Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) whined today that judicial nominees being sent to the Senate by President Joe Biden for confirmation are too left wing and liberal to gain his vote, but his complaints were quickly fact-checked by a reporter who reminded him that many of the judges nominated by former president Donald Trump were so inferior that their own peers considered them to be unqualified for service on the bench.
According to Jen Bendery of Huffington Post, Cruz began by saying Biden’s nominees were “extreme!”
Ted Cruz to reporters: Biden's judges are "extreme!"
Me: Lots of Trump's judges were unqualified.
Cruz: "Ackchyually, the caliber of judges that Trump nominated was exceptional."
Me: Ten were rated "not qualified" to be judges by ABA. Zero of Biden's.
She then used facts to swat down the Texas Republican.
Let's look at some of those unqualified judges that Ted Cruz supported.
There was Steven Grasz, who earned an embarrassing and unanimous “not qualified” rating for being “unable to separate his role as an advocate from that of a judge." https://t.co/D5qDcLQDe3
There was also Jonathan Kobes, 44, who earned a “not qualified” rating because he didn't have the experience and “was unable to provide sufficient writing samples of the caliber required” of a U.S. circuit judge. He could not write, folks. https://t.co/hm2oMi0tZf
Ted Cruz also voted to confirm Lawrence VanDyke to be a federal judge, a guy whose *own colleagues* described him as “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-today practice including procedural rules.” https://t.co/iJseTKPUw0
Those are just some of Trump's TEN unqualified judges who the GOP confirmed anyway.
An unqualified rating is otherwise rare.
And Cruz's claim that ABA is simply partisan goes out the window every time GOP senators celebrate one of their nominees getting a positive ABA rating.
Those are specifically Trump's court picks who actually got confirmed.
Here's a sampling of some who were even too crazy for Republicans to support. In the world of judicial nominations, it was a RIDE during the Trump years. pic.twitter.com/UsLJEt06Xd
He is referring to Judge Dale Ho, a longtime voting rights lawyer, who said in his confirmation hearing that a comment he made about being a “wild-eyed sort of leftist” of how others may have described him, but not how he sees himself.
Ted Cruz loves to try and present himself as some sort of great legal mind because he earned his law degree at Harvard. But he’s really not all that bright. He’s also a habitual liar and so blatantly partisan that he can’t admit when he’s wrong.
But today, Teddy got hit with a giant dose of facts and karma. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving douchebag.
You probably recall that Trump White House policy adviser Stephen Miller was one of the principal architects of the administration’s cruel immigration policy which separated children from their parents and placed them into internment caps that echoed the dark history of the United States when we placed Japanese Americans in similar housing after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
If Donald Trump happens to win another term in office, Miller is expected to once again be a top adviser to Trump, perhaps even being appointed as chief of staff, which is a truly frightening thought.
Citing recent reports that a second Trump administration would feature mass deportations and massive holding camps for immigrants, MSNBC host Joy Reid noted Monday evening, “Much of what Donald Trump wants in a second term is no secret at all. The Project 2025 collection of policy proposals to give him all sorts of dictatorial powers has been in the works for years now, with the help of the Heritage Foundation.”
That’s when Reid tagged Miller with a devastating new nickname: “The white nationalist Dracula,” adding that it was Miller who devised the “draconian and cruel Trump immigration policies like the Muslim ban and separating immigrant children from their families and putting them in cages.”
“That Stephen Miller,” she added, “has even more disgusting, racist immigration plans for a second Trump term.”
The white nationalist Dracula. That’s perfect, and it certainly fits Miller, who belongs in prison with his former boss.
A note that former president Donald Trump angrily ripped up in the days before the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection is likely to be the key piece of evidence that will prove Trump’s guilt in the plot to illegally overturn the 2020 election, according to former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
The torn-up note features prominently in a new book from ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, and it confirms previous testimony presented to the House Select Committee that investigated Jan. 6.
Karl’s book was discussed on “Deadline: White House” Monday, and the issue of the note, in which top Army leaders said the military could not get involved in election issues, led Weissmann to note, “That note gets ripped up into pieces so no one could find it.”
Weissmann also explained why the note is so important in proving Trump’s role in the Capitol insurrection.
“As much of you think of it as a military organization with a hierarchy, they are also trained they do not violate the Constitution. And when there’s an invalid order, they cannot follow it because the Constitution comes first.
“So, to me, this is right to the heart of Donald Trump brushing up against one guardrail.”
Additionally, Weissmann said other evidence also points to how Trump and his top aides were planning to subvert the will of the voters in 2020.
“I have always been fascinated by the fact you had had the Defense Department and [Gen. Mark] Milley, with a lot going on behind the scenes, pushing back because you can’t engage in a coup without military backing. And the fact that Kash Patel was there, a figure with no military expertise whatsoever, and was installed there, to me, is always this unwritten story about what was happening.”
Should a man who wanted to turn the United States into a dictatorship be allowed near the White House again? No. And that’s why his prosecution and eventual conviction for that crime is so important if this country and our representative democracy are to survive.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre schooled Fox correspondent Peter Doocy during the daily press briefing today, and while he tried to suggest the Biden administration hasn’t been vocal condemning anti-Israel demonstrations in the United States, Jean-Pierre made it clear he was wrong and trying to push a narrative that simply doesn’t exist.
Doocy began by asking, “Does President Biden think the anti-Israel protesters in this country are extremists?”
The press secretary responded, “What I can say is that we’ve been very clear about this,” Jean-Pierre explained. “When it comes to anti-Semitism, there is no place. We have to make sure that we speak against it very loud and be very clear about that.”
Jean-Pierre then added that Biden had decided in large part to run in 2020 after seeing white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia as they chanted, “Jews will not replace us!”
“He saw neo-Nazis marching down the streets of Charlottesville with vile, anti-Semitic hatred.”
Doocy, however, wasn’t content with that answer, so he continued to push:
“We hear you guys talk about extremists all the time. It is usually about MAGA extremists. So what about these protesters who are making Jewish students feel unsafe on college campuses? Are they extremists?”
Jean-Pierre reiterated that the administration was “calling out any form of hate.”
“Does President Biden look at these anti-Israel protests on college campuses and think it’s nice to see that the country’s youth are so involved, or does he think the next generation is doomed?” Doocy asked.
“Here’s the thing, there’s no place for hate in America,” Jean-Pierre replied, only to be interrupted by Doocy.
That’s when the press secretary dropped the hammer on Doocy.
“No, no, no, no. I’m telling you! There’s no place for hate in America, and we condemn any anti-Semitic threat or incident in the strongest terms.”
That’s a stark contrast with failed one-term former president Donald Trump, who insisted there were “very fine people” on both sides of what transpired in Charlottesville.
There is no such thing as a “fine” anti-Semite, bigot, or racist. They’re a stain on this country and they deserve to be called out and shamed in the strongest terms possible.
A 2017 meeting failed former president Donald Trump held in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, is once again in the spotlight as questions about how Israel could have been so unprepared for the Hamas terror attack are being raised, with some suggesting that intelligence data Trump shared with the two Russians may have found its way into the hands of Iran, which passed it along to Hamas to aid their planning of the deadly assault launched from the Gaza Strip.
Israel, we later learned, was the source of that intelligence, as NBC noted in May 2017:
The link to Israel was first reported by the New York Times a day after it was disclosed that Trump gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov intelligence about a laptop bomb threat and revealed the Syrian city where the information was collected.
And now Senior White House Communications Adviser Andrew Bates is hinting that Trump may have been partially responsible for the Hamas attack that has left over 1,000 Israelis dead.
According to Mediaite, Bates made the claim in response to a Twitter post from former Trump administration official Stephen Miller.
Stephen just made news by apparently telling on what the definition of “lid” meant during the “executive time” administration.
Soon there was a deluge of discussion and accusation on Twitter.
I’m guessing, but:
– Trump sharing Israeli intel with Russia – Photos of intel in the MAL shitter – Trump’s general disregard for intel – Trump’s efforts to discredit intel agencies,
probably cooled intel sharing with the US from Israel and the Five Eyes. https://t.co/uj2Lcs45Ej
Does anyone one think that Trump showing Classified Israeli Intelligence to Lavrov in the Oval Office played any part in the Intelligence failure that led to the horrors were now witnessing?
It’s important to note that at the moment there is no direct evidence the information Trump shared with the two Russians was used to plan the Hamas attack on Israel, but shouldn’t there at least be congressional investigations into the matter? And if a link can be proven, what additional crimes should Donald Trump be charged with?
