Failed one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump is hinting that if indeed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) runs against him for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he will destroy him by using whatever dirt he has.
The Wall Street Journalreports that Trump was speaking with journalists on the flight back from a rally he held in Miami when the topic of the Florida governor came up, leading the disgraced ex-president to remark:
“There’s our competitor, he’s a fine guy.”
But Trump’s tone soon turned dark and ominous as he mused about a possible 2024 run for the White House by DeSantis:
“If he runs, he runs. If he did run, I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife, who is really running his campaign.”
Journal reporter Alex Leary also noted:
Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. DeSantis in his 2018 run for governor, lifting the tea party-styled congressman in a Republican primary over establishment favorite Adam Putnam. Mr. DeSantis went on to barely win the general election but Covid-19 helped turn him into a GOP darling as he eventually eschewed lockdowns and downplayed vaccine mandates. Mr. DeSantis has broken gubernatorial fundraising records nationally, pulling in some $200 million. The governor didn’t ask for Mr. Trump’s endorsement this time and nor did Mr. Trump formally offer one.
What sort of unflattering things might Trump be referring to? Well, there is the matter of DeSantis’ Italian-American heritage, which has led to rumors that he might have connections to organized crime. And there are also whispers about a possible sexual scandal that could be hiding in the governor’s past, though no one seems to know exactly what that might entail.
Of course, when one is dealing with Trump, it also pays to consider that he often says things just to start people chattering. After all, he’s a pathological liar and deeply insecure, needing to feel superior to others in order to mask his own faults, which are seemingly endless.
In other words, if DeSantis does indeed decided to challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination, he’d better watch his back and make sure there are no skeletons waiting to trip him up with the Donald’s help.
For almost a year now political pundits and pollsters have suggested that the 2022 midterm election will be disastrous for Democrats across the country.
But the number of ballots already cast in early voting shows that Democrats are trouncing the GOP in three key states: Georgia, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
During a panel discussion Monday on MSNBC, host Joy Reid told Nicolle Wallace that voters were sickened by the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and seeing the Supreme Court take away a woman’s right to make her reproductive choices.
“Women just don’t get over the idea that they no longer own their bodies. That’s not something that they say, ‘Hey, you know, I wish milk was a little cheaper. I’ll probably get over it.’ That isn’t something that happens. So, when I look at the electorate and the way that campaigns are looking at it, they’re saying, can Republicans catch up to that 4 million vote lead on Election Day? Because that’s when they are voting.”
That led Wallace to note that she doesn’t trust polls showing Republicans with the lead over their Democratic rivals:
“I think it’s unknowable. Because I think if you don’t trust your Apple watch to track your period, you’re not responding to a pollster about how, whether you care a lot or not at all. It doesn’t answer the question. I don’t know if you’re taking those calls anymore, if you are that kind of voter. I also think that this idea that the Dobbs vote peaked early — it’s 50 years of precedent overturned! You don’t get over it, in like 12 weeks.”
One thing that will definitely happen if the GOP doesn’t win big in the midterms: They’ll claim the election was stolen from them and try to overturn the results in court. But as we saw in 2020, that’s not going to be a winning strategy and will only further antagonize the majority of voters who don’t buy Republican conspiracy theories.
On Sunday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk got his feelings hurt by comedian Kathy Griffin, so he suspended her account despite his claims of restoring free speech on the social media platform he purchased for $44 billion 10 days ago.
NBC News reports that Griffin dared to mock Musk, which led him to take the action.
Comedian Kathy Griffin’s Twitter account was suspended Sunday, the same day she changed her page’s title to “Elon Musk” and mocked the new CEO.
It wasn’t clear whether the suspension was permanent or a direct result of her mockery. It came as Musk announced that accounts that impersonate celebrities and other notables would be prohibited unless they’re labeled “parody.”
Others were also booted from the site for impersonating.
Here are the verified two accounts that I’ve seen suspended for impersonating someone other than Elon Musk:
– Someone impersonating right-wing provocateur Andy Ngo, who appealed to Musk personally
Griffin, however, got the last work on Musk’s suspension of her account in a novel way, according to HuffPost.
She then resurrected her deceased mother’s account to proclaim “Free Kathy” and trigger a war of words with the world’s richest man.
On her late mother’s account, Griffin went after Musk, verbally eviscerating him and his new “policy” of suspending all accounts that impersonate others but fail to carry a warning that they’re “parody.”
Musk later tweeted that Griffin could have her account back, but she’d have to pay $8 a month. It remains to be seen if anyone on the face of the planet will go along Musk’s attempt to extort money from Twitter users.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee (led by Ohio’s Jim Jordan) told the media on Friday that they would be releasing a “1000-page report” documenting the alleged politicization of the Justice Department and FBI.
And yet, when the report came out and was examined by Philip Bump of The Washington Post, it soon became clear that Jordan had just dumped a massive nothing burger that was little more than attachments, letters, and other worthless information that has been public knowledge for months.
News broke early Friday: The Republican minority on the House Judiciary Committee was releasing a “1,000 Page Report” on alleged politicization of the FBI and the Justice Department. The length was mentioned in the group’s tweet and in its press release, reinforcing the heft that 1,000 pages of documentation would obviously convey.
There’s just one problem with this assertion: The report itself was less than 50 pages. Most of the rest of the document was letters sent by the minority members of the committee to various people. In fact, there were more than 1,000 pages of material that wasn’t the report itself, instead mostly those letters.
Included were pages with nothing but signatures on the letters: There were more than seven times as many pages that had nothing of substance on them except signatures than there were pages in the report.
Letters. Signatures. A 50-page missive that had been hyped as a giant tome that would blow the lid off the DOJ.
As Bump notes, the entire thing was laughable and suggests just how desperately Republicans are clutching at straws in the final days before next week’s midterm election.
Here’s a graph breaking down what was in the ballyhooed report:
Impressive, huh? A lot of fluff and not much actual content.
And a quick fact-check by The Post also put a serious dent in the report’s credibility.
This is an intentional tactic, of course. Conservative media outlets like the Daily Caller (“ ‘Rotted At Its Core’: House Judiciary GOP Releases Massive 1,000-Page Report On Alleged FBI Misconduct”) and Fox News (“House Republicans release 1,000-page report alleging politicization in the FBI, DOJ”) included the purported length of the document in their article headlines. The idea is that the Judiciary Republicans either have 1,000 pages of analysis to share with the country or, at least, 1,000 pages of evidence to bolster their claims. At most, they have about two dozen.
So what exactly did we learn Friday as a result of Jim Jordan’s pathetic bid for attention and relevance? That the GOP is running (yet again) on lies and misinformation. It’s all they have.
During a rally in Sioux City, Iowa on Thursday evening, disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached ex-president Donald Trump seemed to suggest that his children are “horrible” and don’t deserve to inherit a dime from him, providing that he still has any money left when he leaves this world.
Campaigning for GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley and Gov. Kim Reynolds, Trump went on a riff about the estate tax (which he called the “death tax”), saying he had virtually eliminated it while in the White House.
“So that now, when you pass away, you can leave — if you like your child, I always say, if you don’t like, leave it to charity. “Some of us have horrible children.”
The former president then asked attendees:
“Do you have horrible children?. Does anybody have, like a child, where you really are not going to leave your farm?”
Ironically, Trump’s remarks came the same day that MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted the ex-president’s lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James may have been filed so he can keep his plan of succession secret.
“The lawsuit accuses N.Y. A.G. Tish James of pursuing him for political reasons, rhetoric heard before. So beyond smearing James, what’s the real purpose of the lawsuit?
“The Trust is the ultimate owner of the various entities that comprise the Trump Organization. But it is also more. As Trump himself notes in this new lawsuit, ‘The Trust contains his private estate plan and present decisions regarding the disposition of his assets upon death.’ And he is hellbent on ensuring that New York’s attorney general — and by extension, the public — don’t learn about that plan or the true state of his assets.”
Indeed, if Trump’s after-death estate plans became public, it might well give some in his family all the incentive they need to cooperate with prosecutors such as James.
The Donald’s comments set off weaves of speculation, laughter, and mockery on social media.
