will guarantee that the crisis continues for at least another full year (until the next president is inaugurated). One wonders how Fox News is going to spin that.

No matter how they do, what it equates to is blatant, cynical, staggering hypocrisy from the Republican Party.

What is rather amusing in all this is that if Trump does manage to tank the deal, then Biden can run on that fact: "Republicans in the Senate cut a deal with Democrats. It wasn't the deal I would have written -- it contained a lot of Republican priorities on border security -- but in the spirit of compromise I would have supported it. But then they realized that it might be better for them politically if no deal were cut, so they torpedoed their own priorities just so Donald Trump could campaign on it. That is why people hate politics, folks, right there in a nutshell. I am running to create commonsense bipartisan solutions to America's problems, while the Republicans just want to play endless political games with people's lives."

This isn't going to be a smooth segue or anything, but we have to shuffle the order of our weekly wrap-up here because as we were writing this the news broke that the jury in the second E. Jean Carroll defamation case against Donald Trump just returned with a jaw-dropping $83.3 million verdict against Trump. This is on top of the $5 million the jury in the first of these cases awarded to Carroll. The most amusing thing? Trump keeps right on defaming her (he will no doubt be going ballistic on social media soon) and so she can just keep right on filing case after case against him, with (hopefully) ever-increasing jury awards against him. Sooner or later, the amounts of money involved may actually do the impossible: get Trump to shut up. But maybe not -- maybe this will just be an endless cycle that plays out as long as both of them are still alive, who knows?

Trump did actually testify in this case, but (surprisingly) this didn't really generate much news, since he was only on the stand for a total of three minutes. He ignored the judge's instructions on what he could and could not say, the judge struck his remarks from the record, and his lawyer just essentially gave up. Today, he couldn't even bear to listen to Carroll's lawyer making closing arguments (which were interrupted by the judge so he could say: "The record will reflect that Donald Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom" ). Which probably didn't make a real good impression on the jury, one assumes.

Trump also got some bad news on his appeal of the gag order instituted in the January 6th federal case against him, as the appellate court summarily refused to hear his appeal. This leaves only the Supreme Court for Trump to appeal to (which he will, of course). The Supreme Court will also be hearing arguments on whether Trump should be barred from the ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment early next month, although no one has any idea when they'll actually rule on it.

What might happen a lot sooner is that the judge in Trump's business fraud case may issue his ruling at any time. Closing arguments were given in this case earlier this month, and like the Carroll case, Trump has already lost. The decision will mainly be concerned with the penalties Trump and his business will be hit with -- which could include barring Trump from operating any business in the state of New York. So we've all got that to look forward to, although there is no deadline or anything (the judge could rule at any time).

In related legal news, Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress, after blatantly ignoring a subpoena from the January 6th Select Committee. So that chicken came home to roost.

In other "Republicans behaving badly" news, the head of the Arizona Republican Party had to resign his position this week after Kari Lake leaked a recording of him trying to offer her lots of money to drop out of the last race she ran:



The recording itself was pretty damning, but even if true it probably wasn't illegal. Nevertheless, DeWit is out -- yet another example of intraparty GOP fratricide heading into an election year (added to similar recent ousters in Michigan and Florida, in other words).

Tying all this back to Republican hypocrisy (call it an attempt at a retro-segue), in the district Lauren Boebert is now running for a House seat in (because she is so toxic in the district she now represents) they just held a candidate debate. The candidates were all asked if they had ever been arrested, and six of them raised their hands -- and then promptly began high-fiving each other. So much for the "party of law and order," eh folks?

In other candidate debate news, the four leading candidates running to fill Dianne Feinstein's old Senate seat -- three Democrats and one Republican -- held their first debate this week. Steve Garvey, the ex-baseball player Republican, pretty much showed he was a complete idiot during this debate, while the three Democrats hammered him for not taking a stand on anything (including whether he was going to vote for Donald Trump or not). Best line of the night came from Katie Porter, who topped everyone else's baseball quips with: "Once a Dodger, always a dodger." Nice one!

Because that jury award announcement has scrambled our regular order into a mish-mash, we're going to end with the biggest campaign news of the week. Donald Trump and Joe Biden are now (whether you want to admit it or not) the two presumptive nominees for president for the two main American political parties. New Hampshire pretty much sealed the deal for both of them.

On the Democratic side, Joe Biden wasn't even on the ballot. In fact, there hasn't been a single official caucus or primary for Democrats to vote in yet. But some Granite State Democrats launched an effort to get voters to write in Biden's name, to avoid an embarrassing loss to Dean Phillips or even Marianne Williamson. It worked -- Biden crushed both of them (Phillips got just shy of 20 percent, while Biden topped him by 45 points). There was also a movement to show displeasure with Biden's Israel policy -- people were urged to write in "ceasefire" on the ballot -- but few did so, in the end (fewer than 1,500 votes out of a total of almost 125,000 votes). In any case, if Biden can do that well in a race where he isn't even on the ballot, then he's got the nomination sewn up -- which is not exactly a big surprise, or even "news."

Over on the Republican side, Ron DeSantis surprised everyone last weekend by ending his campaign. He slunk back to Florida, which gave rise to comparisons to Jeb Bush, another Florida governor with tons of money behind him who failed to beat Trump in the primaries. Amusing footnote: DeSantis included a quote from Winston Churchill in his announcement that he was backing down from the race, but it turns out the quote wasn't from Churchill, but rather from a Budweiser beer ad from the 1930s. Ooops! A fitting end to a disaster of a campaign....

With only two candidates left, the results trickled in on Tuesday and Nikki Haley came in second place to Donald Trump. She did beat expectations -- she had been polling worse than the actual voting results -- but she still lost to Trump by double digits (11 points) in the end. New Hampshire was the one state that Haley actually had a prayer of winning, but that prayer obviously went unanswered. Haley didn't manage to come in second in Iowa and she didn't manage to beat Trump in New Hampshire, so the Republican nomination race is also essentially over.

Haley, true to her "scrappy" (her word) persona, gave a speech on Tuesday night almost immediately after the last polls had closed and Trump was declared the winner by all the media organizations. At the time, she was a lot closer to Trump than the final result, so she gave a very upbeat speech about having almost beat him. She vowed to stay in the race and turned her attention to her home state of South Carolina.

Trump, hearing all of this, went ballistic (because of course he did!). He ripped into Haley for not dropping out, for giving an upbeat speech to her supporters, and for the dress she wore (which Trump proclaimed "wasn't so fancy" ). He also threatened that she might have skeletons in the closet that investigations would uncover, without (of course) giving any details. It was the least-gracious victory speech in most reporters' memories, in fact.

The truly ironic thing about it (which many pointed out) was that Trump was ripping into Haley for refusing to admit she had lost an election and for vowing to fight on. Now let's see... hmmm... who does that remind you of?

Also during his victory speech, Trump forced Tim Scott (who was on the stage with him) to either say he "hated" Nikki Haley (who is not only from his home state but actually appointed him to the Senate when she was governor) or to abase himself before Trump. Scott chose to salaam before his new idol ("I just love you!" ) in a pretty transparent bid to be "the next Mike Pence" -- auditioning for the role of Trump's sycophantic veep. It was pretty cringeworthy to watch.

Haley is already getting lots of pressure to just drop out, but so far she's staying in. Trump then took to threatening her donors on his pet social media network:



Haley's got a tough choice to make now. Does she stay in and suffer the humiliation of being beaten (probably pretty badly) by Trump in her home state, on the off chance that Trump will somehow self-destruct and leave her the only GOP candidate left standing, or does she gracefully bow out and live to fight another day (in some other upcoming election)? Stay tuned....

We end on an amusing note. New Hampshire ran a contest before the election where kids could submit their own drawings for the "I Voted!" stickers voters earn at the polls, and while the winners of the contest were nice and all, the clear champion was the kid who came up with what can only be called a "mutant spider" of a character for his design. We don't know about you, but we would proudly wear that sticker after voting!





Well, Joe Biden did romp to victory in the (unofficial) New Hampshire primary this week, without even being on the ballot, but we have to say we were more impressed with the performance of Katie Porter in the California Senate candidate debate.

To be absolutely clear, we were impressed with all three Democrats on the stage, which isn't all that surprising because both Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee are both impressive Democrats in their own right. Schiff in particular just looks the part -- he has always exhibited a political persona that can most accurately be described as "senatorial." Lee has fought long and hard in the House of Representatives for progressive causes and any one of these three would truly make a fine senator from our home state. They all showed the proper degree of feistiness in taking on the hapless Republican on stage as well. So we truly have no complaints about Schiff and Lee, after watching the debate.

But Katie Porter just seems to have a level of energy the other two don't, at least to us (we do realize this is entirely subjective of us to say). California has been lacking this level of energy in the Senate for a long time now, since Dianne Feinstein only got energetic on a few subjects every so often (and we didn't agree with her on all of them, we should add).

Katie Porter would change all of that if she wins. There haven't been a ton of polls yet, and few voters are even paying attention, but so far Schiff is in the lead with Porter behind him. These polling numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, though, because the race will likely shift before Californians vote in the primary (which is extremely early this year, as we've moved up to Super Tuesday).

Whatever he chances are at the ballot box, after watching all three Democrats on stage together we have to say that Katie Porter emerged as not only the most impressive of the three but also the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. We would love to see Katie (and her whiteboard!) representing us in the United States Senate next year, and we wish her luck!

[Congratulate Representative Katie Porter on her House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We are going to nominally award the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week to Joe Ganim of Bridgeport, Connecticut -- but we are actually awarding it to all the Democratic politicians and operatives in the town who have apparently been stealing elections for decades.

From a deep-dive article on the town in the New York Times, here is just some of what's been going on in Bridgeport:



On Tuesday, Ganim beat challenger John Gomes in the primary once again. But saying that Bridgeport doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the American electoral system is a vast understatement.

Democrats truly need to clean house here, because this sort of thing (while extremely rare) is precisely what Donald Trump and all his MAGA followers point to when claiming (without any further evidence) that all American elections where Trump or Republicans don't win are "rigged."

So our award really goes not just to Joe Ganim, but to all the rest of the miscreants in Bridgeport who have engaged in such shameful (and, obviously, illegal) behavior. This is a black eye the Democratic Party really doesn't need right now, to state the painfully obvious.

[Contact Mayor Joe Ganim on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 737 (1/26/24)

We have to say, that's not exactly an auspicious volume number, these days. Well, we're hoping this column doesn't crash and burn or anything (we couldn't resist...).

This week we have two quick talking points of our own (one of which is recycled) but then the rest of them come straight from the Biden campaign. There was a rather extraordinary article this week which documented how Team Biden is (quite effectively) now just taunting Donald Trump. And Trump being Trump, he seems to be taking the bait every single time, which forces him into playing defense and knocks him off his game. Personally, we think this is great news and heartily encourage the Biden campaign to keep it up! Let's all try to get under Trump's skin as much as possible, shall we?



Records being set under Biden

The fact that the economy is doing well is finally filtering out through the news media, but Democrats also need to make this case as often as possible, in as many ways as possible.

"Taking a look at recent economic news, I see that the stock markets are all hitting record highs, Obamacare signups are through the roof, and the economic growth numbers beat all expectations for all of last year. Taking just one of those -- last year, Obamacare signed up a record number of people during the enrollment period. This year, that record was smashed as five million more people signed up, for a total of 21 million Americans. Donald Trump is still out there calling for Obamacare to be repealed, because some people just cannot accept a Democrat getting credit for improving people's lives. And not just a few people, but 21 million of them and counting."



Endless political games with people's lives

We were going to rewrite this as a talking point for Joe Biden to use on the border deal, but when we read what we had already written at the start of this article, we found we couldn't improve upon it much. So for the first time (we think) we are actually recycling a different part of our same column as a talking point. Apologies in advance if anyone is offended by our laziness.

"Republicans in the Senate cut a deal with Democrats. It wasn't the deal I would have written -- it contained a lot of Republican priorities on border security -- but in the spirit of compromise I would have supported it. But then they realized that it might be better for them politically if no deal were cut, so they torpedoed their own priorities just so Donald Trump could campaign on it. That is why people hate politics, folks, right there in a nutshell. I am running to create commonsense bipartisan solutions to America's problems, while the Republicans just want to play endless political games with people's lives."



LOSER!

From here until the end, these were all inspired by Team Biden trolling Trump. Hey, we understand -- it's fun to do! It's a game all Democrats can play, actually....

"Joe Biden beat Trump the last time and he's going to beat Trump this time too. Joe Biden is a winner, while Trump is the sorest loser of all time. In fact, it's the worst thing you can call him because he gets so angry when people point out the truth to him. So join in with me, folks, as we all send a message to Donald Trump: 'You're a LOSER, Mr. Trump!' Whether you admit it or not, that's all you are... just a big whiny LOSER."



Already Herbert Hoover

This one is already getting under his skin.

"Donald Trump has been wishing for an economic collapse for three years now, because he doesn't care about America all he cares about is making Joe Biden look bad. He's been itching to call Biden 'Herbert Hoover,' but as Biden himself has been pointing out, Donald Trump is already Herbert Hoover. They're the only two presidents who have seen a drop in American jobs while they were president, while Joe Biden is on track to have overseen the creation of a record 15 million new jobs."



Good one, Donald

Too, too funny.

"The last time Donald Trump ran against Joe Biden, Trump predicted the stock markets would 'collapse' if Biden won. This week, the stock markets hit record highs... again. And Trump is still out there rooting for the economy to collapse. Joe Biden pointed all of this out this week with a hilarious tweet which showed a clip of Trump's boneheaded prediction next to a clip of the record market highs, and then summed it all up in three words: 'Good one, Donald.'"



We agree on this much

Biden seemed to be having too much fun, all week long.

"Last week, Donald Trump got seriously confused and started talking about Nikki Haley as if she were actually Nancy Pelosi. This isn't the first such mixup he's made, of course -- he thinks he won an election against Barack Obama, even! So Joe Biden tweeted out a clip of Haley ripping Trump for his confusion with the snarky caption: 'I don't agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we agree on this much: She is not Nancy Pelosi.'"



Ouch!

We saved the best (!) one for last. Because Biden read that same CNN article we did, about how he's been very successfully getting under Trump's skin. And then he commented on it, so we're just going to end with Biden zinging Trump with just two words, this time. The tweet was in response to the following, tweeted out by his own campaign team: "CNN: A person close to Trump says that he is rattled by President Biden and his campaign's efforts to get under his skin. Biden campaign aides have said the taunting will keep up." To which Joe Biden replied, on his personal account:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 20, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- The Changing Of The Vibes

President Joe Biden got some excellent news today: the "vibecession" seems to be over. For those unfamiliar with this neologism, the term was coined by an educator a while back to explain the disconnect between the economic reality (measured by all the economic indicators) and how people actually felt about the economy. The economy has been doing amazingly well in recovering from the COVID pandemic slump, while at the same time public perception has remained a lot gloomier.

There are reasons for this disconnect. First, we thought the pandemic itself was over several times -- but each time another variant attacked and made things worse. So there's a "once bitten, twice shy" residual feeling from those experiences in unfulfilled optimism. Then inflation spiked, and when the Fed brought it back down, interest rates spiked. So there's always been at least one economic indicator out of whack with the rest of the good economic news. The news media fed the disconnect as well (as they always do) by highlighting the bad news (in apocalyptic terms, at times) while ignoring or downplaying the good news. So while the economic numbers stayed strong, the "vibe" out there was that we were actually in a recession -- even though it wasn't true. Hence the "vibecession."

But today, there was some excellent news on this front. Because finally the vibe has begun to shift, in rather dramatic fashion:

To put this another way, everyone seems to have had a very happy holiday season. People are feeling a lot better about the economy and it wasn't just a one-month blip. Consumer sentiment is rising at an astonishing pace, finally catching up to where the economic indicators have been for a while. And that's exactly what Joe Biden needs right now.

If this trend continues throughout the year, it will mean that political attacks on Biden's handling of the economy will be a much harder sell. Biden's own numbers haven't caught up to this surge in consumer sentiment yet, but presidential approval ratings often track closely with how people are feeling about the economy. And for any president attempting to get re-elected, the message "things are getting better, don't change horses in midstream" can be a very effective one.

There's another disconnect between reality and perception out there in the world of politics, and this one is completely understandable. Most of the American public is just refusing to face what is fast becoming inevitable -- that this year's presidential election will be a repeat of Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. People don't want to see this rematch, and many of them are in a serious state of denial. Democrats, according to the New York Times, simply cannot believe that Republicans are still supporting Donald Trump, after his 91 indictments and the possibility that he will be a convicted criminal by the time the election rolls around. Republicans have a conspiracy theory that somehow Biden is going to pull some sort of switcheroo and Michelle Obama is actually going to be the Democratic candidate (and no, we are not making that up). Either way, most of the public just cannot believe that we're going to get the same two guys as the last time around.

This should fade, over time, as it becomes more and more obvious that both Biden and Trump will indeed be on the November ballot this year. Denial will retreat as reality becomes impossible to ignore. This process began this week with the official kickoff to the primary season: the Iowa Republican caucuses. Held in frigid temperatures Monday night, Trump beat expectations while Nikki Haley underperformed her own expectations. Trump cleared the bar of 50 percent (by just one point, but still...) while Haley did not beat Ron DeSantis for second place (again, only by a few points, but psychologically "third" is nowhere near as good as "second" ). This lessens the chance that Haley is about to catch fire with the GOP electorate and pull off a surprise victory in New Hampshire next Tuesday. And if Haley can't beat Trump in New Hampshire, she probably won't be able to beat him anywhere else either. With just one state having voted, Trump is on the verge of pretty much locking up the Republican nomination fight.

This is an astonishing performance in an open race, but that's only because it really isn't an open race. Donald Trump is not just some random Republican running for president -- he's already been president. So he's really running with the tailwind of an incumbent. Seen this way, it's not all that unusual for an incumbent to wrap up even a contested primary season extremely early. Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, for instance -- and we can confidently state that before any state has held their Democratic primary. In any case, like it or not, these are the two candidates that are going to be the standard-bearers of the two major political parties (barring something exceptional and unexpected happening, of course).

The Iowa results had two casualties as well, as both Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson officially dropped out of the race. Ramaswamy immediately endorsed Donald Trump (no surprise there), while the Democratic National Committee had some snarky fun with Hutchinson, stating: "This news comes as a shock to those of us who could've sworn he had already dropped out" (the White House chief of staff later called Hutchinson to apologize).

This leaves a three-person race, even though Nikki Haley confidently defined it as a two-person race (a move that caused much hilarity on late-night television and the internet, as many pointed out the fact that she came in third). But neither Haley nor DeSantis really has any kind of momentum -- or at least not enough to make much difference. DeSantis pulled out of New Hampshire entirely (he's polling in the single digits there), and instead is concentrating on South Carolina -- where he also badly trails both Haley and Trump.

Haley, meanwhile, refused to participate in two New Hampshire GOP debates, unless Trump showed up. He refused, so both debates were cancelled. Haley had two notable gaffes this week, when answering questions in interviews. Here's the first:



The article goes on to note that Haley has said she would pardon Trump if she's elected, so it's hard to figure what sort of "price" she's talking about. And the case she was being asked about was actually settled last May, when Trump was indeed found liable (to the tune of $5 million) for sexual abuse and defamation. So either Haley is just flat-out lying about not paying any attention to Trump's cases, or she is a complete incompetent as a politician, since she is theoretically supposed to be running against Trump. So to ignore his legal liability in a rape case seems like political malpractice at the very least.

In the second gaffe, Haley dug the hole a little deeper on the whole "amnesia about slavery" thing. A Fox News host asked Haley: "Are you involved in a racist [political] party?" and she responded with the jaw-dropping statement: "We're not a racist country.... We've never been a racist country." Seriously? Never? Wow... that's just... wow.

Speaking of that defamation trial, E. Jean Carroll actually filed two lawsuits against Trump. The first one she won (the $5 million award) and the second one got underway this week. Trump has already lost the case -- the only thing the jury will be deciding is how much more money Trump has to give to Carroll for the damage he did to her.

Trump didn't attend and didn't testify in the first case. This time around, he's been showing up in court to scowl at the jurors and make loud statements (that the jury can overhear) and he's already gotten warnings from the judge to knock it off.

One of Trump's biggest lawyers announced right before the case started that he would no longer be representing Trump, which has meant Trump is being defended by a woman who is quite obviously out of her depth in a courtroom (the judge has had to school Trump's lawyer on how to introduce evidence and other basics of courtroom rules, more than once). And Trump has said he's going to take the stand in his own defense, possibly on Monday, so this should be even bigger news next week.

In an unrelated piece of news (which we found highly amusing), Trump was ordered by a judge to pay $400,000 in legal fees to the New York Times, after Trump attempted to sue them and got laughed out of court. That's not a huge amount of money for Trump, but if he ever does actually pay it out, you just know having to do so is going to enrage him.

Outside of Trump's courtrooms and the presidential race, the other big political news of the week was the government shutdown dog that did not bark in the night. Congress successfully passed yet another continuing resolution which will keep the money flowing past midnight tonight, so we are not currently consumed with the prospect of a government shutdown this weekend. Both the House and the Senate got their jobs done early, because a monster snowstorm was expected to hit D.C. today.

What's unclear is whether House Speaker Mike Johnson's job will be in jeopardy for agreeing to pass the continuing resolution. Who knows? Perhaps a "motion to vacate the chair" will be filed when the House returns to Washington, by one of the hotheaded members of his own caucus.

Over in the Senate a deal on border security that would be tied to aid to Ukraine and Israel seems to be inching forward. This deal is not going to make either side very happy, but it might gain enough support to pass (at least in the Senate). If it gets to the House, some Democrats are even floating an interesting deal for Speaker Johnson -- if he allows the bill to get a vote, then Democrats will help him win any "motion to vacate the chair" vote he faces as a result. That's an interesting move, but it's just being rumored at present, so we'll have to see what happens if the Senate does actually send a border bill over to the House.

That's about it for the week, which was a short week due to the Martin Luther King holiday. Which the F.B.I. tried to "celebrate" by tweeting out a respectful note commemorating the day:



Nice, right? Well... unless you know your history. Which plenty of people do. So a "community note" was added to provide some necessary context:



Maybe next year the F.B.I. will think twice about sending out such a tweet, one assumes. Because that community note is entirely correct. The F.B.I. committed egregious abuses against all sorts of left-leaning people and organizations, and Martin Luther King Junior was at the top of J. Edgar Hoover's list.





This week two members of Congress announced a proposed plan to make some changes in the tax code, right before the deadline to make such changes for this year's filing season.

The chairs of the Senate and House committees on taxation (Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Jason Smith) worked together to come up with a bipartisan compromise on a few issues each side of the aisle is interested in. For Republicans (naturally) this meant more tax cuts for businesses. For Democrats, it will mean expanding the Child Tax Credit -- a move that can work wonders to fight child poverty.

As with any legislative compromise, neither side got exactly what they wanted. Most Democrats want to boost the Child Tax Credit a lot more than this plan would. Most Republicans don't want poor children to get anything at all. But this is a solid step in the right direction and it would not only apply to millions of children, but it would also be paid for by ending a COVID-era program that wasn't working very well at all.

There is no guarantee this plan will pass (we wrote about this earlier in the week, if anyone's interested), but it does have a chance because neither part of the plan is inherently offensive enough to the other side of the aisle to tank it.

Can a bipartisan tax plan actually get passed in an election year? Can Congress still work to actually accomplish things even with the partisan chasm between them? Well, nobody's sure quite yet. But for putting in the hard work and for being optimistic enough to hope that this plan will pass, we have to salute Senator Wyden for his effort.

For getting something done and for doing so in a bipartisan way that might actually succeed, Senator Ron Wyden is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Senator Ron Wyden on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





The jury is still (metaphorically) out on this one, but things aren't looking especially good.

The Atlanta district attorney who has brought the most sweeping case against Donald Trump (and plenty of his co-conspirators) seems to be mired in a mess of her own making. She appears to have hired an attorney to work on the case -- and paid him $650,000 as a result -- with whom she was having a romantic relationship. Here's the news as it stands today:



The claim against Willis includes specifics: that the two "have traveled personally together to such places as Napa Valley, Florida and the Caribbean... [including] tickets for both of them to travel on both the Norwegian and Royal Caribbean cruise lines."

If proven true, this could necessitate the removal of both Willis and Wade from the case. That would doubtlessly be a blow to the prosecution, although it might not derail the entire case. But if it does go forward, it might have to do so without Willis being in charge of it, which could negatively impact the prosecution's case (Willis has a great deal of experience with cases like the one she filed against Trump et al).

Again -- nothing has been proven yet. Willis has not fully addressed the claims against her. She has been subpoenaed in the Wade divorce case which would require her testimony next week, but she is fighting the subpoena. If she loses that fight, we might all hear what has been going on very soon now.

To jeopardize such a monumentally important case for such a tawdry reason is more than a little disappointing, so until we hear something that exonerates Willis from the claims we're going to have to give her the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Contact Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis via her official web page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]




Volume 736 (1/19/24)

Because so many are still in denial and because the primary season is pretty much over before it really even got started, we decided to shift into general election mode in this week's talking points. We'll try not to do this every week, but this really is the kickoff to Biden making the case to the country that he's a much better choice in November than Donald Trump, so we felt we had to on this particular week.



Better with Biden

Maybe Team Biden should come up with a new slogan?

"You know what? Things are getting better with Biden in control. When he took office, the American economy had been ravaged by COVID and there were supply chain problems and we still hadn't turned the corner from the pandemic. But Biden got to work and the economy recovered. It recovered without going into recession, and has achieved what economists call a 'soft landing.' Unemployment is still way down. Wages are up. Gas prices are down. Things are getting better. Who in their right mind would want to go back to the days when the president had no clue what to do in a national emergency and just set us all fighting against each other? Things are better with Biden, and they're going to continue getting better after he wins re-election."



More student debt cancelled

This is a blatant appeal to younger voters, of course.

"President Biden just cancelled another $5 billion in student debt -- most of it for teachers and firefighters and other public servants. While the Supreme Court struck down his most ambitious plan, Biden has still been fighting to relieve the crushing amounts of student debt young Americans face when they leave college. To date, Biden has overseen the forgiveness of $136 billion in student debt, and he's not done yet. President Biden is fighting hard to give graduates a chance in life without a crippling amount of student debt. Republicans have been fighting him every step of the way."



Sorry to say, but yes...

Democrats need to start gently leading people away from their denial.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but yes... Donald Trump is almost certain to be the Republican presidential nominee again. Who is going to beat him? Nikki Haley? Ron DeSantis? That was nice to believe a few months ago, but now the voting has started and Trump is still far ahead of any challenger in the polls. He's not just magically going to go away, folks. Republican voters aren't going to suddenly wake up from their personality cult. Whether you like it or not, the choice this November is going to be between Joe Biden fighting to make America better or Donald Trump's eternal chaos. That's the choice we're all going to face. The time for pretending 'that'll never happen' is over."



A conviction won't stop him

This is not very well-understood -- plenty of Democrats seem to still think otherwise.

"Even being convicted of federal crimes won't stop Trump. If a jury finds him guilty of serious felonies, Donald Trump could still run for president from a jail cell. It's happened before in American history, actually. So while it would be nice to think that being convicted of a felony crime would automatically disqualify someone from running for president, that is simply not the case. And who here thinks Trump would let any conviction get in the way of running for office? Trump is not going to just slink away if he's convicted, he's going to campaign even harder if it happens. Judges and juries won't save us from Trump -- only the voters can do that."



Events that cross the line

Trump, as usual, is not being shy about what he wants next time around.

"Donald Trump just sent a social media message out where he (in all caps) shouted: 'ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, OR THE AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS OF A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER.' He also helpfully explained what that meant: 'EVEN EVENTS THAT 'CROSS THE LINE' MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY'. Got that? Presidents should be allowed to 'cross the line' on anything, and enjoy 'total immunity' for doing so. Trump's lawyer even argued in court that this would mean that Joe Biden -- the sitting president -- should be able to order SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political rival without being charged with a crime. Someone needs to point out to Trump that this could mean he is now arguing that Biden should consider himself free to assassinate Trump -- because that's exactly what using Trump's logic could lead to."



Poisoning the blood

Joe Biden should take a page from Trump's playbook and turn his own words back on him.

"Donald Trump is wrong -- it's not immigrants who are, quote, poisoning the blood of America, unquote. What is poisoning the blood of America is Donald Trump. Trump runs on hate. He stands for cruelty and viciousness. He is unapologetic about this -- just listen to one of his campaign speeches if you need any proof of it. He mocks his opponents just like an elementary school bully. He whips his followers into a frenzy of hate against any group he chooses. He promises retribution. To me, all of that is doing exactly what he's accusing immigrants of doing -- poisoning the blood of our political discourse. Poisoning the minds of our fellow Americans to think nothing but evil of their fellow citizens. Trump's bad apple has already poisoned almost the entire barrel of the Republican Party. So if you want to fight back against this poison in our political bloodstream, keep Donald Trump out of office for good. That's the first step towards healing the damage this poison has already done."



Democracy is on the ballot

Stop us if you've heard this one...

"OK, look, we realize that it's a running joke in American politics that each and every election both sides tell their voters 'This is the most important election in your lifetimes!' But you know what? Before now, maybe it was true and maybe it wasn't, but seeing the other party win the presidency hasn't meant that the U.S. Constitution itself would be in peril. It hasn't meant that democracy itself might fail. This time around, sad to say, both those things are true. Donald Trump wants to be a dictator. Ask him -- he'll tell you! He wants ultimate power with absolute immunity from any consequences. That's un-American. That's not democracy. So yes, Joe Biden is absolutely right. In this election, democracy itself will be on the ballot. And if we lose it, we might never get it back again."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 13, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- It'll Be A Cold Day In Iowa...

It is shocking (it always is), but here we are on the brink of the 2024 presidential election cycle's official start. The Iowa caucuses will be held Monday. Most of us, thankfully, will have a few more months to go before being faced with the prospect of going to the polls for our state's primary, when (hopefully) the weather will be a lot better than it is predicted to be in the Hawkeye State three days from now. They may be heading to their polls in the midst of a blizzard, with the temperature forecast to be: "Oh CRAP it is cold!" with windchill factors being as low as: "I can't feel my toes... or my face... just leave me here in this snowbank for the wolves to find...."

OK, we exaggerate, perhaps. But not by much. Hey, we grew up in a state that did get some snow (but usually not too much), so we do fully understand (as many Californians simply do not) what "six below" truly means.

Of course, this year, only Republicans will be having their votes counted on Monday. Iowa was defenestrated from the early-state Democratic calendar after their abject failure to count the Democratic votes in a timely manner the last chance they had, so it'll be a GOP-only affair this year.

[As all columnists who reveal future plot developments must, we hereby issue an official Spoiler Alert. Skip to the next paragraph if you want to stay up late Monday listening to the returns come in with breathless anticipation. OK, you have been duly warned!] The outcome of the GOP Iowa caucus, of course, is not in any doubt. Donald Trump is going to win. The only two questions left to be answered are: "By how much?" and "Who came in a distant second place?"

Snarkiness aside, that last one is actually going to be important. Will Nikki Haley beat Ron DeSantis? If she does so, will DeSantis drop out before the New Hampshire primary? If the answer to both of those is "Yes," then the possibility still exists that the Trump train could be derailed by a GOP challenger. It's still looking like a pretty slim possibility, but it will exist.

If DeSantis, on the other hand, beats Haley, then he will doubtlessly stay in the race for another round -- which will completely torpedo any chance of Haley building enough momentum to score an upset in the Granite State. So the Iowa caucuses won't be a completely meaningless exercise, one way or another.

This dynamic was set up by the most momentous shift in the GOP race this past week. And, no, we do not speak of the one-on-one debate between DeSantis and Haley (yawn) or the townhall Donald Trump used to counterprogram it (double yawn). We speak instead of Chris Christie throwing in the towel on his own campaign.

Christie's exit was pure Christie -- a very heartfelt announcement before a small audience where he took the moral high road and admitted that no matter how well he might do in New Hampshire (the state he made the centerpiece of his campaign), there simply is no viable path for him to get the Republican nomination. Since the entire reason for his campaign was to deny Trump the nomination, dropping out and clearing the path for Haley was the morally upstanding thing to do. Also pure Christie were his comments caught on a hot mic, where he (in true New Jersey fashion) let his real opinion of Nikki Haley's chances be known: "She's going to get smoked, and you and I both know it. She's not up to this." Not exactly a ringing endorsement of her campaign, in other words. We assume that soon we'll be seeing Christie on ABC again, mixing it up with Donna Brazile on Sunday mornings -- where he will no doubt have a few more unvarnished things to say.

The knowledge that Donald Trump is going to win in Iowa has freed him up to sit in courtrooms, either scowling at judges or berating them to their faces. This could become a regular feature of Trump's campaign (such as it is). It scores him maximum "I'm such a victim!" points with his base, and it gets his face on the news in a way he can control (before the rulings against him are actually handed down).

Trump showed up in two courtrooms this week, even though his presence was not required in either one. He attended the oral arguments before the three-judge panel who heard his appeal on the January 6th charges against him, and he also showed up for the closing arguments in his New York fraud trial. Both days in court went rather badly for him (and that's putting it charitably).

He didn't speak in the appellate court hearing, instead relying on his lawyers to make his arguments for him. We wrote about this in detail earlier this week, but the upshot is Team Trump attempted to argue that anything he did while he was president was an "official act" and thus he was immune from any consequences for everything; and also that because the Senate did not convict him in his second impeachment trial, he was off the hook for everything since the Constitution says presidents must be successfully impeached before facing any criminal charges (the Constitution does not actually say this -- in fact it says the opposite).

Neither argument impressed the three judges, not even the one appointed by a Republican president (George H. W. Bush). The highlight of the day was when Trump's lawyers argued that a president ordering SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival was an "official act" and thus if the president who did so was never successfully impeached, he or she couldn't be criminally charged for doing so. Incidentally, if the courts did agree with this bizarre interpretation of the Constitution, it would mean Joe Biden would be free to order the military to take Trump out tomorrow -- and if Biden stepped down the next day, he'd be off the hook legally. Which is precisely why it is such a dangerous legal argument to even make -- which was pointed out by both the prosecutors and the judges.

On the argument that Trump was merely exercising his duty as president to assure the election was held fairly in everything he did up to and including January 6th, the Republican-appointed judge had the harshest thing to say in response: "I think it's paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law." Paradoxical indeed, but that's what passes for Trump's legal reasoning and constitutional interpretation.

Trump, though, doesn't care about being legally right. All he cares about is delaying everything as long as possible. And the question of how long that will be is very much an open one. The three-judge panel could rule very quickly (as early as next week) on Trump's appeal, but the Supreme Court could slow-walk it for months and months.

In his New York fraud case, closing arguments were made to the judge and Trump showed up to get a few things off his chest. The judge had previously ruled that Trump couldn't make his own statement -- his own personal closing argument -- because Trump wouldn't agree to the rules for what can be said in a courtroom during a trial. But then the judge relented and gave Trump five minutes to speak. He allowed Trump plenty of rope during this period, when any other defendant (not named "Donald Trump" ) would have been silenced and cited for contempt of court the first time he insulted the judge to his face. But instead he allowed Trump to rant and rave until he had exceeded his time limit, and then he shut Trump down. It's worth pointing out that there is no jury in this case -- the judge will decide Trump's fate on his own. So there's that to look forward to!

Trump also said some mighty stupid things on the campaign trail this week, but that's nothing really new.

The other big political news of the week was the Chaos Caucus in the House Republicans throwing yet another hissy fit for not getting their own way. This tantrum hasn't fully erupted (yet) but did cause Speaker Mike Johnson headaches all week long. The week began with Johnson announcing he had cut the same budget deal that Kevin McCarthy had with Senate Democrats. There will be no massive budget cuts across the board, there will be no poison pill nonsense to torpedo everything, instead there will just be the usual budget haggling over the details. For bowing to the reality that the House of Representatives doesn't get to singlehandedly set the entire agenda in Washington when the Senate and the White House are held by Democrats, the hardliners began to weep and wail (as usual). They tried to get Johnson to blow up the deal he had just announced and threaten to shut the government down if the hotheads didn't get 100 percent of what they were asking for (which, true to form, the Chaos Caucus couldn't even agree upon amongst themselves). And they ground the floor of the House to a halt for one day, just to prove they had the power to disrupt everything (as if we all weren't aware of that fact already).

The deadline for a partial government shutdown will arrive next Friday -- one week from today. But there's no way they'll be able to draft all the appropriations bills and agree to them all before then, even with the topline-numbers agreement between Johnson and the Senate. So another continuing resolution will be necessary -- but Johnson has sworn he won't pass another temporary C.R. So he may have to go back on that pledge, which will absolutely enrage the Chaos Caucus even further. This all raises the question of whether Johnson will still be speaker at the end of the month, because, well... clowns gotta clown.

Instead of directing their attention towards avoiding a government shutdown, the House kept busy this week moving forward on impeaching everyone under the sun. Well, it seemed that way, at least. Their new number one target is the secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. He hasn't committed any crime or any other actual impeachable offense, mind you, he has just been carrying out the policies of the Biden administration. According to Republicans, this is now an impeachable offense -- which is a real-life (as opposed to made-up) example of "weaponizing the federal government." Disagreeing with an administration's policies has never been an impeachable offense, but that doesn't appear to be stopping the House GOP on their mission to impeach someone -- anyone -- connected to Joe Biden. They're also considering impeaching the attorney general and the secretary of Defense, as well as their ongoing effort to impeach Biden himself.

Because, of course, it's not like they have better things they could be doing, right? As we said, clowns gotta clown.

Which seems as good a place to end this weekly wrap-up as any. So we'll just move swiftly along to this week's awards....





For sheer gall, we are handing the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to Representative Adam Schiff.

Schiff just released a letter he sent to Donald Trump. This is a follow-up to the report he and his fellow Democrats on the House Oversight Committee last week, where he itemized how much he could prove that Trump had received from foreign governments while he was president. This was all to undercut all the nonsense the committee is currently engaging in over Hunter Biden, of course.

In any case, Schiff sent a letter demanding every last dime Trump made from China (mostly) and all the other foreign governments. The full text of the letter opens with:

At the very end of the letter, Schiff throws in some Grade-A snark, as a closing line:



[Cue: rimshot]

But it wasn't just his needling Trump this week that won Schiff the coveted MIDOTW award. He also ramped up his campaign for the open Senate seat in California by releasing his full agenda, which is pretty breathtaking in its optimism:



He's currently leading the field in the primary race, and while we're not endorsing Schiff in that race we have to say he had a pretty impressive week all-around. Which is why Adam Schiff is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Representative Adam Schiff on his House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





We're not entirely sure if he's actually a Democrat or not, but we decided that for the purposes of our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, he's close enough. After all, Lloyd Austin serves in President Joe Biden's cabinet, as Secretary of Defense, and he has retired from military service. So like we said -- close enough.

Lloyd Austin is by all accounts a very private person. So he didn't want anyone to know the details of why he went into the hospital for surgery. And then he didn't tell anyone when he had to go back into the hospital for complications from that surgery. For days on end -- until the story broke.

This is absolutely unacceptible. It should be unacceptible for any cabinet member, although if the same circumstances had happened to, say, the secretary of Agriculture or Housing and Urban Development, we doubt many people would feel as strongly about it. But Austin is in charge of the Pentagon. Didn't anyone put some sort of rules in place for everyone in the military chain of command way back in the times of the Cold War and the passage of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment? Apparently not.

Which is why Defense Secretary Austin was able to enter the hospital and not tell the president, the White House, or the person who was given operational control in his place for days on end.

This, again, is absolutely unacceptible. President Biden just launched a military attack on the Houthis in Yemen. War is raging in the Middle East and in Ukraine. The lines of command and communication need to be crystal-clear right now, obviously. But they weren't.

To his credit, Austin has apologized and the White House has now instituted new protocols for everyone in the cabinet, but again -- to someone who grew up during the latter parts of the Cold War -- it is simply astonishing that protocols weren't adequately put in place 60 or 70 years ago.

Which is why, for putting his own medical privacy above the security of the nation, Secretary Austin was the easy choice for Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

[The only public contact info for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin we could find is his official snail-mail address, so if you've got the patience you can use that to let him know what you think of his actions -- or, more precisely, his inaction.]




Volume 735 (1/12/24)

The first five of these talking points are all designed to rake the House Republicans over the coals, since we felt they definitely deserve such treatment this week. But our final talking point is not an amusing bit of snark (as it often is, here) but instead the most serious one of all.



The do-nothing House

An oldie but a goodie!

"The Republican House of Representatives has been possibly the least-productive House in American history. They have passed a handful of laws -- far fewer than normally get passed -- and every time they are required to do something meaningful, such as pass a budget, they descend into bickering among themselves or even tossing out their own speaker. They're about to go through another round of that one, in fact. Everyone watching at home should come to the obvious conclusion after watching this clown show for over a year now -- Republicans are incapable of governing. They can't do it. They can't get their act together, period. Republicans run on the slogan: 'Government doesn't work, elect us and we'll prove it!' -- and then they do so, every time they get in the majority. Voters, please take note."



Impeach Commander Biden!

You just know they'll eventually get around to him, right?

"The only thing the Republicans in the House seem to know how to do is disobey the Constitution. They are now moving forward on impeaching not just President Biden but also two or three members of his cabinet -- for carrying out Biden's policies. There are no 'high crimes' here. There are no 'misdemeanors,' even. There is no constitutional reason whatsoever for impeaching anyone in the Biden administration, but that's not stopping this GOP clown car from moving forward. Sooner or later it shouldn't come as any surprise when they attempt to impeach Commander Biden for biting Secret Service agents -- that would be about par for their course these days."



Impeach Hunter Biden!

Ladies and gentlemen -- in the center ring of our clown circus, we have...

"Joe Biden's son Hunter has never held a government job, but that isn't going to stop the House Republicans from impeaching him... or doing what they consider the next best thing, at any rate. You can't make this stuff up, folks -- this week the Republicans on a House committee voted to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for not showing up for a subpoena, while Hunter Biden showed up for the hearing in person and would have been happy to testify in public. He showed up for the day of the subpoena, too, and offered to testify in public. Why are Republicans so scared of letting Hunter Biden tell his story to the American people? There is indeed contempt here, but it's not directed at Congress, the contempt is coming from Congress."



But... new pins!

House Republicans did manage to get one thing done (sigh).

"You know what the biggest accomplishment Republicans in the House can point to this year? They issued new member pins. These are little pins worn by members of the House to allow security to know who is a representative and who is not. For some reason they didn't like the color of the pin they had to wear all last year -- which was a red, white, and blue design, by the way -- so they changed it to predominantly a dull green. So I stand corrected when I say Republicans are incapable of getting their act together -- with the clock ticking down to a government shutdown next week, not only are they working hard on impeaching everyone in sight, but they also got new member pins made! Now there's a real accomplishment they can brag about on the campaign trail!"



Or maybe another new speaker?

Here we go again?

"But maybe I'm being too snarky, pointing out the new pins Republicans managed to approve. Because they also seem to be edging towards the brink of booting out their speaker again. And this time it'll only take two votes to do so. Mike Johnson is caught in the same dilemma that ensnared Kevin McCarthy -- the difference between how the Chaos Caucus sees things and actual reality. No matter how much you indulge the MAGA hotheads in their swamp-fever dreams of what they can accomplish, eventually you have to head over to the Senate and talk with the grownups to keep the government running. One week from today, we could see a partial government shutdown. Whether this happens or not is anyone's guess, but no matter what happens, soon afterwards we could see another 'motion to vacate the chair.' Which will set off another round of musical chairs as they all decide who will lead them for the next few months. Or 'weeks,' maybe I should say...."



GOP out in the states no better

Are things better for Republicans when you get away from Washington, out in the state governments and parties? Well... no.

"This week, the Republican Party of both Michigan and Florida moved to boot out the party's chair. In Michigan, they are trying to get rid of an election-denying incompetent, but she's refusing to give up the levers of party power so we'll all see this family fight play out in court, most likely. In Florida, the party had to move since their chair refused to step down after being accused of rape -- and answering the charge by explaining that the sex was consensual and his wife didn't mind because they had all had a three-way previously. Nothing like the 'family values' party, eh?"



Get him to say the words

We end on a very serious note, this week.

"Donald Trump keeps hinting that his followers are quite likely to commit political violence if anything bad happens to him. Just this week he warned of 'bedlam' if things didn't go his way. He urged his followers to 'stay in those voting booths' on Election Day, to watch for 'bags of crap coming into the voting areas' and telling them 'you've got to stop it, you can't let it happen.' Trump refused to sign a pledge with his candidate application in Illinois to never even 'advocate the overthrow of the government,' either. Joe Biden has already called Trump out for his refusal to condemn all political violence of any kind, even if it is in support of him. So far, he won't do it. He won't say the words -- even while the threats against public officials continue to grow. He has never said the words. Every journalist that ever gets to ask Trump a question should really start with: 'Do you unequivocally condemn the use of political violence for any reason, even by your own supporters?' Because until he does, Donald Trump represents just as much of a threat to democracy as he did on January 6th."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 6, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- Biden's First Campaign Speech

Happy new year, everyone! It is indeed a brand new year, and an election year to boot. The presidential election isn't some faraway thing anymore, as the Republican Iowa caucuses are now less than two weeks away. Then it'll be on to New Hampshire and South Carolina and eventually Super Tuesday, which is quite likely the point where Donald Trump will have functionally wrapped up the GOP nomination.

Today is also the day before January 6th, and President Joe Biden marked the occasion by giving the first political speech of his re-election campaign, at a community college a few miles away from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden had initially planned on appearing tomorrow -- on the attempted insurrection's third anniversary -- but had to reschedule at the last minute due to the possibility of a heavy snowstorm hitting the area. Which is kind of an ironic thing to happen, for a speech near Valley Forge, you've got to admit.

Biden's speech today was markedly different than his usual presidential remarks. He hit the campaign trail at full speed, absolutely denouncing Donald Trump and everything he stands for. He excoriated Trump for the insurrection, for his approval of political violence, for his support of the insurrectionists, for the dictatorship Trump is promising in his second term, for not standing up for democracy, and for a whole bunch of other things as well.

Biden spoke for just over a half an hour, and invoked George Washington (naturally, being so close to Valley Forge) and his selflessness in voluntarily giving up power after the Revolutionary War was over, and then for doing so again after serving two terms as president. He cited Washington calling the fight for democracy a "sacred cause."

Biden at one point (while ripping into Trump for laughing at the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi) Biden actually had to bite back what he was going to say, calling Trump: "What a sick..." before stopping (assumably his next word would have been "bastard," but that's just pure speculation on our part, we have to admit) and instead, after a pause (and applause from the crowd) settling on "guy." But we're going to excerpt his speech down in the talking points, so we'll instead move on to take a look ahead to the new year's political calendar. (We should mention that the Washington Post helpfully provided an extensive month-by-month roundup of the 2024 political calendar, for those interested in looking beyond just January.)

While it is good to see Joe Biden kicking off his re-election campaign in such forceful style, this January is going to be a month full of other political events that will soon grab everyone's attention.

Next week, Congress returns and will immediately face its first self-imposed budget deadline on the 19th. House Republicans are already champing at the bit to shut the government down in an attempt to force changes in border and immigration policies, so we'll have to see how the new speaker handles it all. Negotiations in the Senate haven't produced any deal on the border yet, but hope springs eternal, at least for some.

Also next week, Nikki Haley will debate Ron DeSantis one-on-one on CNN, and days later the Iowa caucuses will be held. The two are fighting it out to see who can come in second to Trump, most likely both in Iowa and in New Hampshire. They'll have another CNN debate on the 21st, just before the New Hampshire primary is held. The good news? Vivek Ramaswamy won't be there for either one.

Haley is still trying to overcome a rather major gaffe: forgetting to mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War. Last night, during Haley's solo town hall, she may have made the problem worse, with an answer that made a whole lot of people cringe: "You know, I had Black friends growing up." Ouch. Haley is well-versed in nebulous answers about the Confederacy and the Civil War, being a South Carolina politician, but she hasn't realized yet that the rest of the country doesn't really appreciate what the folks back in Haley's home expect when speaking about racism.

Both Haley and DeSantis explicitly said they'd pardon Trump if elected, which isn't exactly surprising and probably won't do them any harm with the GOP electorate in the primaries.

Donald Trump is more concerned with his legal appointments than primaries, at this point. The closing arguments in the New York fraud trial (that could dismantle his business empire in the Empire State) are scheduled for the 11th. On the 16th, the second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial against Trump is scheduled to begin. In both of these trials, Trump has already lost -- they're just to decide what penalties he will be forced to pay.

All eyes are currently on the Supreme Court, who will have two major decisions to make in relation to the presidential campaign. They've been asked to rule on states' ability to bar Donald Trump from primary ballots (based on his engaging in an insurrection and the text of the Fourteenth Amendment) and will be asked soon to weigh in on whether Trump has some sort of sweeping legal immunity for everything he ever did while he was president.

That last Trump argument, HuffPost helpfully pointed out, would lead to alarming consequences, if the Supreme Court upholds it. They ran a headline that sums the point up nicely: "Biden Could Kill Donald Trump And Not Be Prosecuted, Under Trump's Own Legal Theory." The Supreme Court won't actually address this question until after the appellate court rules on it, but they're scheduled to take the case up next week, on an expedited "rocket docket" timeline, so this won't delay things all that much.

One of Trump's lawyers just stuck her foot in her mouth, essentially stating that Justice Kavanaugh (whom I still prefer to call "Justice Fratboy" ) owes full loyalty to Trump, for nominating him to the high court, and so he should of course rule for Trump, in humble thanks. Democrats, meanwhile, are calling for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from the case, since his wife was actually part of the group that organized the January 6th rally, but nobody really expects Thomas to adhere to the court's (completely voluntary) new code of ethics. It would be out of character for him to do so, obviously.

In Congress, the budget battle won't be the only contentious thing going on, as the House Republicans seem ready to tee up a vote on articles of impeachment against Joe Biden. They still haven't come up with a scintilla of any evidence of actual wrongdoing by Biden, but that certainly isn't going to stop them. This effort was undercut by a brilliant move from the Democrats on the same committee, who just released their own report on the $7.8 million that Donald Trump's businesses received from foreign governments (most of it from China) while he was in office. This is an embarrassing reality that neither the Republicans nor the media have ever adequately addressed: all the things they truly want to charge Joe Biden with doing -- for which they have zero evidence -- were all done in a big, big way by Donald Trump and his own family. A real inconvenient truth, that.

Abortion rights may be on the ballot in Florida in November, but the bar's going to be pretty high to win. First, the ballot measure will be challenged to the state supreme court, who could rule that it was "confusing" and therefore couldn't appear on the ballot. The court is packed with ultraconservative justices, so this could easily happen. Even if they do allow it on the ballot, the measure would have to get 60 percent of the vote to win -- which is a bar that other states which have successfully voted for abortion rights have not hit. So it's not exactly a slam-dunk or anything, but it was good to hear that they've at least collected enough signatures to move the process forward.

There is good news for the lowest-paid workers in 22 states, as a higher minimum wage kicks in (some of which have risen to above $16 an hour). That's a pretty good "happy new year" present that millions of workers will see in their first paychecks of the year.

One rather disconcerting thing happened this week -- bomb threats were delivered to multiple state capitols, and then it happened again the next day as well. Some are speculating that this is a disruptive attack by foreign actors, so we'll have to see how this story develops.

That's about it for the week's news, other than noting that Mickey Mouse (the original "Steamboat Willie" version) is now in the public domain, so if you've been itching to use his character in original works you may now do so without worrying about the copyright. Also on the list of things which are now in the public domain: Tigger (from "Winnie The Pooh" ) and the book Lady Chatterley's Lover. You're now free to make of them what you will, too.





We have to give this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award to Representative Jamie Raskin and all the other Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. They are the ones who fought to present their findings about Trump profiting directly from foreign governments to the tune of almost $8 million while he was in office.

We have been hammering Democrats for months now to bring up Trump and his family every chance they get, while the House Republicans are going down their "Impeach Hunter Biden!" rabbit hole. What was sorely needed here was a healthy dose of "whataboutism" -- "What about Jared and Ivanka? What about Trump and the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution?"

This report provides the rhetorical ammunition to do precisely this, and it was provided at precisely the right time: right before the impeachment follies come to a crescendo. Their timing really couldn't have been better.

So for working to pry the actual data loose and for following through and for presenting their evidence exactly when it would carry the most weight, Raskin and the House Oversight Committee's Democrats all deserve the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Jamie Raskin (and by extension, the others) on his House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Senator Bob Menendez apparently wasn't just doing the bidding of Egypt while chairing a committee on foreign relations, he was also helping out his buddies in Qatar. So says the most recent filing in the federal case against him, at any rate.

His trial is scheduled for May. We still hold out hope that he'll do the right thing and either step down now or at the very least announce he won't be running for re-election, but neither of those things have happened yet. For now, we'll just hand him another Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

[Contact Senator Bob Menendez on his Senate contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 734 (1/5/24)

Because President Joe Biden gave his first campaign speech today, we decided to just pre-empt all our talking points to run a few choice excerpts from his speech instead. [Editor's Note: We should note that we relied on a snap transcript provided by C-SPAN, which was no more than an unedited version of the closed captioning during the speech. Because it had errors, we corrected the obvious ones, so what follows might not be word-for-word exactly what Biden said (we didn't have time to double-check it by watching the video of the speech again, sorry), but it should be close enough to clearly convey his meaning. We also added a few italics to show when Biden spoke with extra emphasis.]

On the whole, it was a pretty good speech. At times it was forceful, as Biden showed emotion when talking about the sacred cause of America democracy. He was also animated when excoriating Trump as well, which Biden did a fair bit of while speaking. He led into his remarks with a few quotes from General George Washington, who called the mission of his army "a sacred cause." This was the main theme of Biden's speech throughout. He began by shifting to talking about the present and his own campaign:

Biden then reminded everyone of what happened on January 6th, in brutal detail:



Biden's disgust and anger at Trump showed through next, as he castigated him for doing nothing while the Capitol was under attack:



Then he put it in personal terms that Trump can understand (and will no doubt hate):



Biden ripped into Trump's revisionism on what happened that day at length, which was followed by a very important point that all Democrats should really be making a lot more forcefully, whenever they get the chance:



It was at this point that Biden's obvious disgust with Trump almost leaked through... but he bit his tongue and substituted a more-polite term instead:



Tell us how you really feel, Joe!

Biden, in winding down his speech, returned to his original theme. This election is about freedom and democracy. That is what is on the ballot. The choice is clear.






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

December 23, 2023

My 2023 "McLaughlin Awards" (Part 1)

Welcome to the first installment of our year-end awards!

As always, we must begin with a stern warning: this is an incredibly long article. So long you likely won't make it to the end, at least not in one sitting. It is -- as always -- a marathon, not a sprint.

We have tried to credit readers' nominations where we could, but writing the whole column is such a frenzied activity that we may have omitted the citations here and there -- for which we apologize. Reader suggestions make our job putting together this list a whole lot easier, and we are indeed grateful for the people who do take the time to do so (and you still have a chance to make nominations for next week's awards, we would point out).

OK, since it is so long, let's not make it any longer and get right to it. Here are our winners for the awards categories first created on the McLaughlin Group television show, for the year that was.



Biggest Winner Of 2023

Our first inclination in this category turned out to be a repeat of last year's Biggest Winner: abortion rights being on the ballot. Just like in 2022, abortion was a big winner in 2023. In the most fiercely-fought (and most expensive) Wisconsin state supreme court election ever, liberal Janet Protasiewicz won in a double-digit landslide over her conservative opponent, on a platform of supporting women's rights and getting rid of the rampant gerrymandering in the state. Then in Ohio, abortion rights won not just once but twice, since the Republicans tried an end-run around the ballot measure which cemented the protections of Roe v. Wade in the state's constitution -- and both won by overwhelming landslides in a reddish-purple state. Putting abortion rights on the ballot is a winner, and candidates who support abortion rights are winners -- a clear message for the 2024 elections, where it will be on the ballot in various ways in many other states.

But instead, we are going to give the Biggest Winner of 2023 to "American Unions." The Unions flexed their muscles this year, and they emerged victorious. The biggest strikes to hit the national news were the United Auto Workers and the Hollywood writers and actors' strikes. And both forced their respective industries into massive concessions and a very favorable contract as a result. These weren't the only organized labor activities during the year, but they were the ones that got most of the attention.

Unions in general have been in a long slow multi-decade decline, from their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, but this year they were resurgent and effective. With both the writers and the actors striking simultaneously, Hollywood was brought to its knees. Television and film production came to a screeching halt. The auto workers didn't call a general strike, with every factory shut down at once, instead they tried a new tactic where they had only targeted strikes at certain factories. This stretched their strike fund (which pays striking workers) enormously and allowed them to keep a constant pressure on the "Big Three" automakers. The U.A.W. head was masterful in his use of the national media throughout the strike, and seems to be a Union boss cut from the old mold of Union bosses of yore.

President Joe Biden, a longtime supporter of Union rights, became the first sitting president to actually appear and walk a picket line with the striking autoworkers, which may help him when it comes time for Michigan to vote next year. All around, the Unions won the battle in the court of public opinion and forced their industries to take their concerns seriously and to cough up some of the record profits being earned and return it to the workers who made those profits possible. So this was a pretty easy call -- American Unions were the Biggest Winners of 2023.



Biggest Loser Of 2023

We had quite a few nominations for Biggest Loser of 2023. From our readers: "democracy" (andygaus), "Rudy Giuliani" (nypoet22), and "Florida Man/election denier Ron DeSantis" (Kick). Those last two tied into a general sort of nomination we had considered: election deniers in general (Fox News losing $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems, Rudy Giuliani losing $148 million, all the fake electors who are now either indicted or about to be, etc.).

We also considered Donald Trump, since he's been racking up lots of losses all year long: a $5 million judgment to E. Jean Carroll for raping her and lying about it, possibly $10 million more for her second defamation trial against him -- which the judge has already ruled Trump has essentially lost (the court case will, like Rudy's recent one, only be about how much more money he'll owe her), the civil fraud case in New York (which, again, he's already essentially lost, other than figuring out the penalty), all the gag orders, all the denied appeals, and as icing on the cake his recent defenestration from the Colorado GOP primary ballot.

But we thought there was one loser who stood out even among this sorry lot. Because Kevin McCarthy lost it all this year, in spectacular and historic fashion.

As the year dawned, Kevin McCarthy (and the rest of America) had to endure an excruciating 15 votes before he convinced his fellow GOP House members to reward him with the speaker's gavel -- in the first such contested speaker's election in over 100 years. To obtain all the holdout votes, McCarthy cut all sorts of "side deals" that left him perhaps the weakest speaker in all of American history. He survived one tense moment when he reached an agreement with the White House over the Republican tactic of holding the debt ceiling (and both the American and world economy) hostage, but then when he passed a continuing resolution during a budget fight to avoid a government shutdown, he was unceremoniously chucked out (for the crime of doing his job). This is the first time in American history this has happened. His speakership -- a job he has been wanting for years and years, mind you -- lasted less than nine months. He tried to herd the Republican cats, but in the end he got clawed and bitten and eviscerated by them. Their unprecedented "motion to vacate the chair" worked, and McCarthy was out on his ear.

At least his predecessors (John Boehner and Paul Ryan) were given the opportunity to gracefully step down from the role, but Kevin McCarthy was forced out by the same hotheaded faction that's been essentially running the Republican House every time they have gotten a majority for the past decade or so. McCarthy slunk back to a position of "backbencher," and took potshots (and, apparently, literally threw elbows) at the ungrateful Republicans who ousted him. But after a few months of this humiliation, he decided to just hang up his "young guns" before the end of the year and resign his House seat altogether. "Young guns" is a reference to the 2010 book of the same name, which touted three up-and-coming Republicans in the House: Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy. All are now gone from the world of politics. McCarthy was the last standing, and just like the other two he was taken down by "friendly fire" from within his own caucus.

That's a pretty spectacular rise and fall. And an interesting comment on the savagery of internecine warfare within the Republican ranks as well. The saddest thing of all? According to one website (you just can't make this stuff up), the day the House voted to dethrone McCarthy was listed as "National Kevin Day."



Best Politician

We couldn't decide on this one, so we're giving it to three Democratic governors.

We did consider, we should mention for the sake of completeness, to give Best Politician to Donald Trump. All year long, things which would have completely torpedoed any other politician in American politics did nothing of the sort to Trump. With every bit of bad news, his poll ratings actually went up. But for some reason, "Best Politician" just didn't seem to fit, at least in our opinion. "Best" really should be more positive....

So instead we are giving it to three Democratic governors: Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky.

Newsom has spent all year running what might be called a "shadow campaign" for president. He's not actually running, he will tell you, but he certainly is out there having a whole bunch of fun building up his own personal political brand. And we'd bet our bottom dollar he will be running next time around, in 2028.

Newsom had somewhat of a unique opportunity, after he easily beat back a recall election in 2021 (where only 38 percent voted to recall him). This turned his 2022 re-election into an absolute cakewalk, and he barely had to spend any of his campaign war chest at all. This left him with a lot of money in the bank while he's facing term limits -- he cannot run for governor again. So he decided to have some fun with this money.

Newsom has become the nemesis of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, spending money to advertise in Florida to rip into DeSantis on a number of issues. If you'll excuse the language, it's kind of a pissing contest between the governor of two of the most-populous states in the country, over whose state is actually better. Newsom began this crusade when it appeared as though DeSantis was going to truly threaten to win the GOP nomination from Donald Trump, but even after that pipe dream faded, Newsom kept the pressure up. The two even debated on Fox News recently, which (when you think about it) is just downright bizarre -- a non-frontrunner GOP candidate for president debating a Democratic governor who isn't even running.

In any case, love him or hate him Newsom has done an excellent job of putting his face before a national audience, which should pay dividends when he does actually get around to running for president.

Gretchen Whitmer, on the other hand, also had a rather unique opportunity. In 2022, Michigan Democrats won control of both chambers of their state legislature for the first time in decades, while Whitmer coasted to re-election herself. Since then, Whitmer hasn't been timid about getting as much done as possible with full control of the Michigan government. She has passed a long list of Democratic agenda items that have all been sitting around gathering dust for decades. This has truly transformed the state, and not unlike Gavin Newsom there is a lot of talk of her running for president some day on her impressive record. So while Newsom wins Best Politician for his rampant politicking (California has had a Democratic statehouse for years, meaning there was no such backlog for him to tackle), Whitmer wins the same award for getting things done.

And finally, Kentucky's Andy Beshear wins Best Politician for, well... winning. As reader Kick put it in his nomination: "Andy Beshear won handily in deep red Kentucky." There aren't a whole lot of Democrats left who can manage to decisively win re-election in a red state, but Beshear managed the feat, keeping his campaign local and running on his record of accomplishments in the state. It wasn't particularly close, either, Beshear won by a margin of five percent. For such a victory, we agree he also deserves Best Politician of 2023.



Worst Politician

Well, there was George Santos...

But there's got to be a more apt award for him. We find ourselves wishing for a "Worst Human Being" category at times, we have to admit.

And we got two excellent suggestions from readers, the first from andygaus: Tommy Tuberville. "Yeah, he's pretty bad," we thought to ourselves, when reading that.

Both Kick and nypoet22 suggested Kevin McCarthy, which is entirely appropriate, but we just gave him Biggest Loser, so we don't want to pile on too much....

Instead, we're going with a very visceral reaction.

Our choice for Worst Politician became obvious, while watching the first Republican presidential debate. And it became absolutely set in stone, with every subsequent debate we watched afterwards.

Vivek Ramaswamy -- even though he only briefly appeared on most people's political radar -- was easily the Worst Politician of the year.

It wasn't even close, really.

If you didn't see any of the debates and you are wondering why we made this choice, well, just watch any random clip of him from any of the debates, and you will understand our choice within about 15 or 20 seconds.

We're not saying he's the worst as a politician in the sense of "doing it badly" (like Tuberville or McCarthy), we're saying it in the sense of "listening to him or watching him is torturous." Seriously, that bad.

We pray to all we hold holy that Donald Trump won't choose Vivek Ramaswamy as a running mate, because that would mean we would be subjected to seeing more of him next year, instead of him fading away to some sinecure job at Fox News or someplace.

For now, just for his annoying presence, for his repulsive personality... Vivek Ramaswamy is the Worst Politician of 2023.



Most Defining Political Moment

This one was pretty easy, actually, after re-reading all the events of the past year. The Most Defining Political Moment was Donald Trump's mugshot.

It was the focal point of a whole bunch of things that happened to Trump all year long:

His indictment in the case of the payments to Stormy Daniels.

Losing a defamation case to E. Jean Carroll, and then having the judge clarify that yes he had been judged to be a rapist.

His indictment in the classified documents case.

Him going on television repeatedly and admitting his guilt in most of these cases, while his lawyers tear their hair out offscreen.

His indictment in the January 6th attempted insurrection case.

His indictment in Georgia on RICO charges -- which are usually used against organized crime bosses.

All the motions and appeals he filed and lost.

All the gag orders placed on him.

Losing -- in advance -- the New York fraud trial against him.

Losing -- in advance -- the second defamation trial brought by E. Jean Carroll (scheduled to begin in January).

All of the breathless television coverage of an ex-president surrendering himself to the authorities, and the circuslike atmosphere of it all.

And, of course, the highest court in Colorado ruling that he engaged in the January 6th insurrection and thus is ineligible to become president again.

All of that (and a lot more, we didn't even mention all the legal troubles Trump's former lawyers and aides are facing...) was boiled down into one key moment -- a mugshot of a scowling former president, taken in Georgia (the other jurisdictions allowed him to skip this step).

The funniest part was that Trump immediately grifted a cool $7 million from his supporters by selling T-shirts and other merchandise with his mugshot and the phrase: "never surrender." This is the mugshot taken while he was surrendering himself, mind you. For us, that was indeed the Most Defining Political Moment of the entire year.



Turncoat Of The Year

As usual, we did consider Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, just on general principles. However, Sinema actually turned her coat (declared herself an Independent) at the very end of last year, and Manchin is technically still a Democrat (while eyeing a third-party bid for the presidency on the No Labels ticket), so we're giving them both a pass.

We also considered all of Trump's co-defendants in his Georgia RICO case who have already flipped on him and turned state's evidence -- most especially those who used to be his lawyers. That's going to provide all kinds of fun, when the case gets to trial and they testify (which, unlike the federal trials, will happen on camera).

From reader nypoet22's suggestion of Matt Gaetz, we also considered "all the Republicans who chucked out Kevin McCarthy," since that was some prime, Grade-A turncoatism, we have to admit. And entertaining, too, for the entire month of October, while the House GOP flailed around trying to find someone else to take the job!

But we're going to have to go with Robert F. Kennedy Junior, with a side-award to the Democrat who was briefly his campaign manager, Dennis Kucinich. R.F.K. Jr. is a nutjob, plain and simple. He's been an anti-vaxxer for a while, and he has plenty of other crazed conspiratorial beliefs to boot. Many of his own siblings denounced him when he announced he was challenging Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries (which is pretty embarrassing, you've got to admit). And Kucinich? What the heck was he thinking?!?

But that wasn't what truly won him the Turncoat of the Year award. What did was when he decided to abandon the Democratic Party and launch a third-party bid for the White House.

R.F.K. Jr., just on his name-recognition alone, could be enough to throw the entire race to Donald Trump. That is serious. And disappointing in the extreme. We have to think that both his uncle J.F.K. and his father R.F.K. are now turning over in their graves at what R.F.K. Jr. has become and what his candidacy might enable. So we sincerely hope we won't be awarding him this honor next year (if he turns out to be irrelevant, when people actually cast their votes), but for the threat he represents, we have to give Turncoat of the Year to R.F.K. Jr. (and, by extension, to Dennis Kucinich as well).



Most Boring

Our go-to for this award is always Joe Biden, since (in contrast to the hurricane of chaos Donald Trump emits constantly) he is so comfortably and soothingly boring.

But this year we had to stick them together.

Because the Most Boring thing that happened all year was the snoozefest of the presidential election. Not too many American voters are real happy that we're going to get "Biden v. Trump II" next year -- a replay of the 2020 election. Plenty of Republicans would have preferred someone beat Trump and plenty of Democrats would have preferred that Biden step down instead of running, but neither of those things took place. So we're all going to sit through a rematch next year, barring any major unexpected developments.

Trump could be running as a convicted felon by that point, but it's doubtful whether he'll literally be running from a jail cell (he will draw his appeals out as long as humanly possible, no doubt). But none of it is going to matter, since the Constitution is silent on convicted felons being president (or even "incarcerated convicted felons" ).

But for pundits like us, this year (where the primary race was supposed to happen) was supremely boring. You simply cannot get excited about a Republican race where the battle is for "who will win second place, only 30 or 40 points behind Trump." Trump's dominance of the GOP field has led to boring (and Trumpless) debates, and very little actual political news from the campaign trail.

Perhaps the actual general election cycle will be more interesting next year, but in the world of presidential politics 2023 was a total snoozer of a year.



Most Charismatic

Well the default answer to this category this year would have to be "Taylor Swift." We must admit, we are not a "Swiftie," but we do have acquaintances who are so we do understand the magnetic draw (or we try to, at any rate).

Swift (and, to be fair, Beyoncé as well) went on tour this year and they both brought an absolute economic bonanza to every single town they visited. They literally changed the local economy in dramatic ways. Swift's tour was pretty impressive (with a 44-song set that lasted over three hours!), and even more impressive was her announcing in the middle of it that she was giving all the workers on her tour (the roadies, the truckers... all of them) a nice $100,000 bonus each. We have never heard of such largesse from a performer before, so that was indeed impressive!

Then afterwards, Swift apparently hooked up with an NFL player, and that brought the collision of two completely independent (and almost mutually-exclusive) worlds of American pop culture together, sometimes with hilarious results (to wit: lots of teenage girls quickly trying to educate themselves on the rules of football, as well as a ketchup-and-ranch-dip meme that instantly went viral...).

But we deal with the political world, so we had to reluctantly decide not to give Taylor Swift the award...

Instead, we are giving Most Charismatic to the head of the United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain. He presented the face of the striking workers to America, and he seems cut from the traditional "tough as nails" Union boss mold. He achieved a monumental victory over the Big Three auto corporations and won a 25 percent raise for his workers.

And through it all, his personality shone through in a very charismatic way. OK, sure, we know he's not as charismatic as Taylor Swift, but he was the Most Charismatic in the political world this year.



Bummest Rap

The Bummest Rap this year was pretty easy to identify. Despite Republicans desperately trying to paint Joe Biden as some sort of kingpin of what they call the "Biden Crime Family," they've actually got nothing on him. Nothing. Nada. Zippo. A big fat goose egg.

Throughout the year, Republicans have been attempting a sort of "Hail Mary whataboutism," evidenced best by their pathetic attempt to say that Joe Biden finding a handful of classified documents, immediately informing the Justice Department, and not only voluntarily handing them over but allowing his property to be searched (just to make sure there weren't others) was anything like the criminal antics of Donald Trump trying to hide the hundreds of classified documents that he was refusing to hand over, even after a subpoena.

The Republicans have worked themselves into an absolute frenzy over Joe Biden, despite not finding a single shred of evidence of any wrongdoing. This will likely culminate in the Republican House impeaching Biden next year, which is when we will all see the absolute hollowness of their fevered claims.

Joe Biden is clean as a whistle. Saying he's a crime boss was the Bummest Rap of the year.



Fairest Rap

There are so many to choose from: Rudy Giuliani. George Santos. Donald Trump's 91 indictments. Donald Trump is a rapist.

Our runner-up in this category is Fox News, who was sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems for spewing lies about the company somehow being at the center of a giant election-stealing plot in 2020. The rap against Fox has always been that they are not a news organization but are instead nothing short of a propaganda operation. They used to be a Republican propaganda outlet but since the rise of Trump became a Trump propaganda outlet. Since then, they've changed their ways (marginally) and don't parrot Trump's Big Lie anymore. Because it hurts their bottom line, in a big way.

Fox settled with Dominion -- after a whole tranche of embarrassing internal communications was made public -- for the mind-bending sum of 787.5 million dollars. Again -- they entered into this settlement voluntarily to avoid a jury slapping them with even higher damages. In other words, they fully admitted that they were indeed a propaganda outfit and not a news organization -- that the rap against them was fair.

But instead, we are going to give Fairest Rap to the obvious conclusion that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is for sale to the highest bidder. News broke this year of all the goodies he grifted off of conservative donors, and then more and more details have trickled out in a constant stream ever since. The other Supremes were so embarrassed by all of this that they came up with -- for the first time ever -- a code of ethics for them to live by.

Of course, this code may prove to be inadequate window-dressing, since it has no teeth (no enforcement method). It is all voluntary. The justices are supposed to keep to the code and police themselves (which doesn't sound like a recipe for ethical success to us).

But the justices have long resisted even making such a window-dressing move in the first place. This year, however, they were forced to. Because Clarence Thomas is so obviously greedy and entitled and corrupt -- the Fairest Rap of the year.



Best Comeback

In all honesty, we really thought that Donald Trump would be the winner of this category. But then we thought some more and realized he didn't have a "comeback" because he never had anywhere to come back from.

Trump's political resilience is extraordinary. He is King Teflon -- nothing sticks to him ever. Throughout the year, he has faced more and more legal problems, getting indicted a jaw-dropping 91 times and having to surrender himself to the authorities on four separate occasions -- and each and every time his poll numbers went up.

More and more details emerged in these indictments as to just how guilty he is of so many different serious crimes. Republican voters didn't care. Trump went right on being his bombastic self, saying a truckload of intensely offensive things -- and again, none of it hurt him politically at all. Trump defies the law of political gravity, over and over again.

But again, he never had a "comeback" because he never slipped or fell. He was never behind in the polls and then had a resurgence, he's just been on top all year. He blew off all the R.N.C. presidential debates, and nobody cared. But being untouchable isn't the same as launching a comeback.

So instead we are going to award "Best Comeback" to a rather mundane sort of organization: the Internal Revenue Service.

From an article way back in March:

They have been using the money provided to them by Congress to hire lots of people to answer phones and dig through the massive backlog they piled up the year before. And they've succeeded. Their stats are all impressive, and it is notable that there simply weren't a raft of stories in the news this tax season about unprocessed returns and unanswered phone calls. That is a monumental turnaround for a government agency, when you consider where they were in 2022. Such rebuilding can occasionally succeed at government agencies, but it usually takes many years (if not decades) to have any sort of real-life impact. The I.R.S. turned things completely around within one year.

That is not just impressive, it was the Best Comeback of the year.



Most Original Thinker

While that last one was a fairly literal interpretation of the award category, in this one we're going to get a little looser.

Most Original Thinker of the year was George Santos. After all, Santos wasn't content to tell the story of his life, instead he had to make it all up. He spun story after story about his wonderful life, which you have to admit takes a certain amount of creativity. As reader Kick pointed out: "not content to lie about being a star athlete on a college volleyball team, also fabricated knee replacements (both knees) as a consequence." Santos also got the nod from reader MtnCaddy, and we have to agree. Santos built story upon story, weaving a web of fabrication that eventually ensnared him and brought about his ruin.

It was all very tawdry and pathetic, of course. At least Donald Trump (who told over 30,000 lies while in office) usually lied about big and dramatic things. Santos, by comparison, was definitely varsity-league.

We have no idea what mental needs a person has to have to construct an entirely false life story. To just lie and lie and lie, and when you are caught lying to cover it up with even more lies -- that takes a certain type of person, and (not being a trained therapist) we have no idea what it all means, inside the head of George Santos.

But you have to admit -- it was all original! It was all made up of whole cloth, spun into a pattern of lies Santos proudly draped around himself. He is facing almost two dozen charges now (mostly for stealing from people during his campaign) and it certainly seems like a stint in prison is in his near future. But whenever he gets out, we fully expect him to make a bid for that year's "Best Comeback" award, because he seems like that type of guy -- the type that never really goes away completely. After all, he's got so many stories to tell!



Most Stagnant Thinker

We did consider one reader suggestion for this one (andygaus nominated "Mike Johnson," and it'd be easy to make that case), but we have to vent about one specific bit of stagnant thinking that brought great harm to millions of families' lives instead.

Senator Joe Manchin pretty much singlehandedly killed the expansion of a federal program which had been passed as an emergency COVID measure but really should have continued afterwards because it was such a smashing success story. With the expansion of the Child Tax Credit that literally put checks in the mailboxes of millions of families, child poverty was cut in half. But two senators saw to it that the program would not continue beyond the COVID years, Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. But Manchin was the worst:



Manchin, when all the other Democrats were trying to convince him to continue the program, stated that he wasn't a fan of it because (to his way of thinking) all the people who got the money would just spend it "on drugs."

That is some pretty world-class stagnant thinking, and why Joe Manchin gets the award, since even after seeing exactly what everyone predicted happen -- a huge spike in child poverty -- he just didn't care in the least.



Best Photo Op

We are struggling mightily not to give Best Photo Op to NASA's "Taters the cat" video, which was just publicly revealed. In keeping with the maxim "where would the internet be without cat videos?" the folks at NASA needed a video clip for a test of a laser communications system they wanted to test from a probe which is on its way to the asteroid belt. So, since it was a laser-based linkup, they decided to use a video of a cat chasing a laser-pointer dot. That's pretty epic, you've got to admit!

Personally, our vote was set very early on last year, as a few weeks into January both California's governor and President Joe Biden personally visited a restaurant which is located about a mile from where ChrisWeigant.com lives. We couldn't resist, and drove down to wave and show the colors. Biden and Gavin Newsom were touring the massive storm damage and for some reason a wharf nearby was the real poster child of the storm's violence (a big chunk of it was destroyed). But that was just on a personal level.

We could have gone with "funny," as the most hilarious political video of the year was seeing Vivek Ramaswamy giving a speech outdoors in front of a big sign reading: "TRUTH." At some point, the breeze picked up and the sign (not heavy, it didn't do any harm) toppled over on top of him. So -- quite literally -- it showed Vivek Ramaswamy "getting hit with the truth" (which we found completely hilarious).

Or we could have gone with "adorable," and chosen two White House photos of "take your kids to work day," which feature several children of Biden's Secret Service detail dressed up like their parents and doing a very serious job (if you click on only one link in this entire article, this should be the one -- it's that heartwarming!).

We got two nominations for Joe Biden appearing in a surprise visit to Kyiv, since it showed Biden's strong commitment to Ukraine so well (plus, for Biden it must have been irresistible since he had to take a very long train ride to get there).

But instead we were in agreement with reader andygaus that the Best Photo Op of the year was Joe Biden visiting a United Auto Workers picket line -- the first time a U.S. president has ever done so, as far as we know. Nothing says solidarity like showing up. And Biden's always been a very strong supporter of Unions, so it was entirely in character for him to do so. Standing with America's hardworking men and women as they demand a share of the massive profits their companies are raking in was indeed the Best Photo Op of the year.



Worst Photo Op

We are heavily inclined to give Worst Photo Op to Trump's mugshot, but we already gave it Most Defining Political Moment, so we're going to instead be contrarian with the category. Instead of "photo op" we are going to interpret it as what should have been a photo op but instead had to be drawn by hand.

But before we get to that, we have a few other nominees worth mentioning. The Chinese spy balloon. Biden stumbling over a sandbag on stage. Mitch McConnell freezing up as his brain's software crashed during a press conference (twice!). Pretty much all of the war images out of both Ukraine and Israel/Gaza. And, of course, closing the year off with a gay sex video shot inside a Senate hearing room (which is so graphic we refuse to even link to it).

Instead of all that, we're going with not Trump's mugshot but instead all the courtroom drawings of Trump being lectured by judges and scowling mightily. One, in particular, seems appropriate to highlight during this holiday season because for all the world it looks like "Trump as Mr. Grinch." One reporter went a step further and said it looked like: "a Romulan and the Grinch had a baby."

Most of Trump's trials next year will be in courtrooms that do not allow cameras. So we'll probably be seeing a lot of these courtroom sketches, but it's pretty hard to top Trump-as-The-Grinch, we have to admit. Which is why even though it isn't a photo but instead actual art, we are giving Worst Photo Op to this sketch.



Enough Already!

The first of our "catchall" categories. And an always-popular one to boot. Here is our list for "Enough Already!" for the past year (with credit for readers afterwards in parenthesis, to give credit where it is due):

George Santos -- Enough Already!

House speaker elections that last forever -- Enough Already!

"X" (né Twitter) -- Enough Already!

Elon Musk -- Enough Already!

Book bans -- Enough Already!

Donald Trump quoting Hitler -- Enough Already!

Trump's Big Lie -- Enough Already!

Rudy Giuliani -- Enough Already!

The entire government of Texas -- Enough Already!

Ron DeSantis -- Enough Already!

Vivek Ramaswamy -- Enough Already!

The Israeli/Gaza war -- Enough Already!



Worst Lie

Our go-to default for this category is, of course: "everything that Trump says, all the time."

Or, this year, perhaps: "everything George Santos has ever said, ever."

But instead we have not just one lie but a whole passel of them. And as things turned out, these were incredibly expensive lies. But the worst of the whole pack was one in particular that was especially heinous.

In 2020, Rudy Giuliani tried to subvert democracy by convincing the Georgia state legislature that two elections workers in the state had somehow, all by themselves, flipped a bazillion votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. In testifying before a legislative committee, Rudy accused the two of "quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they were vials of heroin or cocaine." The women's lives were destroyed by what followed this lie.

Recently, of course, Rudy got his comeuppance, as a court just awarded the two women $148 million dollars as the price Rudy must pay for his lies about them.

So Rudy viciously attacking the character of two innocent women who were just doing their job protecting the basic right of democracy wasn't just the Worst Lie, it was also the Most Expensive Lie as well (unless you count "corporate lying," where Fox News shelling out $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems for all their lies about the company would top the chart).

And Rudy still hasn't learned his lesson -- he's out there still telling lies about the women. Which has already led to a second lawsuit being filed against him.

Some people just never learn, it seems.



Capitalist Of The Year

We are going full-on tongue-in-cheek for this one.

According to everything the House Republicans and Fox News have to say on the subject, the choice of Capitalist Of The Year is an easy one: Hunter Biden!

He took nothing more than his last name and made millions of dollars off it. He's still cashing in on it, even as he fights his legal battles. So obviously he's got to be considered the Capitalist Of The Year, right?



Honorable Mention

Our second catchall category, for everyone who did or said something notable that didn't quite merit an actual award this year, our list of Honorable Mentions:

Congressman Robert Garcia, who was sworn into office on a copy of the United States Constitution, a photo of his parents (who both died during the COVID pandemic), his naturalization papers, and... a copy of Superman #1 from the Library of Congress. He explained this choice thusly:



Hakeem Jeffries, for holding together Democrats during both speakership floor battles.

Liz Cheney, just on general principles. (nypoet22)

Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. (Kick)

When Representative Jamie Raskin underwent chemotherapy and lost all his hair, he began wearing bandannas on his head and in an interview called the E Street Band's "Little Steven" Van Zandt "an inspiration." Van Zandt heard this while he was on tour, so he immediately packed up a bunch of his own signature bandannas and sent them to Raskin. That's classy, you have to admit.

John Fetterman for being so open about his treatments for depression.

The Department of Health and Human Services, who this year finally made a recommendation (that has yet to be acted upon) that marijuana should be moved from Schedule I to Schedule III. This is the most tangible retreat yet from any branch of the federal government in the pointless War On Weed.

The federal government finally beginning to open up their U.F.O. files and let some light in.

An unnamed Capitol Hill tour guide who, during the big debt ceiling crisis walked by a group of reporters staking out then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy's office and remarked: "Over here on your right, you'll see a nation on the brink of economic collapse."

And one that was even funnier -- the best headline of the year, to us. Politico, on the morning that both Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon got fired from their respective cable networks, ran the story under the header: "Fox Nips Tuck, CNN Squeezes Lemon Out."

Person Of The Year

No, it's not Taylor Swift (sorry Swifties!).

Instead, we're giving a collective award this year. To us, every single person working to serve Donald Trump and all his henchmen and henchwomen the heaping helping of justice he has more than earned deserves some sort of award for their labors, and we decided they should all get the highest honor on the list.

All of the prosecutors, from federal Special Counsel Jack Smith to District Attorney Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia and all the rest of the prosecutorial teams that put together all those 91 indictments. Plus all of the judges sitting for all of these cases, and all of the court support staff as well.

All of them have become targets, because Donald Trump operates using the same stochastic terrorism as a mob boss. Trump insults them, lies about them, vents his anger at them, and all of it is a big cue for all his followers to do the same (and worse).

None of these civil servants deserve that. They are just doing their jobs. They are applying the laws as written and bringing an ex-president to justice.

For standing strong despite the constant death threats and other threats of violence directed against them, we salute them all. To us, in this year of indictments and court cases, the Person Of The Year was earned by everyone who worked on any of these cases and then started getting death threats as a result. No one should have to put up with such fascistic and terroristic behavior for doing what is right, period.

[See you next week, for the conclusion of our 2022 awards!]

-- Chris Weigant


Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant

December 16, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- A Seinfeldian Impeachment Inquiry

President Joe Biden now has an official impeachment inquiry investigating him in the Republican-held House of Representatives. It is the most singular such inquiry in American history, since nobody -- not even the people who have been pushing the idea -- can say precisely what crime Biden has supposedly committed. So for now, they're just investigating him for the crime of (take your pick): being Joe Biden. Or being a Democratic president. Or beating Donald Trump. Or (most likely, given the Republican monomania on the idea) being Hunter Biden's father.

None of these things are actual crimes, it bears pointing out. But that simply doesn't matter to the House. They're merrily on their way to impeaching Biden for one reason and one reason alone: because Donald Trump wanted them to. Trump is still miffed (to put it mildly) that he's the only U.S. president to have been impeached not one time but twice. So, as far as he is concerned, Republicans have a duty to turn the tables and impeach the man who beat him at the polls, to try to weaken him for the presidential rematch that is shaping up for next year.

This has led to some (unintentionally) hilarious moments of idiocy from Republicans desperately trying to explain why they're moving forward with impeachment. James Comer, one of the committee chairs who is overseeing the multifaceted investigation into all things Biden, tried to refute the charge that his investigation is not transparent (a charge spectacularly made by Hunter this week, which we'll get to in a moment) with an epic Freudian slip: "This has been, I think, the most transparent, political -- er, congressional investigation." Talk about saying the quiet part out loud! Representative Ralph Norman, who had already accused Biden of being "cognitively gone," turned the entire concept of the American judicial system on its head by stating: "You cannot, just not, uh, say you are innocent and not have to prove it." Um, well... yes you can, here in America, where we have this little thing called "innocent until proven guilty."

They're tying themselves in knots trying to obfuscate the obvious political nature of what they're doing. Here is the best example we've seen:

As usual with Republicans, all the loudest voices calling for others to be punished are themselves guilty of precisely what they are accusing others of doing. Donald Trump feels free to profit off of foreign money flowing into his pockets, his offspring have reaped rewards in the billions of dollars from foreign entities, and James Comer -- who has been darkly insinuating that the "Biden crime family" (as he calls them) is using "shell companies" for nefarious purposes -- appears to have his own shell company, which was created to hide assets from public disclosure. He owns six acres of land together with one of his political donors. You just can't make this stuff up -- Republicans seem to almost always be guilty of projection, when the facts all come to light.

This Congress, and the Republican House in particular, has been possibly the least-productive one in all of American history. They're on their second House speaker already, having ousted the one it took them 15 rounds of votes to install, and we still feel the current speaker's chances of still being in the job by Valentine's Day to be roughly 50-50. The Washington Post ran an excellent deep-dive article (which is well worth reading in full) that examines what little Congress has accomplished this whole year, which began with:



You'll have to forgive us for the abrupt segue here, but as we were writing this some rather jaw-dropping news just broke. The jury in Rudy Giuliani's defamation case just returned with a unanimous judgment. The two Georgia elections workers Rudy falsely accused of being the masterminds behind "stealing" the presidential election from Donald Trump had asked for $48 million in direct damages ($24 million each). The jury didn't award them quite this much... in direct damages. But they did slap Rudy with $20 million (each) for emotional distress and a whopping $75 million in punitive damages to boot. All told, the final price tag that Rudy is on the hook for now: a whopping $148 million, which is $100 million more than what the women were requesting.

So that particular chicken has come home to roost, in a very big way. Rudy didn't exactly help himself during the trial, when he spoke to reporters publicly before deciding not to actually take the stand himself (which led to HuffPost running the amusing headline: "Rudy Giuliani Leaves Defamation Trial To Defame Some More Outside" ) and uttered the same exact falsehood that got him into trouble in the first place: "I told the truth. They were engaged in changing votes." Since this comment happened after the case was filed, the two women would be entirely justified to sue Rudy again for his comments during the case, but we're guessing with that jury award they won't even bother.

Rudy Giuliani (and others, including Donald Trump) made these two women's lives a living Hell. They testified to this during the trial, about how they started getting death threats after Rudy went after them, as well as having to abandon their home and livelihood in fear. They didn't deserve any of this, as they were just doing their job. Now we know what the price for ruining two people's lives is -- which (hopefully) will serve as a deterrent for others contemplating engaging in such character assassination in the future.

For those of you keeping score at home, Trump's Big Lie has now cost those who propagated it an astounding $935.5 million (when you add in the Fox News settlement). But it's undoubtedly going to go much higher than that, as there are plenty of other cases working their way through the legal system on the same subject.

Since we're on the subject of legal woes, we might as well zip through all the developments in Trump's cases too, just for the record. The week began with the special counsel looking into Trump at the federal level, Jack Smith, essentially calling Trump's bluff. Trump's motion to declare himself immune from all charges in the January 6th case was rejected by the judge, so Trump wanted to move it along the appeals process as slowly as possible, to delay the start of the actual trial as long as he could. Smith decided not to play Trump's game, however, and appealed directly to the Supreme Court for an emergency intervention. His reasoning is that the case is eventually going to wind up in front of the Supreme Court anyway (since it deals with constitutional questions that have never been ruled on previously) so why bother with all the intermediate steps? The court responded by asking Trump to file his response by next Wednesday. The court can actually move at lightning speed when it wants to, so they could indeed hear arguments and issue a judgment before the trial is set to open, in early March.

Trump lost another claim to immunity in an appeal in a different case, which means the second defamation case against him by E. Jean Carroll can now move ahead. It is scheduled to begin next month, and Trump has already essentially lost this case -- the jury (as in Rudy's case) will only have to consider how much Trump must pay in compensation.

In the case currently underway in New York, over Trump's fraud in the operation of his businesses, both sides wrapped up their presentations to the judge and final arguments will happen after the holiday break, in mid-January. It has already been determined Trump committed fraud in this case, so things don't look especially good for Trump. Maybe this is why he decided at the last minute not to take the stand for a second time, letting his lawyers rest their case early.

Out on the Republican campaign trail this week, there was a gaffe of epic proportions from one candidate's wife. Casey DeSantis, speaking in Iowa, somehow mistakenly thought that people who lived outside of Iowa could just show up on the night of the Republican caucuses and take place in the proceedings. She called on women nationwide to make the journey to do so, in fact.

This led to the Iowa Republican Party (in horror, no doubt) putting out a clarifying statement that said (we are paraphrasing, here): "Um, no... that would not be a good idea.... Jeez, we can't believe we have to say this, but only Iowa residents can take part in the Iowa caucuses, just like always...."

Trump gleefully got in on this action by accusing DeSantis of trying to engineer some massive voter fraud. Because that is what he does best, right? But in this one tiny instance, he's not actually wrong!

In other Florida-based Republican news, the state party chair -- who has been accused of rape and tried to explain it away by saying the woman accusing him had willingly participated in threesomes with his wife -- is still refusing to step down. But he may have floated the idea that he could be persuaded to do so if the party would give him a golden parachute to the tune of $2 million. Because Republicans are absolutely beyond shame in the age of Trump.

And finally, we have to point to an article we wrote earlier in the week that highlighted how many Republicans simply have no grasp whatsoever on what the United States Constitution actually means. It involves (as is traditional for this time of year) a holiday display put up in the Iowa statehouse by the Satanic Temple. Which seemed like a good place to wrap up our political roundup not just for this week but for the entire calendar year.





We have to give this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, for forcing the senators to actually do their job for another week.

They were scheduled to go on a three-week break for the year-end holidays, which -- for them -- is rather restrained (they take five weeks or more off in the middle of the summer, just because they can). But Schumer used the best political tactic in his quiver -- one used with greatest effect by Harry Reid in the past -- by denying the senators their extended break because they still had stuff left to do.

The Senate has been working towards voting on a supplemental appropriations bill which will give military aid to Ukraine and Israel and also was intended to shovel some money towards the southern border, to appease the Republicans. Sensing an opportunity, they decided to demand sweeping changes in immigration policy in exchange for their support. A bipartisan group has been trying to hammer out an agreement that enough Democrats and the White House can live with. Whether this effort will succeed or not is anyone's guess (the odds differ depending on who you ask), but they seemed close enough for Schumer to give them another week to try to finish up. Voting on the measure before the end of the year would be a big accomplishment.

It may or may not happen, as we noted. But if they had all gone home last night, it definitely would not have happened. Using the pressure of giving up their vacation time is a tactic which has worked wonders in the past, so this week for giving it a try, Chuck Schumer is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Congratulate Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





We have to admit, in the entire history of this award, we've never had such a bizarre candidate for it. Not personally bizarre (we've had a passel of weirder Democrats in that regard), but more her situation.

George Santos was kicked out of the House of Representatives for, well, for being George Santos ('nuff said...). So the seat is empty and there will be a special election in New York next year to replace him. So the two parties are deciding on their candidates. And the Republican announcement had one jaw-dropping footnote attached:



An interesting choice, for them, you've got to admit. But their choice gets a lot more interesting. After mentioning Tom Suozzi, the candidate the Democrats have settled on, the article goes on to explain:



We can't even begin to wrap our heads around the Republicans running a registered Democrat for a House seat, and will have to wait until some further developments appear in this story. But just on the face of it, we have to admit we are left dazed and confused.

So just given the bare facts of the case, we have to award Mazi Pilip this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. How could we not? We cannot think of another Democrat who has run -- while still remaining a registered Democrat -- on the Republican ticket for a congressional race.

Seriously, which party would she even caucus with if she wins? It just staggers the mind....

[Contact Nassau County Legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip via her official contact page (which does not have an email address or online form), to let her know what you think of her actions.]




Volume 733 (12/15/23)

A quick reminder that this column will not appear for the next two weeks, as instead we bring you our annual year-end awards columns. You can go to the nominations page for both installments of these if you've got any ideas for who deserves an award for 2023.

And of course, we will see you all back here in 2025, so here's wishing everyone has the happiest of holidays!

For this week, we had fully intended to use all our talking points to absolutely ridicule the Republican impeachment inquiry, but there's one other event from the past week which demanded Democrats respond, so we stuck that one in there in the first position (because it is a very serious matter, and a very important point for Democrats to make).



A cruel lie

Democrats have already begun making this political case. This is good, because nothing points out the sheer cruelty of the Republican position like a personal example of the consequences of their agenda.

"A woman in Texas who very much wanted a healthy baby had to file a lawsuit in an attempt to get an abortion, because her fetus had a genetic condition that could have impacted her future fertility if it was brought to term, and was guaranteed to be fatal for the child. This decision, of course, should have been made between Kate Cox and her doctor, but in Texas it is a decision not for them but for the attorney general and the state supreme court instead. After getting a judge to rule that she did indeed qualify for one of the exceptions written into the Texas abortion ban law, the state's attorney general threatened her doctors and hospitals and then the supreme court overturned the ruling. Republicans try to sell their forced-birth agenda by stating that they are in favor of 'exemptions' that usually include the health of the mother. But as we can all plainly see, these so-called 'exemptions' are nothing more than a cruel lie. They do not protect women, or the doctors who care for them. And this is what Republicans want nationwide -- what happened to Kate Cox to happen to woman after woman after woman. Cox was able to travel to another state to obtain an abortion, but if the Republicans get their way that won't even be an option in the future."



An impeachment about nothing

This one's kind of a choose-your-metaphor talking point.

"The Republicans have announced what can only be called a 'Seinfeldian' impeachment inquiry, since it is an impeachment inquiry 'about nothing.' It is a fishing expedition plain and simple. Republicans can't even tell you what crime they are supposedly investigating. As Gertrude Stein so aptly put it: 'There is no there there.' Or maybe Alice's Red Queen is more appropriate: 'Sentence first, verdict afterwards!' They've got nothing, they're not going to find anything, and they'll probably wind up trying to impeach Joe Biden for the crime of not being Donald Trump. The entire thing is absolutely ridiculous on the face of it."



Hunting Hunter

The president's son Hunter is, of course, not a public official and never has been, so it would be impossible to impeach him. But that's not stopping the Republicans! Hunter showed up at the Capitol on the day the Republicans had subpoenaed him, but refused to testify unless it happened in a public hearing -- something the chair of the committee had proposed earlier, in fact. But the Republicans insisted it had to be behind closed doors and when Hunter refused that option, they darkly warned of contempt of Congress charges. Notably, this was all way too much for one prominent personality on Fox News to swallow. Here is just some of what Steve Doocy has had to say -- on the Fox airwaves -- about the situation of late:





Insinuation-checking

The media have, in general, been doing a pretty good job on this front.

"When you hear Republicans on rightwing media talk about their impeachment investigation, they boldly accuse Joe Biden of all sorts of nefarious crimes and misdeeds. They say he took bribes and offered foreigners quid pro quo arrangements in return. They say he's the kingpin of what they call the 'Biden crime family.' They say a lot of stuff. But when you actually try to check all these accusations out, it turns out they are all completely and utterly false or, at best, misleading in the extreme. You can't even really call it 'fact-checking' because they don't rely on facts for any of it. You'd have to call it 'insinuation-checking,' and so far none of it has panned out at all. It's a fact-free investigation, but that hasn't stopped them from wildly tossing around unsubstantiated accusations."



No fire, no smoke

We're going to go back to getting metaphorical for this one.

"The Republicans saw a fluffy little white cloud on the horizon and went around screaming that it was a huge plume of smoke. 'Look at all that smoke!' they cried. When anyone tried to contradict them by saying, 'That's not smoke, it is a fluffy little cloud,' they doubled down and insisted there was a giant fire raging beneath it. But no matter how much they rant and rave, there's nothing there but an innocent little cloud. There is no smoke, and there is no fire, period."



Guilty until proven innocent

We have to return to this one, because it is so outrageous that it demands highlighting.

"Representative Ralph Norman certainly got his cart before his horse this week, showing he fails to grasp the most basic understanding of the system of American justice. Speaking in favor of voting to formalize a House impeachment inquiry on the floor of the chamber, Norman said, and I quote: 'You cannot, just not, uh, say you are innocent and not have to prove it.' Well, actually, Congressman Norman, that is exactly what you can do here in America. Every single person is considered -- stop me if you've heard this phrase before -- innocent until proven guilty in a court of law in this country. That's a bedrock part of what it means to be an American, in fact. He should really be ashamed of himself for not understanding this basic concept which is taught in elementary-school history classes, but I suppose that Republicans these days are incapable of feeling ashamed about much of anything."



Masters of projection

'Twas always thus, with Republicans.

"Republicans are absolute masters of projection. According to them, it is disqualifying for any politician to have any family members who profit off their famous last name, especially when the money comes from China or any other foreign country. Like, you know, if the crown prince of Saudi Arabia handed the son of an American politician two billion dollars to play around with. Or getting China to enter into business dealings with any member of the family. I mean... have these people met the Trump family? Seriously? Or how about the chair of one of the impeachment committees darkly insinuating that shell companies are always evil and nefarious while he uses one to hide ownership of a plot of land he owns with a political donor?!? Whenever I hear a Republican make a wild accusation against any Democrat, my go-to reaction is to just automatically assume that whoever is making the accusation is quite likely guilty of exactly what they are accusing others of doing. It's usually a pretty safe bet."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

December 9, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Not The Odds But The Stakes

We return after our extended holiday break to a growing realization in the political world. We had already come to this conclusion a while back, but it seems more and more people are now realizing that, barring any force majeure appearing on the horizon, Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president next year. His polling tells this story plainly: Trump is up roughly 50 points over his nearest competitor nationally, and although his lead isn't quite as commanding in the early-voting states, it is still pretty daunting (Trump is up roughly 30 points in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina). Voting will begin next month, meaning there just isn't much time left for any of this to change -- and no real reason to think it will.

Ronald Reagan first earned the term, but Donald Trump is the true "Teflon" politician. Nothing sticks to him. Not 91 felony counts, not court cases he has either lost or is going to lose, not any outrageous thing he says or does... it all just slides off him. Reagan achieved this through his charm, while Trump achieved it through starting a political personality cult the likes of which America has not seen since George Washington's day. To his MAGA followers, the Dear Leader is absolutely incapable of doing anything wrong, ever. No evidence to the contrary is ever going to convince them.

There has never been such an odds-on favorite to win the nomination at this point who was not already president. Trump is running as a sort of pseudo-incumbent (since he insists he won the 2020 election to this day), and he has cleared the field of contenders without even much acknowledgement that they even exist. Trump skipped all four official Republican debates, and it didn't hurt him politically in the slightest.

The real odds people are worried about are whether Trump can beat President Joe Biden or not next November. But as Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post reminds us, polling a year before the election is notoriously squishy and should be taken with a grain of salt. She wrote in an extended rant about how people in the political commentary industry she is a part of need to not treat this like an ordinary-horserace presidential contest. Instead of taking the easy route -- defined as minutely watching the polling and writing article after article about very subtle shifts in the percentages -- she challenges them to treat Trump differently. Trump needs to be treated as a threat, not a normal everyday politician. She writes (emphasis in original):

She's right. Trump is a walking, talking existential crisis in American democracy. And polling this far out is pretty meaningless. Most Americans, as usual, are simply not paying attention to politics. This is the shocking reality that exists outside the bubble political pundits live in, and they forget it far too often. Most people aren't even aware (because they really don't want to believe it, probably) that next year's election is almost certainly going to be a rematch between Trump and Biden. Average Americans just don't really have the bandwidth to deal with politics, especially now when it is so exhausting and frustrating to do so. Most people have no idea what Joe Biden has accomplished, or what Donald Trump is planning for his own possible second term. They're not going to tune into the presidential race for months and months -- if they do at all. That's a reality that is often forgotten inside the Beltway and on cable television.

The races for the two parties' nominations are virtually over before they began. Trump is going to win Super Tuesday and no other Republican candidate is even going to get close enough to land a punch on him. Joe Biden is also going to skate to his party's nomination. That much seems crystal-clear at this point. But the race between the two is still wide open. First, anything can happen in politics and a year is an absolute eternity in the political world. Who would have thought, three months ago, that a war in Israel and Gaza would be one of the biggest news stories around? Unforeseen events are, by definition, unpredictable. Nobody has any clue what the biggest news story of the day is going to be next September or October. It will likely be something unexpected, that's about the only intelligent thing you can say at this point. Just as one example of the unpredictability of the future: where will the American economy be next year, and how will the public feel about it? Again, it's impossible to say. Probably differently than they do today, but who knows whether that will be better or worse?

Some in the media are waking up to this reality, which is a positive development. Over the past few weeks we have seen stories in the most influential newspapers in the country laying out Trump's actual plans for a second term in office, in great detail. In a nutshell, he plans to rule as a king. He will do what he feels like doing, and he doesn't want anyone in the government standing in his way. And "what he feels like doing" is downright frightening. He wants to round up immigrants, put them in internment camps, and deport millions of them. He wants to use the full power of the federal government to go after his perceived enemies. He wants to be a dictator, in other words. And the media are finally beginning to take it seriously, rather than treating it merely as: "Oh, Trump says a lot of crazy stuff -- it's not news, he's always done that." Or, even worse, treating it all as some sort of political comedy.

None of this is going to change the minds of enough Republican voters to matter, though. Even if the media does a good job of continuing to raise the alarm over Trump's intentions, he's still going to become the Republican presidential nominee next year. Who is going to stop him? Nikki Haley? Ron DeSantis? Not likely.

So we are going to take Jay Rosen's advice to heart, over the course of the next year. We will be writing about the horserace numbers (we can't help ourselves), but we will also attempt to give equal weight to the stakes involved. Because this election is going to be a critical one for the future of our country. We will be forgoing our usual enumerated talking points later in this column because we thought the subject of the stakes involved was important enough to let loose a rant of our own.

But before we get to that, we're going to very quickly zip through what else has been happening in politics.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had a debate, for some inexplicable reason.

The Republican Party held its fourth "all the people who want to be president who will get beaten by Donald Trump" debate, for some inexplicable reason.

Doug Burgum ("Who?" ) dropped out of the GOP nomination race. Nikki Haley is close to overtaking DeSantis for second place in the national polling, but at such a low level that none of it is any challenge to Trump.

In Trump legal news, a judge ruled that Trump does not have some sort of magic immunity for everything he ever did while president, using some pretty scathing language to refute this notion:



This was a big blow to Team Trump, but they're already appealing it and it may wind up before the Supreme Court sooner or later (sooner, hopefully).

Colorado's supreme court is now considering whether the Fourteenth Amendment should prevent Trump from appearing on the state's primary ballot -- another case that could wind up at the U.S. Supreme Court before the election.

The chickens are coming home to roost for many of the "fake electors" from the 2020 presidential election. In Wisconsin, they just settled a civil case brought by the real electors by admitting they were lying about being the state's electors and promising never to be an elector in any future election where Donald Trump is on the ballot. Meanwhile, the fake electors in both Nevada and Arizona have been indicted and will be tried for their actions.

Just today, the restraining order against Trump in the January 6th case against him was largely reinstated.

And, just to be fair, over on the other side of politics, Hunter Biden has been indicted again, this time for tax evasion. Biden has been called to testify in front of a House committee next week, but is demanding that the hearing be public or he's not going to show up, so we'll have to see what happens next week.

In Congress, Senator Tommy Tuberville finally relented on his blanket hold that has been holding up all high-ranking military promotions all year long, and the Senate approved over 400 promotions in a single vote. Tuberville never got what he was demanding, of course, so the entire thing was a pointless waste of time which did nothing but degrade America's military readiness.

There's a big fight in the Senate happening behind the scenes over the money Joe Biden has requested for military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Biden also asked for money for the problems at America's southern border as well, and the Republicans are trying to push several rather extreme changes to immigration policy in return. The plan is to move this bill before the end of the year, so it all might come to a head next week.

Over in the House, Mike Johnson is blurring the faces of the insurrectionists in all the January 6th footage he's releasing, to protect their identities. How this is not "aiding and abetting" insurrectionists is beyond us, personally.

The Texas GOP couldn't manage to agree on a measure condeming Nazis and antisemites, which is an absolute disgrace. Or it should be, at any rate.

Speaking of state-level Republican disgraces, the chair of the Florida GOP has been accused of rape but is trying to insist it was just some consensual sex between him and a woman he's not married to -- a woman he had previously had sex with, in a threesome, with his wife. His wife has been a leader of the "Moms For Liberty" movement -- you know, the folks who are trying to ban books in school libraries so children aren't exposed to what they see as deviant sexual behavior. Pretty ironic, eh? So far, he's refusing to step down from leading the state's GOP, so we'll have to see how embarrassing this one gets before it is over.

Kevin McCarthy is officially going to throw in the towel and step down from his House seat at the end of the year. Guess it's no fun to be a backbencher in a House you used to run... the seat is in a solid-red California district, though, so it won't be at risk for the Republicans, but they'll have to survive at least a few months with and even tinier margin for any votes.

But the big news from the House was that the Republicans were finally so disgusted by one of their own that they kicked out George Santos. His district is a competitive one, so they might be losing this vote entirely. Santos left with a quote for the ages: "To Hell with this place," and is exploring other employment opportunities by offering his services for a few hundred dollars a pop on the site Cameo, where people are paid to deliver birthday or other messages to anyone you pay them to. Some folks are already having a whole bunch of fun with this, as should have been expected.

And we'll end with some even more positive news. Marijuana possession is now legal in the state of Ohio for all adults, and the Republican chair of the relevant House committee just said he would be OK with Washington D.C. finally being able to implement their own regulated recreational marijuana marketplace (which is an enormous sea-change for Republicans). We wrote about this yesterday as well, in case anyone's interested.





This one's pretty easy, as it is not every week that a political record is broken (that has stood for almost two centuries). Here's the story, in case you missed it:



Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer presented Vice President Harris with a golden gavel to mark the occasion. Which seems entirely appropriate, when breaking a record set by John Calhoun.

For being the deciding vote 32 times in just over three years, Kamala Harris is easily our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Congratulate Vice President Kamala Harris on her official contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





Maybe it's the holiday spirit in the air, but we don't have any real candidates for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. Representative Jamaal Bowman was censured by the House for his "pulling the fire alarm" stunt, but these days it's almost a badge of honor to be censured by the clowns running the Republican House so we don't consider it disappointing in the slightest (and we already dinged him for the stunt, back when it happened).

If anyone's got any suggestions for the MDDOTW, feel free to post them down in the comments, as usual. Otherwise, we're putting the award back on the shelf for another week.




Volume 732 (12/8/23)

Liz Cheney's got a new book out (and has even been teasing a possible third-party presidential bid). In one of her appearances to promote the book she had a rather grim take on the danger of Donald Trump:



One other quote caught our eye this week, since it is rather personal to us. Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official (who obviously would find a spot in Trump's White House in a second term as well) said on Steve Bannon's podcast:



We present these quotes as a preamble to our rant this week (for obvious reasons).



The stakes are high

The next American presidential election will be the most important one in your lifetime. Sure, you've heard that before -- every election has some form of alarmism attached to it. But this time it is just as true as it was in 2020, because the choice is between American democracy continuing to build on its almost-250-year run or America becoming something far different -- and far worse -- than it has been for all those years. When the presumptive Republican candidate feels confident enough to joke about when and how much he will be a dictator, you know that things have changed for the worse already.

Donald Trump's first term was bad enough. We don't even have the time to go into how bad it was, in fact. Please just remember how it ended -- in the midst of a pandemic that was exacerbated by Trump belittling not just the disease but also the government scientists who were trying their hardest to keep people alive. Thousands died that didn't have to. Supply chains were in chaos. People were lining up before stores opened in the hopes of buying toilet paper. The economy was in shambles. And all Trump cared about was Trump. Remember all that? But a second Trump term would be far worse, even without a global pandemic raging.

The first time around, Trump was restrained by the "adults in the room" with him -- chiefs of staff, aides, cabinet members, military leaders, Justice Department lawyers, etc. -- who would tell him: "You cannot do that -- it is unconstitutional and illegal." This time around, there won't be any of that holding him back. He learned one big thing from his first term -- to value personal loyalty to him above all else. If he regains power, he will hire only the most servile people imaginable; people whose only guiding principle is: "Trump can never do anything wrong." There will be no adults left in the room. There will be no guardrails. If anyone refuses Trump or tells him "No" in any way, they will be immediately fired and replaced by someone more tractable.

No presidential tradition or convention is going to hold Trump back. He will laugh at anyone who says: "But no president has ever done such a thing before." Trump will do precisely what he feels like doing, and even the judicial system will likely not be enough to restrain him. If the Supreme Court rules against him, Trump could very well just ignore them and do whatever he wants anyway. This is a frightening prospect, but it is very real.

Trump will hire people to work for him who have passed a loyalty test. Not to the U.S. Constitution, not to America, but to him personally. Because that is how Trump sees things. If he is president, then disloyalty to him must mean disloyalty to America, plain and simple. Donald Trump has probably never heard the quote: "L'état, c'est moi," but once someone translated and explained it to him, he would likely agree wholeheartedly with Louis XIV. Trump is America, according to Trump. Therefore, anyone who disagrees with him or puts obstacles in his way is not just disloyal, they have actually committed treason against the country. This is precisely how Trump sees things, and he has never been shy about admitting it.

Trump will replace as many civil servants in the federal government as he can get away with, and the people he will hire will not have to have relevant experience -- but they will have to take his loyalty test to make sure they are ideologically committed to MAGA and Trump. Trump will change the rules for the civil service so he can fire thousands of people in what were non-partisan jobs and hire his own toadies instead. If the Senate won't approve his nominees, he'll just "temporarily" appoint them instead. There will be no checks or balances to restrain him.

Once he's got enough true believers in place, he will use the power of the federal government to go after his enemies -- who he has already referred to as "vermin" to be exterminated. The only surprise in this might be that Trump will attempt his promised "retribution" against his fellow Republicans before he even gets around to his Democratic opponents. Trump is still very angry with all sorts of Republicans who weren't sufficiently loyal to him (as he sees things) the last time around (and since), and those people will likely be the first on his list. He will direct all branches of the federal government, including the Justice Department, to persecute his political enemies. He's out there promising to do so -- this really should not be surprising or somehow unbelievable to anyone.

Trump will quite likely use the Insurrection Act to send in the U.S. military to attack any protests or demonstrations he does not agree with. The last time Trump became president, he had a rather pathetic turnout for his inauguration which was immediately followed by a massive anti-Trump protest demonstration in Washington. This time around, Trump will likely be ready and all those women wearing "pussy hats" will probably be met with tear gas, batons, and worse. Any other protests Trump disapproves of which crop up in any other American cities will also be dealt with by sending in the military, and possibly declaring martial law. The last time around, high-ranking military officers in the Pentagon might have refused to follow such orders, but the next time around they will be replaced by people like Michael Flynn -- who won't hesitate to do so.

Trump, at some point, will declare a national emergency on one pretext or another and use it to anoint himself with sweeping powers to fight this non-existent "emergency." This is what autocrats always do when they take power in a democracy, so it really should surprise no one when it actually happens. This is how dictators always seize all the reins of power, and Trump will almost certainly follow the same model. He will force Congress to approve the national emergency and his sweeping powers to fight it (or he will just ignore them altogether if they don't). If the Republicans hold power in the House and regain control of the Senate, this would be a very real danger.

As for what else Trump might do after he gains full control, the imagination just staggers. This is a man who, while president, considered dropping nuclear bombs into hurricanes in the Atlantic, just to see what would happen. This is a man who wanted to buy Greenland as an investment property. This is a man who considered ordering the military to bomb drug cartel sites in Mexico, and then pretend to the rest of the world that we had no idea where those bombs came from... possibly China? This is not exaggeration, this is what Trump actually considered doing while president. But at the time, there were saner people around him who pulled him back from the brink of such bizarre and reckless actions. The next time there won't be such guardrails -- there will only be people whose only ambition in life is to please Trump.

So yes, the stakes are almost unimaginably high. The next American presidential election might be the last one for a very long time. Trump could easily proclaim himself president-for-life and then name Donald Trump Junior his heir apparent. The one mark of dictators everywhere is that they don't relinquish power, ever. And look at what happened the last time Trump was in office -- he tried to overturn the results of an election he lost. Next time around, he'll solve the problem by just not having another election.

Think this is all Chicken Little saying the sky is falling? Think this is all wildly speculative and alarmist? Well then, you haven't been paying close enough attention. The only check on any of Trump's ambitions if he becomes president again may be what served as the biggest check on his ambitions in his first term -- his short attention span and his gross incompetence in actually getting things done. Trump has lots of ideas, but very little follow-through. But that's a pretty thin reed to hang America's hopes on.

Donald Trump has not been shy about talking about his plans out on the campaign trail. He's out there "saying the quiet part out loud" to anyone who will listen. The more liberals and other sane people recoil in horror, the more amusement Trump gets from saying such things. He's not hiding his intentions. He's not speaking in "dog whistles," he's just out there telling it like it is (as far as he sees things) and letting everyone know exactly what to expect.

So yes, the stakes are high. What is in danger of being lost is American democracy itself. A vote for Trump is a vote for a strongman government doing exactly what one man wants. That is the outcome Donald Trump is promising. Joe Biden may not be perfect, but as he puts it: "Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative." And in the 2024 presidential election, the alternative is downright frightening. So yes, next year's election is indeed going to be the most important one you ever vote in. American democracy will be on the ballot, running against a dictatorship. Which is about as high as the stakes can get.


:sp:

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

November 18, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- What Next? Food Fights In The Cafeteria?

Over 20 years ago -- right around when Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of our state -- we were fond of shocking people by pointing out: "Politics has become indistinguishable from show business." The entertainment industry and our political system had been slowly merging, ever since the ascension of B-movie actor Ronald Reagan to the White House in the 1980s. But we have to say, we never foresaw the day when politics would become completely replaced by entertainment and entertainment alone. And we seem to be fast approaching that point.

Part of this evolution has been the shift in power away from the party machinery to individual politicians. These days, doing outrageous (but entertaining) things in politics means you get instantly rewarded -- you get invited onto news shows to be even more entertaining while explaining your outrageousness, your name gets known because of all this exposure, people who enjoy your antics begin directly donating to your campaign, and so you acquire money and with it, political power. You will notice that the party apparatus plays zero role in this equation. Which is one big reason the parties are now so toothless to police their own ranks.

Of course, this evolution was put into overdrive with the ascension of Donald Trump to the White House. He showed Republicans the way to ignore the party while still wowing the base with all manner of amusements. Trump truly has no core political ideology (other than, perhaps, xenophobia), instead he's all about the entertainment factor. If he makes liberals angry, then he's done his job (as far as both he and his followers are concerned). It simply does not matter what he says or does, as long as he "owns the libs" by doing so.

So those who are now beginning to follow in Trump's political footsteps aren't bound by any overarching theory of government. Instead, they live and die by Trump's favorite metric: audience ratings. As long as they are getting their name out there and ranting and raving on rightwing television, the base is delighted and the campaign contributions keep flowing in.

Which led, inexorably, to this week. The best write-up we have read about this entire rather crazy week in Washington attempted to answer the question of which Republican member of Congress had been the most unreasonable this week:

And that was before the article even got around to mentioning George Santos. This is actually a very good article, because it provides an overview of not just each one of these dustups, but also what was and was not accomplished this week in Washington.

The news that got buried by all this junior-high-school bickering was that Congress not only did its job, but it actually did so two days early! Well, sure, this wasn't really all that big an accomplishment in the grand scheme of things -- after all, they didn't actually "do their job" so much as "successfully punt doing their job until January" (which isn't quite as impressive a feat). Nonetheless, they did beat the clock for once, meaning we aren't sitting here on Friday biting our nails wondering if the government will shut down or not tomorrow. So we will give credit where credit is due, we suppose.

We're not going to go into each of these dustups in detail, since these Friday columns are already long enough. Again, read that link above if you missed out on any of the juvenile behavior from the GOP this week, it'll catch you up.

Instead, we're just going to very quickly run down what else was happening in the world of politics this week. President Joe Biden had a pretty good week, as he met with China's leader and made modest progress on fighting fentanyl and getting some communication lines reopened between the two countries' militaries. Also, inflation fell to 3.2 percent last month, down a half a point from the month before. Biden really needs this number to fall below three percent before he can really claim victory on the inflation front (remember, for context, it spiked up to nine percent last year, so this is indeed a lot of progress towards the goal of 2.0 percent).

The Supreme Court put out an ethics code for the first time, but it is entirely toothless since it has no enforcement mechanism whatsoever other than "we will police ourselves." Nobody was very impressed with their woefully inadequate effort, to say the least.

Representative George Santos is still a member of Congress, but that may not be true two days after the House returns from its Thanksgiving holiday (which they began a week early, just to avoid food fights spontaneously breaking out in the congressional cafeteria, one assumes). The House Ethics Committee released its report on Santos and to say it was damning is an understatement. Santos grifted as much money as he could from his donors, he spent it on luxury shopping sprees, casinos, Botox treatments, and an adult-content site (just for good measure). So a motion to expel him has been filed... again. The earlier ones failed because some House members (on both sides of the aisle) were wary of booting him out before he had had some due process, but with the Ethics Committee investigation complete, that doesn't apply anymore. A two-thirds vote will be necessary to kick him out, so we'll have that to look forward to after the break. Unless he resigns first, of course.

In the Republican presidential primary race, Nikki Haley is rising fast while Ron DeSantis continues to flame out. The week began with Senator Tim Scott bowing out of the race, so all the other candidates have been hoping to pick up what tiny support he had among Republican voters.

Of course, even Haley is far behind Trump in the polls, whether national or early-voting state polls. Trump is actually starting to be attacked on his bizarre gaffes and other stupid statements he's been making, from both the left and the right, but like everything else so far it hasn't seemed to have any appreciable effect.

The New York Times (and a few other media outlets) has been doing yeoman's work exposing what plans Trump and his team have for his second term in office, which includes some frightening stuff on immigration, on taking full control of the civil service, and of using executive power in all sorts of new ways, including fully weaponizing the Justice Department to go after Trump's political enemies.

However, the Times fell far short on reporting what Trump had to say for Veterans Day, which was downright Hitlerian. Think that's an exaggeration? We don't, and neither did the Washington Post, who ran the story under the headline: "Trump Calls Political Enemies 'Vermin,' Echoing Dictators Hitler, Mussolini." While the Times missed the boat completely with their snoozer of a headline: "Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech In A Very Different Direction." We also wrote about all this earlier in the week, because everyone really needs to be aware of how dangerously radical Trump's rhetoric is getting.

Various things happened in all of Trump's legal trials, but it all somehow seems like small potatoes compared to the rest of the Trump news this week. Most involved motions or rulings on his various cases that are all still ongoing, although (to be fair) Trump did chalk up a win in Michigan, where he will be allowed to stay on the state's primary ballot, after a judge rejected the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment means he should be barred.

That's about it for important political events this week. The big news was Congress averting a possible government shutdown at midnight tonight, but it just got buried in all the shoving-in-the-halls Republican-on-Republican violence stories. Sorry, but it's been that kind of a week, folks.





President Joe Biden met with China's leader this week in San Francisco, and made moderate progress on a few of the issues between the two countries (including maybe even getting some of those giant pandas back).

And House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries made the right decision this week to throw the Democrats' support behind the continuing resolution that kept the government open and punted the budget deadline to January and February this week -- since other than the "two-step ladder" gimmick, the C.R. was otherwise a "clean" one, without any GOP poison pills at all.

But this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award goes to Representative Jared Moskowitz, for attempting to make a very salient political argument in a committee meeting chaired by Republican James Comer. If we were writing this up as detective fiction, we would have to call it "The Case Of The Subcutaneous Smurf," because Moskowitz certainly did get under James Comer's skin in a big way.

Here's how HuffPost reported what happened in the House Oversight Committee this week:



No, really. He said that. Or "screamed it," more like, because he was trying to shut down what Moskowitz was trying to say by sheer volume.

The article continued:



Which Moskowitz was trying to point out -- pot, meet kettle, in other words. The Daily Beast article began by pointing out that Comer had just subpoenaed James Biden, who Comer has accused of "shady business practices," along with the rest of the "the Biden family." And they helpfully provided the details:



This is all going to be a very potent thing for Democrats to keep reminding Comer of, since the Biden loan repayment is being touted as some sort of "smoking gun" which will justify the impeachment of Joe Biden (spoiler alert: it is nowhere near any sort of thing). And it's looking like the House Republicans will be moving to impeach Biden (despite an utter lack of any proof of any wrongdoing whatsoever) as early as January. Hyping a $200,000 loan between family members as some sort of international cabal (when Joe wasn't even in office, mind you) has always been a stretch, but when Democrats respond with: "So what about your own $200,000 loan to family members, Chairman Comer?" it does kind of tend to point out the sheer hypocrisy.

For being the first out of the gate to do so -- and for being called a Smurf and then responding later on social media: "Gargamel was very angry today" -- Jared Moskowitz is easily our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week. Democrats on Comer's committee should follow Moskowitz's lead and bring the subject up whenever they can, from this point on.

[Congratulate Representative Jared Moskowitz on his House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





With all the juvenile nonsense coming from the other side of the aisle, we're not even going to bother with naming a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. After all, no Democrat challenged anyone to a fistfight or elbowed anyone in the back all week long! Because Democrats so easily cleared the bar of "be more adult than the Republicans" this week, we're just going to put the award back on the shelf for another week... or two....




Volume 731 (11/17/23)

Which brings us to a program note: there will be no FTP column next week, as we enjoy a long weekend off to eat turkey and watch football and generally do a whole lot of nothing.

Before we get to our talking points this week, though, we have a bonus story that just didn't seem to fit anywhere else, due to its overwhelmingly disgusting nature. Politico reported this story, but (sadly) it was too late for the late-night comics on television to make jokes about it before week's end. But we felt it did deserve at least some attention, so we had to stick it in (pun intended, as you will see) somewhere.

In the Politico column's irrepressive gossip-column style (yes, we left in all the gratuitous emphasis and capitalizations), they relate the story of a former congressman, Dave Trott, who served with now-Senator Markwayne Mullin, while both were in the House of Representatives. He contacted Politico to tell his bizarre story -- or rather, so his wife could. Here's their snarky report of what they were told:



That's really the cherry on top of the type of week it has been, really. This is the type of person Republicans deem to be worthy of a U.S. Senate seat these days.

With that nit um... picked (sorry, we couldn't resist)... let's just move right along to the talking points, shall we?



One thing!

We always thoroughly enjoy it when Republicans provide every Democrat running for Congress with a ready-made campaign ad. This week it was Representative Chip Roy who obliged, in a lengthy rant castigating his fellow House Republicans for essentially getting nothing at all done all year. We should mention that the ellipses in the following quote was when Roy challenged any of his fellow Republicans to come on down to the House floor and explain -- but, of course, he got no takers.





Beep beep!

We've been using it for weeks, but it was rather amusing to hear the metaphor come out of the mouth of a Republican. This quote was prefaced, in the story it appeared in, with the introduction: "Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), who compared Republicans' infighting to grade school bullying, said Johnson was doing his best with the party's slim margins, but the party is still a mess." After which, she was quoted as saying:





Fight Club!

"The first rule of Republican Fight Club is: 'Talk about Fight Club! As much as you can! Pick a schoolyard fight with someone (another Republican, usually) and then immediately go running to the rightwing media and talk about Fight Club as much as possible! Get snarky! Pick more fights! Hurl insults! Anything to keep the campaign cash coming in from all the rubes!' Seriously, this is what the so-called 'Grand Old Party' has devolved into. What's next? Hair-pulling? Face-slapping? Wedgies? Pantsing? Food fights? It's really anyone's guess, at this point. Maybe they should all get together in a big gymnasium and have a spirited round of dodgeball. Maybe that'd get some of their juvenile angst out. Hey, at this point, it's certainly worth a try...."



Echoes from the past

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is not making us laugh even a little bit.

"The frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president is echoing Hitler and Mussolini, and his fellow Republicans don't even seem to care. Trump -- on Veterans Day no less -- decided to call his political opponents 'vermin.' And 'a threat from within' our country. He promised to 'root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs' and his campaign spokesman further clarified that this would mean 'their entire existence would be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.' This is beyond dehumanizing, it is frightening. Or it should be, to any rational American. The White House denounced this language, and the timing of it use, by stating: 'Using terms like that about dissent would be unrecognizable to our founders, but horrifyingly recognizable to American veterans who put on their country's uniform in the 1940s.' They're right. American veterans fought against strongmen who promised to 'crush' the 'vermin' within their own societies. We were proud to defeat Hitler and Mussolini. We certainly don't want to see someone echoing their vile words elected to lead this country."



Camps

The Biden campaign had another good statement this week, in reaction to an article detailing what a second Trump administration would do about immigration. They would round up as many undocumented immigrants as they could find, they would concentrate them in 'camps' near the border, and they would kick them all out without any due process. To which the White House responded:





Beware the purge

This is a warning shot across the bow of any Republican too craven to denounce what Trump is calling for.

"Strongmen always get into power promising to wipe out their opposition. But you know what always happens first when they do get into power? They purge their own ranks. They go after those in their own movement who are deemed insufficiently loyal to the Dear Leader. And they are more vicious in rooting out these supposedly disloyal followers than they ever are against their political enemies. Look at Trump -- he halfheartedly rips into Joe Biden, but his real rage is reserved for those who served in his own administration who he thinks failed him in some way. Ask Mike Pence. Ask Bill Barr. And my guess is that they'll be on top of Trump's list for the 'retribution' he's openly promising on the campaign trail. So I'd like to warn all my Republican friends: be very careful in what you say and do, because if Trump starts his purge, you really don't want to be on his list."



Pillsbury Doughboys

And finally we end with a real head-scratcher of a question: what's the difference, really?

"I have to admit, I don't understand the Republican Party these days. I mean, you have two GOP politicians who are very similar, but who are being treated very differently by their party. They both physically resemble the Pillsbury Doughboy (although in an evil-twin sort of way, since if you poked them in the stomach they wouldn't utter a delightful giggle, they'd probably snarl at you and maybe bite your finger off). They both lie at the drop of a hat -- they'd even lie about a hat dropping, in fact. 'Did you just see that hat drop? It was magnificent... such a beautiful hat, dropping gently to the ground. You didn't see it? Everyone else saw it! It was amazing, I can't believe you didn't see that hat drop....' They both lie like a rug about everything and anything. They both grift their followers for every bottom dollar, and then spend the money on whatever they want (no matter what they promised to spend it on), which includes Botox treatments and OnlyFans.com. They both lie about being financial whizzes and being successful businessmen. They both buy luxury goods with other people's money. They're both hopeless narcissists who never admit they're ever wrong. One of them instigated an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, while the other wore white pants after Labor Day. So which one do you think the Republicans are about to kick out of office and which one do they still support today? For the life of me I can't figure out what the difference is between George Santos and Donald Trump, but I suppose to Republicans there is one."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

November 11, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Women's Freedom Wins The Day

There were supposed to be three big political stories this week, but in the end two of them turned out to be duds. Donald Trump testified at his New York fraud trial, but without video or audio recordings of him answering questions under oath, the impact was significantly lessened. The other Republican presidential candidates (the five who qualified, at any rate) met for their third Republican debate, but it mostly turned out to be a snoozefest.

Tuesday night, however, more than lived up to expectations. The off-year elections which were held ended up as a big night for Democrats almost across the board. Put quite simply: abortion rights won. Big time. Everywhere.

In Ohio, the voters got to vote directly on the issue. A ballot measure to enshrine the same abortion rights as Roe v. Wade in the state's constitution passed with a very comfortable margin (over 13 points). Republicans trotted out all the lies they could think of to "explain" to the voters how evil this initiative was, to no avail. They spent millions and millions of dollars scaremongering their lies on television. They even changed the language the voters saw, in an attempt to scare them even further. Republican politicians repeated these lies over and over again. And you know what? None of it worked. The voters saw through the lies. They chose to stand for women's basic human rights. As they have in every single state where the issue has directly been on the ballot.

Incidentally, Ohio also became the 24th state in the nation to legalize recreational marijuana for adults on Tuesday too. This was a milestone because even though 24 is one shy of being half of 50, it means that now over half of America's citizens live in states where weed is legally available to all. Sooner or later the politicians in Washington are going to be forced to deal with this emerging majoritarian reality and end the federal War On Weed forever. And now that Ohio has tipped the scales you can accurately say: "Most Americans live where marijuana is legal, and none of those bad things the prohibitionists predicted would happen have happened. The sky has not fallen. Anarchy does not reign. Sooner or later we'll be able to say all Americans can enjoy legal weed, but for the moment at least it is a clear majority of the population."

But back to the biggest issue of the night, and indeed the strongest issue in politics for Democrats at the moment. Abortion rights weren't directly on the ballot outside of Ohio, but they were indirectly on the ballot in three other states. And abortion rights won the day in all three.

In Kentucky, popular governor Andy Beshear won re-election against a Republican who supported the state's Draconian abortion law -- which has no exceptions for rape or incest. Beshear made this a central focus of his campaign, putting the Republican on the defensive over it. And when the votes were counted, a Democrat easily won re-election in a very red state, by a five-point margin. In Pennsylvania, a state supreme court justice election was held and the candidate who supported women's rights beat the forced-birth candidate by over six points.

But the best news came out of Virginia, where Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin was going to show the entire Republican Party and the rest of the country how the forced-birth side could win -- by toning their language down and appearing to be reasonable on the issue. Youngkin was even talked about as a white knight who would ride into the Republican presidential primaries and save the day by snatching the nomination away from Donald Trump.

It didn't work.

Youngkin went from having his Republicans control one chamber of Virginia's statehouse to having Democrats control both -- because of the abortion issue, which was the dominant factor in all the legislative races. For the rest of his term in office, Youngkin will now have a completely Democratic legislature to deal with, which will completely shut down his conservative agenda in this very purple state. And nobody's talking about him riding to the GOP's rescue anymore, either.

The only big race Democrats lost was the governor of Mississippi, where the incumbent Republican won re-election against a second cousin of Elvis Presley. But abortion played no part in this, as Presley is an anti-abortion Democrat. When both candidates are on the same side of an issue, it simply doesn't matter to the election results, to state the obvious.

Abortion rights won big, and they won everywhere. That is the clear takeaway from the 2023 off-year election. And it puts the wind at Democrats' backs heading into 2024. Abortion ballot initiatives are being prepared in a number of states, so it will directly be on the ballot in at least some of them. And in the states where it isn't put to the voters to decide, it will still be a major campaign issue, whether Republicans want it to be or not.

Smart Republicans are trying to run away from the issue completely. They just don't want to talk about it, since whenever they do, they lose votes. But some in the Republican Party are tripling down on a losing issue in various ways, which should bring joy to all the Democrats' hearts who are running against them next year. Abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, and Republicans now know it beyond any shadow of a doubt. The forced-birth politicians are going to be playing defense from now on, while Democrats fight hard for women's freedoms against governmental overreach.

Some other good news from this election cycle was that there was a major pushback against the ultra-conservatives who managed to take over local school boards. In many places -- including the county in Virginia seen as Ground Zero for the book-banners -- Democrats reclaimed control of their local school boards and sent the extremists packing.

All in all, it was a great night for Democrats.

Neither one of the other big political stories of the week rose to much prominence, though. Donald Trump was on the witness stand on Monday, testifying in the business fraud case against him, his children, and his signature company. Trump knows he has already lost this case (the trial is being held merely so the judge can determine how steep a penalty to impose), and so he used the opportunity to attempt to try the case in the court of public opinion instead. He had to be admonished from the bench several times for treating the courtroom as a political rally, in fact.

Trump, as usual, said some wildly inaccurate things. Here's our favorite, from when he was answering a question about why he was too busy to pay attention to the business documents he was signing:

Got that? He forgot he wasn't president in 2021. And they have the nerve to say Joe Biden's got mental problems!

Amusing nonsense aside, Trump's testimony just didn't have much impact. This was due to the fact that cameras are not allowed in the courtroom. The public didn't get to see and hear Trump blustering away on the witness stand, and as Trump himself will tell you, if it's not on television it isn't important to most people. This is only a civil trial, of course, meaning Trump is facing no actual jail time, but this case strikes to the heart of his "successful billionaire businessman" persona in a way all his other legal problems don't, so he is personally invested in the outcome. The prosecution rested its case after calling Ivanka Trump to the stand on Wednesday, and Trump's defense team will likely wrap up their side by mid-December. So maybe Trump will get a few lumps of coal in his stocking from the judge, just in time for Christmas.

The... (yawn)... third Republican debate... (zzzzz)... was held this week too. Personally, we watched the whole thing even though it bored us to tears. Nobody on that stage is going to be president, to be blunt. Or even the Republican presidential nominee. They've had all year long to slay the Trump dragon, and none of them has come close to doing so. Most of them aren't even trying -- they almost completely ignored the frontrunner during the entire debate, in fact. They did squabble among themselves a bit, with the biggest dustups happening between Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy (especially when she told him: "You're just scum" ), but two months from now (when the first primaries begin) nobody's going to remember any of it. We hate to admit it, but Trump might be right -- maybe the R.N.C. should just throw in the towel and refuse to hold any more debates? We certainly wouldn't mind, at this point.

In other political news, we are now one week away from another government shutdown deadline. So of course Congress took a long holiday weekend -- it's not like they've got important things to do, right?

The new speaker of the House is trying to prove his chamber can produce a real budget, consisting of all 12 appropriations bills, but he had to cancel the vote on several of these this week since his caucus is in such disarray. They can't agree among themselves just how extremist they want to make these bills, it seems. None of it is going to matter in the slightest, since the Senate isn't going to take a second look at any of these GOP messaging bills. The big question for next week is whether another continuing resolution can be passed, whether it will be "clean" (stripped of all the Republican poison pill nonsense), and how close to the deadline we'll get before it does pass. Oh, and whether the speaker manages to keep his job afterwards, of course -- passing a clean budget extension is what did in Kevin McCarthy, after all.

President Joe Biden visited an automobile factory this week, in something of a victory lap after the autoworkers' Union forced major concessions out of the "Big Three" automakers. This was especially sweet because Biden spoke at a factory that was being reopened -- the automaker had shut it down earlier this year but they've had second thoughts and will be cranking out new cars there once again. The president of the U.A.W. still hasn't endorsed Biden for president yet, but it seems like a foregone conclusion at this point.

While Republicans love to lie about Biden's record (as the candidates did during this week's GOP debate) by claiming he is waging some sort of "war on oil" or "war on fossil fuels," America actually just set a new record for how much oil was pumped out of the ground in the last month that we have numbers for. We're now producing more oil than was produced under Donald Trump, before the COVID pandemic hit the economy hard. So much for "Biden's war on oil," eh?

One very unsettling story broke this week, as it was revealed that mail containing a powdered substance was sent to multiple states' elections officials. In some of them, the substance tested positive as fentanyl. This is domestic terrorism, plain and simple, and it is dangerous stuff, folks. It needs to be forcefully denounced from politicians from both sides of the aisle.

What else? This week Trump showed once again how tenuous his grasp on reality is, at one of his appearances:



It's not enough for him to claim he won, apparently, he's now deluded himself into thinking he won every single state. Anyone else exhibiting such a break with reality would be in a straightjacket in a rubber room by now.

Trump is not shy about talking about what he'd do if he becomes president again, and it is downright frightening. He would willfully weaponize the Justice Department against his political enemies (which includes plenty of Republicans, even some from his own first administration, who have gotten on his bad side somehow). He will rule the federal government as an absolute strongman. He is telling everyone right out in the open that he wants America to move as close to a dictatorship as he can manage, and the media is barely even covering it.

And finally, we end with a story that could grow to epic proportions in the future. For now, the feds are staying mum, but you've got to assume they've got all the client lists in their possession. Here's the story, which could become a major scandal if more details are ever revealed:



They charged three individuals with running the business, but "gave no further details" about the clients. Which, according to an affidavit, could run to "potentially hundreds of yet to be identified customers." So we will be watching for future developments in this story, that's for sure!





Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear defied the odds and won another term this week, in a very red state. Here's the basic story:



Beshear did indeed take on the GOP culture wars, most notably by campaigning heavily on abortion rights. One ad in particular was incredibly effective. This is a tactic that Democrats everywhere should be using in next year's election cycle, in fact:



That is exactly how Democrats should be talking about the abortion issue. Because it affects people's lives in an enormous way. For showing Democrats the most effective way to do so, and for his big win Tuesday night, Andy Beshear is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Congratulate Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





This week, Senator Joe Manchin announced his retirement from the Senate. He won't be running for re-election in West Virginia next year, it seems. But he may have other things in mind instead:



He didn't mention them by name, but what he plainly means is: "I want to convince No Labels to nominate me for president and then run on their ticket." There are rumors that the No Labels people are leaning heavily towards running a moderate Republican for president, although they do plan on a split ticket. Would Manchin accept second banana? Would he agree to run for vice president instead? It's kind of hard to see that, given the size (planetary) of his ego and his sense of self-importance.

Whether he gets the No Labels nod or not, there are plenty of Democrats who are essentially saying "Good riddance!" to Manchin, since it would almost be easier to have an actual Republican in the seat instead of a guy who calls himself a Democrat but refuses to aid the Democratic agenda unless forced to.

But the loss of Manchin's seat to the Republicans becomes a foregone conclusion with him not even running. West Virginia is fire-engine-red, and no other Democrat is going to even have a prayer of winning the seat. With the Democrats now only having a 51-49 majority in the Senate, the loss of this seat means they've got to win every single other race in order to maintain control of the chamber.

Which is why Joe Manchin is once again our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Contact Senator Joe Manchin on his Senate contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 730 (11/10/23)

This week we've got one theme for all our talking points. The abortion issue is going to be the biggest arrow in the Democratic quiver next year, and every Democratic candidate should embrace the issue and place it center stage of their campaigns. We've already got plenty of evidence that shows how effective the issue can be, and how Democrats (for once) will be on offense while the Republicans are back on their heels trying to explain their extremism to the voters.

So here are just seven ways for a Democratic politician to speak effectively about abortion and women's rights and freedoms.



Freedom

It's all about freedom.

"The abortion issue is very simple. Democrats want to protect women's freedom, while Republicans want to take away their freedom. That's it, in a nutshell. We want women to enjoy the same bodily autonomy and human rights that they had for half a century, while Republicans want to roll back the clock and force women to give birth against their will. The voters understand this, no matter how Republicans try to obscure this basic truth. They want to take away women's freedom, while we want every woman in America to enjoy the same freedom they had for 50 years, period."



Big government

Another theme that resonates particularly well with Republican voters.

"Republicans have nattered on about the evils of 'big government' for decades now, but in reality that's exactly what they want. They want male politicians to make the most personal decision imaginable. They want the government in the exam room with a woman and her doctor. We don't. We want women to make their own medical decisions about their own reproductive care. We do not think old men in politics should make those decisions for anyone. That's the difference -- they want government to control women, while we stand firmly for women's right to make their own personal medical decisions."



Slippery slope leads to total ban

Paint with a very wide brush, since they deserve it.

"Republicans are now trying to appear just a teeny bit more reasonable about the laws they want to enact. They talk about banning abortion after this many weeks, or that many weeks, and they sometimes even add in exceptions to their bans. But make no mistake about it -- the end of the road for them is a total ban on abortion. Look at the states where that is already true -- that is where your state could wind up with Republicans passing bans on abortion. They don't want to go just halfway. They are not reasonable at all. They want to totally ban all abortions, period. We are not going to let that happen if we have our say!"



Her rapist's baby

This one is visceral, but it's also true.

"Republicans want a woman who was violently raped to be forced to carry her rapist's baby to term. They want rapists to have more rights than women, in other words. Can any of us even imagine how traumatic it would be for a rape victim to endure nine months of pregnancy and then have to stare into her rapist's eyes every time she sees her child? We think that is inhumane. We stand strongly for the rights of rape victims. Republicans want to protect rapists' rights and force rape victims to have their rapist's baby. Consider that when you vote."



Freedom is not extremism

Republicans tried to take a different tack in Virginia, but the voters weren't fooled.

"Republicans are now trying to paint our position on abortion as the extreme one. Which is just ridiculous. We want women to enjoy the same freedoms they have enjoyed for half a century. Republicans want to strip those freedoms away. They think they can come up with some magic number of weeks and some magic exceptions which will disguise the fact that they want to take women's basic human freedom away. That is extremism, folks. They are the ones with the extremist position. It's pretty obvious, no matter how they try to flip the script. Freedom is not extremism -- taking away freedom is extremism."



Back to Roe

A very simple answer to the false charges of extremism.

"Republicans try scare tactics every time abortion is on the ballot, or forced-birth Republicans are running for office. They lie about Democrats' position, even sometimes saying we're for abortions after the baby is born. This is a vicious lie -- if this happened in any state in America, it would be classified as murder. Republicans make it sound like thousands and thousands of women carry a baby eight and a half months and then suddenly decide they don't want it and demand an elective abortion. This is nonsense. It does not happen. It is a lie. What we want is very simple. We want to return to the protections of Roe v. Wade and we want to end the power of Republican politicians to erode those protections in state legislatures. That's it. We want to go back to Roe, which is where America was for half a century. That's not a radical or extreme position to take."



The worst thing they can hear

This is an easy one. It fits nicely on a bumpersticker, even.

"The most terrifying sentence in the English language for the forced-birth Republicans to hear is a simple one: 'I am pro-choice and I vote.' They are especially scared of this concept because so many Republican voters agree with it. We have the power of the ballot box behind us, and that should make every anti-abortion extremist absolutely quake in their boots."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com