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

November 4, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Republican Chaos Still Reigns

Republicans are in disarray. Let's start with that this week, shall we?

This week in the Senate, Republicans spent five whole hours ripping into one of their own. A group of GOP senators tried to force the hand of Senator Tommy Tuberville over his petulant hold on fast-tracking all military promotions, but to no avail.

The House, meanwhile, voted for an Israel military aid bill that is going nowhere in the Senate because (among other reasons) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is diametrically opposed to the strategy.

The House also took the time to vote down a censure of a Democrat that drew Marjorie Taylor Greene's wrath, but also voted to let George Santos keep his seat. On both votes, there were significant numbers of Republicans crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats.

Speaker Mike Johnson had teed up three more of the 12 appropriations bills to pass this week, but only one made it through -- the other two couldn't get enough Republican support, so the votes were postponed.

But what was most notable (to us) about this dysfunctional week for the GOP was the video that Representative Ken Buck released to explain why he won't be seeking re-election (which is well worth watching in full, as it's only a couple of minutes long). In it, he tears into his own party for pushing Trump's Big Lie and refusing to face reality:

ABC News ran their own excerpts from the video:



Or to put it all slightly differently: "I am a sane Republican, and as a Republican who actually admits that reality exists, I probably will not be able to get re-elected." He joins an ever-growing list of Republicans who dare to contradict their Dear Leader and point out that the emperor's clothes do not, in fact, exist -- and by doing so render themselves electorally toxic to their own party (who still insists that they are witnessing the most beautiful outfit ever seen).

As each of these Republicans exit, the party they leave behind becomes just a little Trumpier. It's a sort of slow-moving ideological purge in Republicanland.

But back to the rest of the GOP disarray. In the Senate, emotions ran high as Republican senators who actually care about America's military lit into Tommy Tuberville's obstructionism, which is blocking hundreds of high-ranking military officers from having their promotions approved by the Senate. Senators like Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, and Dan Sullivan (all of whom have served in uniform) tried to shame Tuberville into backing down. "No matter whether you believe it or not, Senator Tuberville, this is doing great damage to our military," admonished Graham. Ernst snidely pointed out that Tuberville was in over his head, since he had never served in uniform himself (unless you count a football uniform, which we have to say we do not). Sullivan was just as relentless: "We are going to look back at this episode and just be stunned at what a national-security suicide mission this became." He also essentially accused Tuberville of aiding and abetting the Chinese in their attempts to destroy America's military might (we wrote about all of this at length yesterday, for anyone interested).

Over in the House, things got even worse. A lot of time was spent on singling out individual members for punishment, with nothing to show for it than a display of junior-high catfighting. Here's a rundown of just part of this petty viciousness (emphasis in original):



Greene, of course, is head of the Mean Girls Caucus in the House. OK, we kid, but at this point it's really not too farfetched to imagine one, is it? The sober exchange between the Republican members of Congress continued:



Meeee-ow!

The House also attempted to chuck out George Santos, for being George Santos. This failed as well, as both Republicans and Democrats crossed party lines, voted "Present," or skipped the vote entirely. While it is plainly obvious Santos needs to go, he has not actually had his day in court yet and thus remains "innocent until proven guilty," which gave plenty of House members pause. But, once again, it also showed the Republican Party fighting among themselves.

One thing the Republicans in the House did manage to do was to pass a military aid bill for Israel. However, Speaker Johnson chose to stick a thumb in Mitch McConnell's eye (and Chuck Schumer's, to boot) by passing a standalone bill that will go nowhere in the Senate. McConnell agrees with President Joe Biden that there should be a multifaceted aid package that includes Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan as well as funding for America's own border problems.

The House bill might actually have been considered by the Senate except for one thing -- Johnson threw a monkey wrench into it. Paul Krugman at the New York Times had the best description of what Johnson and his fellow Republicans were trying to do:



Who indeed? Johnson ostensibly wanted to pay for the $14 billion in aid to Israel by cutting the I.R.S. budget by the same amount. Except that when the I.R.S. gets less money, they are less able to go after wealthy tax cheats -- which winds up increasing the deficit. So much for being "fiscally responsible." The head of the I.R.S. stated that this cut would increase the deficit by $90 billion over ten years. The Congressional Budget Office came up with a much lower figure, but still arrived at the same conclusion: this would wind up increasing the deficit.

The war in Israel and the Gaza Strip ground on for another week, and pressure is growing within the Democratic Party for President Biden to call for either a "cease-fire" or at the very least a "pause" (as he put it) for humanitarian purposes. The longer this conflict rages on, the harder it is going to be for Biden to please everybody, obviously. The Senate passing a bill close to what Biden asked for would certainly help the situation, but there was no word of progress on such a bill this week from the chamber. The Senate did, however, mange to confirm Jack Lew as ambassador to Israel, which is a rather important position to fill right now, obviously.

There was a lot of other things going on in politics this week, so we'll try to whip through them all in abbreviated fashion here. The United Auto Workers scored a sweep, as the third of the Big Three automakers cut a deal with the Union. All three deals have significant improvements in pay, benefits, and job security during the transition to electric vehicles, so this was a really big win. The strike got lots of media coverage when it began, but not so much for how it ended -- with a big win for the U.A.W.

Next week will be a big week in politics, as we'll have Election Tuesday to take the pulse of voters in differing states. There's are governors' races in Kentucky and Mississippi, and (surprisingly) Democrats could win them both. In Kentucky, the incumbent Democrat is very popular in his state and in Mississippi the Democratic candidate has the last name "Presley" -- a distant relative of Elvis. If the kin of The King can't win in Mississippi, no Democrat probably can, so although it is a longshot it'll be interesting to watch the returns come in. Virginia will also be an important state to watch, as Republicans think they can wrest control of the statehouse back from Democrats (after a Republican won the governorship last time around).

In Ohio, an abortion ballot measure would enshrine the right to full reproductive healthcare into the state constitution. Even though Ohio has trended redder and redder, this has an excellent chance of passing -- and if it does, it will send another very strong signal that this is a winning issue for Democrats pretty much everywhere in the country.

Also next week will be the third Republican presidential debate, a day after the election returns come in. Donald Trump, however, will not be on the stage -- he'll be holding his own event instead, as he did for the first two debates. But all eyes will be on Nikki Haley, to see if she's truly "The One Who Might Beat Trump." Haley has drawn even with Ron DeSantis in Iowa, and is threatening to eclipse him everywhere, so it could be a lively debate. Especially after Politico did a deep dive into whether DeSantis has been wearing height-increasing lifts in his cowboy boots. Haley already took a shot at him over this, so look for it to come up Wednesday night.

The big news from the Republican side of the race this week, however, was the news that Mike Pence was throwing in the towel on his presidential hopes. Pence is the first major candidate to drop out of the race, and it will be interesting to see who follows him out the door in the next few months.

For some reason, Vivek Ramaswamy held a debate with Democratic Representative Ro Khanna this week, which might indicate the start of the 2028 presidential campaign -- at least for Khanna, who has always had his political sights set pretty high.

Joe Biden won't be on the New Hampshire ballot (due to them ignoring the Democratic National Committee's early primary schedule), but Dean Phillips will be. However, Phillips didn't exactly have a smooth time of it when he held his first town hall in the state.

Onward to the "Trump legal woes" part of our weekly program, which we are really going to try to whip through quickly (because there is so much of it).

The judge in Trump's federal January 6th case reinstated the limited gag order on Trump this week, and he violated it again within 75 minutes. He said he was unaware it had been reinstated, so he'll probably slip off the hook for this one, but it's only a matter of time before he violates it again, really. Jury selection is slated to begin in this case on February 9th of next year.

In the trial that is underway in New York dealing with Trump's fraudulent business practices, we heard testimony from Don Junior and Eric Trump this week. Both denied ever doing anything wrong, insisting it was all the accountants' fault. Next week we'll hear from both Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump himself, so that should be the highpoint of the entire trial.

Trump's lawyers continued attacking the judge's law clerk in the case, which seriously annoyed the judge. In fact, the judge just might expand his own gag order to include Trump's lawyers as well, which would bar them from attacking court personnel again.

Trump may be about to get a win in Florida, as the judge (who was named to the federal bench by Trump himself on his final days in office) seemed to be open to delaying the start of the case involving all those highly-classified documents and Trump's refusal to hand over any of them to the National Archives, even when subpoenaed.

Two trials kicked off this week, in Colorado and Minnesota, which are challenging Trump's ability to even have his name appear on the primary ballots. This is due to the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars those involved in insurrection against the United States from ever holding office again. This provision wasn't used from the Civil War until the January 6th riots -- and has never been applied to a presidential candidate -- so the issue will likely wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court before too long.

A case involving Trump's name was heard before the Supreme Court this week, but we're saving the details for the talking points section (because it's pretty funny). Ironically, Joe Biden's Justice Department was the one arguing on Trump's behalf (due to it being a trademark issue).

In other legal news tangentially related to Trump, the attorney general in Arizona is apparently looking at bringing charges for the fake electors in the 2020 election as well as people who tried to influence (or strongarm) elections officials into overturning the vote of the people of the state.

One of the lawyers pushing the whole scheme to have Mike Pence somehow wave a magic wand in Congress on January 6th, John Eastman, suffered a major setback in his disbarment hearing this week. The final decision on whether to yank his license to practice law hasn't been made yet, but things don't look good for Eastman.

There were two other items which caught our eye this week that have nothing to do with any of the week's other political news. In Virginia, the Robert E. Lee statue that was at the center of the White supremacists' march in Charlottesville was melted down in secret. The statue will never be displayed again, because it no longer exists. This seems a fitting end to the story, at least to us.

And finally, the federal government unveiled a new form for government employees to report any U.F.O. encounters:



Hopefully this will begin a new era of the government both taking this stuff seriously and doing so in a very transparent and above-board fashion.





This is kind of odd, but we're going to give our two awards this week based on the same event.

First, the impressive part.

Senator John Fetterman made a move this week attacking a fellow Democratic senator. But this was actually a good thing.

Here's the story in a nutshell:



As is usual in such motions, it didn't actually name anyone's name, but the description is targeted at one senator: New Jersey's Robert Menendez. Fetterman explained why he was making this move:



We're saving the reason for why this motion was even necessary for the next award, but we have to say it was impressive that Fetterman stepped up to the plate (Fetterman has also called on Menendez to resign his seat) in such a fashion. Party unity is one thing, but national security is quite another.

For such a commonsense motion in response to outrageous circumstances, Senator John Fetterman is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

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





Now for the flip side. Fetterman's move was necessary for the following reason:



Seriously? And all the other Democrats were apparently OK with this?

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer fell down on the job, here. He should have had a quiet word with Menendez to let him know to keep away from classified briefings until he has his day in court (or until next year's election, whichever comes first). But Menendez is sending out the signal that he will indeed attend such briefings, which necessitated some sort of action on somebody's part. Fetterman did so, which is why both awards stem from the same event this week.

For attending the briefing and for refusing to step down from his seat, we once again hand Senator Robert Menendez this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

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




Volume 729 (11/3/23)

A very mixed bunch, this week, as there really was no big central theme to the week in politics. We started with the autoworkers' Union big win, because Democrats really do need to beat this drum loudly. For all the faux populism nonsense from the Republicans, Democrats actually do support blue collar workers on the things that really matter -- and they shouldn't be afraid to say so!



Labor chalks up big win

Maybe this will get some more media attention when the deal is voted on and approved?

"The United Auto Workers scored several significant gains from their strike of the Big Three automakers, as they cut a deal with the remaining holdout this week. Not only are they getting a big raise, they also got the automakers to move away from different 'tiers' of workers with different pay and benefits. They also were successful in deploying a new tactic -- that of limited rolling strikes at individual plants rather than depleting their strike fund by everyone walking out in unison -- that is going to be a model for other Unions to use in the future, I would be willing to wager. Unions have been scoring big victories over the past year or so by striking against industries that refuse to pay their workers what they are worth. And with every one of these successful strikes, the next one for the next Union in some other industry gets a lot easier. It is time for the billionaire class to realize the value of the hardworking Americans who actually do the work in this country."



Chaos still reigns

Hit this one every chance you get.

"I see that the Republicans are still in disarray on Capitol Hill. House Republicans are fighting among themselves over whether to censure or eject members, Senate Republicans are fighting over arcane parliamentary rules, the House GOP is fighting with the Senate GOP over a national security bill, and the new speaker of the House shot himself in the foot by trying to be fiscally responsible but winding up passing a bill that would make the federal deficit worse. Members are quitting because they are sick and tired of their fellow Republicans spouting the dangerous nonsense of Trump's Big Lie, and chaos seems to reign everywhere you look in the Republican Party these days. I mean, they can't even agree on supporting the troops by approving military officers' promotions. It's sad, really, when you think of how low the Republican Party has now sunk."



Wealthy tax cheats over national security

Connect these two dots, since it is so easy to do so.

"House Republicans passed a bill to send military aid to Israel, but they tossed in a provision that would take all the money from the I.R.S. What this would do is make it harder for the I.R.S. to go after wealthy tax cheats -- who apparently need protecting, as far as the Republicans are concerned. That's right -- Republicans are standing tall for the principle of rich taxpayers being able to cheat on their taxes and get away with it. And here's the kicker -- this would all increase the deficit by billions of dollars. The Republicans are tying this effort to a national security bill that has nothing to do with taxes. You can see exactly where the priorities are in the Republican Party these days, can't you? So much for all that talk about populism... when the chips are down, the GOP is the party of plutocratic tax cheats, plain and simple."



Harming military readiness

Hit Tuberville just as hard as his fellow Republicans are.

"Tommy Tuberville is miffed at a Biden administration policy which will allow servicemembers to obtain abortions without having to go AWOL to do so. So he's taking it out on every single high-ranking military officer who has earned and deserves a promotion in rank. Tuberville is playing politics with our nation's military readiness, despite never having served a day in the uniform of this country himself. Don't believe me? Ask his fellow Republican senators who have served -- like Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, and Dan Sullivan. They'll tell you. They spent five whole hours this week on the Senate floor trying to shame Tuberville into ending his tantrum, but he simply doesn't care about the military readiness of our armed forces; he's happy to play politics with national security instead."



Read the whole thing

Two trials are testing the boundaries of the Fourteenth Amendment, when it comes to Donald Trump. But most people miss one important clause.

"In Colorado and Minnesota, judges are now weighing whether Donald Trump can constitutionally be president again. The lawsuits were brought using the Fourteenth Amendment, which was written after the Civil War and includes a section on insurrectionists. In these trials it has been argued that Trump didn't 'engage' in insurrection, therefore the section doesn't apply to him. But there's a second part of that sentence which everyone seems to be skipping over. The whole thing reads:"



"Please note that it doesn't leave it at: 'shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion,' but then goes on to also include 'or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.' So you can argue that Trump didn't 'engage' in an insurrection, but the real question is whether he has given any 'aid or comfort' to the people who did rebel on January 6th. It's pretty obvious that he has, after all -- it's a much lower bar for these cases to clear."



Trump too small!

This one is worth commenting on just for the fun of it.

"The Supreme Court heard a case this week on whether a person can trademark the phrase 'Trump too small.' You just can't make this stuff up, folks! Marco Rubio's 'tiny hands' dig at Trump in a Republican debate will now live forever in the annals of the highest court of this land. Of course, whether the trademark is granted or not, shirts with the 'Trump too small' phrase on it will still be available for anyone who wishes to purchase one. In fact, it might make a perfect holiday gift for someone you know!"



School weak

Oh, the humanity!

"Ivanka Trump tried to get out of having to testify in the fraud case being heard in New York against Donald Trump's businesses by filing an appeal that stated that she couldn't possibly attend the trial because it was, and I quote, 'in the middle of a school week.' Gosh, that would be a hardship for Karen... I mean Ivanka. It's not like she doesn't have a husband to help the kiddies get off to school and back, or any number of servants catering to the family's every need. The appellate court refrained from laughing in her face, but rightfully turned her request down, so we should be seeing both Ivanka and Donald Trump in the witness chair next week, as planned. And for some reason, I'm not particularly worried about Ivanka's kids... I'm sure they'll be fine."




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

October 28, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Republicans Get Their 'Poop In A Group'

After three weeks of junior-high-school levels of adolescent slap-fighting, Republicans in the House of Representatives finally (!) chose a speaker. Was this largely due to fatigue at how tawdry the whole clown show was, or was it the fear that some moderate members were actually considering working with Democrats to come up with a solution? We'll never know, but we certainly are glad it's over. For now, that is. The rule on the "motion to vacate" hasn't changed, so while Speaker Mike Johnson seems to be enjoying something of a honeymoon period with even the furthest-right of his caucus, things could always go south for him, since all it would take would be five disgruntled Republicans to kick him out too. And disgruntled is what MAGA extremists do best, so we'll have to see whether this comes to pass or not in the weeks ahead.

Feelings ran high throughout all of this, of course. Think that "junior-high-school" comment was too much? Well, maybe so -- we may be giving Republicans too much credit. This seems worthy of an elementary school playground, actually:

See what we mean? No? How about this one then:



Playground insults (and scatological comments) aside, the Republicans have now wasted the better part of a month -- and not during some lull period in congressional activity, but instead with a ticking government-shutdown clock. Congress has until November 17th -- just before Thanksgiving -- to produce some sort of budget legislation and get it signed by President Joe Biden, or else the government will shut down.

This could be a full budget for the next (current, actually) fiscal year, or it could be yet another "supplemental" that kicks the can down the road a bit more. Johnson has been floating the idea of kicking the can all the way to mid-January or even March, which would certainly give Congress oodles of time to resolve everything, but we'll have to see. To pass both the House and the Senate is going to require Democratic votes, and the only thing Democrats are going to vote for is a "clean" continuing resolution (in other words, one not larded up with extremist rightwing "poison pills" ). But passing such a clean budget supplement was what brought down Kevin McCarthy, so we'll have to see if Johnson can actually pass such a measure -- and whether he will survive any backlash from within his own ranks if he does. Johnson is pretty far rightwing himself, even if he doesn't have as odious a personality as Jim Jordan, so this may buy him some goodwill from the Chaos Caucus. Matt Gaetz -- the Republican who pulled the trigger on deposing McCarthy -- is already calling Johnson "MAGA Mike," which seems to be a sign of goodwill.

Johnson certainly spoke the language of moderation when he accepted the speakership, at least rhetorically reaching a hand out to Democrats and promising to work with them, telling them: "I know that in your heart you love and care about this country and you want to do what's right, and so we're going to find common ground there." We'll see whether he ever follows through on this promise, though.

Johnson comes in as an unknown to most people -- even most people in Congress. "Who?" was a common reaction upon hearing he had been nominated by the House Republicans (emphasis in original):



He doesn't exactly have a lot of name recognition, in other words. Or much legislative accomplishment, for that matter. As one Republican put it:



But at least he wasn't Kevin McCarthy or Jim Jordan! That seems to be his one strength -- he hasn't seriously annoyed too many of his fellow Republicans in any way. McCarthy being deposed and Jordan being refused the gavel was both personal, to put this another way. It was: "We don't like you!" writ large, plain and simple. Johnson hasn't sparked that kind of opposition... yet, at least.

His win was a big one for the rightwing faction of Republicans. Behind his mild-mannered appearance and demeanor is a pretty extreme political personality:



We'll have to see how all of this translates into his leadership of the House. Will he push his own pet issues, or will he be influenced by what a majority of his conference agrees with? We'll have to wait and see.

Already Johnson is being forced into a contentious tit-for-tat of censure resolutions, but we'll have more on this in a bit, down in the awards section. To his credit, Johnson has already passed one of the 12 appropriations bills that make up the federal budget (four had previously passed, one passed yesterday, and there are seven more that haven't passed yet) and passed a "sense of the House" resolution supporting Israel. That's pretty good for his first couple of days, even we have to admit. The House will be on a break until next Wednesday, when we'll all see what happens next.

In election news, two Republicans you were not aware were running have now ended their presidential campaigns, as Perry Johnson and Larry Elder both bowed out. And the moderators were chosen for the next presidential debate (which will take place on November 8th): Lester Holt, Kristen Welker, and Hugh Hewitt. This means it'll be the first debate not hosted by rightwing media, so the questions should be a lot more interesting.

On the Democratic side, Joe Biden will not have his name on the New Hampshire primary ballot. Biden tried to singlehandedly muscle New Hampshire out of the "first in the nation" primary slot, but the Granite State is going to go first anyway. So the Democratic National Committee may strip them of their delegates to the nominating convention and Biden won't be on their ballot (which would give their primary official credence). Instead, there will be a write-in campaign in the state for Biden.

But there will also be a new name on the New Hampshire Democratic primary ballot: Representative Dean Phillips has filed his paperwork to run. Our reaction was the same as yours: "Who?" Phillips is running for some sort of protest reason against Biden, and will likely make about as much impact as Marianne Williamson, the other Democrat on the ballot.

Robert F. Kennedy Junior will not be on Democratic primary ballots, since he has gone rogue and will be running an independent campaign in the general election. His name recognition will get him some votes, as will his anti-vaccine stance. But he may wind up pulling more votes from Trump than from Biden. Kennedy's also got a boatload of money -- his campaign raised $8.7 million last quarter, which was more money than Nikki Haley or Tim Scott managed to raise. It was more than Mike Pence and Chris Christie raised combined. It was more than any other presidential candidate except Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Ron DeSantis, in fact. So his third-party candidacy will indeed be a force to be reckoned with.

Donald Trump is out there campaigning (as well as being in court, which we'll get to in a moment), and saying some head-scratching things, as usual. He mixed up the leader of Turkey and the leader of Hungary, marvelled at his own brilliance in realizing that "U.S." can actually be read as "us" (something he thinks nobody has ever noticed before), unconstitutionally promised to keep out immigrants who "don't like our religion," and compared himself to Nelson Mandela. He also had some advice for his supporters -- don't worry about voting, watch the other voters instead. No, really! Here's the quote: "You don't have to vote, don't worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes."

There was a lot of Trump legal news this week, so we're just going to whip through it all as quickly as possible....

In Trump's January 6th federal case, Team Trump filed a number of motions at the last possible minute, in which his lawyers argue that he shouldn't have to face any charges at all. Good luck with that one, guys!

The judge in the case temporarily lifted Trump's limited gag order, and Trump went right back to spouting abuse at all and sundry in the case. Because of course he did.

It has been reported (but not fully confirmed by his legal representative) that Mark Meadows has already flipped on Trump and testified to the January 6th federal grand jury. This is obviously a worrisome development for Trump.

In Georgia's January 6th case, the number of Trump's former lawyers who have flipped on him is now up to three. Earlier, Trump tried to distance himself from Sidney Powell, saying she was never his lawyer, but (as with most things Trump) "there's a tweet for that," of him welcoming her to his legal team. This week, it was Jenna Ellis who pleaded guilty and flipped on Trump. She read a tearful statement in court where she essentially threw Rudy Giuliani under the bus:



The internet was not impressed with her crocodile tears, it should be noted.

Ellis was involved in the whole "fake electors" scheme, right along with Rudy. She played a central role and will likely have all sorts of interesting things to say when we see her on the witness stand, since she attended many of the key meetings with Trump.

It was also reported that the prosecutor in the Georgia case is in discussions with six other Trump co-defendants for possible plea deals. For those keeping score at home, we now stand at: 4 flipped, 14 left to go. The only real question is: "Which Trump lawyer will flip next?", which we have to say is an enjoyable game to play.

In Trump's New York fraud trial, we finally got the big showdown between Trump and Michael Cohen. Cohen was Trump's "fixer" and they've both long since thrown each other under their respective buses. This was the first time in five years the two have been in the same room, and Trump was as petulant as ever. First he made some snarky comments to reporters in the hall, then the judge hauled Trump onto the witness stand himself to explain them (since they were interpreted as Trump ripping into the court clerk again). Trump swore he was actually talking about Cohen, the judge flat-out did not buy it, and promptly fined Trump another $10,000 for violating his gag order, again.

Soon after this, Trump got especially worked up about something Cohen testified to, stood up and stormed out of the courtroom so fast the Secret Service agents had to run after him.

Today's development in the case: Ivanka Trump will be compelled to testify.

The most ironic development in the case came earlier in the week, however, when Trump's lawyers tried to get the trial delayed because some people in the prosecutor's office had come down with COVID. The lawyer making the complaint said he was sitting further away from the prosecution table in fear -- but as the judge noted no one on Trump's team was wearing a mask, even though the court had made them available.

And finally, hearings are soon going to begin in both Colorado and Minnesota in cases where people are challenging (on Fourteenth Amendment grounds) Trump's right to be on the presidential ballot. It is good to see this happening this early, because one of these cases is almost guaranteed to wind up before the Supreme Court -- and the sooner the better, no matter how the court rules. This is an issue that really needs to be worked out long before the voting begins.

In other news, the war in Israel and Gaza is stepping up, and a gunman killed 18 people in Maine, making it the deadliest mass shooting of the year (to date). Also, the United Auto Workers seems to have reached an agreement with Ford to end the strike, so that's a positive development.

And we saved some other good news for the end. In Ohio, there are two ballot measures being voted on this year, one that would legalize abortion (restoring the protections of Roe) and one that would legalize recreational marijuana. Perhaps because of this, early voting returns in Democratic areas seem to be way up. This isn't a perfect measure of the outcome of the vote of course, but it is certainly a positive sign.





Right out of the chute in the House of Representatives, several motions have been filed that (due to parliamentary rules) will come up for a vote whether the new speaker approves or not. There's one trying to expel Representative George Santos from the House (for being a con man) that was introduced by his fellow New York Republicans. This'll be fun for Democrats to vote on, but the bar's pretty high -- it would need a two-thirds vote of the House to kick him out. And while most Republicans are completely embarrassed by Santos they still need his vote because of their razor-thin margin.

Then there's a motion to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib for "antisemitic activity, sympathizing with terrorist organizations and leading an insurrection at the United States Capitol Complex." This was in response to Tlaib's comments on the Israel-Hamas war, but the motion was filed by none other than Marjorie "Jewish Space Lasers" Taylor Greene.

So Democrats filed their own motion to censure Greene, since Greene is hardly on the moral high road when it comes to hateful comments.

The resolution was read by Representative Becca Balint of Vermont and it is almost twelve minutes of a scathing list of all the times when Greene has "repeatedly fanned the flames of racism, antisemitism, L.G.B.T.Q. hate speech, Islamophobia, anti-Asian hate, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred."

Watching all 11 minutes and 40 seconds of it is exhausting, but it is also pretty riveting. Balint reads all the "Whereas" clauses with barely-controlled contempt in her voice, which struck us as exactly the right tone for listing all the bile Greene has spilled in her short time on the national stage. We strongly encourage everyone to at least listen to any random 30 seconds of her censure resolution, just to remind everyone precisely how vile Marjorie Taylor Greene truly is.

For compiling this exhaustive list of "receipts," for writing it out as a censure resolution, and most especially for reading it out with naked contempt, Representative Becca Balint is without a doubt our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

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





Representative Jamaal Bowman pleaded guilty this week to a misdemeanor for pulling a fire alarm during the last government shutdown fight. He'll pay a $1,000 fine and do three months of probation. But this really only rises to the level of a (Dis-)Honorable Mention this week.

Because Representative Dean Phillips ("Dean Who?" ) has now filed paperwork to run in the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire. Why? We have no idea. Does he think he has a chance of winning the nomination? No, he does not. Is this a vanity project or some sort of political theater? Probably.

Whatever his reasons, one thing is clear: Dean Phillips is the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week for challenging a sitting president that he's voted with 100 percent of the time.

[Contact Representative Dean Phillips on his House contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 728 (10/27/23)

It was mostly a one-subject week, so most of these are parting shots at the whole speaker circus in the House. Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly!



So is it poop or puke? I'm confused.

When Republicans actually admit how dysfunctional they are, feel free to repeat it.

"During the whole mean-girls slap-fight over which Republican will be speaker of the House, Representative Bill Huizenga probably had the most colorful way of describing the madness. He urged his fellow House Republicans to, 'get our poop in a group, people,' and then went on to beg them: 'I don't want us to go out there and, in front of the entire world, puke on our shoes again.' So my question for Huizenga, now that they have elected a speaker -- is Mike Johnson a pile of poop or just some puke on your shoes? I'm a little confused, sorry...."



Sports metaphors, anyone?

Of course, some Republicans fell back on sports to explain what was going on.

"During the speaker election chaos, some Republicans went for sports metaphors. Dan Crenshaw, who hails from the Houston area, concluded: 'I told people there would be problems if the Rangers won, and that's exactly what happened.' Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin had his own down-home metaphor: 'As the Republican representative from Green Bay, it pains me to ask this question, but I'm not sure who sucks at team sports more right now -- the Packers or the House Republicans.' At this point it's only a matter of time before some New York Republican chimes in with a comment about the 1962 Mets, which would seem to fit better."



MAGA Mike

This is one of those things that both sides are using for their own political purposes. Matt Gaetz and other Republicans have embraced the term, but so has the Biden campaign:





More polite, but just as bad

Johnson's mild-mannered Clark Kent persona needs some context.

"The only positive thing I can say about Mike Johnson is that he is not Jim Jordan. Having Jordan be speaker would have been excruciating all around, and Johnson isn't anywhere near as personally obnoxious. But make no mistake, he's just as far out on the rightwing fringe as Jordan and all the rest of the Chaos Caucus. He's still fighting the battle against gay marriage, for instance. He was at the center of the effort to overturn the 2020 election in the House. He is in favor of banning all abortions nationwide. He has voted against funding Ukraine's war effort. His positions are somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, in fact. Just because he doesn't speak in an unending rapid-fire stream of biliousness doesn't make him any sort of establishment Republican. He's more polite than Jordan, that is true, but he is equally as dangerous in his ideology."



Bets? Anyone?

This is just rubbing salt in the wound, but hey, why not?

"I really think someone should start a betting pool on how long Mike Johnson will last as speaker. How long can he last in his caucus of 2-year-olds throwing tantrums for the rightwing media? Until the end of the year? Whenever the budget gets passed? Maybe before Thanksgiving? Someone really should be taking bets...."



No recession in sight

The media really needs to end this nonsense.

"For roughly the past year, the media has been endlessly trying to scare Americans by predicting an imminent recession -- probably right around the corner! Ahhh! Everybody run!!! This has proven to be abject nonsense, and I am waiting for the media to issue a gigantic apology, but I am not holding my breath. Last quarter, the economy grew by a whopping 4.9 percent and unemployment remains at historic lows. Joe Biden has seen over 14 million jobs created during his term -- more than any other American president ever. So like I said, I am still waiting for an apology from the media for constantly engaging in all the 'When will the recession start?' fearmongering for the past year."



This just in...

(With, as always, a nod to the dawn of "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live.)

"This just in... Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is still corrupt. A friend essentially gave him a quarter-million-dollar recreational vehicle for free, and Thomas somehow forgot to report it either on his ethics statement and/or possibly on his income taxes. One of the highest judges in the land is blatantly for sale to the highest bidder, and yet the Supreme Court still hasn't done a thing about it. They refuse to institute their own ethics code even though they have a problem as big as a luxury bus-sized R.V. How many more revelations is it going to take? How many more times are we going to get the news: 'This just in... Supreme Court Clarence Thomas is corrupt'?"




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

October 13, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Last Clown Standing

Personally, we could not think of a better day to elect the next speaker of the House, it being Friday the 13th and all. But the way things are going, that doesn't exactly seem like it's going to happen. As we all sit and watch the center ring of the Republican circus, just when you thought that tiny little clown car couldn't possibly have any more clowns in it... another one emerges!

That's the way it feels, at any rate. Here's an ultra-quick rundown of the events of the past week in the House of Representatives. After chucking Kevin McCarthy out of the speaker's chair and then promptly going on vacation for a week, the Republican conference met again on Tuesday. This was after Donald Trump had a brief flirtation with the idea of running for the speaker's chair himself but then decided not to, we should mention (maybe someone told him it'd be a secret ballet, so he wouldn't know who voted against him?). At the Tuesday meeting, two representatives -- Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan -- gave speeches. Wednesday, Scalise won a secret-ballot vote (113-99) and became the official GOP nominee for speaker, even though Trump had endorsed Jordan. Scalise wanted to immediately hold a floor vote, but members of his party balked at this (because being balky is what they're best at). Thursday, Scalise tried to round up more support in another meeting, but failed. By the end of the day he had withdrawn his name from consideration. This left Jordan with a clear path to victory. So today, Representative Austin Scott decided to challenge him. As we write this, the House Republicans are still huddled together behind closed doors, so who knows what the clowns will do next?

[Update: House GOP members emerged from their meeting, having nominated Jordan -- but with only 124 votes. He's got a long way to go to get to the magic number of 217, obviously. A second vote was held to see how many Republicans would support Jordan on the House floor, and 55 of them voted against him. He might have no more success getting to 217 than Scalise did... and a lot more clowns seem to be grappling in that car, trying to be the next one out, so....]

The Republican House is, in a word, ungovernable. And if they can't govern themselves, how do they expect to participate in the running of our country? That is the clear takeaway message from all of this. Over the course of the past few decades, Republicans have made the job of being a Republican speaker absolutely impossible. What's at the heart of this problem is that House GOP hotheads have been lionized ever since the rise of Newt Gingrich. Writing good legislation and getting it passed is downright boring and does not gain you fawning interviews on Fox News and the rest of the rightwing media echo chamber. What does get you attention is wrecking everything in sight. Throwing epic tantrums. Tearing down the status quo, even within your own party. Destruction is victory for these bomb-throwers, and they are rewarded with lots and lots of attention (and campaign cash, mostly from small hotheaded donors). Getting all this attention goes to their heads and they demand not just a seat at the table but a veto vote on everything. And since their entire brand is to destroy things, nothing is ever perfect enough for them. They can always make up new demands that are more radical and more insane. John Boehner found this out, Paul Ryan found this out, and now Kevin McCarthy has found this out as well. All were ousted by hotheads, for no particular ideological reason. And now the hotheads are so ascendant that they are gumming up the works of deciding on a party leader.

Republicans are truly only at their best when they are in the minority -- because it's pretty easy to be in the minority: just adamantly oppose everything the majority is trying to do. Coming up with what you want to do -- as majority parties must -- is a lot harder.

The House Republicans currently seem to be about evenly divided between those who would love to just put a hothead in control of the House and those who want some sort of actual legislator to lead them who has an actual conservative agenda (rather than just "baying at the moon" ). What this means is that it may be impossible for any hothead to be elected (because saner Republicans won't vote for a hothead), and just as impossible for any mainstream conservative to get elected (because the hotheads know that such a person will eventually wind up cutting deals they don't like). This is the standoff they (and the rest of us) face.

What we are witnessing is rather historical, in one way. This is the way the party conventions used to choose their presidential nominees, in "open" conventions. One faction would build support, but another insurgent nominee would make a splash, and the voting would wind up essentially deadlocked. Either one of the candidates eventually convinces everyone to get behind them or through sheer exhaustion eventually everyone settles on some nondescript dark horse as a compromise. This could happen in the House (it would probably mean that the current acting speaker pro tempore, Patrick McHenry, would become a sort of fill-in speaker at least for the next few months).

Or things could get completely bizarre and a longshot answer to the crisis might emerge. This is one of those things that are so far-fetched they're not even normally worth discussing. But we've already had the first speaker deposed in American history and an ex-president (who is running for the job again) considering doing a quick stint as House speaker, just for the fun of it. So we've already crossed the border into the land of the far-fetched.

At some point, enough Republicans might get so disgusted with the inherent ungovernability of their own party that they start talking with Democrats. This could have one of two positive results. The first would be for a group of centrist Republicans (and it wouldn't take many) to declare that they are switching parties and will now join the Blue Dog Democrats as the most conservative Democrats in the House. The price for their switch in allegiance might be some choice committee seats, one has to imagine. But whatever deal they strike, their defection changes the balance of power in the House, and when the speaker election is held Hakeem Jeffries emerges triumphant.

Less far-fetched than that outcome is some sort of power-sharing agreement. Democrats could demand from Republicans big rule changes to defang the GOP hotheads. At a minimum, this would require changing the rule for the "motion to vacate the chair" so that it takes a lot more than just one member to call for it. Also, something would have to change in the Rules Committee which would allow bipartisan legislation to come to the floor. If an overwhelming number of Democrats and a solid faction of Republicans are for a bill, it would get a vote -- even if the majority of the Republican Party was against it. This would solve a lot of the budgetary games (such as shutting down the government) that have stalled the current House. In return, enough Democrats would either vote for a moderate, non-hotheaded Republican to be speaker, or they would vote "Present" during the speaker vote, which would allow for more breathing room for the candidate on the Republican side (so a speaker could win even if more than four Republicans voted against him or her).

In either case, sanity would once again rule the day in the workings of the House. Tantrums and hissy fits would no longer be the only order of business. Things could get done. But, alas, this idea probably makes far too much sense for it to actually happen. At least right now -- although if we go through another week like the last one, then the far-fetched might begin to look a lot more plausible.

We'll just have to see how many more clowns come out of that clown car in the meantime. Who will be the last clown standing? Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, a war has broken out after a surprise attack on Israel by Hamas. Normally, this would be a time for Washington politicians to close ranks around their ally Israel and both express their support as well as send some military aid. President Joe Biden has been doing both of these things (two aircraft carrier groups moved offshore, in a display of solidarity), but Congress has not. The House can't do anything until they elect a speaker -- not even pass some resolution restating American support. At a time when many in the world are looking to America for some sort of leadership, Biden is doing what he can while the Republicans prove how unfit for governing they truly are.

Donald Trump reacted to the news by first largely ignoring it (while taking the time to rant about the prosecutors who are bringing court cases against him), and then when he finally did address it, Trump praised the terrorist group Hezbollah while airing his (probably made-up) grievances about Israel's leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. This actually earned him some denouncements from the other Republicans running for president (for once).

Speaking of Republican presidential candidates, the field narrowed by one this week, as Will Hurd officially dropped out. You can be forgiven if you weren't even aware he was running (he didn't qualify for either debate), but it is still something to be applauded. The next candidate who really should face reality and drop out is Asa Hutchinson (who made the first but not the second debate). On deck after Hutchinson is Doug Burgum, but he's self-financing his campaign so this might not happen for a while.

On the other side of the aisle, Robert F. Kennedy Junior announced he is dropping out of the Democratic primary race and instead will run an independent campaign. Up until this point, rightwing media has had nothing but kind words to say about R.F.K. Jr., as boosting his candidacy meant a big thorn in Biden's side. But now that he's set his sights on the general election, they have all realized that R.F.K. Jr. might take more votes away from Trump than from Biden, so they all have now turned on him. As have more than one of his relatives. A group of them which included Kathleen Kennedy Townsend put out a statement which said, in part: "Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today's announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country."

There wasn't a whole lot of "Trump legal woes" news this week, but next week might prove livelier. Prosecutors in various Trump cases made various legal motions, but nothing has been ruled upon and Trump skipped the whole week of his business empire/fraud trial in New York City. There are rumors, however, that he's going to show up again next week, to personally confront a key witness against him: Michael Cohen. The two men will face each other for the first time since their epic falling-out, which could lead to some fireworks. Or perhaps just glowering looks across the courtroom, who knows? There won't be any cameras in the room, but we do look forward to the courtroom artists' renditions.

Representative George Santos, serial liar extraordinaire, got hit with 10 more felony charges this week, in the midst of the speaker circus. He's charged with stealing identities and credit card theft among other things. By week's end some of his fellow Republican House members from New York were calling for his ouster. Santos remained unbowed and swore he wouldn't accept any sort of plea deal. Republicans desperately need his vote right now, so we're pretty sure the motion to expel him will fail (that is, if it ever even gets a vote -- which would require a new speaker).

Joe Biden made some legal news this week, as it was revealed that he has sat for interviews with the special counsel who is investigating his retention of classified documents. This is a step that normally happens at the very end of the investigation, so a report (and any recommendations) may appear within the next few weeks or so. Biden, unlike Donald Trump, didn't intentionally try to hide such classified documents (or lie about them) so it's doubtful he or anyone else will be charged (for the same reason Mike Pence wasn't charged).

And to close out the week, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill from his state legislature that would have decriminalized psychedelic mushrooms. According to Newsom, more studies have to be done before taking this step, but at least he didn't completely slam the door on the idea.





Almost by default, we have to give the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award to President Joe Biden.

Biden, as president, is limited in what he can do, of course. But Biden did what he could to show America's support for Israel this week, moving not just one but two aircraft carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean. This is more posturing than actual military support -- American planes are not flying missions bombing the Gaza Strip or anything -- but it does send a strong signal to Iran and any other foreign groups that might be thinking about joining the war.

Biden also gave a speech on the war, and while it wasn't watched by many here at home, it was in Israel -- where millions tuned in. Biden denounced in the strongest language Hamas and their sneak attack, and offered full American support to Israel.

Some Democrats won't agree with Biden's stance, of course. We personally try to avoid weighing in on the subject of Israel and the Palestinians, since we don't have anything original to say on the matter. Some leftists are huge critics of Israeli policies and politics, and they all had to walk a very fine line this week in what they said. Some of them did this better than others.

Pointing out that Israel is not completely blameless in the entire situation is not a very popular stance to take right now. There is context to what is happening that is not being presented to the American public, but at the same time there are all sorts of atrocities happening right now. The whole war is an atrocity, when you get right down to it.

But in American politics, support for Israel is almost completely bipartisan now. Republicans support Israel for their own reasons, as do Democrats. Which means that Biden must speak for this bipartisan majority. His speech struck the right tone to do this -- Biden did not mince words when condemning the evil of the attack.

Agree with him or not, it was still an impressive performance. It was even more impressive for the fact that the Republican Party right now is so dysfunctional that they are lost in internecine squabbles that prevent them from offering any support to Israel (whether rhetorical or military).

So for speaking with one voice while his opposition cannot, and for being unequivocal about standing with our ally, President Joe Biden is the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate President Joe Biden on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Once again, we have to award Senator Bob Menendez with this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

Here's the (continuing) story, for those who may have missed it:

Got that? The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is accused of being a foreign agent. That's shocking and shameful, if true.

Menendez is still refusing to resign and refusing to even say whether he's running for re-election next year. He has stepped down from chairing the committee, at least, but that's not really good enough.

He needs to announce he is stepping down from his Senate seat, "in order to spend more time with my lawyers." At the very least, he needs to announce he will not be running for re-election.

Because he hasn't and because of his new indictment, Bob Menendez is easily this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

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




Volume 726 (10/13/23)

We've got a theme this week, and the theme is: eating popcorn, while watching the Republican circus.

That pretty much sums it up, so let's get on with the show!



The whole world is watching

Shades of the 1968 convention...

"This is an absolute disgrace. The United States House of Representatives is completely out of control. At a time when American government should be coming together and putting partisan politics aside so that we may show our solid support for Israel, instead we get endless partisan bickering within the Republican Party. This isn't even Democrats-versus-Republicans, instead it is Republican-on-Republican violence. They can't even get their own act together in a time of crisis. Right now, the whole world is watching Republicans prove that they should never be allowed anywhere near the levers of power in Washington. All they know how to do is grandstand and throw tantrums for the rightwing media audience. This normally wouldn't be all that big a deal, but during this crisis the whole world really is watching us... and I am downright embarrassed at what they are seeing."



Ungovernable

They've more than earned this one.

"House Republicans are ungovernable. They gerrymander their districts so well that the only challenge they'll ever face at the ballot box is from more-extreme members of their own party. Many of them feel free to be as extreme as possible, to fend off such challenges. And these extremists are now in total control, it seems. Their only problem is that they are actually too extreme for their own party now. The few Republicans in actual competitive districts don't want to follow the crazies down their extreme path. The two sides don't look like they'll even be able to agree on who is going to lead them -- much less where that leader will lead them. They are clueless, utterly incompetent, and completely ungovernable."



Republican civil war

Call it what it is.

"You know it's long been a running joke that the media loves to spotlight any divisions within the Democratic Party with the headline: 'Democrats In Disarray.' Now they're being forced to acknowledge that a civil war has broken out between factions in the Republican Party. Republicans are now eating their own, folks. They are in 'circular firing squad' formation. Or maybe 'no holds barred cage match' formation. The differences run deep between the two sides, and neither looks likely to back down and accept a leader from the other side. Because of their slim majority, this could mean it will be impossible for any one of them to become speaker in the usual way. This isn't just 'disarray' the Republicans are in right now -- it is an open civil war."



Voters, please take note

A pretty easy case to make, really.

"You know what Republicans stand for these days? Utter chaos. From Donald Trump on down to the lowliest House member, they are all heading off a cliff together. But you know what? The voters are paying attention. They see what electing too many Republicans does -- it just leads to endless chaos. Republicans can't be trusted with running the government because they can't even run their own party. All they can offer you is more and more chaos. Who would vote for that? Voters who might have given some moderate Republican the benefit of the doubt in the voting booth now have to face the reality -- giving Republicans control of anything just leads to chaos. And you can bet your bottom dollar Democrats will be reminding the voters of this from now right up to Election Day."



MAGA extremists

Biden was right -- use this label as much as possible.

"You know why the House of Representatives has ground to a halt and all the Republicans can do is further beclown themselves? Because the MAGA extremists are driving the Republican bus. These nihilists have no clue what they even want, they just know that throwing lots of tantrums gets them on Fox News. That's all they stand for -- their own personal 'brand.' They don't really care about the Republican Party, they don't really care about their country, and they certainly don't care about the voters. All the MAGA extremists care about is themselves. This is the lesson that Donald Trump has taught them all -- being outrageous gets you lots of attention. They are a group of two-year-olds throwing tantrums. That's where the MAGA extremist path leads, folks, and we are seeing undeniable proof of it in the House of Representatives right now."



This won't be the last time, either

This could become a regular occurrence, in fact.

"Even if some compromise speaker eventually emerges from the Republican dumpster fire, their days may be numbered in that job. What's going to happen next month when the continuing resolution turns into a pumpkin and we face another government shutdown? What's going to happen when some sort of deal with Senate Democrats and the White House becomes a necessity? My guess is that the same thing that happened to Kevin McCarthy will repeat itself all over again. McCarthy got the boot because he did something responsible. When the next leader is forced to do something responsible, what is going to stop the hotheaded MAGA extremists from running this whole scenario all over again? So to whomever emerges from the Republican leadership fistfight, all I can say is: 'Enjoy it while it lasts.' Because it might not last very long at all."



We welcome you with open arms!

This is just taunting them, but what the hey....

"I'd like to extend an invitation to all the Republicans who represent districts that Joe Biden won, as well as all Republicans who are in very purple districts as well. Are you tired of the constant bickering and chaos on your side of the aisle? Do you want the House to work again? Do you want to see the MAGA extremists completely and utterly defanged? Well then, you should seriously consider switching parties. Democrats will welcome you with open arms, into a 'big tent' party. You could join the Blue Dogs or form your own caucus if you want, it's OK with us. But let's get someone who can get things done running the place again, what do you say? Let's put an end to the chaos. C'mon across the aisle, we'll be happy to have you over here!"




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

October 7, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Republican Civil War Rages

We've finally gotten to the point where even the headline-writers in the mainstream media had to admit the reality -- which runs 180 degrees counter to their propensity to magnify every little squabble among Democrats -- and finally write a few: "Republicans In Disarray" headlines. Because this was the week it became unavoidable. The Republican civil war broke out into the open in a big way, as they made history by deposing a speaker of the House of Representatives for the first time ever. From this point forward, we will be referring to just Representative Kevin McCarthy, since that's all he now is. And maybe not even that, if the rumors he's thinking about stepping down entirely turn out to be true.

We were curious, so we went back to the January chaos of McCarthy getting elected speaker, just to find out what we had predicted at the time. And we found that we called it pretty close to what actually happened. We went back to the first column we wrote after McCarthy finally became speaker (on the 15th round of voting) and found the following:

Here we are, in early October, and McCarthy is toast. Maybe we should have gone to Las Vegas and made an actual bet on the date -- we would have been pretty close, you've got to admit!

McCarthy's ouster may have been the most ignominious, for the way it played out, but he certainly isn't the first Republican speaker booted from the chair by rowdy hooligans within his own caucus. John Boehner and Paul Ryan might have a few words of sympathy for McCarthy right about now, is all we are saying. At this point, becoming speaker of a Republican House should be seen in the same light as being named Spinal Tap's new drummer -- something to celebrate, perhaps, but with an impending aura of doom nonetheless.

McCarthy survived 269 days in his role as "Herder of the Rabid Republican Feral Cats," but there's no guarantee this isn't going to happen all over again -- and a lot quicker, perhaps, next time. We figure the odds are only about even that the next GOP speaker will survive in the job until Thanksgiving, since the whole fight this time was just to buy an extra six weeks for budget negotiations. If those negotiations are concluded by striking any sort of deal with Democrats (in the Senate, in the White House, and/or in the House), another motion to vacate the chair may immediately follow. This isn't a Spinal Tab drummer spontaneously combusting, in other words; it is instead the other members of the band performing a human sacrifice on his own drum kit, live and on stage.

To put this all another way, you would have to be completely crazy to want the job. Which was the cue for one completely crazy Republican to announce his bid for it. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here, let's back up and review the entire three-ring-circus week first.

Last Friday, most everyone (us included) expected that a government shutdown was imminent. But then on Saturday -- the last day possible -- Kevin McCarthy surprised everyone by introducing a clean continuing resolution (C.R.) bill, to keep government funding on autopilot while adding billions in disaster aid and a few other things that needed doing (because deadlines were approaching). What it didn't have: aid to Ukraine. Or any of the radical Republican poison-pill ideas.

McCarthy then actually started talking like a sane politician, which was decidedly odd, for him. It spurred an article in the Washington Post titled: "Who Is This Man And What Has He Done With Kevin McCarthy?" It begins:



McCarthy even explicitly called himself "the adult in the room." His bill passed the House with a whopping 335 votes (every Democrat but one voted for it) and it sailed through the Senate on an 88-9 vote (where all Democrats voted for it). President Joe Biden signed it before midnight, and the shutdown was averted.

Washington was stunned. The crisis was actually solved by the commonsense action of the Republican speaker. Which really shouldn't be stunning, but it was.

Monday, Matt Gaetz made good on his promise to sandbag McCarthy, by filing a "motion to vacate the chair." Over the weekend, McCarthy explicitly ruled out working with Democrats to save his own political skin. His fate, he announced, would depend solely on Republicans, with no quarter given and no deals made with any Democrats.

The vote was called on Tuesday. McCarthy lost, 216-210. He was out -- the first speaker of the House of Representatives ever to lose a "no confidence" vote in American history.

Being a Republican, McCarthy immediately tried to blame the Democrats for his fate. No, really! You just can't make this stuff up, folks....

It's doubtful McCarthy could even have made this bipartisan support appear if he had tried, to be fair. Representative Pramila Jayapal summed up a lot of Democrats' thoughts when she answered a reporter's question with: "Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy. Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy."

McCarthy's spin was that if Democrats hadn't voted to oust him, the eight hotheads in his own party would have lost the vote. But the thing to ask any Republican trying to blame Democrats for McCarthy's fate is, of course: "How many of you would have voted to save Nancy Pelosi's chair if a few Democrats had tried to oust her?" Why is it, in other words, that Democrats are always somehow supposed to be the ones who save Republicans from their own party's worst impulses? We're old enough to remember when the Republicans used to be the party of "taking personal responsibility," but those days are long gone it seems.

We're also old enough to remember when there were three "young guns," the self-identified future of the Republican Party. They wrote a book and everything! All of the three have now crashed and burned: Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy.

But let's return to last week (rather than the dim and distant past). Patrick McHenry, the new designated "speaker pro tempore," immediately demonstrated why Republicans just aren't worth helping, by kicking Nancy Pelosi out of her office space in the Capitol. This was beyond petty, especially considering Pelosi was in San Francisco to attend the funeral of her good friend Dianne Feinstein (who was lying in state in the San Francisco City Hall where she started her political career).

That was just after McHenry entered the history books as his own footnote, under the heading: "Loudest gavel slam in House history." McHenry decided that after leaving the House rudderless, the best course of action was for them to all go on vacation for a full week. Again, you just cannot make this stuff up! Later it was reported that this may have avoided open fistfights within the Republican caucus, but perhaps it will just postpone them.

Where we stand is waiting for the next shoe to drop. The original plan was for the Republicans to all return to Washington next Tuesday and hold a "candidates' forum" within their own caucus, behind closed doors. Then Wednesday they'd conduct a secret ballot to determine which candidate had the support of at least two-thirds of the conference, and he or she would then be put on the House floor as a speaker candidate and they'd all publicly vote on it.

That was the plan, but it may be changing. There is movement on two fronts which may change this schedule. The first is a nebulous plan to change the rules of the House so that it takes more than one member to try to oust a sitting speaker. They'd have to raise it to at least ten to avoid what just happened, but they'd also almost certainly have to have some Democrats vote for this change as well (which is politically fraught, since collaborating with Democrats is what brought McCarthy down).

But the second proposed change is more intriguing. It wouldn't be a change in House rules but rather just in the party rules Republicans follow. And it might actually be an intelligent thing for them to do. Rather than advancing a speaker candidate who got two-thirds of the Republicans' support to the floor of the House (where the voting would be public), instead why not temporarily raise this ceiling to the full 218 votes any candidate would need to actually win the speaker's chair?

The likely result of this would be to delay the proposed schedule, because it is very likely that no Republican candidate would get 218 votes -- at least not on the first round of voting. Remember January? That's what is going to have to happen all over again. Any speaker candidate is going to have to make some promises both to the moderate Republicans in swing districts and to the hotheaded Chaos Caucus. Just like Kevin McCarthy was forced to. The only difference (and it is a big one) is that all this wheeling-dealing and intraparty feuding would happen behind closed doors and the Republicans wouldn't emerge from their caucus room until after someone had enough support to win the first public House floor vote. This would avoid all kinds of public embarrassment, but then again it might take a while for any candidate to hit that bar (we could be in for weeks of the Republican civil war raging, just behind closed doors this time).

The two strongest candidates who have announced their speaker bids so far are Steve Scalise, who held the number-two Republican leadership position under McCarthy, and Jim Jordan, hothead extraordinaire. For a brief heady moment, there was a push for Donald Trump to enter this race, but in the end Trump decided to endorse Jordan and see what happened.

The best epitaph for McCarthy's political career centered on the concept of Republicans eating their own:



The most amusing part of this whole circus is that the House speakership crisis actually shoved Donald Trump from the media spotlight this week. Trump surprised many when he actually showed up in person for his civil fraud trial in New York. This case is being heard by a judge (no jury), so there really wasn't a whole lot of point to showing up, except (of course) to troll the media cameras into covering him. So he sat and scowled at everyone in the courtroom and occasionally appeared in the hallway full of reporters to rant and rave about how unfairly he was being treated (and anything else that popped into his head, as usual). But by Wednesday, even Trump realized he wasn't making the media splash he had intended (due in no small part to the actual real-life political events happening in the House), and he decided to stop attending the courtroom sessions.

Which brings us to the rundown of Trump legal woes for the week. There was a flurry of activity on many fronts, so we're just going to list them here briefly with links to the stories for anyone interested:

In that same civil New York trial, Trump drew his first (but hopefully not last) official gag order from the judge. He had sent an online attack against the judge's clerk, which enraged the judge (who, once again, is the sole arbiter in the case, since there is no jury). He told Trump to cease and desist any comments about his legal staff. We'll see whether Trump can manage to restrain himself...

The judge also ruled to prevent Trump and his family members from hiding money and assets by moving them around all their different corporations, which seems like a smart move on the judge's part.

Trump's lawyers made a motion to delay the secret documents case until "mid-November" of next year, which is conveniently after the election.

Trump's lawyers made a motion to dismiss the January 6th case against Trump by attempting to play the "because he was president, he's immune from everything" card.

Trump's lawyers made a motion to dismiss the porn-star/hush-money case because (hoo boy...) it is making it harder for him to campaign for president.

All of these are legal longshots, and all are expected to fail.

Trump's lawyers also dropped the case Trump has brought against Michael Cohen, because Trump was scheduled to be deposed next week. Trump says he's merely "postponing" the case, but we'll see....

Trump continues to attack and belittle and threaten pretty much everyone involved in every court case against him. The Washington Post tried to come up with a comprehensive list, but they probably missed a few (since there have been so many).

And in "soon-to-be-charged federally (we hope)" Trump legal news, it was revealed that Trump has been playing fast and lose with national security secrets by bragging to an Australian billionaire at his Florida golf resort about the capabilities of America's nuclear submarines -- including how many nuclear warheads they can carry. The Australian then freely shared all this information -- to over 45 people, including "foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists." Thus proving once again that Donald Trump is the embodiment of a national security threat.

In the "Trump henchmen legal woes" category, it seems that two Trump buddies are following his game plan for how to deal with his legal teams, which can be summarized as: "Don't pay them." Both Mike Lindell (the "My Pillow" guy) and Rudy Giuliani were recently dumped by their lawyers because the two weren't paying their legal bills. Giuliani, on top of it, was slapped with an I.R.S. lien for over half a million dollars on a property he owns in Florida -- for not paying his taxes. But they shouldn't be seen as anything less than following in Trump's own deadbeat footsteps.

OK, that's enough of a weekly wrap-up. If we had one, we'd end this with a dramatic and thundering Patrick McHenry-style gavel-slam to close out the week that was (...but for some reason this job didn't seem to come with a big wooden mallet... probably a good thing, that).





This is somewhat premature, we do realize, but the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week was Laphonza Butler, formerly the head of Emily's List, who is now our sitting senator.

Gavin Newsom didn't waste any time, since maintaining a full roster in Washington is important right now, and named Butler last weekend to the vacancy caused by Dianne Feinstein's death. She is an openly lesbian Black woman, the latter parts of which fulfill a promise Newsom made when he appointed our other senator a few years ago.

Newsom recently said that he intended to appoint someone to be a "caretaker" senator, who would not actually run for the seat in the 2024 election. He didn't want to appoint any of the Democrats already running for the job, which functionally would have meant Barbara Lee (the only Black woman running). But it was notable that he didn't apparently get any sort of promise from Senator Butler that she wouldn't run as an incumbent next year, so we'll have to see what happens.

We have to admit we had never heard her name before, but she seems to come with a very acceptable background:



In other words, a breath of progressive fresh air for California. She was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris, which was symbolic (to say the least).

Being that she'll be our senator for at least the next year or so, we will be following her Senate career closely. The most interesting thing will be if she decides to run for the office or not, which should be clear within a few months (given filing deadlines).

But for now, for becoming the first lesbian Black senator in American history, we have to say that Senator Laphonza Butler is indeed the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week, and we wish her well in her new job.

[Congratulate Senator Laphonza Butler on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We have to at least hand out a (Dis-)Honorable Mention award to Representative Jamaal Bowman, who in an apparent attempt to buy time (since Kevin McCarthy introduced his 71-page clean C.R. and then wanted to force Democrats to immediately vote on it, unread) actually pulled a fire alarm in a House office building. He swears he didn't do it to stall things, but we have our doubts as to how honest he is in that stance. In any case, this isn't junior high, Representative Bowman. If Democrats are going to be seen as the adults in the room, then you just can't do things like this, sorry.

But sadly there was another Democrat who was worse. President Joe Biden jarringly announced this week that his administration will be building some new walls down at the southern border.

Here's the basic story:



There are two reasons why this is all disappointing a lot of Democrats. The first is Biden going back on that campaign promise. That's an obvious source of friction. But there's also the feeling that Biden has essentially been forced into doing this and is not owning up to the reasons why he approved it.

The president could indeed have stopped the plan, even if Congress had appropriated the money for it. He could have refused to waive all the federal laws (including the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act) and dared Republicans to sue him in court to force the money to be spent. As Donald Trump proved on multiple issues, the federal courts are so slow that forcing a court case essentially gives a president a free pass for years. Biden could have chosen this route, but didn't.

There is indeed a case to be made to complete these sections of wall, which Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas laid out in the public notice. And Biden (as well as the Democratic Party as a whole) is in a tough spot on immigration, which Republicans are going to try to use as a political bludgeon next year. So Biden might just have been acting politically, to get out in front of an issue he's weak on.

But if the president really did intend this, he should have just owned it. He should have made the case himself: "There are some gaps that need finishing, so we're just going to do some limited construction to do that." But Biden didn't do that. He's trying to say his hands were tied by Congress, but absent a judge's order that's a pretty weak political argument to make. Or he could just get out in front of it and own it, but he hasn't done that either.

No matter how most Democrats feel about immigration and border walls, it left many with a feeling of disappointment. Which is why President Biden is our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

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




Volume 725 (10/6/23)

We did consider including an excerpt from former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly, who confirmed this week to CNN that Donald Trump did indeed say all those disgusting things about America's veterans (even wounded or dead veterans). This proves once again that Trump has zero respect for the military (and zero basic humanity, as well), but that wasn't really in question. And we have to agree with those who still remember Kelly ripping into a Democratic congresswoman for bringing one of these episodes to light by flat-out lying about her. It's really too little, too late for Kelly to somehow fix his own reputation after the fact, so we decided not to even include any of it.

Instead, we've just got the usual mixed bag of talking points, with one rather amusing bit of karma at the end. Enjoy, as always, and please use responsibly.



Chaos party

Reinforce this excellent talking point and expand it!

"You know, up until now we've all been talking about the 'Chaos Caucus' within the Republican Party, that has no interest in getting things done at all and doesn't know how to do anything other than toss bombs and tear things apart. But now it's pretty obvious that the Chaos Caucus is in complete control of the Republican Party. So I guess we should all now refer to the entire GOP as the Chaos Party?"



Sure, why not?

Hammer them for this one as hard as you can. They deserve it.

"The clock is ticking on another impending government shutdown. The House needs to get its act together by mid-November. Negotiations need to happen with the Senate and with the White House to come to some compromise budget that can pass both the House and Senate. Time is short. So what did Republicans do right after they kicked out their own speaker of the House? They decided to take a week off, because obviously they were entitled to a vacation. Sure, why not? From what I can see, taking lots of time off is the only thing that House Republicans truly excel at."



Seriously? Don't make me laugh.

Nip this one in the bud. [Editorial note: we reworked one phrase from the best article we read this week in response to the charge that it was somehow Democrats' fault all this happened, just to give credit where it is due.]

"Seriously? You're sitting there telling me that it was the fault of Democrats that Kevin McCarthy lost his leadership job? You simply cannot be serious. Why is it somehow the Democrats fault every time Republicans make a total mess of things in Congress? Why are we supposed to be the ones to save them from themselves? To all the Republicans sanctimoniously trying to shift blame for this fiasco to Democrats, I would ask a simple question to measure their own omnibenevolence towards their political foes: If Nancy Pelosi had been threatened by a handful of hard-left radicals and it came down to a floor vote, how many of you would have voted to save her? I believe I know the answer to that, and it is precisely the same number as Democrats who voted to save McCarthy: zero. So don't get up on your high horse and try to point the finger now, because if the shoe were on the other foot, you guys wouldn't lift a finger to save a Democratic speaker. I mean, the very idea is downright laughable."



Thanks, but no thanks

Chuck Schumer gets in a good one.

"I see that a certain faction of House Republicans wants Donald Trump to ride in and be their savior by accepting the speaker's job. Marjorie 'Three-Names' Taylor Greene gushed about how it would: 'be like a Trump rally every day,' and: 'It would be the House of MAGA!' Chuck Schumer, who still remembers what happened on January 6th, tweeted back: 'No thanks, we're good. We've seen a Trump rally at the Capitol already.' Yeah, I'm with Chuck on this one: Thanks, but no thanks."



A walking national security risk

This is still breaking news, so perhaps we'll learn more details in the next few days, but it's such an easy shot it's worth taking now.

"Donald Trump apparently brags at his golf resorts to his billionaire buddies -- even foreign citizens -- about America's nuclear secrets. He spilled some national security secrets to an Australian, I guess to impress him or something? Trump blabbed about the capabilities of America's nuclear submarines to this random guy, who then promptly passed all of that information along to 45 of his closest friends -- including journalists and foreign officials. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Donald Trump is a walking, talking national security risk and he should not be allowed anywhere near America's secrets, ever again."



One seat flips already

Something to taunt Republicans with....

"I see that the federal judiciary finally overruled the blatant gerrymandering in Alabama and chose a districting map that will almost guarantee that Democrats win two House seats instead of the one they've been limited to in the state. Just like that, by ending this unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, Democrats have already picked up one of the House seats they will need next year to win control back from the chaos of Republican rule. And since they don't need to flip all that many seats to do so, this is a big win!"



Happy Kevin Day!

Karma just laughs, at times.

"Kevin McCarthy was ousted from power this Tuesday... which also happened to be something called 'National Kevin Day.' No really! National Kevin Day -- 'aka National Hug-A-Kevin Day' -- falls on October 3rd. As the website explains: 'If you have been neglecting your Kevins lately, here's your chance to right a wrong.' Oh, man... too, too funny! I hope ex-speaker McCarthy had a wonderful National Kevin Day, but somehow I don't think he got enough hugs."




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

September 30, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Shutdown Follies

Welcome back once again to the Shutdown Follies! Today's entertainment will be provided by the House Republicans, who will all be driving clown cars in a demolition derby, for your enjoyment.

That's what it feels like, at any rate. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Jellyfish) is caught in a vortex of political posturing, from which there is no apparent escape. No escape for the country, as we all get sucked into a completely pointless government shutdown in its wake, and no escape for Kevin McCarthy, whose only way out is to commit political hara-kiri (or, if you prefer, seppuku). The "Chaos Caucus" of MAGA lunatics is in full control of the House now, and they are content to head the ship of state at full speed directly into a gigantic (and eminently avoidable) iceberg. And there's nothing anyone can do but sit back and watch the disaster unfold, it seems.

McCarthy is mightily trying to appease the hardcore members of his caucus with increasingly-Draconian budget bills that serve no purpose outside of the House of Representatives. They are messaging bills. They are political posturing, plain and simple. None have any chance of ever becoming law. None will ever survive to become the federal budget. So it really doesn't even matter what is in them, which is why McCarthy keeps giving in to the increasingly bizarre demands of the Chaos Caucus. Want support payments to poor women with infants slashed 30 percent? Sure! Heck, why not 75 percent! Hey, let's throw in Trump's border wall, that'd be cool! Want to cut somebody you don't like in the executive branch's salary to one dollar a year? Yeah, let's put that in too, that'd be a hoot!

If this weren't laughable enough, there's actually a secondary level of this posturing, a measure posturing as some sort of way forward. It isn't. It too is never going to make it through the Senate. McCarthy concocted his own "continuing resolution" (C.R.) to kick the can down the road by funding the government for another month. It is just as heinous as the actual budget bills McCarthy is working on, and will never be agreed to by the Senate. And -- here's the kicker -- McCarthy couldn't even pass that. Today, his messaging C.R. bill, meant to strengthen his hand in the eventual negotiations with the Senate, only got 198 votes. A full 21 Republicans voted against it (as did all 211 of the Democrats). This was purely a messaging bill, staking out some sort of ground for McCarthy to fight from, and he couldn't even pass that through his fractious caucus.

The biggest problem is that (as some are starting to call it) this is the "Seinfeld Shutdown," meaning it is a shutdown "about nothing." There is no overarching issue that is driving it (such as, in a previous shutdown: "repeal Obamacare," just to give one example). The Chaos Caucus doesn't know what it wants. Every time McCarthy gives them what he thinks they want, they make new demands. And they're far from unified (being pro-chaos and all). Each lunatic member has their own loony demands, and any one of them can change their own personal goalposts at any time. This more than anything is what is preventing McCarthy from just giving them everything they want -- because nobody really knows what that actually is. So we get a shutdown about nothing.

Of course, there is the world of political posturing and then there is reality. The reality of the situation is that a C.R. is going to have to pass the House, and it's going to have to pass with Democratic votes. That's what McCarthy just proved to the world -- there is no other way out of this. But that's where the ritual disembowelment comes in, because if McCarthy does make this move and puts any sort of compromise C.R. on the floor for a vote, he will immediately face a vote of no-confidence from his own Republicans -- who might just kick him out of the speaker's chair for the effrontery of actually acknowledging reality. That's that one thing that does not go over well in the MAGAfied Trumpian Republican Party these days.

The Senate, meanwhile, is working on an actual bipartisan C.R. which would kick the can down the road for a month and a half. It is going to pass with huge bipartisan support (although Rand Paul is having one of his hissy fits and as of this writing will be singlehandedly delaying this vote until after the government actually does shut down). If this bill does pass, it may become the only vehicle to reopening the government after the shutdown. If the House gets a chance to vote on it as-is, it would likely get the support of almost all the Democrats and the few dozen Republicans who still have some sort of contact with reality. But to save McCarthy's hide, they may have to use an arcane parliamentary procedure that would force the bill to the floor for a vote without the speaker's help. Even this might not save McCarthy, since some of the people who want him gone seem to be on a rather personal vendetta. Meaning parliamentary niceties aren't going to matter to them.

Of course, while the Senate is displaying much more adult behavior in all of this, it too is not above going down some rabbit holes as well. This week a minor pearl-clutching crisis was ended, as the Senate voted to once again require men to wear a business suit in order to be allowed on the Senate floor. This was in reaction to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer deciding that it would be OK to let John Fetterman wear his traditional hoodie-and-shorts combo when he casts his votes. This led to an uproar (see that "pearl-clutching" description) among style mavens everywhere. The horrors! Oh, the humanity!

(Sigh.)

So it's not like the House cornered the market on political silliness this week, or anything.

But they certainly gave it their best shot. With a government shutdown looming, the House Republicans took time out of their busy schedule to open the impeachment inquiry into Hunter Biden. Hunter, of course, cannot be impeached since he is not now nor ever has been a government employee. So the Republicans will continue their attempts at linking Hunter to his dad Joe, who is indeed president and therefore can be impeached. Want to know how that's going? Not well. Their first hearing's witnesses not only had zero evidence of Joe doing the slightest thing wrong, but they actually refuted the idea that he should be impeached. Here's what one of the GOP witnesses had to say:

Of course, these hearings aren't about uncovering facts, they are about political posturing and smearing Joe Biden, and in the right-wing media echo chamber, nobody actually cares that the witnesses undermined the Republican case. And we were just informed today that the government shutdown won't affect this crucially important business:



As we began by noting, welcome to the clown car demolition derby, folks!

While the Shutdown Follies occupied the center ring in this week's political circus, there were two other big political events as well this week. The second Republican presidential debate was held, and President Joe Biden and Donald Trump essentially began their general election campaigns against each other.

The GOP debate, just like the first one, did not include the frontrunner in the primary race, Donald Trump. Trump doesn't want to debate. He's pretty confident he's going to beat all the others without having to subject himself to impertinent questions or criticisms, and he's probably right about that. He's leading the rest of the pack by a clear 40 points in the polls, which is absolutely unheard of in presidential polling (for a non-incumbent). Trump is now openly calling for all the remaining debates to be cancelled, and has stated that he won't be attending the third one next month. The ratings for the second debate were down from the first one, but the Republican National Committee is plowing ahead with their plan anyway. (We wrote our full take on Wednesday's debate in yesterday's column, if you want to hear more of our reactions.)

President Biden made history this week, becoming the first sitting United States president to join striking workers on their picket line. Biden flew to Michigan and appeared with the leader of the United Auto Workers at a plant being picketed. Biden let the Union boss speak and only added a few comments of his own, but the symbolism was the important thing. Biden has long styled himself "the most Union-friendly president ever," and this photo op seemed to cement that legacy for him.

As we said, this truly kicked off the general election campaign, since Biden was pressured to go to Michigan by the fact that Donald Trump decided to speak to a Michigan audience on the same night as the GOP debate (in order to steal their thunder). Trump's speech was (of course) almost all about himself, and was not "given to an audience of striking autoworkers," as it was sold to the media. Instead, Trump spoke in a non-Union plant to people who were waving pro-Union signs who were not actually Union members. There may have been a few actual Union members in the audience, since apparently anyone could just show up and walk in. But there was zero outreach by the Trump campaign to any U.A.W. locals, and the crowd was a lot smaller than Team Trump predicted.

Trump spent his time chiding the U.A.W. leader for not endorsing his candidacy. He didn't address the striking workers' demands at all, and instead all but begged for the U.A.W. endorsement.

Biden, later in the week, gave a speech announcing the creation of a library in John McCain's honor, and stressed the theme of doing what's right and fighting hard for democracy -- themes that Biden struck during his first presidential campaign, and directed straight at Donald Trump (more on this in the talking points segment of our program). Which, as we said, means that while we're still months away from the first actual primary, the rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden has really already begun.

For all the ink that has been spilled over Joe Biden being old, it never ceases to amaze us how little the media cares when Donald Trump shows obvious signs of mental impairment. Just in the past few days, Trump has: (1) stated that Jeb Bush was president and got us into a Middle East war, (2) said that he beat Barack Obama to win the presidency, and (3) warned that Joe Biden was about to get us all into World War II. That's right: two. And yet Biden's the one too old to serve?

Speaking of Trumpian idiocy, it was immediately hushed up, but Donald Trump apparently tried to buy a gun, while visiting the gun shop that sold a mass shooter his weapon. It should come as no surprise that the handgun caught Trump's eye because it came with his own picture emblazoned on it. The only problem is that if Trump did indeed try to buy the gun, he should have been prevented from doing so. Because to buy a gun means to fill out the paperwork and do a background check. And Trump's under federal indictment, which means he should be barred from purchasing a gun. If this transaction did actually occur (details are sketchy), then Trump would be guilty of exactly the same crime as Hunter Biden -- lying on an application to buy a gun. That would indeed be ironic, n'est pas?

There were, of course, some developments in the "Trump legal woes" department, all of it bad for Trump. The judge in the federal elections-interference case against Trump turned down his request that she recuse herself. An appeals court allowed the civil case against Trump's business practices to go forward as scheduled in New York (it is scheduled to begin next week).

But there were two big pieces of news for Trump from the courts. The first is that the judge in that New York business case issued a summary judgment that said Trump did indeed commit massive fraud in overvaluing his properties, so therefore that won't even be an issue at the trial. Trump is liable, we just don't know the full extent of that yet. But the judge did cancel the business licenses he needs to do business in the state, and several of his properties -- including Trump Tower! -- will now be handed over to a court receiver. They may ultimately be auctioned off, depending on how the rest of the case goes. Trump, before the trial even began, has already lost on the biggest accusation against him, the rest of it is mere details, really.

Down in Georgia, the news just keeps getting worse and worse for Trump. Jeffrey Clark was denied in his motion to move his trial to federal court, as the judge essentially told him attempting to overthrow an election was not actually in his job description, therefore he wasn't acting as a federal agent. But then things went from bad to worse for Trump, as today the first of Trump's co-defendants worked out a plea deal with the prosecutor. The guy who was central to the scheme to illegally steal election-machine data in Coffee County will now plead guilty. This means he will be a witness for the prosecution. And he can point the finger directly at two other co-defendants who are also rumored to be talking plea deals with the D.A.: Sidney Powell and Jeff Clark. This could be absolutely devastating to Trump's defense.

Which is where we will leave this wrap-up -- with the warm thought that all of Trump's (legal) chickens are finally coming home to roost.





We had our differences with her and we did disagree with many of the things she did and stood for, but for all of that Dianne Feinstein was our senator for an astounding 31 years.

So today we're going to remember all the good things she did, and all the things where we did agree. Feinstein could be a champion when she sunk her teeth in an issue, and she was indeed a fighter for the causes she believed in. That is an honorable thing.

Feinstein leaves a legacy behind that speaks for itself. She was groundbreaking, or (more accurately) glass-ceiling-breaking in her political career. She was a role model for women in the political world.

She will be missed, both in California and elsewhere. So we hereby posthumously bestow a Most Impressive Democrat (Lifetime Achievement) award upon her.

Requiescat In Pace, Senator Feinstein.

[Leave condolences for Senator Feinstein on her Senate contact page (while it still exists), to let everyone know you appreciated her efforts.]





Both awards were easy to select, this week.

Senator Bob Menendez needs to go. He needs to resign his Senate seat to spend more time with his legal team.

We saw the phrase used today (in a totally unrelated political news article) "so corrupt it would make a New Jersey senator blush." That pretty much sums up the personal status of Bob Menendez, right now. In fact, we don't even feel the need to review what he has now been federally charged with, since by now everyone has already heard.

So we say to Senator Menendez:

Dude, you got caught. Red-handed. It's pretty obvious to everyone that you took bribes.

You need to go.

Will this help make your mind up?

Here you go -- this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. (And we're sorry, but the little statuette is just painted gold, it's not made of solid gold.)

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




Volume 724 (9/29/23)

We are back again after a one-week hiatus (full disclosure: we played hooky to go see the Steve Miller Band, and it was absolutely awesome -- we had never seen him before and despite being 79 years old, he put on a fantastic show!).

This week's talking points is an odd one, but then again it's been an odd week. We start off with a very long "talking point" (truth be told it is actually more of a "speech excerpt" ). President Biden gave a stirring speech while dedicating a new library in John McCain's memory, and he spoke at length about fighting to preserve American democracy. And this time, he named names, so we had to include the best parts of it.

Then we detour over to the smoking wreckage that is the House of Representatives, just to take a few shots at "Republicans in disarray." We then return to another (shorter!) excerpt from Biden this week (his brief remarks to the striking United Auto Workers on the picket line) and wrap things up with a taunt to Republicans who still have hope that Donald Trump won't be their party's nominee next year.

So let's get on with it all, shall we?



MAGA extremists

Biden's speech honoring John McCain was the most pointed attack on both Donald Trump and the "MAGA extremists" he's given since before the midterm elections. It's a shame it didn't get more press coverage, as the entire speech is well worth reading. Here is the meat of it, where Biden rips into the MAGA extremists for what they want to do if they take power again:





A shutdown about nothing

We have to admit, this one's pretty good.

"You know what people are calling what's about to happen due to the Republicans in Congress being out of control? The 'Seinfeld Shutdown' -- because it is a shutdown about nothing. What do the radical rightwingers want? Who knows? What are their demands? Well, they're different for each one of them. Are they shutting the government down for some grand ideological reason, such as repealing Obamacare? No, they are not. They are shutting the government down because a small group of radical MAGA extremists know that they can. They are the tail wagging the sad dog named Kevin McCarthy. And this dysfunction is going to mean military servicemembers will have to work with no paycheck in sight. All for nothing. All just because they can."



Support our troops

Hit them hard with this one, because it hurts.

"The extremist Republicans who are shutting the government down in a temper tantrum are going to have a very real-world effect on those Americans who are serving their country. Every soldier and sailor and pilot in the military is going to have to go to work knowing their paycheck is at risk. They have to trust that sooner or later saner heads will prevail in Congress. I'd like to hear what Kevin McCarthy has to say to an Army private trying to provide for her family by putting her life at risk for this nation when she asks whether she's going to get paid or not. I want to see if he can answer that question, because it should be a shameful question to ever be asked. This is not some academic exercise, Mr. McCarthy. People's lives and livelihoods are being affected. Get your job done! Make sure they get paid!"



Chaos

Make the case to the voters directly.

"Next year, the voters will head to the polls to elect a new Congress and the next president. I'd like to point out to all of them that a vote for a Republican is a vote for this sort of chaos happening over and over again. It's all they know how to do. They do not know how to govern. They have no clue what they're even fighting for. All they know how to do is toss bombs and destroy the workings of government. So when you go into that voting booth next year, please remember that a vote for a Democrat is a vote to get things done. A vote for a Republican is a vote for utter chaos. It's your choice, really."



Weakest speaker ever?

Hit McCarthy as hard as you like, he deserves it.

"Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is quite possibly the weakest person ever to hold that job. He has absolutely no control over his caucus, and his caucus is holding him hostage so he can't work with others across the aisle who want to do their constitutional duty. He is trapped, like Gulliver, tied down by a bunch of tiny little strings. He does the bidding of the most extreme members of his caucus in a desperate attempt to stay in power. I'm not sure exactly why he works so hard to save his position as speaker, since he is completely powerless in that position. We've had some weak speakers before, but for the life of me I cannot think of any speaker of the House of Representatives who was weaker than Kevin McCarthy. In fact, I wonder whether he'll still be speaker, this time next week...."



Unions built the middle class

Shifting gears back to Biden, his remarks to the striking autoworkers were brief (he let the Union leader speak instead), but they were a powerful statement of support from a United States president, so they deserve to be quoted here. (Note: the break in this excerpt is where the Union leader spoke, Biden's remarks were given before and afterwards.)





Catch-22

Finally, a comment to taunt Republicans wishing for someone other than Trump to win their party's nomination.

"Oh, sure, there's a way to beat Donald Trump in the primaries. All it would take would be for all the other GOP candidates but one to drop out of the race and throw their support behind one person. That way, that candidate might have an actual shot of beating Trump. But you know what? The problem with this is that every GOP candidate thinks he or she is the one who should remain to take on Trump head-to-head. They're all waiting for each other to clear that path for them. Which means what will happen is exactly what happened in 2016 -- the anti-Trump vote will be split, and Trump will waltz to victory. Because I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for an outbreak of altruism and selflessness among the Republican presidential candidates any time soon."




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

September 16, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Impeach Hunter Biden!

No, wait... that can't be right...?

Sorry for opening with some snark, but we felt that was the appropriate tone for addressing this week's legal developments. Republicans have been swearing up and down for years now that President Joe Biden's son Hunter somehow bribed his father to use his position as vice president to do... well, something nefarious... and that all they really needed to do was dig into it all and the evidence would then appear.

Hunter has now been investigated for five years (and counting) by the Department of Justice. Republicans in the House of Representatives have been investigating him since the first day they retook control of the chamber at the start of this year. A special counsel was even named to look into all things Hunter. And what do they have to show for it all? Some pretty small potatoes indeed.

To date, there is zero evidence that Joe Biden did anything to benefit his son. None. All of his actions as vice president were exactly what President Obama wanted him to do and told him to do. There is no record of any bribes paid from Hunter to Joe at all, despite Hunter's bank records being repeatedly scoured.

This week, Hunter was indicted on federal gun charges. He bought a pistol and lied on the form when asked if he abused illegal drugs (he said he didn't, but he was indeed an addict at the time). He owned the pistol for 11 days, until his girlfriend (at the time) found it and threw it into the trash. He never committed a crime with it. He never even fired it.

So Republicans are left with not a smoking gun linking all the "Biden crime family" (as they like to say) together, but instead a " (he was) smoking (crack while he owned a) gun." That's it. Hunter may also get indicted for paying two years of taxes too late. As we said, some very small potatoes. Even some Republicans admit their disappointment. Matt Gaetz quipped: "Getting Hunter Biden on the gun charge is like getting Jeffrey Dahmer on littering." As you can see, after month upon month of hearing how evil Hunter is on night after night on Fox News, Republicans naturally equate him to a serial murderer and cannibal. That's how far down the Hunter rabbit hole the GOP is in general, really.

This week House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also announced he was unilaterally opening an impeachment inquiry into Hunter Biden. No, no... that cannot be right... how can we keep making that mistake? [Insert eye-roll emoji] Hunter, after all, was never a government employee and has never and will never run for political office, so impeaching him is absolutely impossible!

What we meant to say was that the House has started an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, for absolutely no reason at all. But don't take our word for it -- here is Republican Representative Ken Buck's thoughts on the matter:

Chris Christie, who is also a former federal prosecutor, made the salient point that all Democrats really should be screaming about right now:



Christie called Jared "essentially the son of a real estate developer in New Jersey." When asked point-blank if the Trump family is corrupt, Christie responded:



Some in the media have noticed both the lack of substance and the obvious parallels to the Trump family. After itemizing what led to the previous three presidential impeachments (Bill Clinton's and both of Trump's), a New York Times columnist pointed out the difference:



The White House responded by calling the whole thing an "evidence-free goose chase simply to throw red meat to the right wing so they can continue baselessly attacking the president to play extreme politics."

Which is exactly right. Kevin McCarthy swore up and down (up until this week, that is) that if the House moved to an impeachment inquiry, it would do so with a vote. He got up on his high horse about it, even:



That was less than two weeks ago, but it all went out the window this week. Because if there's one principle Kevin McCarthy is dedicated to, it is saving his own political skin. His power was about to be questioned by members of his own caucus, so he tossed out the impeachment inquiry in a futile attempt to assuage the MAGA crazies he has to deal with. This failed almost immediately. The MAGA crazies showed no inclination to cut McCarthy some slack on the real issue at hand (the budget fights), and were quite willing to say so to the press:



It was all a desperate ploy that landed with a thud, to put it another way. This was made evident when McCarthy tried to get his Republicans to vote for a Defense appropriations bill (that has already been larded up with all kinds of conservative poison-pills, at the insistence of the MAGA crazies), and he couldn't scrape together even enough votes for that. This is the least contentious of the budget bills remaining to be passed, and even that was a bridge too far for McCarthy.

Now McCarthy is trying another tack, one that could possibly save face for all the various Republican factions while still almost guaranteeing a government shutdown at the end of the month. He's cobbling together a Republican-only version of a "continuing resolution" (C.R.) which is also filled with plenty of MAGA red meat. Passing it would be a small accomplishment (passing anything through this House is almost impossible), but it wouldn't do anything to solve the real problem since there is no way this C.R. will be acceptable to the Democrats in the Senate or Joe Biden. So McCarthy is left struggling to pass even a meaningless bill that will never become law, to be used as some sort of bargaining position, since he has a Nihilist Caucus within his own party that just wants to burn the whole place down.

Case in point: one hour after McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry, Matt Gaetz went to the House floor anyway (the scheduling of this speech was what lit a fire under McCarthy to act when he did) and called for the McCarthy to kowtow to all of his crazy demands immediately, or there would be a "motion to vacate the chair," which would (if successful) depose McCarthy from the speaker's chair. Speaking to reporters, Gaetz threatened to call for these votes on a daily basis, promising each day would begin with: "the prayer, the Pledge [of Allegiance], and the motion to vacate."

All this grief from his own caucus seems to be starting to get to McCarthy a little. In a closed-door meeting with his fellow House Republicans, McCarthy reportedly got a little not-safe-for-work in his exasperation with the Crazy Caucus, throwing down the gauntlet thusly: "If you want to file a motion to vacate, then file the fucking motion." And we're going to let that be the final word on the subject, at least for now.

Let's see, what else has been going on this week? Donald Trump had a few legal developments, but they were all fairly low key -- Mark Meadows was denied in his attempt to move his case (in Georgia) to federal court, the judge in the documents case made a ruling on Trump's access to the same secret documents he refused to hand over, and Trump won't have to start his trial in Georgia in October, as the two defendants who demanded speedy trials have now been "severed" from Trump's case.

This week also marked the first lawsuit filed (in Colorado) challenging whether Trump is eligible to appear on ballots, due to the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment that bars those who have even "given aid and comfort" to insurrectionists from ever holding office again. But in New Hampshire, the top elections official determined that he didn't have the power to keep candidates off the ballot, so Trump's name will appear there (at least in the primary election).

The big legal news everyone is waiting for today hasn't been announced yet, as the Texas senate is now in the equivalent of "jury deliberations" and could return at any time for a public vote on whether to expel Ken Paxton from office or not. The impeachment trial in the Senate wrapped up with closing statements, but no decision had been announced as of this writing.

Mitt Romney made some big news this week by announcing he won't be running for re-election to his Senate seat. Excerpts from an upcoming tell-all were also revealed this week, where Romney dishes a little dirt on what his own fellow Senate Republicans think about Donald Trump behind closed doors.

Representative Lauren Boebert was ejected from a public theater performance, for vaping and taking flash photos and otherwise generally acting like a jackass. She at first denied the vaping accusation, until a local news station obtained footage of her doing precisely that.

And finally, to end on an upbeat note... well, an upwards note at any rate, NASA has now announced a new effort which will encourage the public to report U.F.O.s. They also call for sophisticated satellites and A.I. to aid in the search and make it a little more comprehensive than anything the government has yet tried. Initially they balked at publicly naming the new director of this office, but then someone must have realized that this just feeds into the whole stigmatization of such reports, and his name was released to the press. Is the truth out there? Maybe NASA will soon find out....





While President Biden gave a rousing address on the subject of the United Auto Workers strike (no surprise, Biden came down heavily on the side of the workers getting a fair share of the record profits the Big Three car companies have been enjoying), it's too soon to tell how this situation is all going to shake out. Maybe next week, in other words (and we do have a few excerpts from his address in the Talking Points section, don't worry).

Instead we're going to award this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week on a much longer-term basis than just the past seven days. We decided this after reading an in-depth Politico article which profiled a rather astonishing (and extremely impressive) North Carolina Democrat:



Now just for one minute, think: What were you doing at her age? Only 25 years old... were you the chair of a state political party? We weren't. Far from it, in fact!

But she's impressive not just for her youth and vitality. She is attempting a formula that has indeed worked for Democrats elsewhere (most notably, in Georgia, due largely to the efforts of Stacey Adams) -- stop ignoring rural counties and rural voters! Get the word out to them -- this is what Democrats stand for, and this is why it is better for you and your family than the Republicans you've been voting for.

This effort could take years, but Clayton seems up to the challenge:



North Carolina is a true battleground state. It is purple. Democrats have a solid chance for making gains there, even with a heavily-gerrymandered map with the lines drawn against them by state-level Republicans. So if she's successful, we all may be hearing a lot more about this extraordinary young woman in the next few years.

But just for what she's achieved so far, we have to hand her this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Even if we had somehow managed to attain the leadership of a state-level Democratic Party at the tender age of 25, we fully admit we wouldn't know what to do in the job. But that doesn't seem to be a problem for Clayton at all. We wish her good luck in turning her state a bluer shade of purple.

[Congratulate North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton on her official contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





Before we get to the award, we have a strange sort of preamble. We saw a rather eye-catching headline this week in the Washington Post this week: "VA Dem. House Candidate Performed Sex Online With Husband For Tips." Which pretty much sums up the story in its entirety. A candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates "performed sex acts with her husband for a live online audience and encouraged viewers to pay them with 'tips' for specific requests." She didn't break any laws by doing so, which is an important point. Even so, in the "before times," this might have won her a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week quite easily, but in our Trumpian era, we have to find ourselves wondering if it even matters. In fact, we find ourselves agreeing with a Politico article which responded with: "So What?"

The website she and her husband performed on is not password-protected and requires no money -- anyone in the public can freely watch. The woman now has an attorney and is claiming that someone violated her rights under the state's "revenge porn" law, but it's hard to claim you had a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when anyone could tune in for free at any time. But the surprising thing is the woman is not backing down -- so far, she's fighting back and is continuing her campaign. Which is another point -- all of this came out before the election happened, so it really is going to be up to the voters in her district to decide if they're in any way disappointed in her or not. But in this day and age -- especially after the COVID lockdown era got a lot more people interested in performing on these sites -- if it's OK with her and OK with her husband, who are we to judge? That will be up to her voters, and if she wins her election it is nothing that they can complain about later since they found out before she got elected. So any sort of negative award from us simply isn't justified.

Instead, we have a much more serious subject which is beyond merely "disappointing." Figures were released this week which showed that child poverty in America more than doubled last year. This was the entirely-predictable result of killing off the expanded Child Tax Credit that was passed during the pandemic. And that can be laid at the feet of two Democrats in particular -- at least one of whom is not sorry in the slightest:



In his opposition to the credit, Manchin dismissed this lifeline for poor children, saying their parents would probably just spend it all on drugs. You cannot make this stuff up, sadly.

So for condemning millions of children to poverty that could easily have been avoided, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are our two Most Disappointing Democrats Of The Week. For shame!

[Contact Senator Joe Manchin on his Senate contact page, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema on her Senate contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 723 (9/15/23)

We begin with a program note. Due to us deciding we wanted to go have some fun instead, there will be no Friday Talking Points column next week, sorry. Hey, everyone deserves a break now and again, right?

We also have a very sad note as well (and we apologize for the jarring segue). This week, Representative Mary Peltola's husband died in a small plane accident in Alaska. Our thoughts go out to Representative Peltola and her family. Requiescat In Pace.



Record profits should mean record contracts

Not surprisingly, President Joe Biden was quick to address the United Auto Workers strike, and he came down pretty squarely on the side of the Union. From his remarks this morning:





Biden coins two new terms

President Biden gave a speech this week at a community college in suburban Maryland, and in it he coined two new political terms. The first was rolled out as a foil to Biden's campaigning on his own "Bidenomics" -- now he's comparing it to "MAGAnomics." The entire speech was about the contrast, as Biden laid out his impressive economic record and slammed the Republicans for being against it all and not having any sort of answers of their own. But the most amusing part was when Biden made it a little more personal:





What about Javanka?

Chris Christie shouldn't be the only one out there making this very obvious point. We are going to keep repeating it here week after week until we start hearing some actual Democrats answer any Hunter Biden questions with the following:

"Hunter Biden? I'm sorry, but please explain to me how Hunter Biden did anything differently than Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Except that they did it on an enormously bigger scale, of course. And, of course, except for the fact that they were officially serving in the White House -- which Hunter has never been. Jared got two billion dollars to play around with from the Saudis about ten minutes after Trump left office -- an obvious payoff, after Jared had been in charge of Middle East peace negotiations. Ivanka got trademarks awarded in China while Trump was in office. So if you want to talk about family members profiting off a president, let's talk about 'Javanka,' shall we?"



Sentence first!

An obvious reference to make, really.

"You know, the Queen of Hearts that Alice ran into in Wonderland has nothing on Kevin McCarthy and today's Republicans. It's now not even the Queen's: 'Sentence first -- verdict afterwards!', in fact it's more like: 'Sentence first -- evidence afterwards!' Can any one Republican point to any one piece of actual solid evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden? No, they can't. Because it doesn't exist. They've been investigating their little hearts out and they haven't found a single thing. So their logical next move was just to move right to impeachment. The Queen of Hearts would be so proud!"



An arm of the Trump campaign

The truth hurts, Kev.

"Donald Trump reportedly turned the screws on Kevin McCarthy, who then dutifully announced the House was opening an impeachment inquiry -- despite having no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing by President Biden. This entire thing is a political wild goose chase and will go precisely nowhere, but that's not the point. The whole point is to try to damage Biden politically during the presidential campaign. Kevin McCarthy has now made it official: the Republican House is just an arm of the Trump campaign, plain and simple."



Good news for Democrats

"As we get closer to next year's elections, more and more judges are weighing in on the blatantly gerrymandered maps Republicans have put into place in multiple states. And most of these court battles are being won by Democrats. Kevin McCarthy only has a five-seat majority, but that could be entirely wiped out just by the judicial decisions that are now being made. It's about time Republicans got called out on their rigging the election maps in such a bald-faced manner. Maybe we won't have to put up with 'Speaker McCarthy' for very much longer...."



A national security problem

This one comes from a Republican, who has had enough of Senator Tommy Tuberville's hold on all Pentagon promotions and nominations. This won't come to an end until more and more Republicans pile on him, so it's worth repeating. Here is what Representative Mike McCaul from Texas just said about Tuberville's obstructionism:






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

September 9, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Hit 'Em With The Truth!

We hate to do this (as we suspect we'll be doing it recurringly for the next year or so), but once again the biggest political news of the week came from the legal system. Almost all the news was from the Republican side of the aisle, because of course it was. (And we promise that our subhead this week will be explained in due time, too... but not until the very end of the column.)

While most of the legal proceedings in the political world are going to be drawn-out affairs, this week we saw a truly speedy trial take place. Peter Navarro's trial began at the start of the week (after the holiday, even), took only two days from start to finish (with only three hours of witness testimony), and the jury then took a mere four hours to return with a guilty verdict. Navarro was found guilty of contempt of Congress, which was (quite obviously) an open-and-shut case. Navarro was prevented by the judge (before the trial began) of making his specious argument to the jury that he somehow had some sort of magic "executive privilege" that meant he was free to just blow off a congressional subpoena. In the first place, Donald Trump never backed up Navarro's claim of executive privilege -- which is not something that just anybody can claim (it requires the actual executive to claim it). Secondly, even if Navarro did have a legitimate claim to executive privilege (which he did not), he still would have been required to show up as a witness and claim executive privilege in person (which he did not do). So he really didn't have any defense at all and is pinning all his hopes that the Supreme Court will eventually just let him skate free. He now faces up to two years in jail, although even if he is sentenced to some prison time he will likely remain free until his appeals are all exhausted. Even so, it was good to see some actual legal consequences for a member of Donald Trump's White House.

The other big trial of the week (we wrote about both trials yesterday at more length, if anyone's interested) is taking place in the Texas state senate, where Attorney General Ken Paxton is facing a whopping 16 articles of impeachment. If the senate convicts him of even one of them, he will be removed from office and barred from ever serving in any state office again. The trial is likely to wrap up next week, and the outcome is in no way certain. The Texas legislature is dominated by Republicans, but the house impeached him with 60 out of the 86 Republican members voting to impeach. In the senate, if the 12 Democrats vote to convict, nine Republicans will also be necessary (to reach the two-thirds mark). So this will be a big legal story to watch next week.

Of course, every week (for the foreseeable future) will also have some Donald Trump legal news in it. He's got so many cases up in the air, it's almost guaranteed there'll be developments on a regular basis. So let's just quickly run down what happened this week:

The worst news Trump got was that in the second federal case brought against him by E. Jean Carroll, the judge issued a summary judgment: since Trump has already been proven to be liable (in her first case against him, which she won), there is simply no need to relitigate that part of it, so the only thing the jury will have to determine is how much money Trump will have to pay her. In other words, Trump has lost before the case even begins.

One case sort of flying beneath most people's radar is the business fraud case against him in New York, but the judge in this case ruled against Trump's motion for more delays and the case is scheduled to begin October 2nd. So it'll be the first one out of the chute, although since it is a civil case, Trump won't have to physically show up in the courtroom.

Another case that hasn't been getting much attention is one filed by Lisa Page and Peter Strzok against the F.B.I. They're not suing Trump himself, but an appellate court just ruled that Trump could be forced to give a deposition in this case (since he was at the heart of the effort to punish the two F.B.I. employees, and repeatedly bragged about doing so). And you never know what Trump is going to say when he's put under oath, so there's that to look forward to.

Down in Georgia, the prosecutor indicated that any of the trials (for all 19 defendants) will likely take around four months -- after a jury is seated. That's an important distinction because with a sweeping RICO case that is likely going to take months. It can be tough to find jurors who wouldn't have their financial life turned upside down by a monthslong trial (seating a jury for such an extended trial can, in and of itself, take months).

[Breaking news: while editing this article, the news broke that a federal judge has just denied the motion of Mark Meadows to move his case to a federal court instead of being tried in Georgia state court. This has implications for all the other defendants (possibly including Donald Trump) who are making or may make a similar effort. But the news broke so late we'll have to address this fallout next week, sorry.]

The big news out of Georgia today, though, was the release of the initial grand jury's recommendations. Under Georgia law, the grand jury that extensively investigated everything didn't have the power to actually indict anyone, so they handed off their findings in a report to the grand jury that did have that power. And they recommended bringing charges against a lot more people than the 19 who were ultimately charged. Which included a lot of very big names (Senator Lindsey Graham and former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler), as well as Trump loyalist Michael Flynn, and Trump lawyers Boris Epshteyn, Cleta Mitchell, and Lin Wood. So astonishing as it is to say it, charging only 19 people was actually a very conservative move by the prosecutor. She obviously only filed cases where she thought she could easily win a conviction, and declined to file charges against people who might have been tougher to convict.

And a final bit of Trump legal news -- one that will grow in magnitude, over time -- the very first lawsuit has been filed in an effort to keep Donald Trump off the ballot, because by the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment, he is ineligible to serve. He is guilty, at the very least, of "giving aid and comfort" to insurrectionists (as he sat for hours, gleefully watching them on television, refusing to lift a finger to help the cops defending the United States Capitol and every member of Congress from an angry mob). This battle is going to take place across numerous states and in numerous ways (lawsuits, convincing elections officials to rule Trump can't be on the ballot, etc.), and seems destined to wind up in the Supreme Court, so it's going to be a very interesting test of a constitutional clause that hasn't been used since the Civil War (when it was created).

In other news, Republicans in Wisconsin are plotting a very nefarious way of ignoring and insulting the voters of their state. It hasn't quite happened yet, but we certainly wouldn't put it past them, at this point.

In a hard-fought election this year, a liberal chalked up an overwhelming victory in a race for a seat on the state's supreme court. She just got sworn in, but the high court hasn't heard any cases since then. Two cases in particular are expected soon, however, that would have far-reaching results in Wisconsin: one that would guarantee abortion rights in the state and one that would toss out the blatant gerrymandering that Republicans have gotten away with for years.

This has led to a backlash, and the aforementioned nefarious plot. The Washington Post summed it up nicely in a headline: "Wisconsin's Gerrymandering Rides To The Rescue Of Its Gerrymandering." The GOP has so successfully drawn the lines for the state legislative seats that the GOP holds an overwhelming advantage, despite the fact that the state is almost perfectly-balanced in terms of how people vote. This has given Republicans huge unearned majorities in both chambers, including exactly two-thirds of the state senate.

So what they're contemplating doing is to impeach the new justice. Before she ever even hears a case. This is completely outrageous, it bears mentioning, since there simply is no crime or misconduct to impeach her for. But that may not stop them. And, just like Mitch McConnell showed them how to do, by using parliamentary rules, they could deny the will of Wisconsin's voters almost indefinitely. Here is the twisted plot, in all its ugliness:

Here's how it would all work:



This is pure evil. It is losing and then getting what you want anyway by cheating. As we said, thanks to Mitch McConnell denying Barack Obama a Supreme Court pick, such disgraceful and disgusting tactics are now apparently on the table. Democrats wouldn't even get to make the case to the voters of Republican state senators (several of whom represent districts that lean Democratic) to pressure them to refuse to convict in a senate trial -- because there never will be a senate trial.

The only recourse Wisconsin voters would have would be to throw the bums out in the next election -- but if they're successful in their chicanery, the next election will be held with the same outrageously-gerrymandered maps as are in place right now. Which pretty much guarantees that Democrats are never going to win control of either chamber of the state legislature.

This is how low the Republican Party is willing to stoop, these days. And it has disgusted us so much that we're just going to wrap up this segment here with two news items designed to cleanse the mental palette.

In the first, the Pentagon has now launched a new website where anyone can go to see what evidence they have (mostly from the cameras of military planes) of U.F.O.s. This was all the result of Congress forcing them to go public with this stuff, and now there's a very easy way for the public to see what they've got, so go check the site out!

And finally, President Joe Biden was caught in a rather endearing moment while working the rope line at a recent event celebrating Labor Day. It seems a guy in the audience complimented Biden's baseball cap (with the presidential seal on it), so Biden reached out and swapped hats with the guy. He got to go home with an official presidential cap, while Biden got a cap reading: "JFK" in return. As the tweet with the video clip put it: "That's just Joe being Joe."





This week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week is Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis. She charging ahead with the wide-ranging RICO case she filed against Donald Trump and 18 of his cronies, and since two of them demanded speedy trials Willis told the judge (essentially): "Fine! Let's just try all of them together starting next month! I'm ready to go!" But that's not why we're giving her the MIDOTW award this week.

Representative Jim Jordan, who is hellbent on politicizing the justice system as much as Republicans can get away with, sent a letter to Willis demanding, essentially, that she stop her uppity behavior and let Donald Trump walk scot-free for all the state crimes he is now officially charged with.

Well, that's overstating things, but only slightly.

Jordan is trying the same tactic that has already failed him against New York and federal prosecutors who have the temerity to insist that no one -- not even the leader of the GOP personality cult, Donald Trump -- is above the law. This irks Jordan no end, but as a mere House of Representatives committee chair, there isn't a whole lot he can do about it. Which hasn't stopped him from trying.

So he sent a similar letter to Willis, making all sorts of demands for documents and explanations and obeisance. This week, Willis sent her reply back to him:



In technical legal terms, this is known as "taking him to the woodshed."

The whole letter isn't that long, and is a breathtaking read, so we urge everyone to take the time to do so.

Willis is already showing her steely backbone in the face of a tsunami of political pressure, and she appears more than up to the task of smacking down annoying little pismires such as Jordan. And for that, she definitely deserves this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on her official contact page (although there is no direct "email Willis" link, however, sorry), to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





It is with a very heavy heart that we hand out our next award. Because we can see both sides of the issue, but at the same time it was disappointing to hear.

Representative Nancy Pelosi just announced she is going to run for another two-year term in the House of Representatives. Now, normally this would be cause for celebration, since Pelosi is already a living House legend. She was one of the most consequential and successful House speakers in living memory (Tip O'Neill is the other one in that lofty rank, for us at least), she finally showed that the Democratic House cats (so to speak) could indeed be herded, and she was a stalwart fighter for good and decency and the American way when Donald Trump was president. All that is undeniable. So it's not like we have any personal negative feelings about her or her stupendous legacy.

But she is 83 years old. Now, she's a lot more on the ball and spry and quick-thinking than a whole lot of other politicians of her age (or greater), we have to fully admit (in both political parties, to be fair). But her legacy has always been her leadership. And deciding not to step down is not good leadership, at least as we see it.

Pelosi lives in a safe Democratic district -- the city of San Francisco. And she's already got a literal heir apparent, as her daughter Christine is fully ready to step into Mom's shoes (Christine is currently a member of the Democratic National Committee). This would continue a political dynasty that started with Pelosi's father (Thomas D'Alesandro) in Maryland. So her seat would remain in family hands (since Christine would likely very easily beat any other Democrat who ran).

When Democrats last lost control of the House, Pelosi stepped down from leadership (rather than staying on as minority leader to lead Democrats back to the majority, which she had already done once). She is now nothing but "a backbencher," although she does offer advice (when asked) to those who took up the leadership reins of the party in her chamber. So even if Democrats did win the chamber back in 2024, Pelosi will almost certainly not become speaker again (for a third time). So that isn't a reason for her to stick around for another term.

As we said, this is a tough thing for us to say, since we have tons of admiration for Pelosi and since she is a valuable institutional resource for the leadership who did take over and because she is still one of the most prolific fundraisers the Democrats have. If this had happened in a vacuum, then maybe we'd just say: "Oh what the heck, sure, take another term, Nancy! You've more than earned it!"

But it didn't happen in a vacuum. Pelosi is missing out on a chance to really show some leadership in the manner of her exit from the national political stage. She could set a very good example by handing her district over (to her own daughter, most likely). She could show some other octogenarians (and even nonagenarians): "This is the graceful way to step down."

But she chose not to. Which we have to admit, is more than a little disappointing.

Nancy Pelosi will cruise to re-election, we have zero doubt about that. She will be around for the next two years in Congress after the election. She will still be a resource for the current Democratic leadership, and she's still got the power to knock heads and get Democrats all on the same page. That is all to the good.

But still... she is 83 years old. And she chose not to set an example by going out demonstrating the stellar leadership that is her hallmark. Which is why we -- very reluctantly, mind you -- have to name her our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

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




Volume 722 (9/8/23)

The talking points are kind of all over the map this week, but as promised there's a funny one at the end.

Before we get started, however, we have to mark the passing of two men of note this week: Jimmy Buffett and Bill Richardson. Both -- in their own way -- made a lot of people's lives better, so they will be missed. Requiescat In Pace.



Do you believe in democracy?

Joe Biden is leaning in hard on this one, which he also did (to great effect) in the midterms. Other Democrats should follow his lead, because at this point it's not just Trump, it has metastasized across the entire GOP.

"You know what a fundamental difference is between our two parties? Democrats believe in and fight for democracy -- while Republicans fight tooth and claw against having the voice of the people decide things. Even when they lose an election, they'll use any means -- by hook or by crook -- to try and rig things so that the voters just don't matter. In Wisconsin, the Republicans are about to pull a fast one to get rid of a state supreme court justice they don't like. They are going to, in a word, cheat to get what they want. They can do this because they already cheated -- they drew incredibly gerrymandered districts that guarantee that the voices of Wisconsin's voters can never accurately be heard. Now they're afraid the new justice -- who was elected by the people of Wisconsin by a double-digit margin -- is going to rule that their gerrymandering is cheating and force a new map to be drawn. So they're just going to sideline her forever. This isn't fighting for democracy, folks, it is fighting against democracy -- and fighting dirty, at that."



A matter of national security

Biden's been ripping into Senator Tommy Tuberville over his dangerous nonsense, but everyone should join in the chorus.

"The leaders of three branches of America's armed services -- the secretaries of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force -- wrote a joint open letter in the Washington Post this week. In it, they excoriate Senator Tuberville of Alabama for his blanket hold on all upper-level military promotions. He has dug in his heels for over six months, because he wants to change the Pentagon's policy on making reproductive health decisions possible for all serving members of the armed forces. In it, they plainly state that Tuberville's hissy fit is, and I quote, 'putting our national security at risk.' Remember when the Republican Party used to support the military? I guess those days are gone. Over 300 high-ranking officers are being blocked from promotions they have earned because one senator is being stubborn. This includes the currently-acting secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. This ties their hands -- they do not have the full power to do their jobs. It is a disgrace, and it is even more disgraceful that the other Republican senators are allowing Tuberville to actively undermine national security for purely partisan reasons. I am calling on Mitch McConnell and all the other Republicans in the Senate to get Tuberville to change his mind and lift his holds, because the national security of America is what is at stake."



Gotta be pretty corrupt....

Hoo boy. Get this talking point ready no matter what the verdict is next week.

"It seems the Republicans in Texas are impeaching one of their own. Boy howdy, you gotta be pretty corrupt to be impeached by Texas Republicans! A whopping 60 out of 86 Texas house Republicans voted to impeach him. All it will take is nine GOP senators to vote to convict to remove Ken Paxton from office. And Texas is about as red a state as it gets, so like I said, it's notable because you really gotta be pretty corrupt for Republicans to turn on one of their own in such a spectacular fashion, at least these days."



Bernie's not looking so bad, eh?

This is really just taunting them, but what the heck, it's fun to do....

"Mike Pence gave a speech this week where he laid out the battle for the soul of the Republican Party, as he sees it. He denounced the populism of Donald Trump and said it would be a, quote, 'road to ruin' for the party. He then hurled what (to Republicans) is a pretty scathing insult, calling Trumpian populists 'fellow travelers' on that road to ruin with (gasp!) Bernie Sanders. At the same time, however, some Republican operatives have been slowly realizing that the ranks of their party's base voters have swelled with two distinct demographic groups: blue-collar workers and those without a college education. And whaddya know, both of those groups actually like a whole lot of what Bernie has to say. They want government to tax rich people and help out the working class. They want Social Security and Medicare protected. And they're a big part of the Republican Party's base now. Who woulda thunk it -- Bernie's policies aren't looking quite so radical now, no matter what Mike Pence thinks about it."



Oh, the horror!

Admittedly, it is a pretty impossible task.

"Republicans just can't quite seem to successfully demonize Joe Biden with the American people. Oh, they keep trying -- they keep attempting to paint him as a cross between Al Capone and Jack the Ripper or something, but it's a pretty tough case to make when Biden is so obviously a decent human being at heart. Don't believe me? Republicans are currently trying to paint Biden as some sort of horrific monster because -- are you sitting down? -- he likes dogs. No, really -- he pets them and everything! And if that weren't enough to make you swoon with fear, it appears Biden also likes ice cream. Oh, the humanity! Who will save us from this dastardly villain?"



Not exactly holding my breath

Justice Fratboy tried to polish his halo this week, without much noticeable success.

"Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh told an audience this week that there will be 'concrete steps' taken 'soon' to address the complete and utter lack of ethics on the highest court in the land. However, the same sentence of the article reporting on this ends with: '...but he stopped short of addressing calls for justices to institute an official code of conduct.' This is more of the same 'Nothing to see here, folks!' moosepoop that we've gotten from all the conservatives on the court. They have no rules, they get to police themselves, and nothing about this is ever going to change until Congress does its job and passes some ethical reforms. Because I'm not exactly holding my breath for Kavanaugh's promise to come true any time soon. The article didn't say whether Kavanaugh was just quietly smirking behind his hand when he said that, or if he just burst out laughing afterwards, but he was pretty obviously showing his contempt for the idea of any ethical rules at all. Which doesn't surprise me one tiny bit, with him."



Hit him with the truth

Too, too funny. Watch the video clip, it's a riot!

"Vivek Ramaswamy was -- quite literally -- hit with the truth, on the campaign trail this week. He was giving a speech in front of a giant sign that read: 'TRUTH.' But the karmic gods had apparently had enough, and the sign fell over and smacked him up upside the head. It is rare indeed when you can say without any irony at all that a Republican politician 'got hit with the truth,' but in this case it's just about the only thing you can say!"




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

September 2, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Finally, A Messaging War Democrats Can Easily Win

It is rare in American politics when Democrats manage to win a political "messaging" war with Republicans, but it certainly seems like they've got a doozy of an opportunity to do just that, on the issue of lowering prescription drug prices. This messaging battle really began in earnest this week, and so far Republicans are losing badly.

This week President Biden announced the first 10 prescription drugs had been chosen for price negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies. Medicare will, for the first time, use its vast purchasing power to force the drug companies to lower their obscene prices. Americans pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs precisely because the government doesn't use Medicare's bargaining power to rein in the bottomless greed of the drug companies. The Inflation Reduction Act finally gave the government the power to bargain for prices -- but it was limited to only 10 drugs, at first. So Biden announced which drugs would be covered, and then (perfect timing) after a year of negotiations, the final prices agreed to will be publicly announced... right before the 2024 election. So of course Biden and the Democrats are going to use the issue politically. Especially since fighting for insanely-high profit margins for drug companies isn't exactly a very defensible thing, politically. But that's not going to stop Republicans from trying.

Here is Biden, speaking while unveiling the 10 drugs chosen:

Now here are some Republicans, trying to counter this basic and easily-understood argument:



Oh, the horrors! Politicians and bureaucrats in my medicine cabinet! Except for the part they don't say at the end, which is: "...to save you a whole bunch of money!" That's the indefensible part for Republicans. Republicans have taken the position of: "We're fighting hard to make sure you pay more money for prescription drugs!"

The issue is a clear winner for Democrats. Polling shows that over 80 percent of the public favors government negotiations over drug prices. And why shouldn't they? People paying less money is universally understood to be a good thing.

Republicans are caught (for once) in the weeds of complicated political arguments that don't easily fit on a bumpersticker (and aren't very popular anyway). Here is another Republican attempting to make the case to continue obscene drug prices for all Americans:



Got that? It is "extortion" when the government tells a drug company it won't pay an obscene price any more. Which, we suppose, means that it's not extortion to charge such... well... extortionate prices to begin with?

You can see the quandary the Republicans are in. Which some of them are willing to admit:



Actual Republican politicians aren't doing much better, either:



OK, so let's see... on the one hand we have: "We are fighting hard to bring drug prices down," and on the other we have: "We need consensus-based, market-driven solutions to access and affordability challenges," whatever the heck that's supposed to mean.

As you can see, Democrats easily have the winning position on this and Republicans are fighting for a very unpopular concept. Which at least one Democrat gleefully pointed out:



In other words: bring it on. The Biden White House is already planning to make this a centerpiece of the re-election campaign. As they should. This is a historic development that progressives have been fighting to have happen for decades, and even though the corporatist Democrats in the Senate watered down the program to cover only 10 drugs (at first, though this number will grow over time), it is still a big milestone. And, like most of the things progressives fight for, it is incredibly popular with the public. "Pay less for prescriptions? Sounds good to me!"

For once, the Democrats have the popular position that fits on a bumpersticker, while Republicans are left trying to figure out how to spin: "We're fighting hard for corporate greed!" Good luck with that one, guys.

President Biden's been accomplishing other good things as well: expanding overtime pay for millions of workers and trying to expand background checks for purchasing guns, to name just two. Biden also just got another good jobs report today, and inflation has come down by roughly two-thirds from its post-pandemic peak. And for the first time ever, one branch of the federal government is recommending that marijuana not be treated as a more dangerous drug than fentanyl (which we wrote about at length yesterday). All around, it's been a pretty good week for the Democrats.

Republicans, meanwhile, are in disarray. The House will likely begin an official impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even though they really don't have a clue what they'll be impeaching him for. They have no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden, but they sure do want to go after his son Hunter -- who has never worked in an actual government job.

But let's get back to Republicans being in disarray. Over in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be falling apart. For the second time in as many months, McConnell froze for a couple dozen seconds while answering questions from the press. He just blanked out and stared off into the distance, even after his aides tried to jar him back into reality. This has all the other Senate Republicans freaking out, since unlike Dianne Feinstein, McConnell holds their party's highest leadership job in the chamber. It will be interesting to see what happens next week when the Senate returns from its long summer vacation, since McConnell could face a leadership challenge in his caucus if only five of them call for it. The conservative National Review is already calling for McConnell to "step aside from leadership." One House firebrand Republican called McConnell "not fit for office."

In presidential election news, Donald Trump is making big money off his mugshot, to the tune of over $7 million in the first few days after it was released. Proving once again how irony-impaired the entire MAGA movement is, Trump's selling T-shirts with the photo and the slogan "Never surrender!" even though the photo was taken while Trump was surrendering himself. You just can't make this stuff up, folks.

The post-debate polling numbers are starting to come in, and it seems that the first Republican debate didn't change the race all that much. Mike Pence and Nikki Haley both saw small bumps from their debate performance, Vivek Ramaswamy didn't see much movement at all (which was kind of surprising -- we suppose Republican voters find him just as annoying as everyone else), Ron DeSantis at least stopped his slide in the polls and flattened out just under 15 percent, and Trump lost a few points at the top (but is still hovering around 50 percent). But there were no enormous spikes or downturns for anyone, really.

Vivek was pointedly told by Eminem to stop rapping his songs at political rallies, and it appears (unlike Trump, who plays any damn song he feels like) that Ramaswamy will actually stop doing so. DeSantis had to suspend his campaign to deal with Hurricane Idalia in Florida, as well as a racist shooting (where he was booed when he addressed a crowd, for good reason). And we noted the first casualty of the GOP race this week, as Francis Suarez actually followed his own campaign promise and dropped out of the race after not making it to the debate stage.

There was a lot of legal news from Republicans, which has become the usual thing. A date was set (March 4th, 2024) for the federal trial of Donald Trump over January 6th, but it is probably too late to chance the dynamics of the primary race much even though it is one day before Super Tuesday.

Trump will not be presenting himself in court for arraignment in Georgia, instead opting to just sign a document that enters his "not guilty" plea to the court. This means we won't get to see him sitting stony-faced before a judge next week, but the good news on this front is that the Georgia judge ruled that whenever the trial does happen, it will be televised.

For those of us who just can't wait for next year, Trump does have his first court case scheduled for October -- a civil case that accuses him of lying about his net worth on statements he filed with banks (which is a federal crime). But because it is a civil case, Trump won't have to appear in person. Still, it will get the courtroom ball rolling a lot faster than all his other cases.

In "Trump henchmen legal news," former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows actually took the stand and testified in a hearing in federal court, as Meadows tries to get his Georgia trial moved to federal court. This may not have been the smartest thing for him to do, but we'll have to see how it all plays out.

John Eastman is still facing disbarment in California, and his trial's not going great for him so far. Peter Navarro is about to go on trial for contempt of Congress (he ignored a congressional subpoena) and the judge ruled that he cannot argue that he was somehow "covered by executive privilege" since Trump never actually asserted it for him. And then after the judge ruled against him in court, Navarro spoke outside the courthouse with a heckler standing behind him holding a giant sign that said: "TRUMP LOST (And you know it!)", which irked Navarro no end. He finally made a lunge to grab the sign, but the woman holding it yanked it back and scoldingly told Navarro: "Bro, you're already facing charges!" To our ears, Navarro then confessed: "Yeah, I did it." The video is absolutely hilarious, we have to say.

Rudy Giuliani lost big time in court this week, as a judge ruled that because Rudy had defied the court's orders to produce evidence, no trial would even happen -- Rudy was summarily found liable for defaming two Georgia election workers. The jury will now only have to deliberate over how much money Rudy will have to pay the two. Rudy appears on the brink of financial ruin already, so it'll be interesting to see whether these two ever get any actual money out of him, but seeing Rudy lose big was certainly entertaining. And now it is being reported that Special Counsel Jack Smith has been asking people how drunk Rudy actually was during the period when he was advising Trump about the 2020 election, so it will be interesting to see if that answer is presented in court eventually.

And we have one political footnote to close on this week -- "Joe The Plumber" has passed away. Requiescat In Pace.





We've been wondering when some enterprising Democrat is going to make a big stink over a very obvious issue, and this week we were finally rewarded. Which is why Representative Jamie Raskin is this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

The backstory is that CNN's Joe Tapper finally called out one of the House Republicans who is leading the investigation into Hunter Biden, over Jared Kushner cashing in on his family ties to Donald Trump. James Comer's answer was: "What Kushner did crossed the line of ethics." Which is putting it mildly, but at least he admitted it.

Jamie Raskin, who serves on Comer's committee, pounced on this, as Insider reported:



The article also has the full letter from Raskin. Here's the key excerpt:



In other words, turn-about should be fair play. You want to investigate Hunter Biden and others making something like $20 million selling family influence? Well then, let's just take a look at that $3 billion Jared Kushner got to play around with, shall we?

You can call this "whataboutism" if you want, but it's the Republicans who have painted themselves into this corner. If every time Hunter has ever cashed in on his last name is fair game, then it would also be equally fair game to take a look at Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and all of the other Trump children as well.

And it's long past time Democrats made this point and made it forcefully. Which is why we were so glad to see Jamie Raskin do so this week, and it is why we're handing him the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week. Every time Hunter Biden's name comes up, Democrats should immediately counter with Jared Kushner's name, plain and simple.

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





New York City Mayor Eric Adams is in somewhat of a spat with the Biden White House (and with his own governor as well), but for some reason we just don't think this rises to the level of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

So we close out this year's Silly Season in politics by putting the MDDOTW award back on the shelf for another week. But since the Senate returns next week, we fully expect someone (we are looking in Senators Manchin and Sinema's direction, here) will disappoint us soon.




Volume 721 (9/1/23)

Our talking points are all over the map this week, which is perhaps why we decided to end them talking about weed and beer. It's been that kind of a week, we suppose. As we just mentioned, next week the Silly Season will finally be over and there will be lots of political intrigue when the Senate reconvenes (especially on the Republican side of the aisle, as they all try to figure out what to do about Mitch McConnell), so there's that to look forward to.

For now, here's what we've got for this week, heading into a 3-day weekend (Happy Labor Day, everyone!).



Democrats fighting to keep your drug costs down

This is such an easy battle to win, really.

"Joe Biden and the Democrats are fighting hard to lower prescription drug prices. Insulin now only costs patients $35 per month. And Medicare is getting the power to bargain down obscenely high prices for other live-saving medications as well. We are tired of seeing the American people ripped off by Big Pharma. We are fighting to change all of that. Republicans, on the other hand, are fighting hard to keep your drug prices sky-high. This is your choice, when you go into the voting booth -- vote to lower your drug costs, or vote to continue to pay more than any other consumers on the entire planet. It's a pretty easy choice to make, actually."



Three million workers

Toot this horn as loud as you can too, because it is a winner.

"The Biden administration has moved to give a raise to more than three million American workers, by making them eligible for overtime pay. The Department of Labor is moving to force businesses to pay hourly wages -- with overtime! -- to these workers rather than mislabeling them as "management" and giving them only a set salary no matter how many hours a week they work. Big business has been ripping off workers making less than $50,000 a year by denying them overtime, but this new rule would fix the problem. Biden cares about the middle class and is fighting hard to give millions of workers a raise."



What about Jared?

This is pretty easy to do, as Republicans prove all the time.

"Hunter Biden? Give me a break... what about Jared? All of the money Republicans have gotten their panties in a twist over with Hunter amounts to loose change in Jared's couch cushions. Jared got like 150 times the amount of money from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia! So if we're going to hold investigations into family members of presidents and other politicians, the question that demands an answer at this point is: What about Jared?"



Party of lawlessness and disorder

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

"The Republican Party used to brand itself as being the 'party of law and order.' They've been doing so since at least the 1960s, when there were lefty anti-war protesters in the streets. The GOP strongly supported law enforcement and respect for the rule of law. They got up on their high horse about it and headed down their moral high road. And now look how low they've sunk -- in the first GOP presidential debate, six out of eight of the candidates agreed that they would support and vote for a convicted felon for president. Republicans have been attacking prosecutors and the Department of Justice for trying to punish lawbreakers. They talk blithely about defunding the F.B.I. and the whole Justice Department. They use political pressure to weaponize the entire process. Sarah Palin -- a former GOP vice-presidential candidate -- casually talks of civil war. And she's not the only Republican advocating political violence these days. The Republican Party has done a complete 180, folks -- it is now the 'party of lawlessness and disorder.' They should really be ashamed of themselves, but of course they're not."



For sale to the highest bidder!

"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is, apparently, for sale to the highest bidder. That is disgraceful. Billionaires can apparently not only buy politicians now, but they can actually own Supreme Court justices as well. All it takes is a few luxury vacations, a few rides on private planes, and -- hey presto! -- you've got a buddy on the highest court in the land. This is disgraceful and has to stop. Reforming the Supreme Court should be a no-brainer for Congress, at this point, since Thomas seems to revel in rubbing everyone's face in his grifting ways."



Deschedule!

As we mentioned, we wrote about this yesterday if anyone's interested.

"For the first time in the long and sordid history of the federal War On Drugs, there is now a recommendation that the federal government end the War On Weed portion of it. The Department of Health and Human Services recommended to the Drug Enforcement Agency that marijuana be moved from Schedule I to Schedule III, which would solve many of the problems that people selling it in the 38 states who allow such sales routinely have to face. Right now, it is the official position of the federal government that marijuana is a more dangerous drug than cocaine or fentanyl. That is insane -- it is just outside the bounds of reality, folks. We need to end the War On Weed altogether by completely descheduling marijuana and handing enforcement of federal laws on it over to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. That's where it obviously belongs, right? Until we get to that point, however, I would strongly urge the D.E.A. to do exactly what H.H.S. just recommended, and reschedule marijuana down two notches."



The Beer Police are coming! Ahhh!

"Republicans are the masters of fearmongering over absolutely nothing, folks. They try to scare their voters into believing abject nonsense on a regular basis. This week's entry in the GOP Hall of Idiotic Fearmongering is the way some Republicans are running around with their hair on fire screaming that Joe Biden's Beer Police are about to knock down their doors and seize any beers over the limit of 'two per week' from people's refrigerators. I will pause here, for you to laugh at that concept. But it really is how they've blown up a non-story into the biggest boogeyman imaginable -- Beer Police! Everyone run! -- so I guess Democrats once again have to calm everyone down with some reality. A public health advocate said in an interview that perhaps in the future the recommendations for alcohol consumption might tighten. He didn't promise such a move, he just speculated that we might someday move towards Canada's official recommendations. Now, can anyone name off the top of their head what the current recommendation is? Anyone? Bueller? Because I certainly had never heard it before, but it's apparently only two alcoholic drinks per day for men and one for women. Canada's guidelines are stricter: only two drinks per week. But you know what the result of even this drastic change would be? Absolutely nothing. Americas would go right on drinking as many beers as they pleased because everyone ignores this recommendation anyway. So even though Ted Cruz was out in front fearmongering his gullible constituents into thinking Joe Biden was going to rip their cold beer from their hands, this is just not true! Get a grip, people. A grip on whatever frosty beverage you feel like, because nobody's coming for your beer. The Beer Police do not exist and never will, OK?"




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

August 26, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Mugging For The Cameras

We will start this column (as every public speaker is taught to) with a joke. We saw two Republican spectacles this week: the first was watching all the "not-named-Trump" presidential candidates trying to verbally mug each other onstage for two hours, and the second was Donald Trump himself scowling into a jail camera for his first-ever mugshot. You might say it's been a very muggy week all around.

[Pause for audience laughter....]

Seriously, though, the week did have a rather apocalyptic feel, at least from the vantage point of California, which experienced (early in the week) what people began calling a "hurriquake." That's an earthquake happening during a very rare tropical storm hitting the Southern California deserts. "Locusts" began trending on the former Twitter. There was a feel of: "What next?!?" in the air. Sharknadoes didn't seem out of the question, to put it another way (thanks, Ted Cruz!).

What was next, of course, was the real kickoff of the Republican presidential nomination contest. Before we get to what actually happened, we do have one rather critical comment to make: It is now time for some Republican candidates to start exiting the race.

First to go should be the four who didn't make it onto the stage, and whom you may never have heard of: Larry Elder, Will Hurd, Perry Johnson, and Francis Suarez. That last one especially -- Suarez should lead the pack in bowing out. Suarez specifically commented on the issue (previous to not making the stage) and said anyone who doesn't make the debate cut should immediately drop out of the race. Well, Francis? It's time to put your (lack of) money where your mouth is, and set a sterling example for the rest of them to follow.

Of course, these four would struggle to put together all their respective support and come up with -- combined -- even a single percentage point. So it's not even really an issue whether they stay in or not, at least on a purely mathematical level. But it is important to set that example -- for the next tier of candidates to bow out. Somebody's got to get this ball rolling, if anyone is going to have any chance whatsoever of beating Trump.

The next round of GOP candidates to drop out probably won't come until the next debate, in one month's time. But the bar has been raised to get on the second stage, and rather than just charting polls with a single percentage point (the criteria for the first debate), candidates will have to clear the mark of three percent -- which is a lot tougher to do. I fully expect both Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson to be left out in the cold next time around, and their exits from the race will be even more profoundly meaningful than the first four no-names (since they are or were both governors, and thus serious candidates).

Right now it is a 13-person race (it's even bigger than that if you include the real no-names who have also filed paperwork). It should be a 9-person race by the next debate, and then a 7-person race after Burgum and Hutchinson throw in the towel. Even that's too big, but it would begin clearing the way for the race to tighten even further. Or perhaps the R.N.C. will help this process along by hiking the requirements for the third debate even higher -- if candidates have to hit a bar of five percent, that could leave Tim Scott out in the cold and a stage with only Trump (if he bothers to show up), DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Pence, Haley, and Christie on it.

Getting the race down to a 6- or even 7-person contest is critical if it is ever going to constrict even further. But all of those seven are solid candidates (at this point) and therefore truly believe they actually have a shot of winning. That is the problem, right there in a nutshell. Because if all of them stay in until, say, Super Tuesday, then the "not-Trump" vote is going to be split six ways, and Trump will waltz to the nomination in exactly the same fashion that he did back in 2016.

Which, at this point, is the most probable outcome.

If all seven of those candidates refuse to pull the plug until it is too late, then the Republican Party is doomed to have Trump as their nominee once again. The only two on that list who currently hold office (and might be concerned about damaging their future political careers) are Scott and DeSantis. The rest basically have nothing to lose by staying in. And that's the problem.

If by Super Tuesday the contest was down to only Trump, the second-place candidate in the polls, and perhaps one or two others, then the second-place guy or gal would actually have a shot at dethroning Trump. But if the race has more than, say, four candidates at that point, then Trump is going to romp and the nomination contest will essentially be over. But it's going to require a whopping amount of selflessness on the part of those who do drop out to make that happen -- and presidential candidates are not generally known for their selflessness.

Having said all that, our own snap-reaction rundown of the debate (which we stayed up to do) meshed pretty well with what the rest of the punditocracy in general had to say about it all. Vivek Ramaswamy was annoying, but boy did he sure get some screen time! Nikki Haley played "the adult in the room" and got some praise for not backing down an inch to Ramaswamy (on foreign policy) or the others (on being realistic on abortion bans). Mike Pence was surprisingly animated and forceful. Chris Christie did his thing. Ron DeSantis was surprisingly subdued, and (the biggest surprise of the night) received almost no incoming flak at all from the others (most of which was directed at Vivek). Doug Burgum gets points for true grit (standing for two hours after tearing his Achilles tendon that very morning), but was otherwise a non-entity. Asa Hutchinson outdid Christie in being anti-Trump, but few will remember that fact next week (Hutchinson easily got the "most boring" prize of the night).

Who "won" the debate depends on your point of view. Surprisingly, the Washington Post surveyed a bunch of Republican voters both before and after the debate, and they said (29 percent of them) that DeSantis won -- a conclusion shared by few in the political pundit realm (Ramaswamy came in second, at 26 percent, and Haley was the only other one in double digits, at 15 percent). If you liked his brash, Trumpian style, Ramaswamy won. If you liked being told the truth, Haley won. If you don't like Trump, Christie probably won (or Hutchinson, for daring to bring up the Fourteenth Amendment). Or you could take a "big picture" view and say that Donald Trump won, because he truly didn't need to be there -- there were so few attacks on him that his sycophants on the stage did an adequate job of defending Trump.

This was pointed out, earlier in the week:

Trump, of course, was not content to have the entire news cycle stolen away from him. So he "counterprogrammed," first with a video interview with Tucker Carlson that was released five minutes before the debate began, and then by turning himself in to the Fulton County Jail the next evening. Notable in his interview was Tucker salivating over the prospect of further political violence (a civil war, or assassination, even!) and Trump giving his usual wink-and-a-nod reaction:



Got that? They all sang Kumbaya and took molly at the Capitol. Or something. It was a real love-fest, in any case. Except for the parts about all the hatred, of course.

This is the Republican presidential field, folks. One man so narcissistic and delusional it still staggers the mind at times, and a whole bunch of other people who somehow want to beat him for the GOP nomination but would still be fine voting for him even if he is a convicted criminal by the election. At the debate, six out of eight of the candidates said they would do so.

That's where the Republican Party is these days. Sad but true.




Volume 720 (8/25/23)

Since it was such an odd week -- and with such a Republican focus to it -- we have decided to forgo both of our weekly awards for Democrats this time around. President Biden visited Maui (where Republicans astonishingly tried to slam him for... you can't make this stuff up... petting a dog), and his campaign team got some good shots in before, during, and after the GOP debate, but there just weren't any standout performances in either the Most Impressive or Most Disappointing categories, so we're just going to leave both awards on the shelf this time around. Sooner or later the August Silly Season will be over and all the congresscritters will scurry back to actually do their damn jobs, and we'll no doubt have plenty of things (positive and negative) to highlight -- but this week was really a two-story week. We just dealt with the first of these, and for the second we were inspired to go on a rant.

So here are our feelings on the fact that the first presidential mugshot in all of American history was released this week.



The mugshot seen 'round the world

So it finally happened. The mugshot seen 'round the world. A former United States president was treated exactly the same as anyone else accused of a serious crime would be treated -- for once, the "two-tiered justice system" (the real one -- the one that is tilted heavily in favor of being rich and being White) didn't come into play. Donald J. Trump was booked into the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia, and produced a photo which is going to be worth 10,000,000 words (at the very least).

A lot of those words -- to date, at any rate -- are ones of ridicule. Trump tried for strong and threatening in his facial expression, but it certainly came off to us as more of a petulant toddler who has been denied a cookie. Or maybe The Grinch... after he got his head stuck in a machine making honey-flavored cotton candy? Or maybe, as John Bolton put it: "He could've smiled. He could've looked benign. Instead he looks like a thug." Take your choice, really.

But one thing is almost certain, although few have realized it yet. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell put the photo into the correct historical perspective, because this is indeed how this photo will be remembered:



He's right. OK, maybe after Trump eventually dies the United States Postal Service will use a more conventional photo for his commemorative stamp (yes, he will get one -- even Nixon did, after all), but in all other references to Trump (such as the obituaries which will predate his stamp) his mugshot is going to feature quite prominently. Maybe the artist who does wind up painting Trump's portrait should depict him in prison orange? But it won't matter -- O'Donnell is right -- this is the image of Donald Trump that history will not be able to ignore.

Incidentally, Trump showed us all just how delusional he truly is, both while being booked and afterwards. He self-reported a height of 6 feet and 3 inches, and self-reported his weight as 215 pounds. This is rather extraordinary since he reported the same numbers only a few weeks back (while being booked for different felony counts) as only 6' 2" and a more-realistic 240 pounds. Either he grew an inch and dropped 25 pounds, or he's just lying once again.

Afterwards, he sent out his first tweet in years with his mugshot and the line: "NEVER SURRENDER!" This is also delusional, since the photo was taken while Trump was surrendering, for the fourth time. But the followers of his personality cult won't be fazed by this inconvenient truth and are already likely snapping up Trump merchandise featuring his glowering look.

The real question in all of this -- not just the Atlanta court case but all four of them -- is whether Trump will be held to account before it is too late or not. Trump is the master of delaying legal proceedings, and he is looking to push all his courtroom problems out until after the 2024 election. That could actually happen -- the judicial system in America does not exactly move with lightning speed. After all, it has taken two and a half years for us to even get to this point. This is not an episode of Law And Order, this is the reality of the court system.

If Trump is tried and convicted of any of the serious felonies he has been accused of, it will not preclude his presidential run. Candidates have indeed run from jail cells before. So the real question here is whether Trump will be convicted before it is too late for the Republican Party to decide on a "Plan B" or not.

Trump will not actually be incarcerated by the time of the election, that's my guess at any rate. Even if convicted, he will appeal all the way up the line and demand to stay out of prison until his appeals all run out. But if such a conviction happens, when it happens is going to be monstrously important.

Ideally, all Republican primary voters should all get to vote knowing whether Trump is a convicted felon rather than just an accused felon. But this is likely going to be impossible. The early-voting states vote so early that it is seriously doubtful whether any of the cases against Trump will be completed before they do. A lot will depend on the judges setting trial dates (which will happen over the next few weeks). If one judge decides to go early, it could be enough. But if all the trials are delayed until after next February then a large portion of the GOP electorate is going to be voting on a candidate who might (or might not) be convicted before the convention rolls around.

If no trial is complete by Super Tuesday, then Trump may very well win the nomination (or have it all but sewn up) by the time any verdict is handed down. Republicans have a very "winner-takes-all" system of awarding delegates, so their nominee is locked in a lot earlier than in a Democratic primary race.

What would happen at that point? "Chaos" is the only answer I can come up with. If the voters have chosen Trump but he may be in jail, this is going to be a serious headache for the Republican Party at large. Some will (quite sanely) push for the party to stage some sort of revolt on the floor of their convention, to prevent a felon from being the party's nominee.

Let's all just imagine that scenario, shall we?

Trump has the majority of delegates, but in the fabled "smoke-filled back rooms," the party puts together some scheme to deny him the nomination. This move could either succeed or not succeed. Either way would still guarantee chaos. If it didn't work and Trump was nominated anyway, then there would be a seething white-hot rage coming from all the voters who supported Trump. There would be a purge of the official ranks of the Republican Party, and Trump's takeover would be absolute.

On the other hand, if the move did succeed, that white-hot rage would absolutely volcanic in nature. Trump would finally have a real "rigged" and "stolen" election to rant and rave about. There would be a civil war within the Republican Party. Trump might form his own "MAGA Party. Joe Biden would coast to re-election."

After all, who else are the Republicans going to nominate, in that scenario? One of the mini-Trumps (say, DeSantis or Ramaswamy)? They would be savaged by the MAGA core and destroy their own political futures by accepting such a nomination. One of the anti-Trumps (Christie, perhaps)? That would be equally insulting to the MAGA core, if not more so. Some sort of establishment-acceptable "consensus candidate" (Pence, maybe)? I would bet my bottom dollar that's not going to lead to any sort of consensus in the GOP ranks.

It just looks like every option is a bad one for the Republican Party. They will all lead to chaos of one flavor or another, down in the ranks of the GOP voters.

Of course, the Republican Party has only itself to blame for all of this. They could have convicted Trump in his second impeachment, which would have barred him from seeking office for the rest of his life. They didn't. So it's hard to feel sorry for them in any way.

Now they are stuck with Trump whether any of them like it or not. Trump is where he is right now -- facing 91 felony counts against him -- because of his own actions. He is trying to gaslight everyone into "it's all free speech," or "it was a perfect phone call," or "it's a witch hunt," or whatever other weak excuses he may try, but the reality is he has dug his own grave. Donald Trump -- while president -- launched an attack on American democracy.

Trump's ultimate fate will be fought over in two arenas: the court system and the court of public opinion (or "the world of politics," which is in this case interchangeable). Juries of 12 of his peers will decide his legal fate (and then the higher courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, will ultimately determine his fate). But the jury of those who will determine his political fate is a lot larger -- it contains every single American voter.

If Trump is convicted of the RICO charge in the case which just produced the first ex-presidential mugshot in history, we will all be able to correctly call him a "convicted mobster," or a "convicted racketeer." No matter what happens in the 2024 election cycle, that will follow Donald Trump around forever. And as Lawrence O'Donnell accurately prophesied, there will be one image that encapsulates this, and one image alone:

The Grinch, after having an industrial accident with a cotton-candy machine. That's Donald Trump's legacy, from this point forward.




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