April 20, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- Week One Of The 'Don Snoreleone' Trial

We begin today with some rather sad breaking news. Outside the trial of Donald Trump in New York City, a man lit himself on fire in the protest area. However, from initial reports, this act of self-immolation was not actually political in nature, instead it appears to be the act of a man suffering from serious mental problems. From live reports from the scene:

A witness who saw the entire thing from a very short distance away said the man: "had a sign saying something about Trump and Biden working together to orchestrate a 'coup'," which clearly shows the act can't really be classified as partisan in any way. Anyone thinking that President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are "working together" on anything is obviously not in his right mind, to state the obvious. The man was still alive when taken to the hospital, but was said to be in critical condition. As of this writing, that's all the news there is on the subject.

Inside the trial room, the week ended with both a full jury and six alternate jurors being successfully seated, so everything is now on track for opening arguments to begin Monday morning. This is a faster schedule than some had anticipated, but the trial itself may take over a month to complete.

So far the biggest news (other than today's horrific events) has been that Trump can't seem to stop falling asleep in the courtroom. He drifts off, closes his eyes, his head slumps down on his chest, his mouth goes slack... and then eventually he snaps back awake. It hasn't happened every day, but one does wonder if he's going to be this lethargic when the actual case gets rolling. Jury selection is a repetitive process than can get monotonous at times, but hearing the case presented by both the prosecution and the defense might be a little more interesting to Trump, so we'll just have to see.

Currently (as we write this) a hearing is taking place which will determine what subjects the prosecution can ask Trump about in cross-examination, if he actually decides to testify in his own defense. So far, Trump has indicated publicly that he is eager to testify, but that should really be taken with a grain of salt -- because it would be such a monumentally stupid thing for him to do. It's hard to imagine a more damaging thing for Trump's defense than him being asked questions under oath that he either: (1) doesn't want to answer, or (2) is almost guaranteed to lie about. Any decent courtroom prosecutor in the country could easily make mincemeat of Trump's believability without even breaking a sweat, obviously.

But that's all for next week. For now: the jury's set, the last details are being worked out, and the real show will begin Monday morning, as the first criminal trial of an ex-president gets underway.

One rather odd thing about the trial so far is that the judge, for no apparent reason, has delayed holding a hearing or issuing a ruling on a rather important (and ongoing) issue: Donald Trump defying his gag order in the case (which is supposed to prevent him from attacking any witnesses or jury members). This Monday, the prosecution filed a request for the judge to sanction Trump over three violations of the gag order, with an incredibly modest suggestion that Trump be fined $1,000 for each instance. They also asked the judge to warn Trump that future violations would be dealt with more harshly, perhaps landing Trump in jail for contempt. Mystifyingly, though, the judge scheduled the hearing not for this Wednesday but for next Wednesday (all Wednesdays will be breaks from the trial, throughout the whole case). This gives Trump a whole extra week to rack up violations, and the prosecution later counted seven violations so far. It's a safe bet that by next Wednesday that number's going to be even higher, so why the delay? As we said... mystifying....

One other high-profile trial was -- very briefly, mind you -- in the news this Wednesday, as the Senate promptly disposed of the laughably unconstitutional impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. We say "very briefly" because the entire trial ended before it even began -- which robbed the impeachment managers (which included Marjorie Taylor Greene, proving how unserious the entire exercise was) of any ability to score political points while completely ignoring the Constitution's requirement of "high crimes or misdemeanors." But we're going to cover that a bit later, so we just mention it in passing....

Other congressional news -- things are actually happening in Congress! No, really! In both houses, even! Could've knocked us over with a feather....

Snark aside, both the Senate and the House are actually moving to pass some critical and very serious bills. The Senate (as of this writing) is moving a bill to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is important because it is about to expire. There is some last-minute haggling going on, and there may even be a short period when the law lapses, but they seem on track to finish soon afterwards, at the very least. The House is going to be in session tomorrow to vote on a package of foreign aid bills -- including military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan -- which has already led to some rather unprecedented bipartisanship (over parliamentary moves), but again, we're going to cover all of this in more detail later as well.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is skating on some mighty thin ice within his own caucus by moving these bills along, as we've now got three Republicans backing the "motion to vacate the chair" Marjorie Taylor Greene is using to threaten Johnson's job. After this week, Republicans will only have a one-vote majority, so normally this would mean he's toast. However, as a side product of the deal to move the foreign aid bill, Democrats might actually come to his rescue. Which would also be rather unprecedented, but we live in strange times indeed.

President Joe Biden has really amped up his campaign, as he made multiple appearances in Pennsylvania this week (and released an ad specifically designed to court Pennsylvania voters). Team Biden also went with a "deploy the Kennedys" strategy, to blunt the impact of gadfly R.F.K. Jr.'s quixotic campaign. Biden is hoping for lots of "split-screen moments" during the Trump trial, where he is shown either vigorously campaigning or quietly doing the nation's business while his opponent faces dozens of felony charges in a court of law. Possibly related to the new focus on Trump's past (which many voters seem to have forgotten) was the news that Biden is inching up in the polls. Perhaps the polls should be taken with a grain of salt this far out, but good news is always better than bad, right?

Republicans in Arizona continue to shoot themselves in the foot by blocking a bipartisan (technically: "all Democrats plus a few Republicans" ) effort to repeal the 1864 abortion law that has no exceptions for rape or incest victims. If they were smart, they'd quickly get rid of the law so that Arizona reverted to their previous abortion ban (of 15 weeks), which might have defused the issue for November -- when a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to secure the provisions of Roe v. Wade will be on the ballot -- but apparently they're not that smart. Or, at least, not in the lower chamber -- the state Senate appears likely to pass a repeal bill, but the speaker of the state house is a forced-birth radical and actually likes the 1864 law. So we'll have to wait and see, as the clock ticks down to when the 1864 law will fully take effect again.

What else? Senator Tom Cotton became the latest Republican to just openly advocate for political violence against peaceful protestors, as we all slide down the slippery slope to normalizing something that used to be universally condemned by all.

That's about it for the big political stories this week, which is just the first week of Donald Trump's criminal trial sucking all the oxygen from the room. Things are only going to get worse, in this regard, as time goes on, so we encourage everyone to buckle up for the whole bumpy ride.





We have two Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week awards to hand out this week, for showing the country that there is one sober-minded political party that is interested in governing and getting the people's business done, while the other is an unserious trainwreck of a clown show (not to mix metaphors or anything, but today's GOP certainly does have aspects of both).

Our first goes to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who immediately shot down the entirely-not-serious impeachment articles the House of Representatives finally sent over to them (after delaying this for months, for no particular reason).

The House Republicans were petulant, because their investigation into President Biden didn't turn any sort of evidence of wrongdoing up at all, so they were denied their real objective (which was to impeach Biden in a tit-for-tat retaliation for Trump having been impeached twice). Since this big prize was denied to them, the House GOP decided to impeach the first sitting cabinet secretary in history, for purely political reasons (also a historic first). They didn't even really pretend to have found that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had committed "high crimes or misdemeanors," they just impeached him for being a Democrat in a Democratic administration, carrying out Democratic policy objectives. That was it. It was pure partisan spite, nothing more.

So the Senate shot the entire circus down before it could even get started. Schumer started off by offering Republicans a chance to vent their spleens on the floor for awhile before Democrats shut the whole thing down, but they turned his offer down so they didn't even get that. Instead, the articles of impeachment were voted to be unconstitutional and dismissed with no trial. The "trial" would have been nothing short of an extended campaign ad for Republicans running for office, slamming Biden's border policies. Democrats had no obligation to provide this platform to the opposition, and so they didn't.

Republicans howled, but the fact is that most of them also voted to dismiss all charges without holding a trial for Trump's second impeachment, so it's not like they had any sort of moral high horse to preach from here.

Schumer did exactly what he should have done, after the House abused the constitutional process of impeachment: he shut them down before they could say a word. Which was impressive indeed.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is aiding Speaker Mike Johnson in almost unprecedented ways, in order to get military aid packages for both Ukraine and Israel finally passed. Democrats are crossing party lines to make this all possible, and may even wind up saving Johnson's speakership from an expected challenge from within his own Republican caucus. Which, as we said, is virtually unprecedented, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

House bills have to go through a process to get a floor vote. The usual way is for the Rules Committee to vote on how exactly the bill will be voted on (defining all the parliamentary questions of amendments and whatnot), and then for this "rule" they pass to be voted on by the full House. After the rule is in place, then the bill itself can be debated and voted upon. That's how it is supposed to work, at any rate.

Except that when Kevin McCarthy (remember him?) got elected speaker (after a tortuous few weeks of repeated votes), he had to agree to put three of the Chaos Caucus hotheads on the Rules Committee. And Johnson didn't change this setup when he became speaker, so the three are still there. This committee is also usually known as "the Speaker's Committee," since it is usually packed with the speaker's staunch supporters. But with the radicals there, the Rules Committee keeps voting down bills that Johnson wants to pass -- meaning they never even make it to the floor (without extraordinary parliamentary maneuvers). Voting down your own party's rules in committee almost never used to happen, mind you. It is extraordinary, but has become normal in this House.

Traditionally, the members of the Rules Committee from the minority party always vote against every bill the speaker wants to move. The speaker's got to get the votes he needs from within his or her own party, in other words. But today all the Democrats on the Rules Committee voted for the foreign aid package to move forward, which defeated the move by the three radicals to vote against it. Again: this is almost unheard-of.

The rule then went to the House floor, where it passed 316-94. It got more Democratic "aye" votes than Republican votes -- also an extraordinary thing to happen (although not nearly as rare as what happened in the Rules Committee). This tees up the bills for votes tomorrow afternoon, since Johnson kept to the House rule to give members 72 hours to read the text of bills before votes happen. It is likely to pass, with that much Democratic support. So Ukraine military aid could begin flowing again by as early as next week, which is a huge accomplishment.

Without Hakeem Jeffries allowing such extraordinary actions by his fellow Democrats, it never would have happened. Which is why we're also giving Minority Leader Jeffries his own Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

As we said: there are two parties, but only one of them is serious about getting things done. The other is a complete Dumpster fire.

[Congratulate Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on his House contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]





In case anyone was wondering the precise level of sleazebagginess Senator Bob Menendez could possibly display, we now have an answer: maximum levels!

In a court filing that was previously sealed (but was recently unsealed due to pressure from reporters of various media organizations), Menendez lays out his defense's legal strategy:



Yep -- he's going to blame his wife for everything. And she won't even be present, since the case against her was postponed due to her needing surgery. So he's not just blaming his wife, he'll be blaming his wife who will currently be either undergoing or recuperating from surgery.

What a stand-up guy!

Menendez is a sleazeball who got caught with the gold bars a foreign nation had bribed him with. He has refused to step down from the Senate, and his trial will begin shortly (it was just postponed a week, but will begin next month). We'll doubtlessly be giving him more awards when the trial begins, but in advance we're giving him this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, just on the grounds of general sleaziness.

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




Volume 748 (4/19/24)

We begin with a link, just because.

If we had had the choice of who we'd like to hear interview the protestors outside Donald Trump's trial, we would have said (in a New York minute): "Triumph The Insult Comic Dog." Only he could have done it justice -- and he did.

Go ahead and enjoy watching (and do so knowing that this was posted earlier in the week, long before today's self-immolation horror).

Our talking points this week aren't quite as snarky or absurdist as only Triumph can manage, but we couldn't resist taking a number of cheap shots of our own.



Election interference trial

This is a point about branding that others have made as well, but that we addressed in a column at the start of this week (after someone helpfully pointed it out to us in a tweet).

"It's not a case about a porn star. It's not a case about hush money. That makes it sound trivial, when it is not. It is a case about the election interference that Donald Trump did before the 2016 election. Just think of what this election interference might have done, given the thin majority Trump eked out in a handful of swing states. Without Trump killing negative stories about him, we could be in the final year of President Hillary Clinton's second term in office. Imagine how different things would be, if Trump had just skulked off back to Trump Tower after losing in 2016. That is how important this trial is, because it involved election interference and could have been responsible for changing the course of history."



Fun with acronyms (Part 1)

This is actually a commonsense thing to do, which has never been necessary before. But with the House in Republican hands it's never going to pass, so why not have some fun with it?

"Representative Bennie Thompson -- who chaired the January 6th House committee -- has introduced a bill to strip lifetime Secret Service protection from, and I quote: 'any person upon sentencing following conviction for a Federal or State offense that is punishable for a term of imprisonment of at least one year.' Got that? Anyone convicted of a crime that is punishable by at least a one-year jail term -- even if that is not the sentence they actually get -- forfeits their right to lifetime Secret Service protection. The bill is pretty easy to understand, it is only two paragraphs long, and the first one merely defines the name of the bill: the 'Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable Former Protectees Act' or the 'DISGRACED Former Protectees Act.' Yeah, that sounds about right...."



Churchill or Chamberlain?

We thought this was a pretty good framing of the choice, personally.

"Speaker Mike Johnson was presented with what many have been calling his 'Churchill/Chamberlain moment' -- where he could choose appeasing a tyrant after a land-grab in Europe just like Neville Chamberlain did, or where he could choose to fight back, like Winston Churchill ultimately did. Thankfully, Johnson seems to have chosen Churchill. But that is the magnitude of the stakes here, as the Ukrainian military has all but run out of ammunition to use in their fight against Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion. We saw before -- with Hitler's Nazi Germany -- what inaction could lead to, so now was not the time to dither and do nothing. I am thankful Speaker Johnson chose Churchill and not Chamberlain this week."



Fun with acronyms (Part 2)

We wrote about the next two yesterday, for those who simply don't believe that we aren't making this stuff up....

"The hotheads in the Republican Chaos Caucus got scared this week when rumors were flying that Speaker Mike Johnson was considering kicking three of them off the Rules Committee (in order to put a stop to their nonsensical obstructionism), or maybe even change things so that a 'motion to vacate the chair' would take more than one member to propose. So the hotheads got together and decided to post one of them on the House floor at all times, in rotating duty, to protect against Johnson sneaking some vote by them when they were least expecting it. And -- I swear, you cannot make this stuff up, folks -- they decided to give their little group a name. Which has to go down as perhaps the worst Washington acronym ever, since they decided to call themselves the 'Floor Action Response Team.' That's right -- there will be one vigilant FART on the House floor at all times... stinking up the place."



If it's good enough for the Jews....

Marjorie Taylor Greene is certainly in a class of her own when it comes to beclowning herself. This week, she managed a self-own of hilarious proportions.

"Marjorie Taylor Greene proposed an amendment to the foreign policy bill in the House this week which would have -- are you sitting down? -- appropriated money to build some, quote, space lasers, unquote, on our southern border. She wanted to develop these space lasers, since she bragged she had 'previously voted to fund space lasers for Israel's defense' -- which is false, since Israel does not actually have any space lasers deployed. Greene is not just the butt of many comedians' jokes, she's now making herself the butt of her own jokes. Maybe she's angling for a spot in the Beclowning Hall of Fame? As usual, it's hard to tell, with her."



Place your bets

Here's a fun project you can try at home!

"Somebody should start a betting pool for how long Donald Trump can go during his trial without totally blowing his stack and losing his cool altogether. What will it be? Ranting at the judge? Shouting down a witness? Ripping into a jury member? And how long do you think he can sit there and stay silent before 'Mount Trump' erupts again (sending the villagers fleeing)? What's the over/under, do you think? Place your bets, folks! I think I'm going to go with 'the fourth day of the trial -- next Friday -- he'll lose it while a witness is testifying.' So where would you put your money?"



Lullaby... and good night...

Heh. This one's just pure fun -- because it is always fun to mock a bully using his own terms.

"Donald Trump couldn't even stay awake during the first week of his trial. Joe Biden's campaign has begun calling him 'Sleepy Don,' which is appropriate since Trump has been using 'Sleepy Joe' for a while now. But there are all kinds of other names we could use, right? Just from watching what trended on social media this week, two related ones caught our eye: 'Don Snoreleone' and 'The Nodfather.' It's always nice to see a bully get hoist by their own petard, isn't it?"




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

April 13, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- The Abortion Election

If Democrats have their way, the 2024 election will be a one-issue election for many voters (enough to win, hopefully). And conservative Republicans just keep making it easier and easier for that to actually happen.

In the half-century that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, Republicans made a lot of political hay out of being what they called "pro-life," but what is now more accurately referred to as "forced-birth." They want to force every woman who ever gets pregnant -- no matter the circumstances, no matter the consequences -- to give birth, no matter what. American women (and men, it should be noted) do not support these radical restrictions of their rights. And they're now going to get to vote on it, in the clearest way since Roe was overturned. The 2024 election may well go down in history as being "the abortion election," to put this another way.

Republicans -- or at the least, the ones smart enough to read public opinion polls -- are terrified of this. They have every right to be. But they also have only themselves to blame. They have supported the concept of "life begins at conception" for decades now, but for all that time it was merely an abstraction. It was something for Republicans to give lip service to when trying to get elected. Now it has become reality. Which means that in-vitro fertilization is now at risk. Rape victims will now be forced to give birth to their rapist's baby. This is their "brave new world," and tens of millions of American women are now suffering because of it.

Republicans used to believe (and some still do) that their forced-birth position was actually popular with the voters. They would conduct opinion polls that were carefully worded to produce the result they wanted to see. They could claim that "a majority of Americans" believed as they believed. But this wasn't true, and still isn't. A majority of Americans is actually horrified at the brave new world Republicans are creating, and more and more they are responding at the ballot box.

Again, this terrifies Republicans, which is all to the good. For the first time in recent memory, some Republicans are now urging a state to overturn an abortion ban, because they know full well that it is so extreme that few voters support it. Even politicians who, a few years ago, expressed their strong support for exactly the same law -- they're now scrambling around trying to convince other Republicans to get rid of it before it tanks their chances of getting elected. As mentioned, they only have themselves to blame for this conundrum.

The Arizona supreme court this week ruled that a law written in 1864 which bans all abortions except to save the life of the mother can go back into effect. This is precisely what the forced-birth advocates want to see nationwide, in fact. To them, all abortions are evil and the only extenuating circumstance allowable is if both the mother and fetus are at risk of death (when it becomes permissible, to them, to save the life of the mother). That's it -- that's the only exception. Rape victims, incest victims, women who will lose the ability to reproduce if they carry their pregnancies to term -- none of them get any exception at all. As far as they are concerned, that is all God's will.

These radical laws are no longer theoretical or abstract. They are real. They impact real women's lives, for the worse. They overrule medical decisions made by a doctor and patient. They tell women what they can and can't do with their own bodies. They rip freedom and bodily autonomy away from millions. And this is what Republicans have been fighting to create for half a century.

President Joe Biden, to his credit, is fighting back. Donald Trump is trying to weasel out of the consequences of his own actions, since he still brags about how he personally saw to it that Roe was overturned. Trump tried to punt the whole issue, washing his hands of it by blithely saying it was now up to the states and that that would be fine with him. Arizona's decision was handed down almost immediately afterwards, and Trump had to quickly try to backpedal. Today, Vice President Kamala Harris will speak at a political rally in Arizona, and abortion will be the central subject of her appearance.

Team Biden is leaning in hard to two very good slogans in this fight: "Blame Trump," and "Donald Trump did this." Short, sweet, and to the point. They are smart to do this, since both slogans have the benefit of being true. They've already unveiled their strategy, which is already a proven winner:

Such personal ads have already worked, even in deep red states like Kentucky. The new Biden ad is heart-wrenching, because it shows the anguish women have to now go through in many American states. It is a personal story -- as they all are. Republicans blithely like to toss around talking points on how many weeks they'll allow abortions up to and "exceptions" that turn out to be meaningless, but at the heart of the matter are real women who are going through Hell because Republicans have decided what is morally acceptable and what is not for a woman and her doctor to decide. These laws have real-world consequences and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Biden campaign will be featuring more and more of them during the rest of the campaign.

Before the Dobbs decision threw out Roe v. Wade, the only worry for all American women was that the Supreme Court would keep curtailing abortion rights and adding needless obstacles to obtaining one. Now women have to worry about dozens and dozens of state courts and state legislatures making such decisions for them. That is not progress, not for them. As one Washington Post columnist put it:



So far, abortion has been an enormous game-changer and motivator for election turnout. Democrats are hoping that the issue becomes the pre-eminent one in the 2024 campaign and that single-issue women's rights voters will hand both Joe Biden and a whole lot of other Democrats the margin of victory in November.

It's impossible to say at this point in time, but there is a good chance they will be proven right. The 2024 election may be remembered historically as "the abortion election" because the issue is so potent. But then, issues of freedom and human rights often are.

Because this possibility exists -- 2024 becoming known as "the abortion election" -- we are going to dedicate a whole lot of this week's column to the subject (including a rant at the end, rather than our normal talking points section). So for now, let's just whip through what else has been going on politically before we get to the awards.

It wasn't widely reported, but Trump showed his racist core once again, condemning immigrants from (as he previously put it) "shithole countries" because they are not White. Think this is overstating it? Here's what he had to say: "Why can't we allow people to come in from nice countries, I'm trying to be nice. Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?" The audience of rich donors reportedly responded with "chuckles from the crowd." Republicans have abandoned all pretense and dog-whistles and are just saying this stuff out loud now.

Last week, a group of House Republicans wanted to pass a bill that would rename Washington's Dulles Airport after Donald Trump. Democrats responded by suggesting a bill that would name the closest federal prison to Trump's Florida golf resort after him instead (which is reminiscent of the effort by some local California Democrats to rename a sewage treatment plant after George W. Bush a while back, we have to add). Wouldn't it be fun if Trump had to serve a sentence in a prison named for him? Heh.

Trump's legal woes are building to a crescendo, as his first criminal trial begins on Monday. He filed three motions to try to delay the case, and all were quickly shot down by the courts. In advance of the very real possibility that he will be jailed for contempt of court (which is a entirely possible, since he is incapable of controlling his own mouth, even in a courtroom), Trump has taken to comparing himself to Nelson Mandela. Because of course he has.

Allen Weisselberg, a former executive (an "ex-executive"?) at Trump's company who already did a short stint in jail for his financial crimes on Trump's behalf was sentenced to an additional five months in prison this week, for perjury.

Meanwhile, yet another longtime Trump lawyer quit this week, who could wind up testifying against Trump in his national security documents case in Florida. Hey, it's better than doing jail time for a man who shows no loyalty to anyone but himself, right?

But all the rest of Trump's legal woes will be totally eclipsed next week (we had to get the word "eclipse" in here somewhere this week!), when we fully expect some of the headlines to use the tried-and-true "trial of the century" phrase -- which is rather ironic, seeing as how O. J. Simpson died this week. But then his trial actually took place in the previous century....

In Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson is once again skating on thin ice with his own caucus. After failing once earlier in the week, today the House managed to pass a bill reauthorizing foreign intelligence gathering, which was important since it was facing a deadline. If the House hadn't acted, the whole FISA law might have disappeared, but now it'll be up to the Senate (where chances for passage are quite good) next week.

Next up for the House may be passing some sort of military aid to both Israel and Ukraine, but this will only make the ice under Johnson's skates that much thinner. Marjorie Taylor Greene -- who got a new nickname this week from former Republican House member Ken Buck: "Moscow Marjorie," or as it is trending right now on social media: "Moscow Marge" -- is still threatening to move forward on her "motion to vacate the chair," so Johnson's tenure as speaker is very much in doubt if any Ukraine bill actually gets a floor vote. Stay tuned!

Johnson also further delayed sending over to the Senate the articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, probably to delay the publicity until it could possibly counter some of the media circus that will doubtlessly surround Trump's criminal trial. As things stand, the article are supposed to be delivered early in the week, and chances are excellent that the Senate will dispense with them as quickly as possible, without bothering to hold an actual impeachment trial. Some Republican senators are howling over the monstrous unfairness of this, but pretty much all of them voted to dismiss Trump's impeachments too, so they have no leg to stand on now.

But let's get back to our main subject, shall we? There was some other minor political news this week, but none of it rose to the level of the fallout from Trump's abortion announcement and the Arizona supreme court's decision. So without further ado....





We're actually giving this award somewhat in anticipation of hearing her speak later today, but Vice President Kamala Harris has already more than earned this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week, for becoming the point-person for the Biden administration's political messaging on abortion rights.

Harris has definitely done a good job already, even before we hear what she has to say in Arizona later on. This is an issue which she obviously feels very strongly about, and it shows in the authenticity of how she speaks about it. Harris has had problems with her delivery on other issues, but not on this one. She shows honest emotion and what she has to say resonates with the crowds she addresses.

We will doubtlessly be seeing a lot more of her out on the campaign trail, hitting this issue hard. President Biden has had a more complicated political stance on abortion (everyone tends to forget this, but he's only the second practicing Catholic president America has ever had), but Harris does not. She speaks from the heart and she speaks for tens of millions of women when she does so.

If this truly does become "the abortion election," then Harris will be one of the main reasons why. Up until Roe v. Wade was overturned, many Democrats shied away from talking about the issue entirely. Biden himself edited his State Of The Union speech this year so he could mention "women's rights" rather than have to say the word "abortion." But Harris is of a new generation of Democrats and is unafraid to speak plainly and from her heart.

So as we said, we are awarding this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week somewhat in advance, but we have no doubt that Harris is about to give a barn-burner of a speech on the issue today. And next week. And the week after that.

[Congratulate Vice President Kamala Harris via the White House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We're not going to get into the reasons why (because we are saving that for our talking points rant), but we are posthumously awarding the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to a man who has been dead for over a century: William Claude Jones. Keep reading to discover why he more than earned such a dishonor....

[Since he's been dead for quite a while now, we cannot provide contact information for Arizona Territorial Speaker Of The House William Claude Jones, sorry.]




Volume 747 (4/12/24)

As promised, here is our own rant on the importance of abortion rights to the 2024 election campaign. For years, Democrats had felt constrained by abortion as an issue, since it wasn't all that clear how strongly the public supported abortion rights.

That has, obviously, now changed. Abortion rights, to date, have a perfect track record at the ballot box. Every time abortion rights have been presented to voters -- even in deep red states -- the vote has been pretty overwhelmingly against banning abortion and for women's rights. This has freed up Democratic politicians to lean in hard to the issue, which (to their credit) most of them are already doing. So here is the speech we are offering up -- our suggestions for how to speak to the voters about the issue (some of which we didn't come up with ourselves, so we've provided links to give credit where it is due).



Blame Donald Trump

We are all now living in the world Donald Trump made possible. For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court ripped away an individual human right, and all the blame for this rests at the feet of the man who put three of the justices on that court: Donald Trump.

The court, in all its supposed wisdom, decided that the right to bodily autonomy for women would henceforth be up to each state's government to decide, instead of being constitutionally guaranteed to all American women as it had for half a century. Just like during the Jim Crow era, the rights of Americans now depend on the ZIP code they live in. On one side of a border, women have full bodily rights, while on the other side they don't -- because their legislature or state courts decided to take them away.

Donald Trump came out this week in strong support of this balkanization of American human rights. He's totally fine leaving it all up to the states. Except that when one state -- Arizona -- decided that a law originally passed 160 years ago was still valid, Trump backed down and urged the state to "bring it back into reason," and expressed his confidence that "it will be straightened out." But when Democrats in the legislature tried to do precisely that as soon as they could, Republicans blocked it. They like the law and they don't want to see it repealed, even though it was passed when women couldn't vote and Arizona wouldn't become a state for another half-century.

It seems Arizona's state legislature hasn't improved much since 1864, just after it first became an American territory. Back then, the speaker of their house chamber was a man named William Claude Jones. After Jones's first wife divorced him, he married a woman he declared was 12 years old. When he moved to the Arizona territory, he married a third woman, who was 15 years old. Jones himself was around 50 at the time. He abandoned her within a year, and headed off to Hawai'i where he married "a princess from a noble family" -- who was 14 years old.

This is the man who passed that abortion law through his chamber. These were the morals of the man -- who was clearly a pedophile -- who got to decide what was permissible for Arizona's women. And Arizona Republicans are just fine with letting this law stand as it is, even though there are zero exceptions in it for rape or incest. Rapists in Arizona should be able to select who will be the mother of their babies, in other words (according to Republicans), and the rape victim should have no say in the matter at all. This is barbaric, but that's actually what Arizona Republicans are now fighting to preserve.

To be fair, some Republicans realize that this is somewhat problematic (to say the least). Even Republicans who used to actually voice support for the 1864 law. Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake spoke glowingly of the law when she ran for governor two years ago, calling it a "great law." Now that this "great law" has been upheld by her state's highest court, she has drastically changed her tune. She is now actually actively lobbying Republicans in the state legislature to join with Democrats in repealing the law. But it's really too little, too late -- we've already seen that when she thinks it will benefit her politically, she will throw women's rights under the bus in an instant.

For a half-century, Republican politicians gave their tacit support to the forced-birth advocates. It was all rather abstract, so it really didn't matter how extreme the laws they supported really were. It helped them get elected, and that was good enough. But when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the protections of Roe v. Wade, it all got very real, very quickly. Now blithely stating that you think "life begins at conception" will mean that in some states, in-vitro fertilization will essentially be outlawed. Or that rape victims will be forced to carry their rapist's baby to term, whether they want to or not.

Donald Trump did this. Never forget. He too thought it would be politically expedient to go along with appointing anti-abortion judges, without really caring what it would mean. He is still proud of the fact that Roe v. Wade was overturned. He takes credit for doing so. He brags about it. But "credit" isn't really the right word, because any woman seeking to lay the blame for losing the right to decide what happens with her own body should blame Donald Trump, not "credit" him.

Some Republicans try to sound reasonable on abortion, by supporting "exceptions" to their abortion bans. But when a woman tries to get a medically-necessary abortion using one of these exceptions, doctors will turn her away because they are afraid of being sent to jail. They speak of 15-week or 16-week bans as being reasonable, when they truly are not. Most abortions -- over 90 percent of them -- in America do indeed take place before these limits, but the ones that happen after that point are the ones that are the most in need of protection. Because these are the abortions that happen not because the mother doesn't want to have a healthy baby, but because that is not going to happen for them.

This can include when a miscarriage happens and the fetus dies, for instance. But even then some doctors will refuse to perform an abortion -- even when refusing to do so will cause the woman to suffer excruciating pain, perhaps prevent her from ever becoming pregnant again, or even die. The doctors are rightfully terrified that their decisions will be second-guessed by some local cops or district attorneys and they will be sent to jail for doing what is medically necessary and humane.

When "the life of the mother" exceptions are put to the test, they fail. Even when a doctor knows that the fetus is going to die and that quick action will avoid deadly sepsis, the woman is forced to wait until the fetus actually does die before an abortion will be allowed -- for no medically-sound reason whatsoever. The "exception" dooms women to needless pain and anguish and medical risk. And "life of the mother" doesn't cover a whole range of other problems, either. What happens when a woman is informed that her fetus is developing abnormally and has failed to develop the organs necessary for life? Such a fetus can be carried to term and then die within minutes or hours after the mother gives birth to it. Who would force a woman to go through that excruciating experience even though the doctors know it is going to happen months in advance? Republicans, that's who.

This is a question of freedom. The freedom for you and your doctor to make medical decisions -- even extremely heart-wrenching ones -- without a gaggle of theocratic politicians looking over your shoulders and telling you what you can and can't do with your own body. This is the freedom Donald Trump has taken away from tens of millions of American women. And he brags about doing so!

Democrats believe your body should belong to you. Not to Republicans in the government, not to Donald Trump. Not to some male judges. Only to you. And we believe that for all American women.

Why should American women today enjoy fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers did? Why should we go backwards on human rights, depending purely on what state you live in? Why should some women get the medical care they need when they need it, while others are denied and condemned to pain, possibly losing the ability to bear any future children, or even death? That's not the America I want. But it is precisely the America Donald Trump has created -- and he's just fine with it.

Republicans won't be satisfied until they ban abortion nationwide. They may try to do this in a reasonable-sounding way, but check the fine print. They're fine with limiting abortion in blue states, but their laws also would allow red states to go even further and ban all abortions with no exceptions at all. Which is the real endpoint they want to get to, nationwide, for all American women.

Arizona just reinstated an abortion ban from the time of the Civil War. It was passed through their territorial government by a man who married multiple girls -- not "women," but girls, one as young as twelve years old. And the Republicans in their current state government just refused to even allow a vote on repealing this archaic law. They are just fine with leaving it on the books.

Arizona is just one state. There are plenty of others where laws that are just as Draconian are now in place. The Republican Party wants to force every woman who ever gets pregnant to give birth to a baby, and it simply does not matter to them what that woman wants or thinks about it. Even when she's a rape victim. Even when the father of her baby is her own father.

Donald Trump did this.

Remember, in November.

One party stands strong for women's freedom while one party fights to take rights away from women. And if Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans win, things are just going to get worse, because they are not done yet. Don't give them that chance. Vote for human rights and freedom. Vote blue.




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

April 6, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- Shake, Rattle, And Roll

Living in California means not being generally surprised by earthquakes, but we realize that this is simply not so in New York City and the Northeast in general. So when a 4.8 temblor hit New Jersey, we certainly could sympathize. However, it seems East Coast tectonic zones have a certain personality trait that goes (we can't resist) right down to the bedrock? Here was the tweet that the "USGS Earthquakes" account put out this morning:

"Passive-aggressive"? We are going to exhibit a mighty amount of restraint here, and leave it to everyone else to suggest their own jokes in response to that. No, really... we're just going to sit here and not type... in the dark... all by ourselves... while you go out and have your fun, don't worry about us....

Heh. Seems we couldn't resist, after all!

Geological/psychological kidding aside, there was at least one political announcement this week which we suppose qualifies as "earth-shaking." The group No Labels, one week after the death of co-founder Joe Lieberman, announced that they will not be running a third-party presidential ticket in 2024, after spending tens of millions of dollars (of other people's money) preparing to do just that. This is incredibly good news for the effort to re-elect President Joe Biden, since it would have been a wild card in what is shaping up to be a very close race.

Of course, Robert F. Kennedy Junior is still running, and he spent the week as he always does, making one insane statement after another.

In other mentally-unbalanced news, President Joe Biden began the week being attacked by Republicans for: (1) not having godlike powers over the Christian calendar, and (2) a regulation that has been in place since the 1970s, which includes each and every year of Donald Trump's term. In both instances, Republicans were sure that Biden had somehow been the instigator for these things -- and in both cases, he was not. This, of course, didn't stop Republicans from falsely accusing him of nefariousness. It got so bad the White House had to invite the Easter Bunny himself to the podium of the White House briefing room to explain it all (well, we made up that reason, but the video is still pretty amusing to watch).

Monday was, of course, "Everyone Act Like A Republican Day"... which (ahem) was also a mere quirk of the calendar with another holiday. We have to say, though, we didn't hear very many good April Fool's jokes from politicians, seeing as how this was the best of the lot:



By week's end, Biden was in Baltimore to view the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the progress being made to get the shipping channel back open again. Republicans, as usual, are quick to demand federal disaster money when tragedy strikes in their home states but balk at providing the same to blue states, so they're already signalling they'll be making their own demands to be included in any emergency funding bill in the coming days.

Congress is still out on one of their generous vacations, but will return next week with a full plate of all sorts of bizarre things to do (as well as the serious work of governing, which continues to seem beyond their abilities, no matter how many weeks of vacation they take). The Senate will be starting the impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, which (hopefully) will end before it even begins. The House, meanwhile, may devolve into another Hunger Games-style free-for-all, if Marjorie Taylor Greene moves forward with her plan to force a "motion to vacate the chair." Speaker Mike Johnson may be about to cross the Rubicon with the Chaos Caucus, as he's made noises about actually bringing some sort of Ukraine aid bill up for a vote -- which will send the hotheads into an incandescent rage. So there's all that to look forward to.

Florida had their own sort of legal/political shakeup this week, as their state supreme court ruled that all the Draconian abortion bans the Republicans have passed there can go into effect, but also (quite surprisingly) that the state's voters will be able to weigh in via a proposed constitutional amendment which will now appear on their November ballots. As we hasten to point out, though, it will need a 60-percent supermajority to pass, so that's a pretty steep hill in an increasingly-red state.

Democrats didn't let that stop them from openly salivating about the possibility of amping up turnout and possibly scoring some big political upsets in November, but this may be runaway optimism, we'll have to see. What most news stories don't also mention is that the state supreme court also greenlighted a ballot measure which would legalize recreational marijuana use for adults, which also could serve to drive up turnout for certain voters (Democratic and otherwise).

In related international news, Germany became the largest country in Europe to legalize recreational marijuana use. It's not just here at home where the War On Weed is coming to an end, which is a rather positive thing to see.

As usual, we've got to check in with all the "Trump's legal woes" news, and this week there certainly was a lot of it.

The judge in the New York porn-star hush-money case expanded his gag order on Trump to also cover his own family, and Trump responded by attempting to push the boundaries of this restriction -- which he will continue to do right up until the no-nonsense judge smacks him down. Trump's trial is still set to begin on April 15th, as the judge denied a motion to delay the case on "presidential immunity" grounds (until after the U.S. Supreme Court gets around to addressing the issue in a different case). So we are a little more than a week away from seeing the first ex-president ever sitting in the dock of a criminal court case.

Also in New York, Trump posted his (reduced) $175 million bond to cover his appeal, but the company providing the bond is based in California, so its validity is now being challenged by the state attorney.

We saw somewhat of a showdown down in Florida, as Special Counsel Jack Smith answered the judge in the national security documents case with a scathing takedown of what the judge had requested, where Smith all but guaranteed he is on the brink of appealing on the grounds of what might be called legal ineptitude. She countered back by essentially ruling for Smith (on the question of whether Trump can claim the Presidential Records Act somehow gives him magic powers to legally keep nuclear secrets in a bathroom at his golf club after he left office or not, which is laughable) -- but she did so in a weaselly way that may allow Trump to make this (inane) argument to the jury. As time goes by, more and more legal experts are urging Smith to just go to the appeals court and try to get the judge removed from the case for showing (1) judicial incompetence, and (2) pro-Trump bias (Trump appointed her to her seat at the very end of his presidential term).

In Georgia, the judge in Trump's election-interference RICO case denied Trump's motion to toss all the charges out because he had some sort of First Amendment right to commit crimes and encourage others to commit crimes as well.

All around, it wasn't a great week for Trump's various cases.

It also wasn't a particularly great week for Trump on the stock market either, as his pet media company took a nosedive when they 'fessed up to the fact that they had only made $4 million last year, while losing a whopping $58 million at the same time. The stock lost 20 percent of its value in one day, which translated to Trump losing a cool billion dollars.

To make up for it, Trump's daughter-in-law Lara (now helping run the Republican National Committee) told people who were too poor to donate $5 to Trump to "save up" so they could donate later. Because grifters gotta grift, right?

We have two amusing items to close on. The first is to thank the Washington Post for assembling an exhaustive list of all the people who worked for Trump's White House -- including some top aides and his very own vice president -- who have now come out in various ways against Trump's re-election. Reading the list is sobering, but the sheer length of it is the most jaw-dropping part of all.

And finally, some amusing reactions by Democrats to a brand-new push from a handful of House Republicans to rename Washington's Dulles Airport after Donald Trump. The airport is in Virginia, so HuffPost went looking for comments from some Virginia Democrats. We leave you with the two best responses -- the first from Representative Gerry Connolly:



And from Senator Tim Kaine:







Before we get to the main award, we have to at least mention a rather unusual outcome in a California election from our general neck of the woods. California has a "jungle primary" system where only the top two candidates make it through the primary to appear on the general election ballot. But in one Silicon Valley seat in the House of Representatives, the voters will get three choices this November. Because while the Democratic frontrunner secured his spot on the ballot early in the counting, two other candidates (Evan Low and Joe Simitian) wound up in a perfect tie, with 30,249 votes each. By California's election law, they will both end up on the general election ballot, unless a recount happens to change things ever-so-slightly in one direction or the other. But neither candidate will likely demand a recount, since it could always go against them in the end. So file this under "sometimes, every vote does count," we suppose.

Moving on... we wrote about this effort earlier this week and we would sincerely like to see Senator Tina Smith at least force a vote on it in the Senate, because the days of just assuming the Supreme Court won't do anything crazy are obviously over for the foreseeable future.

Here's some of what we had to say earlier:



Senator Tina Smith -- who has a rather unique perspective in the Senate since she used to be a Planned Parenthood executive -- isn't just assuming that this long-ignored and long-unenforced law will continue to be seen as an archaic relic by the current Supreme Court. So she's leading the effort to repeal the law once and for all. Here is part of a New York Times editorial she wrote this week, explaining why this is so necessary:



Senator Smith is right. The Comstock Act needs to be entirely repealed. And if Democrats don't start pushing the issue, then it never will be... and sooner or later five Supreme Court justices might decide it's time to enforce it again. This could end all abortions across the entire country, since it is not only patients who rely on the mails it is also doctors who perform medical abortions and/or prescribe abortion medication.

Maybe repealing the Comstock Act won't have a chance, in a Congress with a Republican House. Maybe it won't even make it through the Senate. But the American people deserve to see which Republicans vote against such a commonsense move, and that's never going to happen unless someone like Senator Smith pushes for it to happen.

For doing so, Senator Tina Smith is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Congress doing nothing about changing federal laws to accommodate abortion after Roe v. Wade is what led us into all this mess in the first place, so: "Oh, don't worry, that'll never happen" simply isn't a valid excuse for legislative inaction any more.

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





Once again, with Congress out and no enormous earth-shaking crises to speak of, we are happy to report that no Democrats seriously disappointed us this week. As always, feel free to make your own nominations in the comments, if you think there's someone who deserves one.




Volume 746 (4/5/24)

Another mixed bag, ending with our own snarky reaction to naming an airport after Trump. We do have to warn that two of these in the middle of this list are longish excerpts from other people, but we felt that both were important enough to include (in fact, we encourage everyone to click the links and read both of them in full). Either one can easily be turned into a Democratic talking point, which we leave as an exercise for the reader (since they're long enough as it is...).



Jobs, jobs, jobs

More good news on the employment front dropped today.

"For the 39th month in a row, the American economy added jobs last month -- over 300,000 of them. The last month where the American economy lost jobs was December of 2020 -- or Donald Trump's last full month in office. Since Joe Biden was sworn in, the economy has added a record-setting 15 million jobs, the highest number of any president in American history. The unemployment rate dropped last month and has now spent 26 months -- more than two years -- under four percent. That's something which hasn't happened since the 1960s. Wages are up, inflation is down, and Joe Biden has overseen the creation of 15 million jobs. That's a pretty stellar record to run on."



Republicans won't rest until abortion is banned everywhere

Hit this one constantly, since it works so well.

"The Republican Party simply will not rest until abortions are banned everywhere in America, folks. They don't want to talk about it on the campaign trail, since they're beginning to realize that this is not what the American public wants, but they continue working behind the scenes in every way they can to make any abortion anywhere illegal. They'll dig up 150-year-old laws and try to enforce them if they can't pass new laws now. Donald Trump says he's going to announce his policy on abortion 'next week,' which is his way of saying 'never.' Remember all the times he promised he'd reveal his wonderful replacement healthcare plan that he'd put in place after repealing Obamacare? Yeah, we're still waiting on that one. He wants to have it both ways on the issue, but you know as well as I do that he'd sign anything the Republicans in Congress put in front of him -- and they're on record supporting making abortion illegal from zero weeks with zero exceptions. Joe Biden is now running ads that sum the whole thing up the best, saying: 'Donald Trump doesn't trust women. I do.' Any woman or any man who wants to see women retain the freedom of bodily autonomy in America should vote for every Democrat on the ballot, because any Republican vote for any GOP candidate means moving us all closer to the day when Republicans ban abortion everywhere."



Short and to-the-point

For once, we have a very shot talking point this week (well, we thought we should counterbalance the next two, which are very long indeed).

The Senate is due to be sworn in as jurors for the impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas next week. The proper thing for Democrats (and the few Republicans who are also disgusted with the House's action) to do is to hold a vote before the trial even begins and just move on. There is nothing impeachable in the articles of impeachment the House sent over, so there is really only one response possible for Democratic senators to answer anyone who complains about shutting this perversion of impeachment down right from the start:

"When the House sends over a serious impeachment, then we will give it a serious trial. This didn't qualify, sorry."



No president has done worse

This next rather long excerpt comes from a recent editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where Editor Chris Quinn explains why his newspaper has been accused of "demean[ing] the former president's supporters in describing his behavior as monstrous, insurrectionist and authoritarian." He writes in response to letters he has received, but bends over backwards not to insult any of the writers, knowing that: "No matter how I present it, I'll offend some thoughtful, decent people." But then he goes on to stand squarely for the truth and ends by warning that: "Our nation does seem to be slipping down the same slide that Germany did in the 1930s. Maybe the collapse of government in the hands of a madman is inevitable...."

It is an extraordinary editorial, and is worth reading in full, but here is his basic case:





An attack on the rule of law

Sitting federal judges do not normally make media appearances to warn about the dangers of any particular politician, but then again we do not live in normal times. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who was appointed by both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (to different federal courts), sat down this week with CNN to give such a warning, about Trump's dangerous rhetoric about the judges in all the cases that relate to him. He brought up the killing of the son and wounding of the husband of a federal judge in 2020 to make the point that this can lead to deadly consequences. Here is just some of what he had to say about Trump's constant barrage of invective and threats against judges and their loved ones:





Projection, much?

Trump, as always, has no sense of irony whatsoever. Whatever he is accusing someone else of, you can bet your bottom dollar it means that he is guilty as sin of doing exactly the same thing. We found this particular effort laughably pathetic, personally.

"Donald Trump keeps whipping up his supporters in an effort to incite violence against everyone in the judicial system who is working hard to hold him to account for his criminal activity. This includes judges and even the families of judges. But he had an incredible 'self-own' this week when he took to his pet social media outlet to whine about the federal special prosecutor who has brought two separate cases against him. After the prosecutor answered the Trump-appointed judge with a scathing takedown of her legal reasoning -- including a promise to appeal her judgment right away -- Trump turned all snowflakey once again. He complained that the prosecutor was, and I quote, 'a lowlife who is nasty, rude, and condescending, and obviously trying to "play the ref".' First off, it is 'work the ref' not 'play the ref,' and second, Trump complaining about someone trying to influence judges is just downright laughable. I mean, I had to check, because at first I thought that was a description of Trump himself: 'a lowlife who is nasty, rude, and condescending.' As far as Trump is concerned, irony is dead, obviously."



The Donald J. Trump Valley Forge Airport?

This is an idea which deserves all the ridicule that can possibly be heaped upon it.

"I see some Republicans in Congress have nothing better to do than suggest that Washington's Dulles Airport be renamed for Donald Trump. But you know what? I have an even better idea for them! Why not tie it to the American history Trump loves to mangle? As president, Trump gave a patriotic speech where he lauded the American Revolutionary army because they 'took over the airports' from the British. That's right: airports. In the 1700s. So the real honor for Trump would be to have one of those fabled Revolutionary War airports named for him, right? I would suggest that Republicans in Congress pass a resolution that would christen 'The Donald J. Trump Valley Forge Airport'... and then after they pass it, we can all have a laugh when we tell them it doesn't actually exist."




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

March 30, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- Old Man Misinformates

From the "stop me if you've heard this one" file, we suppose: An old man is running for president who is saying increasingly bizarre things... except that you might not know about it because the mainstream media only goes into a frenzy of breathless reporting when his opponent misspeaks.

We wish that were actually the punchline to a joke, but it really is no joke at all. Just think how the media would have reacted if President Joe Biden had said any of the following in the past week:

That's all straight from Donald Trump's mouth. Haven't heard about it? We're not too surprised.

To top it all off, on his pet social media app (which went public this week), Trump also accused someone named "Joe Buden" of some mental nefariousness. Well... we think. It's hard to tell:



When George W. Bush said something like this ("misunderestimated" ) we all had a big laugh, and even Bush himself cracked jokes about it later. But nobody should really be laughing now. The moral of this story is: Sure, Joe Biden's old. But then again so is Donald Trump. And only one of them will ever admit he made any kind of error in speaking -- the other clings to his own idiocies even when defending them is just downright ludicrous (remember "Sharpiegate"?). Which one would be more dangerous to have as president? The answer seems pretty obvious.

In other Trumpian news, his grifting has (as one online commenter aptly put it) now reached truly biblical proportions. He's out there hawking $60 Bibles to his army of rubes, because he never passes up a chance to make a quick buck off his own name. Add this to the $400 tacky gold sneakers he recently unveiled. What will be next? Your guess is as good as ours -- maybe Trump-branded sets of the Emperor's New Clothes? We certainly wouldn't put it past him... come to think of it, that'd be even better than the champion all-time grifting product ever (the "pet rock" of the 1970s, of course)... all Trump would have to do would be to send out completely-empty boxes! Pure profit!

Joe Biden, meanwhile, is out there actually campaigning. He appeared at the most lucrative fundraiser of all time this week, alongside Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and plenty of big stars to entertain the crowd). He reportedly pulled in an astounding $25 million from this single event -- which is more money than Trump raised in all of February. We sincerely hope to see both Obama and Clinton at some future rallies for Biden, since they were somewhat of a forgotten Democratic resource the last time around.

Also good news: Biden has been pushing back hard on Trump's attempt to recycle Ronald Reagan's: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" campaign line. The problem for Trump is that, well... no we weren't better off four years ago! Four years ago is when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the entire world hard -- and the United States hardest, due to Donald Trump's attempts to just "wish the whole thing would go away" rather than showing the slightest leadership or even just an ounce of human compassion for his fellow citizens.

Contrary to four years ago -- which was just the start of the "COVID times" -- things are indeed better. Crime has come down from the pandemic peak, the job market went through the greatest and fastest recovery in American history, complete with unemployment levels at historic lows for an absolutely historic span of time, the stock market is setting record highs again and again, and life in general is undeniably better than when we were all lining up to buy toilet paper only to be greeted by empty shelves.

Biden is even making a bid for Nikki Haley's voters, which is a smart thing to do (since Trump doesn't seem interested in courting them at all). In fact, Trump is more interested in purging the Republican Party of anyone who doesn't fully believe in his Big Lie (which would include many Haley voters, one assumes). If a significant slice of Republicans wind up voting for Biden, it could mean the difference in many close states, so this is indeed a smart thing for Biden to attempt.

There was one big political story this week that was rather insular, because it came from the political media itself. Ronna (née Romney) McDaniel, after getting forced out from her stint running the Republican National Committee, followed a well-trod path toward accepting bundles of money to become "an on-air contributor" at NBC News. Ex-pols are hired by the political media all the time, and some of them do well and some of them don't (for various reasons).

McDaniel didn't even last "a half-Scaramucci" (as one article put it, following the quip originally made by journalist Aaron Rupar, to give credit where it is due). After a stormy few days of virtually all the political reporters and commentators on both NBC News and MSNBC (including some memorable comments by Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow) absolutely ripping into the decision by the network bosses, they finally relented. By midweek, McDaniel was un-hired (so to speak).

It's hard to feel sorry for her, though, since while head of the R.N.C. McDaniel not only regularly attacked the political journalism industry at large but also fully supported Donald Trump's Big Lie even to the point of assisting him on a phone call to her home state of Michigan to try to browbeat elections officials into throwing monkey wrenches into the workings of a free and fair election. It's one thing to be a lying hyper-partisan, but actively trying to undermine American democracy was a step too far for all the other journalists who work for NBC. Such an open revolt against the corporate bosses is incredibly rare, but at least this one ended with the correct decision: to jettison McDaniel forthwith.

It's also hard to feel sorry for McDaniel since she will be laughing all the way to the bank. She appeared for an interview on Meet The Press this week for approximately 20 minutes, but apparently had signed a contract which promised her $300,000 a year for two years. So... let's see... $600,000 divided by 1,200 equals NBC paying her $500 per second for being on the air a single time. And she's already hired a powerful media attorney, so NBC could wind up paying even more for that sole interview.

Let's see, what else has been going on?

No Labels was decisively turned down by Chris Christie this week, and they're running out of time and running out of names on their list of possible presidential candidates. They also lost one of their founders this week, which we will address in a moment. Let's hope the entire effort collapses in the next few weeks, which would be a fitting end for it indeed.

GOP moderates in Congress are streaming for the exits, because what sane Republican would want to still be in Congress if Donald Trump takes over again? The MAGA-fication of the party continues apace, as now the R.N.C. (under Trump's own daughter-in-law, who instituted mass firings upon her arrival) is asking for a loyalty oath for new hires -- loyalty not just to Trump but to Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election. The "adults in the room" are quickly vacating the building, in other words.

And finally, let's catch up on Trump's legal woes, shall we? Trump got a sort of split decision on Monday, as a New York appellate court agreed he could only put up $175 million while he appeals the almost-half-billion-dollar judgment against him, but the judge in the porn-star hush-money case swatted down all of Trump's objections and set a trial date of April 15th. That's when the first ex-president in history will go on trial in what will hopefully be only the first criminal trial of such a person ever. Trump got slapped with a new gag order in this case, but quickly exploited the loopholes in the gag order by repeatedly attacking not just the judge in the case but the judge's adult daughter as well.

In the related topic of "Trump's toadies' legal woes," a California judge ruled that John Eastman, an ex-Trump-lawyer, should be permanently disbarred (and thus turn into simply "an ex-lawyer" ), for participating in the whole "subverting American democracy" Big Lie project. Down in Arizona, Senate candidate (and complete nutjob) Kari Lake followed in Rudy Giuliani's footsteps and unconditionally surrendered in a defamation case brought against her by a county election official. Just like in Rudy's case, this will now mean that the only thing the court will have to decide is how much Lake will owe for her vicious falsehood that somehow an election had been stolen from her (spoiler alert: it wasn't, she lost, just like Trump).

So we all have that to look forward to! We wrote about this earlier in the week, speculating what the grand total of damages paid in the fallout from Trump's Big Lie will eventually be (which is now approaching $1 billion -- but which we believe will wind up totalling up to multiple billions of dollars, once all the cases dealing with elections equipment manufacturers are done).

Which is all to the good. Baselessly and maliciously destroying the good name of both individuals and corporations should be prohibitively expensive, after all.





We have quite a few nominees this week, so first let's hand out a couple of Honorable Mention awards before getting to the main event.

This week a horrendous crash in Maryland took down a key bridge (ahem... sorry, we couldn't resist...) and the mayor of Baltimore was thus thrust into the national spotlight. Mayor Brandon Scott was instantly accused by rightwing racists of somehow being a "D.E.I. hire."

For those of you unfamiliar with the term (which stands for "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" ), this is merely an update to an older slur against minorities -- calling them "affirmative-action hires" in order to delegitimize them.

Scott, however, wasn't "hired," he was elected -- with a whopping 70 percent of the vote. He countered his critics beautifully, by stating: "...what they mean by 'D.E.I.', in my opinion, is 'Duly Elected Incumbent'."

Nice.

Next up, we have to admit that we are just as much of a sucker for cute cat photos as the next guy or gal, so we were delighted at the news that Jill Biden is going to release a new children's book about how First Cat Willow Biden joined their family (it's an endearing story, to be sure).

However, we did wonder if Dr. Jill is going a wee bit too far in trying to keep everyone happy when we read: "Jill Biden will donate proceeds from sales of the book to charities that support military dogs."

Wait... what? Cat lovers are going to donate to dogs?

Heh. OK, OK, working military dogs certainly deserve all the support they can get and all of that, but even so....

Kidding aside, we certainly wish Dr. Jill well on trying to bridge the cat lovers/dog lovers division out there!

This week we found we could not decide between two finalists for our main award, so we're just going to hand out two Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week statuettes this week.

The first goes to Representative Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat who is running to take over the seat of disgraced Senator Bob "Gold Bars" Menendez. Because this week saw two momentous events in the Democratic primary race to replace him (Menendez announced he would not be running for re-election as a Democrat but hasn't ruled out an independent bid).

The first was Kim's major opponent dropping out of the race. Tammy Murphy, wife of Governor Phil Murphy, was supposed to be a shoo-in for the nomination, since she had the powerful weight of the New Jersey Democratic machine solidly behind her. But then Kim showed surprising popularity and he struck back in court, filing a lawsuit against the undemocratic and unfair primary ballot system in New Jersey (which we wrote about earlier this week). The system is so odious that even the state's attorney general declined to defend it in court, calling the ballot "unconstitutional."

Today, a federal judge agreed and drove a stake through the "county line" style ballot for good. This is an incredible achievement which will reform New Jersey politics in a big way -- not just for Kim's primary run, but for every candidate in every future primary race as well (on both sides of the aisle).

That is a very impressive thing to have achieved, before the voting has even begun. With Murphy's exit from the race, Kim is now the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination as well as the general election in November (even if Menendez mounts an independent bid -- his name is now so tarnished that few voters are going to back him).

Our other winner of the MIDOTW is a new member of the Alabama statehouse, Marilyn Lands. Lands ran in a special election in the state, with a message that should become more and more familiar as more and more Democrats see how effective it can be:



Lands kept with this theme in her victory message:



Lands won her election -- in a district where Trump edged out a win in 2020 -- by an astounding 25 points.

That is the potency of supporting women's rights. Other Democrats are also out there telling their own abortion stories, which humanizes the debate in a way not seen before now. The 2024 election could easily become known as "the abortion/I.V.F. election," the issue is so powerful. Abortion rights could be directly on the ballot in as many as 12 states this year, including battleground states like Arizona and Montana. And the Supreme Court just heard another abortion case, meaning the subject will be in the news again in June (when they issue their decision), right before campaign season really gets going.

For her astounding win, for the way she fearlessly ran, and for showing other Democrats how effective such a campaign can be, Marilyn Lands is our second Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award-winner this week.


[Congratulate Representative Andy Kim on his House contact page to let him know you appreciate his efforts; but you'll have to wait for state Representative-Elect Marilyn Lands to be sworn in and get her own official statehouse page up and running to do so for her (since as a general rule we do not link to campaign websites, even after the elections are over).]





We know... we know... De mortuis nihil nisi bonum and all of that sort of thing... but...

We'd like to posthumously award our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week (as sort of a negative lifetime-achievement award) to former Senator Joe Lieberman.

We won't speak much ill of the dead, but please remember that for all the kind things said about him this week, Lieberman was the Joe Manchin of his age, who personally killed the public option from being included in Obamacare. Thanks for nothing, Joe.

We sincerely hope that his No Labels plan to spoil Joe Biden's re-election will soon be a thing to be spoken of in the past tense as well.

[We will not be providing contact information, obviously.]




Volume 745 (3/29/24)

Our talking points are somewhat all over the map this week, but then it has been an eventful week. As always, use responsibly!



Enough already!

Just like night follows day....

"Can all the people pushing all the crazy conspiracy theories about the accident which destroyed Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge please just cut it out? It seems there are some people who see a dastardly evil genius at work behind any tragedy, at the drop of a tinfoil hat. Here's an idea: let's all wait for the investigation to figure out what went wrong before we go full-on paranoid, OK? I mean... please... just stop with the uninformed nonsense."



Like a mobster

Rachel Maddow, true to form, had some rather pointed things to say about NBC hiring the likes of Ronna McDaniel to appear on their network. So did a whole bunch of other NBC journalists, but Maddow devoted fully half of her show to the subject, and had the most quotable things to say about it of anyone:





Republican voter-suppression thwarted

This was a big win for Democrats and for anyone else who cares about making voting easier and more fair for all.

"The Montana supreme court this week overturned several Republican-passed voting laws, stating that they 'violate the fundamental right to vote provided to all citizens by the Montana Constitution.' This is big news, as the head of the Montana Democratic Party pointed out:"



"She's right -- Democrats are the ones out here fighting for free and fair elections without putting needless hurdles in the voting process. Republicans tried to end same-day voter registration and eliminate student I.D. cards as valid voter I.D., as well as a few other schemes they came up with to make voting not just harder but almost impossible for some Montanans. Democrats will never stop fighting Republican efforts to make it harder for everyone to cast their ballots."



Total sellout

Hammer this one home.

"I see that Robert F. Kennedy Junior has picked as his running mate -- surprise! -- the same woman who paid millions to run his Super Bowl ad. What a total sellout! He wants to award the second-highest office in the land to the highest bidder -- that's just pathetic. And this woman seems like a good fit for him, since she's got some pretty out-there opinions on in-vitro fertilization -- calling it 'one of the biggest lies that's being told about women's health today.' R.F.K. Jr. doesn't seem to have figured out where he stands on abortion rights or I.V.F., and his veep nominee just confirmed this. R.F.K. Jr. is nothing more than a whackadoodle sellout, and it boggles the mind why any sane person would even consider voting for him."



Where's Trump?

It would be sweetness indeed to turn this one around on him.

"While Joe Biden is out there on the campaign trail explaining what his plans for a second term would mean for all Americans, you know what we haven't seen much of? Donald Trump. Where's Trump? Are they afraid to put him out there because he is now saying so many crazy things all the time? Are they afraid he's going to just completely lose it at a rally -- again? To put it in terms he will recognize: Donald Trump seems to think he can run a campaign from the basement of his Florida golf club. Or maybe that should be 'from inside a courtroom'?"



The universal appeal of one type of joke

OK, this one's a cheap shot, but studies have indeed shown that mother-in-law jokes are somewhat universal across all human cultures and societies, so why not?

"Remember when Donald Trump used to rail against 'chain migration' -- meaning American immigrants sponsoring their own relatives to come over and become citizens too? Trump always had a scathing hatred for the process, although he never did make good on his promises to end it. But you know what was just publicly revealed? Trump's own mother-in-law was able to enter America through this exact same program. So maybe that's the reason he hated the concept so much? I mean... I'm just saying...."



Hannity has on-air "Kinsley gaffe"

What else is new, really?

"Sean Hannity signed off his broadcast this week by tossing it to the next Fox News host, but in doing so he committed a 'Kinsley gaffe' -- he accidentally told the truth instead of what he was going to say. To close his broadcast, Hannity said:"



"Yeah, that about sums up pretty much the entire Fox News network, wouldn't you say? I'm just astonished Hannity actually came out and admitted it for once...."




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

March 23, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- M.T.G. Threatens An M.T.V.

For once, big things are actually happening in Congress. No, really!

As we write this, the House has passed the final budget bill for this fiscal year (by a vote of 286-134) and sent it over to the Senate. The Senate may pass it tonight, if senators like Rand Paul can restrain their natural urge to be total [insert favorite plural derogatory expletive here]. If they do throw a monkey wrench into the works, we could have a very short-lived partial government shutdown, but if it gets resolved before the weekend is over then it won't do much damage at all. Either way, the bill's got the votes to pass the Senate, so it's now only a matter of time until President Joe Biden can sign it and the budget that was supposed to be in place on the first of October last year will finally be finished.

The bigger news, though, is that Representative Marjorie "Three-Names" Taylor Greene expressed her displeasure with Speaker Mike Johnson by filing a "motion to vacate the chair," which may result in a no-confidence vote when the House returns after one of its many, many two-week vacations. We say "may" there because the way Greene filed her motion-to-vacate (which waggish headline-writers are already calling the "MTG MTV" ) doesn't actually force a vote on any schedule. If she had filed it as "privileged," it would have to be acted on within 48 hours, but she decided not to -- which means she can just hold it over Johnson's head as a threat and then move to vote on it whenever she feels like.

We've said all along -- from the moment he was chosen speaker after an excruciating couple weeks of voting -- that Johnson's chances of surviving the entire budget process were no more than 50-50, so we're not exactly surprised by this development. However, there are two interesting dynamics at play this time. First, the other Republicans (even some of the hotheads) don't seem to be leaping to back Greene's tantrum. As things stand right now, Johnson could only lose two GOP votes and still manage to cobble together a majority -- but that will get even more precarious next month, as yet another Republican (Mike Gallagher) has decided to head for the exit early. When Gallagher leaves, Johnson will only be able to lose a single vote -- the smallest of majorities that is even possible.

But that's not the really interesting part. This time around, Democrats may save Johnson's bacon, because they have some leverage that they would dearly like to use. Rumors are already flying that enough Democrats would vote in such a manner to allow Johnson to survive the no-confidence vote -- if he brings the Ukraine military aid bill that passed the Senate up for a House floor vote. The more time that passes without some sort of aid bill the more dire things get for the Ukrainians, so forcing a quick vote might be enough for Democrats to save his speakership in return. It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out (in two weeks' time, of course, after yet another of their generous vacations).

Perhaps in the spirit of bipartisanship (heh), Democrats heaped praise on Greene this week, agreeing wholeheartedly with something she tweeted out. Democrats leapt to support Greene (for obvious reasons) after she admitted: "Our Republican majority is a complete failure."

Turning our attention to the campaign trail, the White House started off the week by inviting an absolute passel of Kennedys to drop by for St. Patrick's Day, and at least 49 of them showed up -- a real showing of family strength and solidarity for Biden (which must have been embarrassing for R.F.K. Jr.).

Some more primaries were held this week, and while both Joe Biden and Donald Trump won a bunch more delegates, the real story (as far as we were concerned) was the fact that even though the mainstream media has been shining a spotlight on "protest votes" against Biden in his primaries, Trump is actually doing a lot worse on the same metric -- over one in five Republicans are refusing to vote for him in the Republican primaries, which certainly seems to signal an "enthusiasm gap" on the GOP side. Biden is also doing a whole lot better with fundraising than Trump, but then again he doesn't have to shell out millions and millions of dollars to legal teams defending him in court.

Biden will be appearing this weekend with both Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, to celebrate the successes of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise affectionately known as Obamacare. The more we see of Obama on stage with Biden the better, obviously, so we certainly hope this becomes a regular thing.

Biden also rolled out another $5.8 billion in student debt forgiveness this week, bringing his totals to almost four million students helped out to the tune of $144 billion. And Biden unveiled an $8.5 billion investment in Arizona in Intel computer chip factories, which is a direct result of Biden's legislative accomplishments. All around, Biden seems to have ratcheted his campaign pace up a few notches, which is certainly a reassuring thing to see.

Team Biden also seems to be doing a good job at quickly producing ads to highlight the many times when Trump says something outlandish, responding immediately to Trump's suggestion that he'd be open to cutting both Social Security and Medicare. They also put an ad out after Trump warned of a "bloodbath" should he not be elected, to remind everyone that Trump regularly says frightening things of this nature.

Trump is now considering backing a national abortion ban (although he still hasn't decided on 15 weeks or 16, it seems) and is out there telling American Jews that they "hate their religion" if they vote for Democrats, both of which also seem ripe for a Biden ad to spotlight.

Then there's always the thorny issue (for Republicans) of in-vitro fertilization and how they cannot square supporting it with their insistence that "life begins at conception." Democratic governors and other down-ballot Democrats are already attacking Republicans for their doublethink on the issue, which is also a good thing to campaign on this year.

Moving on to our "Trump legal woes" segment of our weekly round-up, Trump's lawyers this week filed paperwork pleading poverty (which certainly amused many). They swore he just didn't have the half-billion dollars he's supposed to put up by Monday and begged for some sort of relief from the courts. If he doesn't put up a bond, the New York attorney general could start seizing his property -- freezing bank accounts, putting liens on real estate, and (our favorite) perhaps even seizing Trump's own personal airplane. Trump did get some good news on his finances, as his pet social media company seems about to hit the stock markets (which will give Trump a bonanza, since he owns most of the stock), but he won't actually be able to cash in on it for at least six months, so this may not help him at all before Monday dawns.

Trump, being Trump, then undercut all his lawyers by sending out a message claiming that he's got the $500 million just lying around in cash, which means either he is lying his face off or his lawyers were lying in their court filing which clearly stated that Trump does not have that much cash on hand. Trump is always Trump's own worst enemy, as usual.

Of course, nobody knows at this point how this is all going to work out on Monday, but there is one scenario which is beyond disturbing -- what if some foreign government were to put up the money Trump needs? What if his buddy Vladimir Putin or some oil emirate ponies up the half-billion? That would represent the most serious national security risk imaginable if Trump actually wins the presidency once again.

What else? Trump lost most of his motions in his porn-star hush-money case, meaning both Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels will indeed be able to testify in front of the jury. Trump, in a fit of pique, sued ABC and George Stephanopoulos, which will (no doubt) be laughed out of court just like all the other baseless defamation cases Trump has filed over the years.

And as the icing on the legal cake, Peter Navarro turned himself in to a federal prison to begin serving his sentence for contempt of Congress this week, making him the first (but hopefully not the last) Trump toady to go to jail for all the crimes committed before, during, and after Trump's presidency. That seems like a good place to end on this week....





Before we get to the main award, we have a Honorable Mention to hand out first.

House Republicans forged ahead with their impeachment inquiry this week, and once again all they achieved was completely beclowning themselves. Don't believe me? Here is conservative commentator Charlie Sykes on how it all went:

Parnas was one of the witnesses, who later laid out how Russian propaganda had a clear pipeline to the American public straight through Fox News.

But Representative Jared Moskowitz at least provided some comic relief during the hearing. The Florida Democrat absolutely taunted the chair of the committee, Representative James Comer, by absolutely daring him to hold an immediate impeachment vote:



For taunting Comer right to his face, Moskowitz certainly deserves at least an Honorable Mention, don't you think?

But snarkiness aside, our winner of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week had a much more serious moment by sharing a very painful and personal decision in order to point out how the politics of abortion has very real human consequences to millions of women. Here is an excerpt of an article about Arizona state Senator Eva Burch's floor speech (or you can watch video excerpts for yourself):



She went on to warn that "the reality of how the work that we do in this body impacts people in the real world. There's no one-size-fits-all script for people seeking abortion care, and the legislature doesn't have any right to assign one." She was "forced to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound that she did not want" and then told of alternatives such as adoption that were not even options for a non-viable pregnancy like hers. All because the state passed laws mandating such things. Which is why she felt she was the "perfect example of why this relationship should between patients and providers."

This was an incredibly brave thing to do. No woman should have to go through what she went through, either in the doctor's office or on the floor of the state senate. This should truly be a private decision and neither the doctor nor the woman should be forced to jump through hoops before this decision is made.

Arizona may have a state constitutional amendment to guarantee abortion rights on the ballot for voters to decide upon this November. So this is not just incredibly important to Burch right now, it is also incredibly important to all the voters of Arizona.

Sharing her story in such a public way was very brave and a very impressive thing to do. The more women share such stories, the more the public has to confront the reality that abortion isn't some one-size-fits-all issue, and that it is different for every woman facing the choice. Eva Burch demonstrated how personal a decision it truly is and why the politicians have no right to be interfering in it. Which is why she is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Arizona state Senator Eva Burch via her Arizona Senate official webpage, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We also have a (Dis-)Honorable Mention to hand out this week. David Trone, who is running for the Democratic nomination in an open Senate race in Maryland this year (and who is also White, just for the record), stuck his foot in his mouth with a disastrous gaffe. While speaking about corporate tax rates, he (quite obviously) meant to use the term "bugaboo," but instead he came up with an incredibly offensive racial slur:



He has repeatedly apologized for his error -- and it pretty obviously was an error (since the slur made no sense whatsoever in the sentence he used) -- so there's not a whole lot more to say about it.

This week, we're giving the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week as a group award, to "the entire New Jersey Democratic political machine." We certainly weren't aware of the ins and outs of how Democrats in New Jersey get elected before now, but we have to say that it needs to change as fast as possible.

Here's how it works. Primary ballots in New Jersey are not arranged in a fair way. There's simply no other way to put it. In most states, the order of how candidates' names appear on the ballot is randomized -- often randomized in each county to further improve fairness. This is because the name which appears first on the ballot has a built-in advantage. People who have no idea who to vote for often just pick the first name they see. So you can't even arrange them alphabetically, since an "Aberdeen" would have a clear advantage over (as just a random example... ahem...) a "Weigant."

In New Jersey, it's even worse than that advantage, though. Because each county's Democratic machine is in charge of how the ballot is arranged. And they choose which candidate to favor -- either by voting on it within the party or (in some counties) just in a proverbial smoke-filled back room. The first line (or column, in some cases) is known as "the line" and the party bosses control who gets to appear on it.

This is so unfair that the Democratic attorney general of the state just announced he cannot defend the practice in court because it is "unconstitutional." One of the Democratic candidates for Senate, Andy Kim, is suing to end the practice entirely. Here's the story:



Here's a local news article with an image of one of these ballots (where the names are arranged by column, not by line, but the advantage is still just as clear).

This practice is so obviously unfair that the state legislature is slowly realizing that they're going to have to do something about it. They're not exactly sure what, or when they will address it, but the embarrassment factor seems to already be through the roof.

When the state attorney general -- from your own party -- refuses to defend the party machine's unfairness, you know it's bad. And it is. So bad, in fact, that the entire New Jersey Democratic Party machine is our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week

[Contact the New Jersey Democratic Party via their official webpage, to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 744 (3/22/24)

We begin this week's talking points with an open question. Because there is a political tactic which has become so common (at least on the Democratic side) that it really deserves a snappy name. But as far as we can tell, nobody's slapped a catchy moniker on it yet, even though it deserves something on the order of "the full Ginsberg," which (of course) refers to any politician making the full rounds of all the Sunday morning political shows on the same day.

The nameless tactic just bore fruit again this week, as Ohio voted for an extreme MAGA Republican over one who had been supported by the party bigwigs. Democrats wanted this outcome to happen, so they spent some advertising money to actually boost his chances.

These type of ads have a thin veneer of "plausible deniability," since they almost always say something like: "Candidate X is too conservative for our state!" This means the Democrat paying for the ad (or whatever super PAC or other group) can claim: "No, no, we're not trying to help him, we're warning voters about him!" but the real effect is it motivates GOP voters to support the candidate over other GOP candidates who are more moderate. This usually makes it easier for the Democrat to win the general election, since extremism turns off a certain segment of the voters.

It happens every election cycle, these days. Newspapers routinely use the word "meddling" in headlines describing the tactic, but that just somehow doesn't seem good enough -- it needs a more-specific (and less Scooby Doo-ish) name. The only other political term that is even close is too broad, too petty, and too profane to really work (since "ratfucking" is not going to make it into many headlines, for obvious reasons).

We must admit we haven't done our homework and looked up who the first Democrat was to utilize this tactic. Or their opponent. Either name could work, really. But when we tried to free-associate something not tied to an actual name, we must admit we didn't come up with anything. So we're throwing it open to our readers -- what would you call the tactic of running ads that boost an extreme opponent in a backhanded way? There seems to be an obvious need for a neologism here, and (rather astonishingly) the entire rest of the punditverse has yet to fill this need, so toss out any ideas you may have!

OK, with that out of the way, let's move on to the talking points.

The Biden campaign team tweeted out a thread this week that was so damning we almost used quotes from it as our entire talking points segment (but then that would be lazy, so we decided not to). Check it out if you have forgotten how many people who worked directly for the Trump administration now say things like Trump "threatens our democracy" or "is unfit to be president." And that's not even counting the fact that Trump's own vice president refused to endorse him this week -- which is a major embarrassment, you've got to admit.

Instead, we're going to devote all our talking points to stomping some hobnailed boots on Republicans who think they're being cute by using Ronald Reagan's famous line: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

The problem, for these Republicans, is the calendar itself. All the supporters of Donald Trump have conveniently thrown all of 2020 down the Memory Hole, since they would much prefer everyone just think about the first three years of his term -- before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. But strike it did, and four years ago right now was just not a fun place to be.

Both the folks at Meidas Touch and the Biden campaign immediately cut ads to refute such "blowing sunshine up your skirt" nonsense. Both are worth watching. Which is why we're answering back with our own talking points to remind Americans precisely where we were four years ago -- and who was to blame for how it all unfolded.



Remember the lockdown?

Let's start with an overview.

"I hear Republicans asking if I'm better off now than I was four years ago, as they try to get Donald Trump elected again. Well, I don't know about you, but four years ago was exactly when the American economy went into a tailspin, with more people unemployed than at any time since the Great Depression. Remember the days of the lockdown? Remember the streets being empty and businesses being shut? I do. And yeah, I am better off now than I was then."



Get out the sanitizer

Remember what everyday life was like?

"Remember sterilizing everything that came into your house? Running a U.V. light over your mail? Wiping down all your groceries with Lysol? Remember that? Because I for one sure don't want to go back to those days."



T.P., not concert tickets

Personally, this is the memory that won't be forgotten any time soon.

"Remember when there was a dire shortage of paper products? I remember lining up at the local Safeway at 5:30 in the morning, getting in line to buy some toilet paper. The only other time in my life I've lined up at that hour of the morning it was to buy concert tickets for a show that was guaranteed to sell out. But there I was -- shivering in the cold just to have something to wipe my butt with. Yeah, no thanks, I don't want to go back to those days."



Remember the leadership void?

Let's make it a little more personal, shall we?

"Remember President Donald Trump actually refusing to admit that a pandemic was even happening? Remember him wasting months because he didn't want himself to look bad? He didn't care that thousands were dying, he didn't care that medical supplies were impossible to obtain, he didn't care about any of it -- instead he just flat-out lied to the American public about how it would all magically somehow go away on its own. Guess what? It didn't. Imagine how much better things would have been if we had had a president who was capable of showing an ounce of leadership instead of worrying about his poll numbers. Yeah, I definitely don't want that to happen again."



Remember the Hunger Games?

This was the absolute worst.

"Remember Trump refusing to use the power of the federal government to help out the states? Remember him setting all the governors against each other in some twisted Hunger Games fight for masks and ventilators and test kits? Remember when one governor called out his National Guard to protect a planeload of COVID tests that he had had flown in from South Korea -- so the federal government wouldn't steal them all? Yeah, that happened. In the United States of America. And, no, I never want to see anything like that happen again. We are better than that -- or we should be, as long as we don't put Trump back in charge."



Remember Trump being an idiot?

This is just the worst example of it, mind you.

"Remember Trump trying to give COVID briefings even though it was painfully obvious that he didn't have a clue what he was talking about? Remember the medical professionals squirming in the same room, listening to his dangerous nonsense? Remember Trump casually musing about injecting bleach or somehow shining some sunlight inside people's lungs? I want a president who is capable of understanding complex issues, or at the very least able to let the experts speak for themselves. Trump is incapable of doing either of those things, in case anyone's forgotten."



How many needlessly died?

This is the real question at the root of all the others.

"How many thousands upon thousands of people needlessly died because of Trump's delays and lack of leadership? America was the worst country on the planet in terms of the COVID death rate, and a large part of that has to be laid at Trump's feet. Remember bodies stacked up? Remember thousands dying every single day? Remember that over a million people died here? I do. And I never ever want that to happen again. I want a leader who takes human life seriously to be president. I want a leader who shows some humanity and some empathy, not some blowhard who is incapable of seeing past his own self-interest. I want anybody but Donald Trump to be president, so you can just take your 'are you better off than you were four years ago' and stick it where the sun don't shine, OK? Because pretty much anything would be better than reliving 2020."




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

March 16, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- R.N.C. Purge

This week President Joe Biden and Donald Trump both secured their respective parties' 2024 presidential nominations. Most Americans, if the pollsters can be believed (and they do all seem to be telling the same story), are not exactly thrilled with this rematch and would have preferred different choices. But we are where we are, so that's not going to happen for another four years.

Trump moved quickly to consolidate his power by installing loyal toadies (including his daughter-in-law Lara) at the head of the Republican National Committee. An already-existing exodus of people working for the R.N.C. then accelerated, as 60 staffers were shown the door. The R.N.C. is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump campaign, in other words.

The new ever-more-Trumpy R.N.C. stumbled out of the gate, as it was first revealed that they were shutting down their minority-outreach offices, but then had to backtrack and say that they weren't going to do that. But the message was pretty clear. Lara Trump has publicly stated that "every dollar" the R.N.C. controls is now going to go to one sole purpose: electing Trump.

This is somewhat amusing to watch, of course. What could possibly go wrong with firing all the people who know what they are doing and installing MAGA-crazed loyalists who only swear fealty to the Dear Leader? If the R.N.C. does focus exclusively on the Trump campaign, that means that they won't be paying any attention to any of the down-ballot races for House, Senate, governor, or statehouse. Several state-level Republican Party organizations are already melting down (see: Michigan, for one), so this could be the final nail in their coffin, at least for this election cycle. As one former Republican House member colorfully put it: "There are crazy people" running the R.N.C. right now, "and it's going to get worse." That's from a fellow Republican, mind you.

It all seems reminiscent of how George W. Bush's administration "rebuilt" Iraq. For those who might have forgotten, this effort was conducted as a neoconservative "nation-building" exercise and was staffed by people who had zero experience setting up a functioning society and government, but did have impeccable credentials as neocons. They were ideologically pure, in other words, even if they didn't know beans about what they were supposed to do. The result was an unmitigated disaster, as we all know.

To Trump, loyalty to Trump is all that really matters. And he learned his lesson from his first term in office -- he will not abide any more "adults in the room" (who have a propensity to tell him he can't do exactly what he wants to do). Instead he will surround himself with people who will carry out any order he gives (no matter how insane or unworkable).

Again: what could possibly go wrong?

Maybe the R.N.C. and the Trump campaign will implode from within, collapsing into a pile of dazed unqualified sycophants wondering what happened to their dreams. It's certainly looking like a distinct possibility, at this point.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, has hit the ground running after his memorable "State Of The Union" speech last week. Biden's been making campaign appearances, giving speeches on policy, and hitting the airwaves with his first campaign ad. The White House also released its budget proposal this week, which was more of a campaign document outlining what Biden would like to do in a second term, especially if the voters send him some more Democrats to Congress.

Trump and Biden both showed the voters what kind of person they truly are this week, as Trump mocked Biden for stuttering during his State Of The Union speech (which is a lie, Biden didn't actually stutter during it), in true schoolyard-bully fashion. Stutterers from across the country pushed back on Trump's cruelty, but Biden showed how to counter such things by meeting with a 9-year-old boy who had written to him about his own stutter. Biden even took the time to offer the kid a few tips on what has worked for him. The entire thing was endearing and showed Biden's humanity at its best. That is the clear contrast between America's presidential choice: cruelty and bullying versus empathy and support.

Need more proof? Yet another close Trump aide (former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly) said that he had heard Donald Trump praise Adolf Hitler. No real surprise, since we've heard similar stories from others before, but the staggering ignorance and dictator-love of Donald Trump needs to be pointed out as often as possible.

Trump casually tossed out the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare this week, but then hastily tried to walk it back. The Biden campaign is not going to let him get away with it, however, as they're already using it as a major focus in Biden speeches.

In Trump legal woes news, there has been a flurry of activity of late. First up was Trump once again defaming E. Jean Carroll with the same lies he's been telling about her all along. Her attorneys pointedly mentioned that they could very well file another defamation lawsuit against Trump and that they were carefully monitoring his statements, which seemed to shut him up (for now, at any rate, until his next eruption of legally-liable statements).

One of the witnesses in the Trump national security documents case came forward of his own volition this week and told how he had personally loaded "10 or 15" boxes containing papers into Trump's plane right before Trump left for New Jersey, which means Trump still might have classified documents in his possession. Maybe it's time for another F.B.I. search? One that happens at all of Trump's residences, this time? Just an idea....

Trump is, if nothing else, the master of delaying legal cases. He got one such delay this week, as the prosecutors in the porn-star hush-money case had to ask for a delay of up to 30 days since the Justice Department had apparently just dumped a bunch of documents (over 10,000 of them) and more might be forthcoming. Trump also appeared in a Florida court in his documents case as his lawyers argued both for dropping all the charges or delaying the case until after the election, but the judge has yet to rule when the case will begin (she did shoot down several of his arguments for dropping the charges, however).

And Trump did score a partial win this week, at least for now. The judge in the Georgia election-interference case allowed Fani Willis to stay on the case (but forced her to fire the guy she had a relationship with), but he also threw out six charges, three of which were levelled at Trump. The charges were too vague, the judge ruled, but the prosecution will be able to refile them if they go back and make them more specific.

Peter Navarro lost his bid to stay out of jail until all of his appeals are ruled on, although he has now made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. Assuming it fails (appeals of this type almost never succeed), Navarro will be trading in his fancy suit for a set of jail clothes on March 19th, so we all have that to look forward to!

The special counsel who investigated Joe Biden's retention of classified documents appeared before a House committee this week so everyone could perform some partisan politics for the cameras. Right before this happened, the transcripts of Biden's actual interview with the special counsel were released, and they showed that rather than the picture of senility the special counsel painted in his report, Biden was cogent and in one instance the special counsel actually praised Biden for his "photographic understanding and recall." This merely proves what everyone already suspected, that the over-the-top language in the report was nothing more than a partisan smear job. We lost count of how many times the special counsel himself responded to a question: "I don't remember," which just drove the point home even more.

What else? Congress is facing yet another budget/government shutdown deadline next Friday, but didn't noticeably make any sort of progress at all on the problem this week. So look for yet another frenzy of last-minute dealmaking all next week, we suppose.

And finally, an amusing note to end on. Robert F. Kennedy Junior apparently has decided that he needs to name an extra-macho running mate to balance his presidential ticket out, and is promising to let us all in on who he's chosen in the next few weeks. The amusing part was hearing the names of the two finalists for this position: Jesse Ventura and Aaron Rodgers. Hoo boy. That'll certainly liven things up for his campaign, we suppose.





This week, Vice President Kamala Harris became the first sitting vice president (or president) to visit an abortion clinic. Harris toured a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota, in an effort to remind voters of the importance of the issue to her and Joe Biden in the election.

Her historic visit was a continuation of Harris being at the forefront of the abortion issue ever since the Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade. And the issue continues to resonate with voters, creating a big advantage for Democrats. Here is Harris, leaning in to the issue:

We had already chosen Harris for this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week when we saw this late-breaking story today -- which we present just as "icing on the cake," as it were:



Can't argue with that -- federal cannabis law is absurd. We've been making the exact same case for years, in fact. But it is good to hear the vice president speak so plainly on the issue, since that is the clearest statement from the highest-ranking government official we have ever heard. So for not just one but two historic events this week, Vice President Kamala Harris is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Congratulate Vice President Kamala Harris via the White House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We're reaching back into the past for this one, as it has been a while indeed since we gave a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to Joe Lieberman.

But Lieberman fully deserves it, for being an integral part of the "No Labels" third party movement. This week the group announced it was going forward with its plans to name a presidential candidate, and they put together a small group to come up with someone, as well as a bigger group that would rubber-stamp the decision. But here's the part that qualifies Joe for yet another MDDOTW award:



This is meant to calm Democratic worries that they're really just working to elect Trump, of course. But it's utter nonsense. The group Third Way points out how it would be almost impossible for No Labels to "pull the plug" on a candidacy once it gets rolling (emphasis in original):



No Labels played it cute by not registering as a political party but instead just some sort of advocacy group that happened to be working hard to get a presidential line on as many states' ballots as possible. By doing so, they avoided having to reveal who was funding the group. But now that they are going to launch a candidate, it means that once launched, the candidate will be in charge of the campaign, as a completely separate entity than No Labels itself. Meaning No Labels will have no control over anything after that point is reached.

For his attempt at fooling the public (or maybe he's just pulling the wool over his own eyes, we're not really sure), Joe Lieberman is easily the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Contact Joe Lieberman via the No Labels contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 743 (3/15/24)

We've got a varied bunch of talking points this week with no central theme (and more than one grim overtone). So let's just dive right in, shall we?



End the both-sides-ism!

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post wrote a great takedown of not just the mainstream media but all forms of "both-sides-ism" this week. Her launching point was the upcoming departure of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, but she really could have led into it with just about anything these days. So we present this (especially the second paragraph) as a handy retort for Democrats whenever they face inane questions about "extremism on both sides" (emphasis in original).





License to kill? Really?

Speaking of extremism....

"Republicans are falling all over themselves trying to square what appears to be an unsquarable circle on in-vitro fertilization. They desperately want to appear supportive of I.V.F. -- because they know how popular the concept is to the vast majority of the American people -- but at the same time their previous moral-high-road stance demands they outlaw I.V.F. as soon as possible. The extreme anti-abortion organizations are already calling pro-I.V.F. laws -- like the one they had to hastily pass in Alabama -- giving doctors a 'license to kill,' and accused the lawmakers of approving 'thousands of dead human beings.' If life truly does begin at conception, then embryos can never be discarded or destroyed, period. That is extremism, folks, and yet that is exactly what some Republicans want to do at a nationwide level. Vote Democratic to show your support for sane I.V.F. laws instead of religious extremism."



Enjoying the purge

Everyone got their popcorn? Are we all ready for the next clownshow?

"I see that Donald Trump's daughter-in-law has been installed to run things after his purge of the Republican National Committee, and that the first order of business was to sweep out all the people with any experience running a national party organization. I would heartily applaud this purge, since Trump obviously needs to be surrounded by people who are so loyal to him they will never tell him 'No.' In fact, I'd encourage Lara Trump to go even further and fire everyone left at the R.N.C. and replace them with people Trump already knows well -- like the staff at Mar-a-Lago. All the bartenders and waitresses and pool cleaners are (one assumes) fully loyal to Trump and they should be given the chance to run the Republican Party because what could possibly go wrong with that scheme?"



Republicans in disarray

This one's just embarrassing (so point it out!).

"I see that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson held his annual retreat for all his fellow Republicans last week. What a fiasco! Not even half of his members showed up. There were supposed to be panels held on the second day to discuss policy and how to expand their majority, but they had to be cancelled due to lack of interest. Sounds about right -- that's par for the Republican course, these days, folks."



How many more does Trump still have?

After hearing testimony this week from the special counsel who investigated Joe Biden's retention of classified documents, it's good to remind everyone of the differences between what he did and what Trump did.

"When the question of having classified documents arose, Joe Biden immediately informed the authorities and consented to a search of every possible place there could be more classified documents. But that only raises the question -- does Donald Trump still have classified documents he's not supposed to? The F.B.I. searched only one of Trump's residences, in Florida, and when they found a locked closet they didn't even bother demanding it be unlocked or forcing the lock themselves. They just believed 'oh, there's nothing in there.' Even if there wasn't, Trump wasn't in Florida at the time, he was at his other golf club up in New Jersey. This week one of the witnesses in the classified documents case came forward on his own and told an interviewer that he had personally helped load '10 or 15' boxes full of documents onto Trump's plane, right before he flew off to New Jersey. So how many boxes of documents were in New Jersey while the F.B.I. was searching in Florida? Nobody knows. Why didn't the F.B.I. also get a search warrant for Trump's second residence? I have no idea. But it seems very likely that they missed some stuff and now I just wonder how many more classified documents does Trump still have?"



"So let me get this straight..."

This one is a talking point for President Joe Biden to use. Biden has, so far, not talked much about Donald Trump's legal problems, because doing so would be politically risky. Biden has decided to stay mostly mum on the issue, which is probably a good thing, but there's one part of it in particular that he could actually use out on the campaign trail. It comes from the appeal Trump is making to the Supreme Court on the subject of presidential immunity, and Biden could avoid talking about the underlying case and instead focus on what Trump's lawyers actually argued in court instead:

"Folks... do you think I should be able to order Seal Team Six to assassinate Donald Trump? And should I be able to escape all legal consequences for doing so by resigning just before a Senate impeachment trial begins? Because that is exactly what Donald Trump is arguing in court that I should be able to do right now. It makes no sense. It is abhorrent to American democracy and the rule of law, but that's exactly what Trump's legal team argued. Now, don't worry folks, I'm not going to do that -- because I am not insane -- but that's what Trump thinks I should be able to do, which is an absolutely frightening thought."



I demand satisfaction!

Hoo boy. Just when you thought politics couldn't get any stupider....

"A Republican in the Missouri statehouse has introduced a proposal to improve their state's politics by letting politicians challenge each other to a duel. No, really! Here's the actual text of the proposal:"



"Got that? Not only are we going back to the 1800s, but as one historian pointed out, at least back then they had the sense to perform such idiocy outside. I think Democrats should wholly support this measure, with just one small edit. Make the law only applicable to Republicans. As long as they give us enough time to clear the building before they try to shoot each other, we're good with it. I'd also suggest they allow television cameras to cover such duels -- just think of the ratings!"




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

March 2, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- A Cinder Block On The Scales Of Justice

This week, the Supreme Court didn't just stick a thumb on the scales of justice for Donald Trump, it tossed on a cinder block instead. By delaying any decision -- for months and months -- on Trump's ludicrous claim to total immunity from everything and anything he's ever done, the court will allow Trump to win even if he loses his appeal. Because Trump's main objective in the January 6th insurrection case against him is to delay, delay, delay. The Supreme Court is aiding and abetting this scheme in rather blatant fashion.

By doing so, they proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Supreme Court should now be seen as just another partisan actor in Washington. They are not "calling balls and strikes," instead they are postponing the entire game for months, when it isn't even raining. The phrase "justice delayed is justice denied" sums it up nicely, in fact.

As others have already pointed out, Trump's lawyers actually argued during his appeal that he could have ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival and then could never have been criminally charged for doing so if he hadn't been first impeached and convicted by Congress. Since Mitch McConnell took the ridiculous position that anyone not currently in office could not be convicted in an impeachment trial (even though an impeachment trial can bar people from ever holding office again), this means any president could do so in the waning days of their term and get away with it. Or order such an assassination and then step down before a Senate trial happens. In either case, they could never be legally charged with a crime for using the power of the federal government to assassinate a political rival. Which, of course, sets up an interesting thought experiment. If the court rules for Trump, that would mean that Joe Biden could then order Seal Team Six to assassinate Trump (or even assassinate a few Supreme Court justices, just for the sake of argument) without worrying that he'd ever face any legal jeopardy for doing so. File this under "be careful what you wish for," we suppose, because it is indeed the logical end of the argument Trump's lawyers have been making.

If the justice system followed any sort of logic, however, the order of Trump's trials would be different than whatever it is going to turn out to be. The easiest case to prove -- the simplest one -- is the national security documents case. That one's really a slam-dunk for the prosecutors, since Trump is so obviously guilty of what he's been accused of. It's also a very serious case with very serious charges. Plenty of people have served many years in jail for far less egregious violations of the same laws.

Next up would be the federal charges surrounding January 6th. This would be a longer case and a more complex one, but it should definitely be tried before the American people vote on whether to return Donald Trump to the presidency. Following this case would logically be the Georgia case stemming from the same basic crime: trying to overturn an American presidential election by any means necessary. This is the most complex of the cases and the trial is going to take many months, but it also may be the one with the most jail time at stake for Trump.

At the very end of the schedule should be the New York case stemming from the hush-money payments made to a porn star. This is the least serious case when it comes to the laws Trump is accused of breaking, and it also will involve tricky legal positions which a jury might not be convinced apply to Trump.

That's all if the judicial calendar were arranged by logic, of course. Since it is not, the porn-star case is going to go first. At this point, nobody's sure when any of the other three cases will be heard -- or even if they'll be heard. The Supreme Court, as mentioned, threw a cinder block on the scales of justice for the January 6th federal case, the Georgia case is mired in accusations of self-dealing made against the prosecutor (a hearing is underway today which may decide this matter), and the documents case is also up in the air (another hearing on this case is also underway today, which may set a new trial date). At this point, it looks like the documents case may be the only other one that has enough time to be tried in court before the presidential election happens, although that could change. And there's always the possibility that the Supreme Court might intervene in any of the other cases as well, as Trump's legal team has been filing appeals like there is no tomorrow. Or, more accurately, "like none of these trials is going to be heard tomorrow, or the next day, or the next month, or even this year."

As we wrote yesterday, the lion's share of the blame for this sorry state of affairs falls squarely on Attorney General Merrick Garland, for twiddling his thumbs for almost two full years before appointing a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump. Those two years are lost forever. If this massive delay hadn't happened, Donald Trump might already be sitting in a jail cell somewhere.

But he's not, obviously. Instead, he is skating towards picking up his third Republican presidential nomination in a row. Two primaries happened this week, and Trump handily won both of them. In South Carolina -- Nikki Haley's home state -- Trump beat her by roughly 60 percent to 40 percent. In Michigan, it was even more lopsided as Trump beat Haley by a whopping 40 points.

Still, Haley did pull in 39.5 percent in one state and 26.6 percent in the other, which is pretty good, running against what is essentially an incumbent president. This shows Trump's weakness within his own Republican base, but it's an open question how much this will mean in November. How many Haley voters will wind up voting for Trump and how many will either vote for someone else or stay home? Nobody knows. Haley's still got enough campaign cash to keep going past even Super Tuesday, so we'll get a whole lot more data points on this question very soon (as a whole raft of other states hold their primaries).

President Joe Biden had his own difficulties in Michigan, even though he won the primary with over 80 percent of the vote. Coming in second place was "Uncommitted," which accounted for 13.2 percent of Democrats voting (over 100,000 votes). This was organized as a protest against the war in Gaza and Biden's support for Israel, and it could be very worrisome for Biden in November. Michigan is a swing state, after all. In an amusing footnote from Michigan, the one Democrat still challenging Biden (Dean Phillips) actually lost to Marianne Williamson -- even though she had already ended her campaign. How embarrassing!

Biden and Trump just got back from holding duelling photo-ops on the southern border yesterday, where they each made the case the problem is the other one's fault. Since Trump tanked the bipartisan border/immigration reform bill (even though it was largely written by and tilted towards the Republicans), Biden has been trying to hang the whole problem around Trump's neck. Meanwhile, Trump is out there ranting and raving -- here is just part of what he had to say yesterday:

Um... what? Immigrants "who don't speak languages" are coming in to the country? Or maybe it's just the languages themselves "coming into our country"? Languages "nobody speaks"? What about the people coming in who are speaking them? Any language which is not English is a foreign language (by definition) so it's hard to even understand what "truly foreign languages" would even be.

Not to put too fine a point on it but even Sarah Palin made more sense than this word-salad garbage, but somehow the media isn't making a huge deal over Trump's obvious idiocy (or dementia) here. Or the fact that Trump is promising in his second term to enlist all police forces down to the local cop on the corner to just round up everyone they think could possibly be an immigrant, ship them to camps out in the desert, and then send them to other countries. That's a pretty alarming notion, but it never seems to be a story on the evening news.

Joe Biden will lead the news next week on at least one night, as the annual (and very late-scheduled) "State Of The Union" speech will be given to Congress and the American people. This will be the biggest megaphone he'll have all year, so it will be closely watched. Will he lay out his agenda for a second term? Will he take Congress to task for accomplishing virtually nothing for the past year? Will he rip into Trump in subtle ways (or possibly overt ways)? We'll be tuning in to find out, that's for sure.

One thing that seems certain is that Biden is going to address the border problem and unveil some new policies (while taking Republicans to task for tanking their own measure, which would have improved the situation by now). These are not likely to be greeted with applause from progressive Democrats, to put it mildly. Biden knows the issue hurts him politically, one poll just put it at the top of voters' concerns, and he's got to counter the drumbeat from Trump and the Republicans on it. So he's going to somehow toughen up his own immigration policies, in an effort to at least partially defuse the issue for the rest of the campaign. We expect some howls from the left when Biden does so, so we'll be tuning in to see that as well.

Congress did manage to punt the government shutdown deadline once again, but this was a very short punt indeed. Instead of money running out at midnight tonight, it will instead run out one week from tonight. That's one day after the State Of The Union, so either Congress will have actually passed a portion of the federal budget by then, be on the brink of passing a budget deal, or once again be frantically trying to punt the issue further down the road. One way or another, it'll definitely get a mention in Biden's speech, that much seems certain.

The big news out of Congress this week is that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to step down from his leadership position at the end of this year. He's still planning on finishing his term in office (he won't be up for re-election until 2026), but he'll spend the final two years of it as a back-bencher. As with Nancy Pelosi stepping down in the House, this should pass the torch of leadership to a younger generation. The best commentary we read this week on Mitch's legacy came from a reporter at Salon who first interviewed McConnell as a reporter for his high school newspaper, back when McConnell was a mere local county executive. Here's what this reporter had to say about Mitch -- which we find we cannot disagree with one bit (emphasis in original):



McConnell's legacy is packing the Supreme Court with partisan ideological hacks, please always remember this. He shirked his duty to the Constitution to increase conservative power, plain and simple. Other folks online had plenty of other things to say about McConnell and his legacy, if anyone's interested.

And because we've got lots of other stuff to cover, we're going to end here with the news that a third state -- Illinois -- just also decided that Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on their ballot for president, due to him engaging in the January 6th insurrection. This is another matter before the Supreme Court where they have been dragging their feet, even though everyone already knows which way they're going to rule on it (hint: it won't be "against Trump" ). We're all living with Mitch McConnell's Supreme Court now, folks, and it just gets uglier and uglier with each passing day.





Joe Biden deserves at least an Honorable Mention for his appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, where he was relaxed and at ease bantering with Seth. It might seem a strange choice for Biden (there are other late-night shows with larger audiences), but it was obviously a favor to Meyers, since it was his tenth anniversary show. Seth's first guests, way back when, were Amy Poehler and then-Vice President Joe Biden. So he got them both back to celebrate. Hopefully this won't be the last such appearance Biden makes, because as we said it went really well.

This week we're torn between two candidates, so we decided to just hand out two Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week awards. The first goes to Senator Tammy Duckworth, for moving quickly to box in the Republicans on their new pet issue.

Duckworth is the perfect person to champion in-vitro fertilization, since she had both her daughters via I.V.F. In fact, she was the first sitting U.S. Senator to give birth while in office. So the entire matter is personal, for her.

Duckworth introduced a bill which would federally protect the right of women to utilize I.V.F. services, no matter how antediluvian their states' judges or legislature happen to be. She moved to pass the bill by "unanimous consent" and one Republican immediately took the bait and stepped into the trap. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi objected to the bill, claiming it would legalize human cloning and "the creation of human-animal chimeras." So the bill died.

This highlighted the impossible position Republicans now find themselves in. A full 125 House GOP members have signed onto a bill called the "Life at Conception Act" which would create a federal law that matches what the Alabama supreme court ruled recently -- all embryos would have full constitutional rights and destroying any of them would be tantamount to murder. This would effectively end I.V.F., where embryos are routinely discarded for various reasons. But due to the public backlash, Republicans are falling all over themselves trying to appear supportive of I.V.F., somehow squaring the circle that they have created. But none of that means anything if you don't vote for it when you have the chance.

Duckworth can always bring her bill back up in the normal fashion (where a single senator can't derail it), which would force every single Republican senator into voting either to support I.V.F. rights or with their theocratic buddies. We certainly hope Duckworth does so at the earliest available opportunity, because now is precisely the time to get them all on record, heading into campaign season.

Our second MIDOTW award goes to Hunter Biden, for his command performance in front of the House committee desperately trying to impeach his father for something (anything!). From various points in his opening statement, Hunter lit into the Republicans and did not mince his words at all:



Biden strongly defended both his and his father's innocence:



Once the transcript of the entire hearing was available, it became obvious that Hunter remained this resolute throughout all the questioning, ripping into Republican innuendo piece by piece.

Democrats in the hearing had a wide array of metaphors to describe it afterwards, to the press:



But the best moment (and why Republicans didn't want this to be a televised public hearing, obviously) came during Representative Eric Swalwell questioning Hunter Biden (for which Swalwell deserves his own Honorable Mention):



This is precisely the way to handle all this faux Republican outrage over (gasp!) the very idea that a family member would cash in on a famous politician relative -- just ask pointedly: "What about Jared? Or Ivanka? Or any of the other Trump family members? When's the investigation into them going to be?"

The Republican chair of the committee left promising that there would be a public hearing later with Hunter, but this is highly doubtful since it would only allow him to show the American people the true extend of the clown show that is the Republican impeachment attempt. For putting up with it and for defending his family's honor, Hunter Biden also gets his own Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Senator Tammy Duckworth on her Senate contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts. Hunter Biden is a private citizen and it is our longstanding policy not to provide contact information for such persons, sorry.]





We were inclined to just give a retroactive Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to Attorney General Merrick Garland, for the massive and unnecessary delay in bringing Donald Trump to justice, but it almost seems superfluous at this point (sigh).

Instead we decided to give the MDDOTW to a hitherto-unknown Democratic political operative. Here's the story in a nutshell:



It gets worse. Kramer "worked on getting Democratic candidate Dean Phillips on the ballot in New York and Pennsylvania," admitted the Phillips campaign, while swearing that "the candidate had no involvement" with the nefarious scheme.

This is some awfully dirty pool, folks. And it may get more and more common as time goes on, seeing as how the technology is now easily accessible. Kramer even admitted it would only take "a mere $500 investment" for anyone else to do what he had done.

There's a term for this sort of thing, from the days of Richard Nixon. It's known as "ratfucking," and it's about as disgusting as it sounds. No Democrat should have anything to do with such anti-democratic skullduggery, period. Because he did, Steve Kramer is easily our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Steve Kramer is also a private citizen, so once again our blanket policy is not to provide his contact information, sorry.]




Volume 742 (3/1/24)

Another mixed bag this week for our talking points. Enjoy and as always, use responsibly!



The Republican Court

They're not even trying to pretend anymore, so call them what they deserve to be called.

"This Supreme Court is no longer the 'Roberts Court.' From this point forward, we should just call it what it has become -- the 'Republican Court.' The laws are different if you're a Republican, according to them. If you're a Republican, many if not all laws simply do not apply. If the Constitution clearly says a Republican should be held accountable for his or her actions, it can be ignored. If the Constitution doesn't give a free pass to Republicans, then we'll just make one up out of whole cloth. Laws are for non-Republicans to follow. Republicans can never do any wrong. This is no longer an apolitical branch of the American government, it has become another partisan arm of the Republican Party and John Roberts has lost all control of his court. So let's call it what is now is: the Republican Supreme Court."



A religious question

At heart, it is a theological distinction, not a medical one. Point this out as much as possible.

"The question of when to bestow personhood is one that is purely a matter of religion, not medicine. The state supreme court in Alabama made this clear, quoting the Christian Bible in its decision that a collection of six cells in a Petri dish is a 'child' worthy of full constitutional rights. If you accidentally drop that Petri dish, that's morally the same as murdering an actual full-grown human being, according to them. Republicans won't be happy until they control women's reproductive systems completely, and dictate what is and is not allowable based solely on their own religious beliefs. One can picture them sitting around some monastery somewhere debating how many embryos can dance on the head of a pin, in fact. They do not care if anyone else shares their particular religious beliefs, they won't be satisfied until the law is twisted to their own interpretation. This is downright scary, but it is indeed the road Republicans want to take us all down."



Squaring the circle

They can't have it both ways. Point it out!

"Republicans have long tried to curry favor with the most extreme of the forced-birth activists by sanctimoniously proclaiming 'life begins at conception.' Up until now, we've never actually been forced to understand exactly what they mean by this. But now the cat's out of the bag. They mean no more I.V.F. for desperate women. They mean to ban any birth control system they deem to interfere with an embryo -- so no more I.U.D.s either, and probably no more birth control pills. Sorry, ladies! Any miscarriage will be investigated by the Uterus Police for possible murder or manslaughter charges. This is the frightening world that Republicans who support 'life begins at conception' want the rest of us to live in. And over 100 House Republicans are co-sponsors of a bill that would impose this Draconian existence on the entire country. They can pretend to be for I.V.F. rights all they want, but their own bill's text makes no allowances at all for I.V.F. They can't have it both ways -- they're either for women's rights or not, and it's pretty plain to see they are not."



This week in GOP racism

This is all just from one week, mind you.

"The Republican Party is embracing its inner racist more blatantly and overtly than ever, folks. Donald Trump gave a speech to some Black conservatives this week where he told them, quote, 'Black people like me' because he has now been indicted four times. He also claimed that Blacks now loved him because he has a mugshot. Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas just hired a new law clerk who, while previously working for a group allied with his wife, wrote texts to a fellow employee where she said, and again I quote: 'I HATE BLACK PEOPLE... Like, fuck them all... I hate blacks. End of story.' Charming, eh? In Missouri, a Republican is running for governor who was previously pictured standing next to a fully-robed member of the Ku Klux Klan while both of them give Nazi salutes -- in front of a burning cross. These are the depths the so-called 'party of Lincoln' has now sunk to, folks. They're not even trying to hide it much anymore."



Maybe she'll get to use her whole name again?

She probably won't, though....

"Ronna McDaniel will be stepping down from leading the Republican National Committee next week, after Donald Trump forced her ouster. This is a woman who has been so in the tank for Trump that she actually changed the name she uses publicly -- she used to proudly call herself Ronna Romney McDaniel, but that was before her uncle Mitt got on Trump's wrong side. So she jettisoned her maiden name to please her Dear Leader. Now he's soured on her so she's dutifully falling on her sword. But hey, at least she'll be able to use whatever name she wants to from now on, right?"



Fortunate Son

Trump seems to be searching the couch cushions for spare change, these days.

"In a court deposition last year, Donald Trump bragged about how much cash he had on hand, characterizing it as 'substantially in excess of $400 million in cash.' He even bragged it was '400-plus and going up very substantially ever month.' That was then, this is now -- and now he's on the hook for over $450 million that he's got to put up before he can appeal the New York fraud case decision against him. Now he's pleading to judges that he's actually broke, and could barely scrape together $100 million. The judge refused to bargain in such a fashion, meaning he'll have to at least arrange a bond for the full amount before he can file any actual appeal. This reminds me of a verse from the Creedence Clearwater Revival song 'Fortunate Son,' which was written about nepo babies and other wealthy children. Their verse seems almost prophetic, after hearing Trump whine to the judge:"



"Seems about right. Oh, that reminds me -- for those that want to keep track at home, there's now a handy website with a running counter to keep up with the mounting interest charges, so you can see exactly how much Donald Trump now owes to the state of New York. Enjoy!"



Maybe look in the mirror?

This one proves there is some justice still left in the Universe.

"Representative Lauren Boebert recently tweeted out her take on (as she put it) the 'Biden Crime Family,' who was in her opinion 'the most corrupt political family in America.' Mere hours later her own 18-year-old son was arrested on 22 criminal charges, including felony counts of possessing false IDs, as well as other assorted crimes. This is also the woman who showed the world her 'family values' by groping her date at a theater performance, and whose now-divorced husband -- when Lauren was only 17 years old -- was arrested for exposing a tattoo on his penis to two underage women in a bowling alley and spent four days in jail for the crime. So it seems like Representative Boebert doesn't have to look very far to find a 'crime family' in politics -- she can start by looking in her own mirror."





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

February 24, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- A Slow Sort Of Week

Because this week had a federal holiday at the start of it, Congress is off on vacation for two entire weeks. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

It's not as if they don't have anything to do, either. When they return, the Senate will hold the first impeachment trial for a sitting cabinet member ever (although "trial" may be overstating it, since it may be over before it even begins, with a simple vote to dismiss the nonsensical articles of impeachment the House finally was able to pass), the House will be under pressure to pass some sort of military aid for Ukraine before their soldiers are reduced to fighting with pointy sticks, and Congress will be staring at yet another government-shutdown deadline at the end of the week. Those are just the big things on the congressional plate, mind you. But after all their hard work (at not getting anything done on time), they all needed two weeks of relaxation, obviously.

However, one thing Congress likely won't be doing any time soon is impeaching President Joe Biden. This feverish effort has been ongoing ever since Republicans took control of the House, but it has yet to bear any fruit whatsoever. They thought they had a smoking gun, but (not to mix explosive metaphors or anything) this blew up in their faces last week when a confidential informant to the F.B.I. was arrested and indicted for making the whole thing up. Lying about a politician isn't a crime... unless you tell those lies to the F.B.I., that is. Which he did. Which has left the GOP's impeachment investigation in tatters, since his tall tale of Joe and Hunter Biden being paid $5 million each by a Ukrainian energy company was the centerpiece of their entire effort. Now it is looking more like the center ring in their clown circus. After touting the informant's lie for months, Republicans are now wiping the egg off their faces, and slowly coming to the realization that they're never going to have enough votes to impeach Biden within their own caucus. All their investigating was a gigantic waste of time, to put it another way. Which is what the Republican House does best, of course -- waste time.

Primary season is also about to heat up once again, as South Carolina's Republicans will be voting in their primary tomorrow, followed by Michigan voting next Tuesday. This will mark the logical end of Nikki Haley's campaign, although she swears up and down that she's not going to back down until every single primary has been held. This is the standard sort of thing for any candidate to say, right up until she doesn't say it anymore. Who, after all, is going to vote for a candidate that comes out and admits: "Well, we're going to pack it all in next week, but hey, vote for me before that happens!"? Haley could actually follow through on her bold promise and stay in the race -- hoping desperately for a lightning bolt to come out of the blue and strike Donald Trump down -- but even if she does it's going to be increasingly pathetic to watch her deny the hard cold reality of losing. Tomorrow's contest is in her home state after all, and pretty much every poll shows Trump with a 2-to-1 lead over her (up by roughly 30 points). No matter what the actual margin turns out to be tomorrow night, Trump is coasting towards another win.

The interesting thing about Haley, at this point, is that she appears to have a very "I've got nothing to lose" attitude now. She (gasp!) has finally been hitting Donald Trump hard out on the campaign trail, a tactic that might have been more interesting if she had tried it a few months earlier. She hasn't gone quite as far as some "never Trumper" Republicans (this week New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu optimistically stated: "It won't be [Trump's] party forever, right? It just won't. At some point, Donald Trump won't be here forever. Let me put it a different way: assholes come and go, but America is here to stay." ), but Haley does seem to have woken up and suddenly realized she is running against Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. From the past week:

Trump, true to form, finally did issue a statement on Navalny's death and (because of course he did) he managed to make it all about himself. He later doubled down on his narcissism (with his usual tenuous grasp of how the English language is used), talking about his own $355 million judgment against him by saying: "It is a form of Navalny." Everything, to Trump, is always all about Trump.

Republicans then dutifully backed up Trump's megalomania, by refusing to condemn his equating the American judicial system with a murderous dictator, because of course they did. The Republican Party is now the Party Of Putin, plain and simple. Credulous gadfly Tucker Carlson, fresh from his fawning "useful idiot" interview with Putin, reacted to Navalny's death with breathtaking indifference, saying: "I have spent my life talking to people who run countries, in various countries, and have concluded the following: That every leader kills people, including my leader. Every leader kills people, some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people, sorry, that's why I wouldn't want to be a leader." Um, OK. Sure. Interesting worldview you got there, Tucker....

Democrats were not shy about expressing their disgust:



Trump made some other political news, by (tentatively, at least) supporting a national 16-week ban on abortion. He also took the time to badmouth mail-in voting once again, undermining the Republican Party's desperate attempt to convince their voters to vote early. Trump also took the time this week to channel his inner Al Bundy and hawk the most garishly gaudy sneakers one could imagine at a convention of sneaker enthusiasts (where he was audibly booed by the crowd). Step right up, folks! For the low, low price of just under $400, you too can look like a complete idiot!

Trump's legal problems continue, but most of it was on the back burner this week. But he did promise us all a rather refreshingly-honest thing if he gets a second term, as he mangled his words in yet another speech: "We're going to take over Washington, D.C. We're going to federalize. We're going to have very powerful crime, and you're going to be proud of it again." Um, sure... because you haven't done enough "very powerful crime" yet? And we're going to be proud of it? Hoo boy.

A few "friends of Trump" had their own problems, as Mike "The Pillow Guy" Lindell lost an appeal and will now have to fork over the $5 million he promised to anyone who could prove his conspiracy theories about election fraud were wrong. One guy did precisely that, and now Mike's gotta pay up. Meanwhile, Peter Navarro could soon be facing more contempt of court charges (in addition to the ones he's already been sentenced to prison for).

There was some amusing legal news as well this week, as George Santos sued Jimmy Kimmel for fooling him. Santos offered his services on a website where celebrities who need some cash do little videos to wish people a happy birthday (or whatever) for a price, and Kimmel trolled him with some fake identities and then used the clips on his late-night comedy show. Santos was not amused -- how dare someone defraud him with a fake identity! Kimmel immediately mocked the suit as "the most preposterous lawsuit of all time," which sounds about right, to us.

In other legal comedy, John Oliver made an amusing public offer to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: step down from the court immediately (or, as he put it: "All you have to do in return is sign the contract and get the fuck off the Supreme Court" ) and Oliver will pay Thomas a million bucks a year for the rest of his life. Plus a multi-million-dollar luxury bus to boot! That's a tempting offer for a jurist who loves enjoying the finer things in life (as long as someone else is paying for them, of course!). Oliver gave Thomas 30 days to take him up on the offer so... fingers crossed!

And we'll end with an amazing coincidence from the annals of American law. On Presidents' Day, the Washington Post ran an interesting story someone successfully dug out of the military archives. It seems Joe Biden's great-great-grandfather received a pardon from none other than Abraham Lincoln, which wiped away a court-martial conviction for getting in a fight with another Union soldier. The other big holiday story was the release of this year's historians' rankings of America's president, where Biden ranked 14th-best and Trump came in dead last -- which sounded about right, to us.





It was a fairly quiet week in Washington, since Congress is off having fun rather than doing their jobs.

But President Joe Biden made some news with yet another round of student debt forgiveness. After his sweeping plan to forgive student loan debt were hobbled by the Supreme Court, Biden has been working at the problem in a piecemeal fashion, and this week's announcement added to his totals.

Biden is sending notices out to certain students informing them their loans have been forgiven. When you add it all up, almost four million students have now had a whopping $138 billion in loans forgiven. This is not as sweeping as Biden's original plan, but it ain't exactly peanuts either.

Biden hasn't gotten the political credit he should have for his efforts to make students' lives better, so we sincerely hope that both he and anyone speaking for him out on the campaign trail hits this point as often as possible.

This week, over 150,000 students will see a total of $1.2 billion in debt forgiven. It is hard to overstate what a difference this makes in these young people's lives -- many of whom simply cannot afford both paying off their loans and living a decent life.

So for the four million students that Biden has helped so far, and in specific for the 150,000 of them helped this week alone, Joe Biden is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week

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





Yet again (it being a slow week in politics) we find ourselves without any Democrat disappointing us in any major way. So we're just going to put the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week statuette back on the shelf until next time.




Volume 741 (2/23/24)

This week was a momentous one in the legal world, and to reflect the seriousness of what the supreme court of Alabama just decided we could not be contained in discrete talking points, so instead we wrote a rant on the subject.

Republicans need to squirm over the inevitable consequences of their extremism, and the only way to do that is to stand up and loudly point this extremism out, every chance you get.



Freedom from religion

This is what the end of the road looks like, folks. The anti-abortion extremists have looked forward to this for years, but the rest of us are just getting our first glimpse at the plans they have to revamp the legal system to conform with their own personal religious beliefs. The Alabama supreme court just ruled that frozen embryos -- consisting of a few cells, invisible to the naked eye -- are "people." This is what the forced-birthers have meant all along when they say: "life begins at conception." Once a sperm cell has met with an egg cell, legally (as far as they are concerned) that is a human being, and as such is entitled to all the protections of the law other human beings get. This is an awfully simplistic way of looking at things, but then that's the hallmark of extremism and always has been.

Republican politicians are now panicking, because they know full well the public at large simply does not accept this simplistic religious viewpoint. A poll conducted by none other than Kellyanne Conway (who is about as MAGA as a person can get) showed that in-vitro fertilization (I.V.F.) has the support of 86 percent of the public, including 78 percent support among self-identified "pro-life advocates" and 83 percent of evangelical Christians. The strict "life begins at conception" notion is not very popular, obviously.

But this is the logical and inevitable end of the anti-abortion road. If a fertilized egg is a human life with constitutional rights, then killing that life in any way is exactly the same, in legal terms, as murder. Some states have gone further down this road than others already -- in some states, killing a pregnant woman results in not one charge of murder but two. The anti-abortion extremists see everything through this unforgiving lens. Any abortion, for any reason (even to save the life of the mother) is murder, plain and simple. Therefore all abortion should be outlawed. And disposing of unwanted excess embryos in an I.V.F. clinic is no different to them, either.

Republicans in Alabama are desperately trying to come up with some new law that will solve this problem, but this may in fact be impossible. After all, their highest court has already ruled on the basic issue of personhood. They're proposing that the law view embryos not as "life" or "a baby" (as they define it) until it is actually implanted in a woman's uterus. This could avoid the problem of excess embryo disposal, but would still leave a host of other legal problems for women trying desperately to conceive. And the high court has already ruled specifically on the issue of frozen embryos that are still in vitro (and not yet in vivo). So any law the Alabama legislature passes that attempts to paper over the difference seems doomed to be struck down by the very same court, using exactly the same reasoning.

This is what you get when you empower judges and legislators -- many of them men -- to make the most personal and intimate decisions imaginable about a woman's reproductive system. This is what happens when the government interferes with the medical profession for purely religious reasons.

We've already seen how extreme the moralists can get over abortion. In some states, women with life-threatening complications during their pregnancies now have to wait until they approach death to get the medical care they need -- which is absolutely inhumane. Forcing a woman to go through pain and suffering for no medical reason is barbaric, plain and simple. But that's what is happening today in many states in America. Even spontaneous miscarriages are treated as suspect, since (according to the forced-birthers' definition) a crime might have been committed.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has already created two Americas. In one, a woman has full human rights and is able to make medical decisions with her doctors without governmental interference. She can decide to terminate a pregnancy or carry it to term or have embryos created outside her body without politicians and judges having any say in the matter. This is full reproductive freedom, but it no longer exists everywhere in the country. In the other America, judges and politicians get to make those decisions for women. Reproductive freedom does not exist. Women are considered second-class citizens, who must be guided by the state rather than being free to make their own decisions about their bodies.

This is the end of the theocratic anti-abortion road. If "life begins at conception" then every embryo must be carried to term no matter what. Even if it has serious genetic deformities. Even if the woman doesn't want to carry it to term. Even if the woman already successfully has the child or children she wants from a medical treatment -- all the other embryos created by that treatment must be given the same opportunity. "Draconian" doesn't even begin to cover how extreme this way of thinking truly is.

Republicans finally packed the Supreme Court with ideologues and caught the anti-abortion car they've been chasing for decades -- and now they have no idea what to do with it. It was easy to spout the forced-birth dogma when it was only a theoretical goal to strive for, but now that it has become reality they are faced with the inevitable consequences of treating medical matters as religious matters. Republicans are currently falling all over themselves to show their support for I.V.F., but none of them have any answer to the legal conundrum they now find themselves in. If the highest court rules that any embryo is a legal person, then it doesn't matter what laws they propose to pass because none of them will change that basic legal ruling.

Sooner or later this will affect abortion laws directly as well. How can there be "exceptions" for rape and incest when the product of such crimes is a person? That's adding a murder (by their definition) to the rape or incest, and thus it needs to be illegal. How can abortions be allowed up to any number of weeks when it legally doesn't matter how big the embryo is? Murder (by their definition) will still be murder, so the only possible logical position to take is that all abortions must be banned at zero weeks.

If a microscopic cluster of six or eight cells is legally a person, then it will lead to all kinds of other legal headaches as well. What's to stop a couple undergoing I.V.F. from claiming 15 or 20 frozen "dependents" on their taxes, after all? If a child is a child is a child, as the court ruled, then having all those "children" should mean big tax breaks, right? This is only one of many such legal absurdities which the court's decision will give rise to.

And the extremists are not done yet, either. They want to impose their religious beliefs on contraception as well. If an egg is fertilized but is prevented from implanting itself in the uterine wall, then as far as they are concerned that is exactly the same thing as having an abortion. Meaning passing anti-contraception laws is going to be their next goal. Make no mistake about it, folks.

Our country is facing a choice. The choice is between having religion dictate morality for everyone or keeping politicians and judges out of the examination room and giving women the freedom to make their own decisions about reproduction. And if Republicans get their way, it soon won't be a matter of "Well, I don't live in Alabama, so it doesn't affect me," but rather a nationwide legal system that puts the rights of six cells above the rights of a full-grown woman.

There is only one way to stop them at the moment, and that is to vote all the self-anointed moralists out of office. If a politician doesn't support full reproductive rights for all women in every way then they need to be replaced with politicians who do. Roe v. Wade must be codified into federal law at the national level to prevent states from injecting religion into a matter of basic constitutional rights for all women.

Vote for freedom. Vote against the extremists. Vote for women's rights. Vote for personal reproductive decisions to be made between a woman and her doctor, period. Because if you don't, sooner or later you'll find yourself living in a society where religion dictates what you can and cannot do with your own body. Alabama just showed us where this road can lead, so we need to show the politicians that voters simply do not agree with them forcing their religion upon everyone.




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

February 17, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- Grinding Exceedingly Fine

That headline comes from the end of an aphorism that goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks: "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." Today, the wheels of justice just ground out a penalty of $355 million for Donald Trump, for committing serial fraud in his New York businesses -- which we certainly found to be an "exceedingly fine" result of the case (an "exceedingly fine fine," maybe?). The $355 million can now be added to the $88 million Trump is already on the hook for, after losing two other civil cases (the defamation cases brought by E. Jean Carroll). Plus, in today's ruling, two of Trump's children were fined $4 million each, as well as a $1 million fine for another member of the Trump Organization (making it a $364 million penalty, in all). This was the capstone to a week watching the slow grind of multiple court cases Trump is currently ensnared in, so we thought it was an appropriate place to start our column this week.

The biggest other Trump legal news of the week is that for the first time in history, an ex-president will face a criminal trial for paying "hush money" to a porn star. Actually, every word after "trial" in that previous sentence is superfluous in a way... but it's still fun to point out.

As we write this, Trump has yet to react to today's ruling, but our guess is he's not going to be very happy about it (to put it mildly). We'll be watching for his inevitable explosion of rage on social media, though, with a profound sense of expectant schadenfreude.

The week in legal maneuverings began with Trump filing (at the last moment, of course) an appeal to the Supreme Court of the appellate decision that he is not, in fact, a king. In the case dealing with January 6th and Trump's efforts to overturn an American presidential election, Trump claimed "absolute immunity" for any crime he may have committed as president, basing this assertion solely on his own megalomaniacal view of himself (it certainly wasn't based on the U.S. Constitution or any actual laws). His appeal to the Supreme Court was quickly answered with a filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who urged the court to follow in the appellate judges' footsteps and laugh Trump out of court forthwith, so the trial can get back on track and happen before the next presidential election. Nobody has any clue of how the Supreme Court will react (or when, for that matter, which is almost more important), although it was pointed out that it will take four justices to vote to hear Trump's appeal, and five justices to vote to extend the stay which is preventing the trial from continuing. So if they decide not to take up the appeal, it will translate into at least a 6-3 decision against Trump.

On the same day, Trump showed up for a closed-door hearing by the judge in the classified documents case being held in Florida, for a discussion about access to all the national security secrets Trump had refused to return to the government. No real news leaked from his appearance, so it's anyone's guess what happened (although "the judge was sympathetic to Trump" is a good guess, since this is the case with the most Trump-friendly judge imaginable).

Later in the week, we had a split-screen day in court, as Trump personally appeared (for no apparent reason, other than assumably to glare at the judge) to hear a rejection of his motion to toss out the porn-star case. The judge wasn't having any of it, and announced that the trial will indeed take place on schedule, with jury selection to begin on March 25th. So we've all got that to look forward to.

Down in Georgia, the lead prosecutor in the state-level RICO case against Trump (and a whole passel of co-conspirators) was grilled over her romantic involvement with another prosecutor she had hired to work on the case. Fani Willis was quite feisty in defending her actions, as she took the stand. She could be removed from the case or allowed to continue prosecuting it, depending on how the judge rules (the case is still being heard today, and nobody really knows when a decision will be handed down).

All in all, that's a pretty busy week for Trump's lawyers, you've got to admit. And this likely won't be the last week where we get bombshell news from multiple Trump cases -- this rollercoaster ride is going to last for months and months to come, folks. Of course, any sane political party would automatically disqualify someone with so many legal headaches from running for any office -- even dogcatcher -- as a representative of their party, but seeing as how it is today's MAGAfied Republican Party instead, Trump is still waltzing to the GOP presidential nomination.

In other presidential legal news this week, the effort by House Republicans to impeach President Joe Biden took a big hit, as the star witness they are basing their entire investigation on was indicted this week for lying to the F.B.I. That's right -- he is now accused of just making the whole thing up. And -- the icing on the cake -- the charges were brought by the same prosecutor who charged Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes as well, so it's impossible to say this was somehow politically motivated. This completely undermines what was already the shakiest of efforts by Republicans to build some sort of case of wrongdoing against Biden, but (knowing them) they'll probably soldier on nonetheless. After all, this week they successfully (on the second try, and with only one vote to spare) impeached the first sitting cabinet member in United States history (one other was impeached almost 150 years ago, but he resigned moments before the House held the vote, so technically he wasn't still a "sitting" cabinet member at the time). Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached not for bribery, not for treason, not for any discernable high crime and/or misdemeanor, but instead for the crime of not being a Republican. Which kind of proves that all the House GOP cares about is chalking up impeachments as revenge -- meaning the Biden impeachment could still happen even with their star witness now having to defend himself for flat-out lying about the entire matter.

Of course, this was big news -- everywhere but on Fox News, that is. After hyping the lies told by the F.B.I. informant for months on end, they found it wasn't newsworthy enough to mention the fact that their entire case just collapsed into a house of cards.

Speaking of things collapsing in the House, the speaker had to pull a bill reauthorizing spying powers from being voted on this week, since (as usual) Republicans couldn't even agree among themselves what to put into it. Also, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee followed up a classified briefing by immediately scaring the heck out of everyone by publicly warning of a new military threat from Russia. It instantly leaked that this meant anti-satellite nuclear weapons, which the White House then had to partially confirm. Nothing like putting Republicans in charge of national security, eh?

And finally, some choice Republican idiocy to close on. In the Missouri senate, a bill was being debated which would have allowed children who had been victims of rape or incest to have an abortion. One state senator objected, with the most bizarre reason imaginable (you simply cannot make this stuff up, folks!). Here's the story:

Chalk this up as yet another Missouri Republican who simply does not understand how (or which) women can get pregnant. He can now join Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin in the Missouri annals of Republican stupidity on the subject of female reproduction.





We were impressed with Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis this week, as she took the stand to defend herself against charges of impropriety in her case against Donald Trump (et al.). She was adamant and even downright scathing as she faced hostile lawyers, turning in a rather impressive appearance on the stand.

However, we cannot even see awarding her a Honorable Mention, since the whole mess was completely avoidable in the first place. The man she was romantically involved with was in the midst of a divorce, but that's not what was legally unethical about the situation, really. It was the fact that he was her subordinate, so any relationship between them should have never happened in the first place. Willis and her paramour had two basic choices: (1) don't have a relationship until after the trial had taken place, or (2) go ahead and see each other, but only after he stepped down from working on the case. They did neither of these. They claim that since he wasn't an actual employee of hers (he worked on a contract basis instead) that there was no real ethical problem, but that's a hair that's really too fine to split, at least as far as we are concerned.

Instead, we are giving the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to Representative-Elect Tom Suozzi, who will soon be representing New York's third congressional district in the House. Suozzi will take the seat previously held by George Santos, who was ignobly kicked out of the chamber for being such a schmuck. Both parties had high hopes of winning this special election, since Santos had successfully flipped the district from the Democrats less than two years ago. In the end, it wasn't even really close -- Suozzi romped to an eight-point victory over his Republican opponent, which will shrink the Republican House majority by one more vote.

It's impossible to say exactly why Suozzi coasted to victory in a race that the polls said would be neck-and-neck, since there were multiple factors at play. Amusingly enough, one big factor was turnout on Election Day, since Democrats successfully convinced many of their voters to vote early while Republicans are still leery of mail-in or other early voting due to Donald Trump spreading conspiracy theories about it all. So when a big snowstorm hit the day of the election, Democrats already had a huge lead banked while Republicans had to struggle with smaller turnout for in-person voting. Which, as we say, we found quite amusing, since the entire Republican Party (by following Trump down this rabbit hole) has been hobbled by the consequences ever since.

But while this might have explained the larger-than-expected margin of victory, and while any election following an epic political scandal usually leans to the opposition party, Suozzi's campaign strategy was also likely a key reason why he won. The district is a wealthy suburban one, which is exactly the type of battleground both parties expect to fight over in November in many other places as well. And the Republican candidate doubled down on making the border and immigration the central part of her campaign, since she figured Democrats are weak on the issue and New Yorkers are tired of the crisis arriving on their doorstep (on buses from Texas).

Suozzi, however, leaned in to one big argument: Republicans talk a good game, but they refuse to do anything to fix the problem. The failure of the compromise deal on border security in the Senate was Exhibit A in this effort, since Republicans essentially forced Democrats to accept a whole bunch of Republican agenda items and then promptly walked away from the deal -- all because Donald Trump wanted to preserve it as a campaign issue. So the entire issue boomeranged on the Republican candidate.

This was not only impressive -- going on offense instead of retreating to a defensive crouch -- but it should make other House Republicans quake in fear over using the issue in their own campaigns. Because now, as Suozzi just proved, Democrats can effectively answer back: "Yeah? So why is your party refusing to do anything about it?"

For showing other Democrats how to accomplish this, for his impressive margin of victory, and for reducing the GOP House majority to the point where the speaker can now only lose two Republican votes to pass purely partisan bills, Representative-Elect Tom Suozzi is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Since he has not yet been sworn in, Representative-Elect Tom Suozzi does not yet have an official House webpage, so you'll have to wait until after February 28th (when he is scheduled to be sworn in) to congratulate him and let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





We find ourselves (astonishingly) not disappointed by Senator Joe Manchin this week, after he just announced out of nowhere that he won't be making a third-party run for the presidency. But we don't exactly have a "Not Disappointed" award, so we just mention it in passing....

In fact, Democrats actually had a pretty good week all around, so yet again we find ourselves without a candidate for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award. Which, as always, is good news indeed!




Volume 740 (2/16/24)

The first comes from Donald Trump, and from just about anyone else on the planet this would give rise to sadness and words of comfort. But, seeing as how it came from Donald Trump, that is absolutely impossible to even imagine. In the midst of a social media rant on why he should in no way be blamed for the Republican loss of a House seat this week -- and without any context to anything else he said in the rant -- Donald Trump interjected a bit of personal pathos, writing (in all-caps, naturally): "I WANT TO BE LOVED!" Make of that what you will.

And secondly, a bit of trolling that wasn't really all that great (but at least he's trying!) came from President Biden this week. On Valentine's Day, Biden's social media accounts sent out his own "Valentine" to House Speaker Mike Johnson. Which was kind of an amusing thing to do, but their message was just a wee bit too clunky to stick the landing: "Roses are red / Violets are blue / The border deal was crushed / Because of you." Um, well... points for effort, maybe?

In any case, as we said we couldn't really make either of those work and decided on seven other talking points this week, so let's just get right to them, shall we?



Ball's in your court...

Hammer this one home -- it scares them.

"Republicans will now have to answer to the voters for why they are refusing to do anything about the southern border or immigration. Senate Republicans came up with a plan to solve at least some of the problems, and Democrats agreed to it but their fellow Republicans shot the idea down -- just so that Donald Trump and the rest of them can campaign on the issue. That's the very definition of partisan obstructionism -- refusing to do anything so you can continue to complain about something. But as the voters in New York just showed us all, the voters are smart enough to figure out who is now to blame. If you refuse to be part of any solution, then you are definitely part of the problem!"



ICE melts

Rub their faces in it, in fact.

"The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is hurting for money right now, but the Republicans voted down their own measure to provide ICE with an extra $6 billion right away. Because they won't now be getting this funding, they are now talking about releasing thousands of immigrants and slashing their capacity to hold detainees -- because they just can't afford to do so. This is exactly the opposite of what Republicans say they want, as it'd mean less enforcement, not more. This is all so Donald Trump can complain about the issue on the campaign trail -- they're going to allow ICE to go broke for partisan political gain. That is cutting off your nose to spite your face, folks."



A Democratic House

Hit them with their worst fear, in fact!

"As Republicans continue to prove that they are absolutely incapable of doing pretty much anything in Congress, the voters are watching. They can't pass a budget, they can't pass bills for America's national security, heck they can't even keep their mouths shut when they get classified military briefings. We need to end the clown show in the House of Representatives and return it to functioning status. It's not going to take many seats flipping to hand control back to the Democrats this November, and as the New York special election showed this week, Democrats have the wind at their backs. I look forward to seeing Hakeem Jeffries sworn in as the next speaker of the House, personally, and I know tens of millions of other Americans feel exactly the same way."



Trump finally facing the music

Indeed, it is about time.

"Donald Trump has skated away from consequences for his entire life, but now he's finally being called to account for his actions. He has now been fined over 440 million dollars, and that's just from the civil court cases he has lost. Soon he'll be back in court facing over 90 criminal felony charges, and the first trial will deal with him paying 'hush money' to an adult film star. For the first time in history, we're going to see an ex-president be judged by a jury of his peers over all the possible crimes he may have committed -- before, during, and after becoming president. I for one say 'It's about time!' because Trump finally facing the music in court is indeed long overdue."



In the words of Oliver Twist...

This one's just pure schadenfreude, but hey, it's been that kind of day.

"My reaction to hearing that Donald Trump lost another court case and has been fined over 350 million dollars can be summed up in the immortal words of Oliver Twist: 'Please sir, I want some more.'"



Seriously, though...

OK, that was a bit much, so we're going to get serious once again here. After Donald Trump had some encouraging words for Russia possibly attacking fellow NATO members, President Biden had a heartfelt response that is worth quoting in full. Because this is precisely the right way to react to such an outrageous statement:





Haley's husband burns Trump from overseas deployment

Trump also badmouthed Nikki Haley's husband recently, implying he had somehow disappeared to leave his wife to campaign on her own (which really should have resulted in a round of "Where's Melania?", but we digress...). Her husband, South Carolina National Guard Major Michael Haley, responded from his overseas posting in Africa by tweeting out a photo of a wolf with an absolutely priceless caption:






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

February 3, 2024

Friday Talking Points -- Rightwing Heads Exploding

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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



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

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



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

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

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





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

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

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




Volume 738 (2/2/24)

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

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

Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly.



An ideological 180

Put Republican hypocrisy on full display.

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



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



From the horse's mouth

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

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



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



White House chimes in

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





Strongest in the world

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





Things are getting better

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

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



Renewable energy taking off

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





Donald Herbert Hoover Trump

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

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




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