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‘The bell of stupidity’: Conservative’s Christmas video lampoons Trump’s latest speech
President Donald Trump was supposed to prioritize the economy at a MAGA rally last week — but instead rambled about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and other familiar foes.
In a Christmas-themed video, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson (a Never Trump conservative former GOP strategist) and journalist Molly Jong-Fast brutally mocked the speech for failing to get the desired economic message across.
Jong-Fast told Wilson, "Let's talk about how positively b----- the whole thing is. It was meant to be a rally on affordability. Here's what was not discussed: affordability. Here's what was discussed: Marjorie Taylor Greene. He calls her Marjorie Traitor Brown."
Wilson, sounding amused, interjected, "And I'm also intrigued by how she's somehow a leftist."
Jong-Fast told the Never Trumper, "It has really been a week for Trump."
Wilson laid out a variety of ways in which Trump and the MAGA movement are having a bad Christmas, from the Epstein files to the economy.
"There is no unringing this bell of stupidity," Wilson told Jong-Fast. "They have f----- it up. They have made a giant mistake."
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Trump Supreme Court battle could be dismantled by Congress members’ own history
New evidence is emerging that could deal a major blow to President Donald Trump's case for stripping birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants.
The president has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restore “the original meaning” of the 14th Amendment, which his lawyers argued in a brief meant that “children of temporary visitors and illegal aliens are not U.S. citizens by birth," but new research raises questions about what lawmakers intended the amendment to do, reported the New York Times.
"One important tool has been overlooked in determining the meaning of this amendment: the actions that were taken — and not taken — to challenge the qualifications of members of Congress, who must be citizens, around the time the amendment was ratified," wrote Times correspondent Adam Liptak.
A new study will be published next month in The Georgetown Law Journal Online examining the backgrounds of the 584 members who served in Congress from 1865 to 1871. That research found more than a dozen of them might not have been citizens under Trump’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment, but no one challenged their qualifications.
"That is, said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia and an author of the study, the constitutional equivalent of the dog that did not bark, which provided a crucial clue in a Sherlock Holmes story," Liptak wrote.
The 14th Amendment states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside," while the Constitution requires members of the House of Representatives to have been citizens for at least seven years, and senators for at least nine.
“If there had been an original understanding that tracked the Trump administration’s executive order,” Frost told Liptak, “at least some of these people would have been challenged.”
Only one of the nine challenges filed against a senator's qualifications in the period around the 14th Amendment's ratification involved the citizenship issue related to Trump's interpretation of birthright citizenship, and that case doesn't support his position.
"Several Democratic senators claimed in 1870 that their new colleague from Mississippi, Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first Black man to serve in Congress, had not been a citizen for the required nine years," Liptak wrote. "They reasoned that the 14th Amendment had overturned Dred Scott, the 1857 Supreme Court decision that denied citizenship to the descendants of enslaved African Americans, just two years earlier and that therefore he would not be eligible for another seven."
"That argument failed," the correspondent added. "No one thought to challenge any other members on the ground that they were born to parents who were not citizens and who had not, under the law in place at the time, filed a declaration of intent to be naturalized."
"The consensus on the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause has long been that everyone born in the United States automatically becomes a citizen with exceptions for those not subject to its jurisdiction, like diplomats and enemy troops," Liptak added.
Frost's research found there were many members of Congress around the time of the ratification of the 14th Amendment who wouldn't have met Trump's definition of a citizen, and she said that fact undercuts the president's arguments.
“If the executive order reflected the original public meaning, which is what the originalists say is relevant,” Frost said, “then somebody — a member of Congress, the opposing party, the losing candidate, a member of the public who had just listened to the ratification debates on the 14th Amendment, somebody — would have raised this.”
‘Birth control is poison’: MAGA group spokeswoman details plan for Trump to win ‘females’
The spokesperson for Charlie Kirk's Turning Point Action group expects Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help former President Donald Trump to win over "females" because she said birth control was "poison" and men in the U.S. "don't have sperm anymore."
During a Tuesday interview, Turning Point's Caitlin Sinclair hailed Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) strategy for the Trump campaign.
"Look, we talk about this gender divide all the time right now, right?" Sinclair told Real America's Voice. "And I think this is the way Donald Trump can get more of the females on board."
Sinclair cited low fertility rates and "the highest numbers of autoimmune conditions in this country, in history."
"So this is how, if you ask me how we can bridge this gender gap and divide," she continued, "this is how Donald Trump can attract more of the female voters who care about all of these issues, care about how birth control is poisoning us, they care about how the men in this country don't have sperm anymore."
ALSO READ: The week Fox News finally faces its reckoning
"So this is my answer to how we can bridge that divide," Sinclair added. "And I am definitely on board MAHA, because, guys, there is no Make America Great Again, there is no MAGA without MAHA."
In a report earlier this year, The Washington Post noted that "prominent conservative commentators have seized upon mistrust of medical professionals, sowing misinformation as a way to discourage the use of birth control."
Watch the video below from Real America's Voice or click the link.
‘Hellscape’: Women increasingly charged with pregnancy-related crimes after Roe’s end
Women are increasingly being charged with pregnancy-related crimes since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that had found a constitutional right to abortion. Abortion bans are playing a role.
A new study, "Pregnancy As a Crime: A Preliminary Report on the First Year After Dobbs," found 210 cases of pregnancy-related crimes were charged in the first year since the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court ruling that rescinded the constitutional right to abortion. That is the largest number of cases in any 12-month period since the year Roe v. Wade was decided.
"Most of the cases identified were in just two states: Alabama and Oklahoma," according to the Associated Press. Essentially half of all cases (104) were charged in just one state: Alabama. Oklahoma ranked second with 68.
"Wendy Bach, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law and one of the lead researchers on the project, said one of the cases was when a woman delivered a stillborn baby at her home about six or seven months into pregnancy," the AP reports. "Bach said that when the woman went to make funeral arrangements, the funeral home alerted authorities and the woman was charged with homicide."
READ MORE: Trump and Vance Face Criminal Charges Over ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a legal historian focusing on abortion at University of California Davis School of Law, told CNN, “Prosecutions of pregnant women for conduct during pregnancy didn’t start with the anti-abortion movement, but they definitely accelerated with the anti-abortion movement.”
Lourdes Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice, the nonprofit organization that released the study, told the AP, “It’s an environment where pregnancy loss is potentially criminally suspect.”
Rivera, speaking to Jezebel, "said the report’s findings reflect how 'post-Dobbs, abortion bans have created a chilling effect, an environment for law enforcement to misapply existing criminal laws and the ideology of fetal personhood' to wrongly criminalize a range of legal behaviors from pregnant people."
Earlier this year the Republican National Committee released its first new platform in eight years. Some media reports claimed it was "softening" on abortion, and some far-right activists blasted the RNC for that stance. But the new platform included language paving the way for what some call fetal personhood, the belief that human life begins at conception and therefore a fertilized egg is immediately conferred the same civil rights as every other person in America.
CNN reports fetal personhood "is at the root of many of the allegations" examined in the Pregnancy Justice report.
“The goal was not just to have these individual people go to prison, it was meant to set a precedent about what fetal rights look like,” Ziegler said. “So going for the easiest target made sense.”
CNN adds that "the data from June 2022 to June 2023 shows that the vast majority of pregnancy-related charges alleged substance use during pregnancy, according to the new report from Pregnancy Justice. In more than half of the cases, substance use was the only allegation made against the defendant."
The vast majority of the defendants were low income, and proof that the fetus was actually harmed was not required for most of the 210 charges.
"About half of cases were in Alabama, where residents voted in 2018 to amend the Constitution to include protections for unborn life and where the state Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos are children and those who destroy them can be held liable for wrongful death," CNN noted.
READ MORE: Trump in Georgia Goes Off-Script, Appears to Call for Assault Weapons Ban
“The People of Alabama have declared the public policy of this State to be that unborn human life is sacred,” Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in his concurring opinion earlier this year. “We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness.”
Pregnancy Justice on social media explained that after the Dobbs decision, "State actors are emboldened, putting pregnant people under INCREASED surveillance and making a dire situation even worse."
Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, and contributing editor for the Atlantic weighed in on Alabama Public Radio's report from the Associated Press.
"Alabama. Elected Tommy Tuberville. Katie Britt. Kay Ivey. A Hellscape of racism and cruelty," Ornstein wrote, referring to the state's Republican freshmen U.S. Senators and longtime Republican governor.
READ MORE: ‘Conditional Adherence’: Speaker Johnson Slammed for Wavering on Certifying 2024 Election
Embattled Republican hires ex-Trump lawyer to probe ‘false smears’ after bombshell report
Mark Robinson, North Carolina's Republican nominee for governor, has reportedly retained a former attorney for Donald Trump to investigate "where and how" comments made on a pornographic website were connected to the candidate.
Robinson hired attorney Jesse Binnall, who worked for Trump's campaign in 2016, WUNC's Colin Campbell first reported Tuesday. The announcement comes following an explosive CNN report that an account linked to Robinson posted comments more than a decade ago on a porn site messaging board in which he defended slavery and called himself a "Black Nazi."
ALSO READ: Inside Trump and Johnson's shocking new bid to suppress women's votes
Robinson said Binnall would "investigate where and how these false smears originated."
The candidate previously refused to allow tech experts to prove he did not make the online posts. He has also threatened to sue CNN.
‘For the life of me I don’t know what he’s talking about’: Trump speech baffles MSNBC host
Even MSNBC host Katy Tur couldn't understand what Donald Trump said during a Monday night rally in Pennsylvania.
"Now we have this stupid stuff where you can vote 45 days early," Trump told his rally attendees. "I wonder what the hell happens during that 45. Let’s move — see these votes? We’ve got about a million votes in there. Let’s move them. We’re fixing the air conditioner in the room, right?"
He continued: "No, it’s terrible. What happened the last time was disgraceful, including right here. But we’re not going to let it happen again. You know too big to rig, right? That’s one way you do it."
Read also: Just say it: Trump has dementia
After showing the clip, Tur confessed, "For the life of me, I don't know what he's talking about when he mentions air conditioning in that soundbite."
Trump urged his voters to cast their ballots early, then claimed that early voting is "a scam," Tur explained.
NBC News senior political editor Mark Murray told Tur that at least 51 percent of voters intend to cast ballots early either in person or by mail, according to the latest polls from their network.
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New lawsuit against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs from woman who discovered he filmed her assault
Attorney Gloria Allred revealed that she is filing a lawsuit against rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs from one of his accusers, who only recently learned there was a video of her alleged rape.
According to the filing posted by judicial reporter Meghann Cuniff, Thalia Graves is suing Combs along with his companies, alleging that Combs and bodyguard Joseph Sherman "viciously raped her at the Bad Boy Records studio in New York."
Cuniff was one of the employees at the studio and was "lure[d]" into a meeting with the two men, the lawsuit alleges. Once "sequestered," the men gave her "a drink, likely laced with a drug that eventually caused her briefly to lose consciousness." When she woke she was "bound and restrained."
Read Also: 'A fantasy of manhood': Are frat boys the new Proud Boys?
The filing says that the two men "brutally sexually abused and violated" her. Combs, in particular, "raped her, anally and vaginally" while Sherman "slapped her, and repeatedly thrust" himself "into her mouth."
The complaint explains that Graves was suicidal and has suffered anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and "lives in fear of the defendants."
It wasn't until Nov. 27, 2023, that she learned that Combs and Sherman videotaped the "horrific rape 22 years before and had shown the video to multiple men, seeking to publicly degrade and humiliate both Plaintiff and her boyfriend."
Combs has been federally indicted on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. He denies the charges.
— (@)
‘What a shame’: Observers pounce on ‘mass resignation’ of Mark Robinson’s campaign staff
Embattled gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson reportedly suffered another blow on Sunday after a "mass resignation" of his staff.
Robinson has been under fire since a recent CNN report exposed purported comments the North Carolina GOP candidate allegedly made on a porn site many years ago. The report claimed that Robinson had identified himself as a "Black Nazi," as well as a "perv." Earlier Sunday, the North Carolina Republican Party incurred the wrath of conservative columnist Kathleen Parker for surprisingly continuing to back Robinson despite the avalanche of revelations.
Later in the day, Emmy-winning reporter Michael Hyland reported that Robinson's senior adviser, campaign manager, finance director, and deputy campaign manager "have all resigned."
ALSO READ: The simple yet powerful way Tim Walz just exposed Donald Trump
The campaign itself spun the resignation as "staff changes" that it was announcing.
“I appreciate the efforts of these team members who have made the difficult choice to step away from the campaign, and I wish them well in their future endeavors. I look forward to announcing new staff roles in the coming days,” the Robinson campaign news release said.
Aaron Fritschner, Virginia communications for Vice President Kamala Harris and a former Democratic House aide, said, "'Announces staff changes' to break a mass resignation is an all-timer press release header."
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg said in response, "North Carolina GOP is melting down."
Former Michigan Republican operative Jeff Timmer replied, "What a shame."
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‘The bell of stupidity’: Conservative’s Christmas video lampoons Trump’s latest speech
President Donald Trump was supposed to prioritize the economy at a MAGA rally last week — but instead rambled about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and other familiar foes.
In a Christmas-themed video, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson (a Never Trump conservative former GOP strategist) and journalist Molly Jong-Fast brutally mocked the speech for failing to get the desired economic message across.
Jong-Fast told Wilson, "Let's talk about how positively b----- the whole thing is. It was meant to be a rally on affordability. Here's what was not discussed: affordability. Here's what was discussed: Marjorie Taylor Greene. He calls her Marjorie Traitor Brown."
Wilson, sounding amused, interjected, "And I'm also intrigued by how she's somehow a leftist."
Jong-Fast told the Never Trumper, "It has really been a week for Trump."
Wilson laid out a variety of ways in which Trump and the MAGA movement are having a bad Christmas, from the Epstein files to the economy.
"There is no unringing this bell of stupidity," Wilson told Jong-Fast. "They have f----- it up. They have made a giant mistake."
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Trump Supreme Court battle could be dismantled by Congress members’ own history
New evidence is emerging that could deal a major blow to President Donald Trump's case for stripping birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants.
The president has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restore “the original meaning” of the 14th Amendment, which his lawyers argued in a brief meant that “children of temporary visitors and illegal aliens are not U.S. citizens by birth," but new research raises questions about what lawmakers intended the amendment to do, reported the New York Times.
"One important tool has been overlooked in determining the meaning of this amendment: the actions that were taken — and not taken — to challenge the qualifications of members of Congress, who must be citizens, around the time the amendment was ratified," wrote Times correspondent Adam Liptak.
A new study will be published next month in The Georgetown Law Journal Online examining the backgrounds of the 584 members who served in Congress from 1865 to 1871. That research found more than a dozen of them might not have been citizens under Trump’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment, but no one challenged their qualifications.
"That is, said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia and an author of the study, the constitutional equivalent of the dog that did not bark, which provided a crucial clue in a Sherlock Holmes story," Liptak wrote.
The 14th Amendment states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside," while the Constitution requires members of the House of Representatives to have been citizens for at least seven years, and senators for at least nine.
“If there had been an original understanding that tracked the Trump administration’s executive order,” Frost told Liptak, “at least some of these people would have been challenged.”
Only one of the nine challenges filed against a senator's qualifications in the period around the 14th Amendment's ratification involved the citizenship issue related to Trump's interpretation of birthright citizenship, and that case doesn't support his position.
"Several Democratic senators claimed in 1870 that their new colleague from Mississippi, Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first Black man to serve in Congress, had not been a citizen for the required nine years," Liptak wrote. "They reasoned that the 14th Amendment had overturned Dred Scott, the 1857 Supreme Court decision that denied citizenship to the descendants of enslaved African Americans, just two years earlier and that therefore he would not be eligible for another seven."
"That argument failed," the correspondent added. "No one thought to challenge any other members on the ground that they were born to parents who were not citizens and who had not, under the law in place at the time, filed a declaration of intent to be naturalized."
"The consensus on the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause has long been that everyone born in the United States automatically becomes a citizen with exceptions for those not subject to its jurisdiction, like diplomats and enemy troops," Liptak added.
Frost's research found there were many members of Congress around the time of the ratification of the 14th Amendment who wouldn't have met Trump's definition of a citizen, and she said that fact undercuts the president's arguments.
“If the executive order reflected the original public meaning, which is what the originalists say is relevant,” Frost said, “then somebody — a member of Congress, the opposing party, the losing candidate, a member of the public who had just listened to the ratification debates on the 14th Amendment, somebody — would have raised this.”
