Donald Trump has now repeated publicly that if a NATO country is delinquent on its dues, that he would not only refuse to aid that country, but would allow (and even encourage) Russia to do whatever they want with that country.
I just want to point out that Trump is notorious for stiffing people who have worked for him. Maybe we should encourage people to whom Trump owes money and are delinquent, to do whatever they want to Trump.
Also, is there any doubt that Trump is a pawn of Putin? The news media reported that Trump ordered Republicans to kill the bipartisan border measure, so he could campaign against Biden. But the same bill included aid to Ukraine so they could defend themselves against Russia. Has anyone in the media noted that maybe Putin wanted that bill to fail?
You know, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show was one of the biggest things that convinced me to start writing this political humor blog. And now, close to 9 years since Stewart walked away from that role, he is returning to doing what he does best. However, he is only going to be hosting the show on Mondays. Luckily, he is executive producer of the show, and since it is still called “The Daily Show”, there will be other people hosting on days that are not Monday.
Republican supporters of Donald Trump created the meme of “Dark Brandon” to attack Joe Biden. But Biden and his administration liked the meme so much they adopted it as their own. So they are continuing to lean into the meme in hilarious fashion. Here are some “Dark Brandon” signs that sprouted during the third Republican debate on Nov 8, 2023:
My last post was about Republicans going nuts and claiming that the Super Bowl was rigged in the KC Chiefs’ favor by the “deep state” so that Taylor Swift and her boyfriend Travis Kelce could endorse Biden during the game. Alas, even though Kelce and the Chiefs won the game, there was no endorsement.
But that didn’t stop Dark Brandon (aka, Joe Biden complete with laser eyes) from having fun with the situation by posting this to X-Twitter after the game:
The MAGA-sphere is having a full-on meltdown hissy fit about Taylor Swift, who had the audacity to encourage young people to vote. How Dare She!!!
I would write more about this, but Brian Tyler Cohen does an excellent job in his thorough video “Taylor Swift sends Fox hosts into Meltdown”. It is less than 10 minutes long — watch it!
Today was a very bad day for Republican politicians. Here’s a few things that happened:
Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chair of the RNC, announced she will step down later this month. Since she became the chair in 2017, the Republicans have done poorly in 3 elections, including losing a presidential election, and is doing terribly in fundraising. So you might think she is leaving because she is doing a bad job. But no, the reason she is leaving is because Donald Trump has been badmouthing her, and last weekend announced about her, “I would say right now, there’ll probably be some changes made.” But as you might guess, McDaniel is not the problem, Trump is the problem.
Trump has completely taken control of the Republican party, and McDaniel does whatever Trump tells her to do. And of course, when Trump fails, it is always someone else’s fault. So the Republicans are going to get some new RNC chair right in the middle of a presidential election.
Next, as you probably already know, Trump ordered GOP Senators to kill the bipartisan bill to fix the immigration problems at the Southern border. The only reason he did this was because he can’t stand for Biden to have any “wins“. As a result, everyone now knows that Trump doesn’t want to fix the border, he just wants to use it to score political points. It is likely that this will backfire, since even Republicans are condemning it.
Next up, the House Republicans decided to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas today for not doing his job to protect the southern border, but they miscounted how many votes they had, and the impeachment failed. So not only did they fail to pass the bipartisan bill to fix the immigration problems, their hypocritical attempt to blame it on Mayorkas failed.
But wait, there’s more! The Republicans insisted that funding for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan be included in the immigration bill. But they just torpedoed that bill, so instead they brought up a bill that only included funding for Israel. You guessed it — that bill also failed. Which is a big loss for Trump because he loves strongmen like Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
Last, but not least, an appeals court slammed Trump down today, pointing out that being president does not mean that Trump is immune from criminal prosecution. That means that Trump can be tried (and convicted) of the Jan 6 insurrection. May he rot in jail.
Republicans demanded changes to US border policies before they would pass any aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Which is crazy, since the two things aren’t related. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Match McConnell (R-KY) only reluctantly tied the two because of House right-wing radicals.
I guess Donald Trump couldn’t imagine our gridlocked Congress would be able to solve all these problems. However, a group of Senate negotiators managed to close in on a deal last week, largely because Democrats removed their demands for a path to legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants. So what does Donald Trump do? He fires up social media and demands that the deal be killed. Why? Because Trump refuses to give Biden any win, even if it is a bipartisan win. Trump wants the credit for solving the border crisis.
Even Republicans are furious. Senator James Lankford (R-OK), who is the lead negotiator said, “There are some people that oppose the bill, based on the presidential politics issue, rather than the crisis that’s actually occurring at the border.”
Another GOP Senator said that efforts to disrupt the ongoing negotiations are “tragic” and “I hope no one is trying to take this away for campaign purposes”.
And another Republican Senator, who refused to be named for fear of retaliation from Trump, said, “This proposal would have had almost unanimous Republican support if it weren’t for Donald Trump.”
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said “I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling. But the reality is that, that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved. as opposed to saying, ‘hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later’.”
Or who knows? Maybe Putin asked Trump to kill the aid to Ukraine for him. I wouldn’t put it past Trump. And in fact, endangering our country for political reasons is just as bad. There’s a name for that, and it starts with “traitor”.
UPDATE: Electoral Vote points out that Trump is using the same playbook as Richard Nixon. When Nixon was running for president in 1968 against then VP Hubert Humphrey, Nixon sabotaged LBJ’s peace talks in Vietnam, to make it appear that the Democrats were incapable of ending the unpopular war. The treachery worked and Nixon won, and we all know what happened after that.
There are a couple of ways in which Trump’s treachery differs from Nixon’s. First of all, Trump’s belief that he can solve the border crisis is nonsense. Trump had four (long) years to solve the border crisis and he not only failed, his plan — to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it — was doomed from the start because Mexico never agreed to it, and the few walls that were built were easily subverted by simple ladders and underground tunnels.
Second of all, Nixon’s treachery succeeded because there was no proof that Nixon ordered it. In fact, it took 50 years before Nixon’s Presidential Library finally opened papers proving what happened. In Trump’s case, it took only a few hours for everyone to know that blowhard idiot Trump sabotaged the bill, and did it for his own benefit. Which pissed off many Republicans and gave strong evidence for the Democrats to use against Trump. And if Republicans capitulate to Trump and sink the bill (which is likely), it will also provide strong evidence for the Democrats to use against those GOP politicians who are running for re-election.
Iowa is a small, overwhelmingly white, evangelical state, which forces it’s population of rural farmers and pig ropers to go out on an invariably freezing winter night, where they invariably pick losers. I mean, Rick Santorum? Mike Huckabee? Heck, they didn’t even pick Donald Trump in 2016, and decided that Ted Cruz (who everyone hates) would be their choice.
They don’t stop with the winner either. In this year’s caucus, they got the other choices wrong, with Ron DeSantis dropping out immediately after the caucus picked him for second place.
And that was just the Republicans. Remember, that we still don’t know who won the Iowa Democratic caucus from 4 years ago (but we do know that it wasn’t Joe Biden).
I console myself by pretending that this absolutely guarantees that Trump will go down in flames, becoming a punchline for a joke that isn’t even remotely funny.
I actually believe that Donald Trump is guilty of absolutely obvious insurrection, and is not eligible to hold the office of president. The evidence is overwhelming. Anyone who says “it isn’t illegal if the president does it” is full of shit. Is there anyone sane who doesn’t know that Trump tried repeatedly to overthrow the government? Even his MAGA followers?
I actually think that what Trump did is much worse than our civil war! Think about it. The South wanted to succeed from the USA. The North could have just let them, and avoided a terrible war. Now, even though the Constitution says nothing about (for or against) secession, there are reasonable arguments that states cannot unilaterally secede. But that is not what we are talking about here. Trump repeatedly tried to subvert the Constitution. Including encouraging people to use violence to keep himself in power, against the Constitution.
Trump keeps claiming that the election was stolen, but there is absolutely no evidence of that. There is more evidence that Trump knows that he lost the election, than evidence that the election was stolen from him. Heck, there might even be more evidence that the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary Clinton (I’m not claiming that it was), or that the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore.
I’m tired of people claiming that what Trump has done is not insurrection. I totally agree with the Maine Secretary of State, who says she had no choice. The Constitution doesn’t say that the voters get to decide whether or not Trump engaged in insurrection. It also doesn’t say that Trump is above the law. Several insurrectionists testified in their trials that they stormed the Capitol because they understood that Trump told them to do that, and to “fight like hell”. And when they did, Trump refused to tell them to stand down.
Not to mention the hypocrisy of just about everything Trump says.
It looks like The House will finally vote to expel “George Santos” from Congress, despite the fact that it is likely that he will be replaced by a Democrat. But that just shows Republican hypocrisy, as they still solidly support Donald Trump as President, despite Trump’s insurrection, lies, fraud, and other crimes. The reason they are expelling Santos is because he isn’t popular, and is making the GOP look bad.
They know Trump is a nut-job, as many of them have explicitly said in the past. For example, Governor Chris Sununu (R-NH), who just yesterday said he would vote for Trump if he is the GOP primary winner, despite previously saying that Trump is “fucking crazy”. Not to mention all the flip-flopping Lindsey Graham has done between castigating Trump and promoting him.
