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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.”
Top Democrat says J.D. Vance causing ‘surge’ in new democratic volunteers and donors
GOP vice presidential candidate and Ohio Senator JD Vance is responsible for a "surge" of new Democratic Party donors and volunteers, the House minority whip said on Monday.
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) was interviewed on CNN Monday morning by Kate Bolduan about the November election. During her interview, she talked about what voters "in purple, red and blue districts" thought about Vance.
"They don't trust JD Vance to order doughnuts. They certainly don't trust him to order American families on if, when and how they can have children. So we're seeing a surge of volunteers, a surge of first time donors, and we know that Kamala Harris is the underdog going into this, but momentum remains on her side," Clark said.
READ MORE: ‘Bullying Needs to Stop’ Says Ex-Beauty Pageant Winner After JD Vance Refuses to Apologize
The line about ordering doughnuts refers to an August stop by Vance to Holt's Sweet Shop in Valdosta, Georgia that was broadcast by C-SPAN and went viral. In the awkward clip, Vance ends up asking for "just whatever makes sense," instead of ordering a specific type of doughnut. Vance later expressed sympathy for the doughnut shop clerk who served him in an interview with NBC News.
“I just felt terrible for that woman,” Vance said. “We walked in, and there’s 20 Secret Service agents, and there’s 15 cameras, and she clearly had not been properly warned, and she was terrified, right? I just felt awful for her.
"We don’t want to have these scripted events — I don’t want to go and do three takes of buying Doritos at a Sheetz. I like to get out there and talk to people, and we want to make sure we’re doing it but definitely make sure that people are at least OK with being on camera, or we’re going to walk in and you’re going to have a person who has, practically, a panic attack because she’s got 15 cameras in her face.”
Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign has made headlines for the amount of funding it's raised. During August alone, her campaign raised three times more money than former President Donald Trump's campaign, according to the Guardian. And in July, at the very start of the Harris campaign, over 170,000 volunteers joined with her, according to Axios.
Current polling shows Harris and Trump in a dead heat. A New York Times poll published Monday shows Trump leading Harris by only 1%, with 48% of polled voters saying they'd pick the former president.
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Trump tried to get DOJ to go after Saturday Night Live for mocking him: report
A new report from Rolling Stone claims that former President Donald Trump wanted to use the United States Department of Justice to go after late-night comedians who made fun of him.
In a lengthy report on Trump's second-term ambitions, sources told the publication that Trump believed that comedians who mocked him on television were guilty of giving what amounted to illegal campaign contributions to Democrats.
"As president, Trump briefly attempted to get Justice officials to twist campaign finance laws and the federal equal-time rule to declare that anti-Trump material broadcast by Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and others was somehow illegal," the publication writes.
"During his 2024 campaign, according to a source with direct knowledge, Trump has raised this topic again, venting about the need to punish late-night comedians for giving “illegal” campaign contributions to the Democratic Party — in the form of jokes and on-air satire."
ALSO READ: The 8 ways Project 2025 will devastate your life: NY Times
While career officials at the DOJ ignored these orders from Trump during his first term, the publication notes that they could actually become a reality should Trump win a second term given how much his allies have worked to weed out anyone who might be disloyal to his agenda.
“There are no guardrails,” Yale scholar Jason Stanley told Rolling Stone of Trump. “He already has control of any institutions that might stop him.”
‘Super weird’: TMZ’s new pictures of J.D. Vance in a swimming pool prompt ridicule
J.D. Vance was recently photographed by TMZ swimming at a luxury resort with his t-shirt on, prompting laughter from the Republican vice presidential candidate's critics on social media.
Over the weekend, the celebrity news source published a report entitled, "J.D. Vance Beats Heat in S.D. Swimming Pool ... Wears Shirt Into Water."
"J.D. Vance is trying to beat the heat down in sunny San Diego ... jumping in a swimming pool -- but, don't think you're getting a glimpse at his bare torso," the outlet reported Saturday. "The Republican VP candidate went for a dip at The Lodge at Torrey Pines Saturday ... a luxury resort in La Jolla -- hopping in the pool with his shirt still on."
ALSO READ: Buckle up: Win or lose, Trump promises potential scenarios of violence
Former prosecutor Ron Filipkowski said, "Weirdo wore his shirt in the pool."
Actor Bruno Amato replied, "....and for that we should be grateful."
Life coach Pete Quily chimed in:
"Wow. Pro Trump TMZ shows this. I know JD is very creepy and weird. But why does he keep escalating the weirdness? Does the far right extremist have far right tattoos he’s covering up?"
Ret. U.S. Army medic Molly Ploofkins also said the visual was "WEIRD."
"J.D. Vance, surrounded by Secret Service with the pool to himself, goes swimming with his shirt on at the luxury La Jolla Hotel," she added.
Comedian Jay Black said, "I mean, we ALL knew that JD Vance was a wear-his-shirt-in-the-pool guy, even before we knew it, like some Jungian imagery in our collective unconscious, right?"
Artist Art Candee said Sunday, "JD Vance isn’t beating those 'weird' allegations anytime soon for swimming in his t-shirt. He’s super weird."
‘Spectacular’: Alex Jones makes a ‘dead serious’ prediction about Kamala Harris at debate
Vice President Kamala Harris is "going to fall flat on her face" at the presidential debate against Donald Trump, and she will also be on drugs, according to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Jones, a Trump ally who in August claimed that there are Democrats plotting to put conservatives "in camps," predicted that Harris will be taking ecstasy due to her "performance anxiety."
"It's going to be spectacular in that she's going to fall flat on her face without a teleprompter," Jones said. "It's because she has serious performance anxiety."
ALSO READ: Buckle up: Win or lose, Trump promises potential scenarios of violence
Jones said, "She's going to be on drugs. She's going to be bombed out of her gourd."
Jones went on to insist Harris would be taking ecstasy.
"She looked like that at the DNC. Big pupils, feeling good. Yeah, they're going to give her a molly," Jones said on his show. "I'm dead serious."
He further claimed Harris was "drunk and on Xanax" at her CNN interview.
‘Donald is dementing’: Trump’s psychologist niece flags his ‘worsening’ mental condition
Donald Trump's mental health is deteriorating and the American press is unable to properly cover it, according to the former president's psychologist niece.
Trained psychologist Mary Trump said on Sunday that her uncle's recent rambling, stream-of-consciousness answers to policy questions are worth coverage, but the media isn't doing its job. Mary Trump previously argued that her uncle's obsession with crowd sizes ties into his desire to be complimented 24/7, which stems from unfortunate circumstances during his early childhood.
Over the weekend, Mary Trump noted a recent answer that Trump had to a question about the cost of childcare.
ALSO READ: Buckle up: Win or lose, Trump promises potential scenarios of violence
"Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, I was somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue, but I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about that because look, childcare is childcare," Trump said in part.
The member of the Trump family replied, saying, "I defy anybody who was actually trying to follow the thread of that gibberish to tell me what it means. Nobody can. The only phrase that has any logical consistency, 'childcare is childcare,' also happens to be the only thing Donald said that’s true—childcare is, after all, childcare. The rest of it is just disjointed riffing coupled with his greatest hits and catch phrases."
The corporate media, Mary Trump added, "have decided that it is no longer the job of its journalists and pundits to report and analyze information; rather they believe they must translate Donald’s nonsensical ramblings into a version of the English language we can all understand."
"That’s a huge problem because, on the one hand, they’re not really translating his words—they’re imbuing them with a meaning that is not there; on the other hand, they’re doing this without telling us they’re doing it," she then added.
The psychologist went on to say that it's "deeply disturbing that somebody as unhinged and incoherent as Donald is allowed to run for the presidency in the first place (and that leaves aside all of the other disqualifying things about him), but the disturbance is compounded when you consider that corporate media can’t seem to muster any urgency in the face of Donald’s increasingly bizarre behavior."
"On any given day, he is demonstrably untethered from reality—and it often seems that the reason the warning lights aren’t constantly flashing red is because nobody covering him expects otherwise," she added. "Surely a political press corps that spent months arguing that President Biden’s age rendered him mentally unfit, wouldn’t look the other way when the Republican candidate, the oldest person to run for president in American history, is not only old but decompensating before our very eyes. The difference of course is that Biden is aging while Donald is dementing."
Mary Trump added that her uncle "is a frightened, desperate man knowing, as he does, that his continued freedom might well depend on his ability to get back into the White House so he can make the still-pending federal cases against him disappear."
"His increasingly fantastical pronouncements and worsening psychiatric disorders strike me as being newsworthy," she said.
Major GOP figure’s endorsement of Harris seen as ‘massive signal’ to undecided voters
A major figure in the GOP just sent a "massive signal" to undecided voters that Vice President Kamala Harris is their choice, a former Barack Obama aide said on Saturday.
Democratic political commentator Van Jones, a frequent guest on CNN, appeared on the network over the weekend to discuss the state of the presidential race and the upcoming debate during which Harris is set to face off against Donald Trump. Jones appeared alongside GOP operative Scott Jennings.
Both political strategists were asked about the recent endorsement of Harris by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who stated that Trump has shown he's not trustworthy in a position of power. The host noted that Harris said Cheney's comments were "courageous."
ALSO READ: Buckle up: Win or lose, Trump promises potential scenarios of violence
Jennings, who worked for George W. Bush and said he "reveres" Cheney, said most Republicans would disagree with the conclusion Cheney reached.
Jones, on the other hand, said this specific endorsement could actually reach crucial undecided voters.
"I see it very differently. If you are an undecided voter and you're trying to figure out what to do, this is a pretty massive signal," Jones said. "If Kamala Harris does stuff that you don't like, maybe her tax policy is too aggressive, you can vote her out in four years and fix it."
He then added, "If you put somebody in office who does not respect the rule of law, the Constitution, somebody who led an insurrection, somebody you may not be able to vote out in four years, you can't fix that really easily."
Jones further stated, "But if you're in the middle trying to figure out who is going to have the most survivable set of errors... even Dick Cheney says that Kamala is a safer bet for America."
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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.”
