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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.”
‘He did me a favor’: Trump says he’s ‘insulted’ by Putin’s fake Harris endorsement

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested Thursday that he might be "insulted" if Russian President Vladimir Putin actually endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Trump made the remarks while speaking to the Economic Club of New York.
"Putin came out today, he endorsed Kamala, and I didn't know, was I supposed to call him up and say, thank you very much, I appreciate it," Trump opined. "But he endorsed Kamala. I have a feeling, I don't know, I don't know exactly what to say about that."
"I don't know if I'm insulted or he did me a favor," he added.
In fact, Putin was most likely joking when he said this week that he backed Harris after the Biden administration sanctioned Russia for interfering in U.S. elections.
ALSO READ: Why Trump's Arlington controversy is actually a crime
Putin claimed he would support Harris just as he had backed President Joe Biden.
"She laughs so expressively and infectiously that it means that everything is fine with her," the Russian dictator teased.
Trump uses insensitive word to describe Gold Star families during Arlington fiasco

Donald Trump told a crowd at The Economic Club of New York Thursday that his campaign team was taking photos at Arlington Cemetery to mark the "celebrating" of the families of those who died in an attack on American soldiers in Afghanistan three years ago.
Saying that he was at Arlington "four days ago" — though in fact it was a week earlier on Aug. 26 — Trump hit back at criticism that he was illegally using the burial ground for political campaigning.
"They were celebrating three years, honoring their children, and yeah, that's right. They call them their children," Trump said of the parents of the slain soldiers.
"But many of those people that were so badly hurt, they don't talk about them," Trump claimed. "No legs. No arms. Obliteration of their face, their entire body. And nobody mentions that we left Americans behind. Large numbers."
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley confessed in March that he wasn't sure how many Americans were left in Afghanistan. After the withdrawal there were an additional 800 Americans pulled out by Aug. 2022, Politico reported.
Trump's campaign said that reports that Trump staff were involved with an altercation with an Arlington official as they took photos in the burial ground was "made up," though the U.S. Army refuted that in a statement that was criticial of the campaign's activities.
See the video below or at the link here.
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‘Weird timing’: Dem uses Tim Walz attack to hit back at GOP subpoena targeting him

A Democrat used a popular Tim Walz line to hit back at Republicans on his GOP-led House committee after it subpoenaed the vice presidential nominee and Minnesota governor.
Virginia Foxx, chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, took to X on Wednesday to reshare her committee's announcement that it had issued a subpoena for Walz. to compel him to hand over records stemming from his handling of a $250 million fraud scheme involving the Minnesota-based nonprofit Feeding our Future.
"Time for answers," Foxx (R-NC) wrote in the post.
ALSO READ: Dem leaders keep shrugging off Moms for Liberty — even as Trump keeps grooming them
The committee's post asked, "How much did the governor know about the criminal activity that stole $250 million in taxpayer funds intended to feed children in need?"
Axios reported Wednesday that the move was among a flurry of new House Republican probes targeting Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris. The moves also sparked fears among some in the GOP that the probes could backfire and inadvertently make Walz and Harris look like martyrs.
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who is the top Democrat on the committee, suggested that the probe is politically motivated.
"The timing of the Republican's subpoena to Governor Walz is weird," he told Axios, a nod toward Democratic lines of attack against Sen. J.D. Vance and former President Donald Trump.
‘Did not happen!’ CNN fact-checker flags several Trump falsities after Fox News town hall

A CNN fact-checker flagged several claims from former President Donald Trump after his town hall Wednesday night with Fox News host Sean Hannity in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaking with CNN anchor Abby Phillip, Daniel Dale first addressed Trump's claim about Iran and terrorism.
"Iran was broke. They didn't have the money for Hamas and for Hezbollah, they didn't have the money for anybody," he said.
A second clip showed Trump claiming the U.S. went four years "without any blow-ups."
"We had no radical Islamic terror," he said — twice.
Dale looked at the two claims and bluntly labeled them "false."
"This claim that Iran did not have money for Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups during his presidency — that's wrong, as his own administration acknowledged in 2020."
Dale noted that Iran continued to fund terror groups throughout Trump's presidency, though experts say it reduced funding when the Trump administration hit the country with sanctions.
The CNN fact-checker then smacked down Trump's second claim that the U.S. saw no radical Islamic terrorist attacks under Trump.
ALSO READ: Something broke Trump’s brain
"There were terror attacks by Islamic extremists under Trump," he said, including one that Trump repeatedly "lamented" during his presidency. In that case, noted Dale, eight people were killed in a highway attack in New York that federal authorities said was carried out in support of ISIS.
In 2019, an extremist member of the Saudi military attacked a U.S. military facility and killed three U.S. Navy sailors. In that incident, federal authorities said the attacker was a Jihadist and a longtime associate of an Al-Qaeda group.
Phillip and Dale shook their heads after the network played a clip of Trump whining that Vice President Kamala Harris must've been fed questions ahead of time for her first sit-down interview.
"Nobody wants to cover it," railed Trump.
"Nobody wants to cover it," said Dale, "Because it did not happen. Vice President Harris did not have notes during her interview with Dana Bash. You can look at images — photo, video — from that interview if you're skeptical. There was nothing on the table right in front of her. All that's there are Dana Bash's notes."
He stressed Harris was not given questions ahead of time.
Watch the clip below or at this link.
Tim Walz’s sister says they ‘didn’t know’ distant Trump-supporting Nebraska relatives

Tim Walz's sister is trying to correct the record after a group purporting to be Nebraska-based family members of Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate staged a picture this week in which they all wore shirts saying, "NEBRASKA WALZ'S FOR TRUMP."
Former President Donald Trump called the photo a "great honor" and repeated the claim at a Wednesday night town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
It turns out that, although Nebraska is indeed the state where Walz grew up, the people posing in that photo are distant relatives.
According to The Associated Press, a spokesperson for Charles Herbster, who previously ran for governor of Nebraska with Trump's endorsement but lost the primary amid allegations of groping, said the relatives in the photo were "descendants of Francis Walz, who was brother to Tim Walz’s grandfather.”
ALSO READ: Why Trump’s Arlington controversy is actually a crime
"Walz’s sister, Sandy Dietrich, of Alliance, Nebraska, said she suspected it might be people from that branch of the family. Dietrich and Walz’s father, James Walz, died of lung cancer in 1984 when the future congressman and Minnesota governor was just a teenager. His father had been the school superintendent in Valentine, Nebraska," noted the report.
“We weren’t close with them," Dietrich said. "We didn’t know them.”
She said her side of the family is firmly in the "Democrats for Tim" camp.
Walz, a veteran of the Army National Guard who previously served as a teacher and a championship-winning assistant football coach before being elected to Congress and the governor's mansion in Minnesota, has been a target of right-wing opposition research ever since being named as Harris' running mate, but the hunt to find scandals to pin to him hasn't been going well.
In one of the most recent such opposition releases, Walz's brother, who is not supportive of his campaign, cited as an example of his lack of "character" the fact that he used to get carsick when he was a kid.
‘Shameful’: Ex-senator slams Rick Scott’s new ‘infuriating’ claim

U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) is under fire over video of him baselessly telling students women and doctors would “crush” the “skull” of babies just minutes before they are born, if abortion were legal, apparently at nine months, or starve them to death immediately after. The secretly recorded video, reportedly recorded and leaked by a student, is going viral.
“…you crush a baby’s skull,” Scott says in the video (below), which has received over 400,000 views in under four hours. “A baby that would be born healthy and alive at nine months, two minutes before, okay, it could be crushed and killed,” Scott can be heard saying in the video, remarks very similar to ones he has made before. NCRM has not verified the authenticity of the video or its context, which was posted to social media by attorney and MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski.
Senator Scott, the wealthiest U.S. Senator, is the former governor Florida, an attorney, and the former head of a hospital corporation that plead guilty in the largest health care fraud case at the time in history. He is running for re-election after winning his 2018 race by a mere 10,033 votes, a tiny margin of about 0.12 percent.
“On top of that, all the Democrats have voted to say that a baby born healthy and alive can be allowed to [be] put in the corner and starved itself to death,” he can also be heard saying in the video. Filipkowski says Scott was “speaking to a college class and I got this from a student.”
In a May interview with Politico, Sen. Scott said Democrats “want to crush a baby’s skull at nine months, and they want to leave a healthy baby born alive in the corner to die.”
He also said he would sign an abortion ban if it were at 15 weeks.
Florida Politics reports Scott is leading his Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, by just three or four points in the latest polls, and calls his position “vulnerable.”
ALSO READ: Something broke Trump’s brain
MSNBC‘s Steve Benen earlier this year wrote, “Before becoming a far-right politician, Scott led a company called Columbia/HCA, which faced a federal fraud investigation over Medicare. As the FBI’s investigation advanced, Scott resigned as CEO, though he nevertheless faced considerable scrutiny — including an infamous civil deposition in which the Republican asserted his Fifth Amendment rights 75 times.”
“Scott’s former company ultimately pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and was fined $1.7 billion. It was, at the time, the biggest Medicare fraud case in American history,” according to Benen. “Though the article is no longer online, The Miami Herald reported in 2010 that federal investigators ‘found that Scott took part in business practices at Columbia/HCA that were later found to be illegal — specifically, that Scott and other executives offered financial incentives to doctors in exchange for patient referrals, in violation of federal law, according to lawsuits the Justice Department filed against the company in 2001.'”
Wednesday on MSNBC, Murcarsel-Powell told MSNBC that Rick Scott “has been proudly saying” he supports an abortion ban, and called him “one of the most extreme senators” on abortion.
“Florida is in play,” Mucarsel-Powell said.
“Shameful the lies that people like Rick Scott are willing to tell to hold on to power. Infuriating,” wrote Democratic former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill.
“This is demented,” remarked Salon’s Heather Digby Parton.
“These freaks and weirdos really, really hate women. Abortion bans are absolutely rooted in hatred of women,” observed Democratic communications strategist Laura Chapin.
Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist and author Laurie Garrett asked: “What psycho horror movie alternate reality is this man living in?”
Watch the video below or at this link.
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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.”

