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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.”
‘Absolute dumpster fire’: Ex-Trump aide scorches ‘ranting and raving’ news conference
Former President Donald Trump's bizarre press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday was a desperate attempt to force the media's focus off Vice President Kamala Harris and back onto himself, argued former Trump administration communications official Alyssa Farah Griffin on CNN.
The problem is, she added, it wasn't the kind of attention that benefits him.
"We've seen Trump do this before, arrange a news conference when he doesn't like the way the news cycle is going," said anchor Kaitlan Collins. "But he is very clearly trying to get it back now from Harris, from her crowd sizes, from the momentum she's seeing. He was claiming there's only 1,500 people at her rally. It was closer to 15,000. What did you see in that press conference today?"
"I mean, it was an absolute dumpster fire of a press conference," said Griffin. "I don't know how you could frame it any other way."
ALSO READ: Why ‘vanilla’ Tim Walz is the ingredient to beat Trump: Dem lawmakers
"He does feel like the focus is not on him," Griffin agreed. "She's getting a lot of attention and he's kind of getting into 'I alone can fix it' mode. I don't think advisers would have told him that 90 minutes of ranting and raving and re-litigating the former election is a useful way to be campaigning, but he did what he's going to do. He had shouted some of his greatest hits."
As for why he has been oddly absent from the campaign trail lately, Griffin continued, "I think that there is something to the fact that the last time he was in a battleground state was in Georgia. He went after the popular governor and his wife. That's not helpful in a swing state. So I think advisers are thinking, maybe have him do these interviews with influencers, maybe have him call into Fox News, but figure out, until he can hone a message and have some level of discipline, having him out there actually isn't that helpful."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
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Chuck Schumer burns GOP insider for saying Jews ‘not allowed’ in Dem leadership
Talk show host and Republican insider Erick Erickson on Tuesday seemingly tried to sow division among Democrats after Vice President Kamala Harris passed over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to be her running mate.
"No Jews allowed at the top of the Democratic Party," Erickson wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader who happens to be Jewish, sent out a three-word response to Erickson's tweet: "News to me."
Schumer was the most high-profile critic to respond to Erickson, but far from the only one.
"Stop," wrote journalist Ron Fournier. "The top of the ticket is a Black-Asian nominee married to a Jew. She picked who she wanted to pick."
ALSO READ: Why ‘vanilla’ Tim Walz is the ingredient to beat Trump: Dem lawmakers
Others noted that Erickson's criticism of the Democrats was ironic given that neither former President Donald Trump nor Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) are Jewish.
"Ah yes. JD Vance and Donald Trump are a regular klezmer band," wrote former Apple product designer and current entrepreneur Matty Gregg.
"Yes, I went to both JD Vance and Donald Trump's bar mitzvahs," cracked the Christian nationalist parody account Betty Bowers.
"Doug Emhoff is Jewish," noted Business Insider reporter Bryan Metzger. "Chuck Schumer is Jewish. There are 4 Jewish governors, all of whom are Democrats. Of the 35 Jewish members of Congress, just 2 are Republicans."
"Name the current Republican Jewish Governors," challenged Michigan State Sen. Jeremy Moss. "Name the current Republican Jewish US Senators. Don’t strain too hard to look them up. Despite the gaslighting, the overwhelming majority of Jewish voters are part of a liberal voting bloc."
‘Kamabla?’ Experts say bad nicknames are plaguing Trump’s campaign
Call it the Kamabla conundrum.
Former President Donald Trump's failed attempts to dub Vice President Kamala Harris with a snarky moniker spell trouble for the Republican nominee's political campaign, legal experts say.
"'Kamabla' is almost certainly a wild swing that won't connect," Andrew Wroe, senior lecturer in American politics at University of Kent, in England, told Newsweek Tuesday. "It's just not clear what it means."
Wroe praised Trump's past ability to dub his political opponents with nasty nicknames that stuck, such as "Crooked Hillary" and "Little Marco." But he threw his hands up in the air when it came to "Laffin' Kamala."
"Trump is a master of identifying an opponent's key weakness and capturing it in a pithy and derogatory nickname," Wroe said. "Trump's efforts to land a similar punch on Kamala Harris have so far failed, despite trying many different combinations."
Trump's inability to land a nickname for Harris suggests a bigger problem with his presidential reelection campaign and its inability to pivot after President Joe Biden decided to step aside, Wroe argued.
ALSO READ: Tim Walz's personal finances are extraordinarily boring — and that may help Harris
"He knew Biden's weaknesses, as did the wider electorate, and 'Sleepy Joe' was one of his greatest punches," Wroe said. "He wishes Biden was his opponent and is struggling to refocus his campaign on Kamala Harris."
Political scientist Thomas Gift agreed 'Kamabla' and 'Kamala Crash' have yet to do the work Trump needs them to do.
"Trump's difficulty in smearing Kamala Harris with a nickname is a lot like his campaign at the moment," Gift told Newsweek. "It's throwing things at the wall, but nothing seems to be sticking."
Meanwhile, Harris' running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) appears to have earned his position on the ticket thanks in part to his own deft political messaging, reports show.
Democrats across the nation echo the now-viral speech in which the midwestern former school teacher likened Trump and the MAGA right to name-calling bullies.
"These guys are just weird, that's who they are," Walz said. "We're not afraid of weird people. We're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid."
House Dems demand Heritage leader come clean on Project 2025’s secret 180-day plan
Dozens of House Democrats on Tuesday called on the president of the Heritage Foundation to disclose the details of Project 2025's so-called "Fourth Pillar," a section of the far-right agenda that has been kept under wraps as Republican nominee Donald Trump attempts—unconvincingly—to distance himself from the unpopular project.
In a letter to Roberts, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and 36 other congressional Democrats highlighted the "glaring problem" that Project 2025's Fourth Pillar "remains shrouded in secrecy" despite organizers' pledge to be "an open book" about their agenda.
"You have conspicuously declined to publish or disclose any of the prioritized early actions that we believe would obviously be the most important parts of Project 2025," the Democrats wrote. "The immediate executive orders, emergency declarations, presidential directives, and other measures are likely to have profound impacts on the American people and their government. Therefore, we believe it is overwhelmingly in the public interest for you to actually keep your 'open book' promise by disclosing the 'Fourth Pillar' of Project 2025, and we hope you'll consider explaining why, unlike the first three pillars, you have been keeping it secret for so long."
"If the published part of your 'second American revolution' is so extreme that it has alarmed millions of Americans, including many conservatives, what additional controversy are you worried about?"
The lawmakers urged Kevin Roberts, who recently suggested bloodshed could follow if the left refuses to capitulate to Trump and his far-right movement, to meet with members of Congress on Capitol Hill to discuss the Fourth Pillar and other elements of the Project 2025 agenda.
"You have intimated that the reason for keeping this 'Fourth Pillar' of Project 2025 secret is that it is too controversial for the public to see. With all due respect, if the published part of your 'second American revolution' is so extreme that it has alarmed millions of Americans, including many conservatives, what additional controversy are you worried about?" the House Democrats asked. "It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025."
Project 2025's website provides a brief summary characterizing the Fourth Pillar as "our 180-day Transition Playbook" that "includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency."
Spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 was crafted with the help of around 110 conservative groups and at least 140 former Trump administration officials, and its authors have released a 922-page agenda outlining their sweeping plans to gut worker protections and climate regulations, accelerate Medicare privatization, abolish the Department of Education, and much more.
Survey data shows the project, which has become a focal point for Democrats ahead of the November election, has become increasingly unpopular as more and more Americans are informed about its far-right policy proposals.
In June, as Common Dreamsreported, Huffman and other congressional Democrats launched the Stop Project 2025 Task Force in an attempt to counter "this right-wing plot to undermine democracy."
"We need a coordinated strategy to save America and stop this coup before it's too late," Huffman said at the time.
Trump, meanwhile, recently claimed he knows "nothing" about Project 2025, a statement one of his former advisers called "totally false."
One of the key architects of Project 2025, Russell Vought, served as head of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump and is "likely in line for high-ranking post" if the former president wins another White House term, according toThe Associated Press. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running mate, praised Roberts in what The Guardiancharacterized as a "glowing forward" to the Heritage Foundation president's soon-to-be-published book.
Despite public efforts by the Trump campaign to distance itself from Project 2025—and vice versa—analysts at Center for American Progress Action noted last week that there is significant "overlap" between Project 2025 and Trump's 2024 campaign platform.
"In fact, President Trump already attempted to implement key policy components of Project 2025 during his first term, with varying degrees of success," the analysis wrote. "Project 2025 was designed to remove the guardrails that prevented President Trump from enacting his baser instincts and priorities in his first term."
‘Purge Trumpism’: Powerful Georgia Republican tells GOP voters to pick Harris
A powerful Georgia Republican on Monday urged GOP voters in his state to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris instead of his own party's nominee.
Geoff Duncan, the state's former lieutenant governor, delivered a blow to Donald Trump's campaign days after the former president unleashed what the Washington Post described as a "fusillade of personal and sometimes false attacks" against Gov. Brian Kemp.
The blow came in the form of an Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial urging Republicans to "purge Trumpism."
"Our party revolves less around convictions and governing policies and more toward a cult of personality," writes Duncan.
"At the very least, four years under Harris will provide the GOP time to put the pieces back together without Trump and hopefully give this lifelong Republican a chance to help rebuild the party I’ve always called home."
Duncan slammed Trump for his repeated attacks on Kemp which he argued worked against the greater good of the Republican party.
"Politics should be about attracting more voters, not fewer — to win an election," Duncan wrote. "But more importantly, to win the hearts and minds of a governing majority."
Duncan admitted his concerns extend beyond the success of his own political party and raises the specter of what a second Trump administration would entail.
"The outcome of saddling up for another four years with Trump is preordained to be cloaked in chaos, anger and vitriol, the same unproductive position as when he disgracefully left office last time," Duncan wrote. "Trump’s obsession with power fuels head-scratching disappointments at unexplainable times and places."
ALSO READ: Don’t be fooled: Project 2025 is already happening
The Georgia GOP member ultimately urged Harris to court Republicans in his state.
"My hope is that Harris will continue to extend an olive branch to those looking for a new home in November," he wrote. "Time will tell if that works out."
Duncan's editorial quickly spread across social media after it was shared by George Conway, the outspoken co-founder of the Republican anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project.
Republicans weighed in on his remarks.
"I loved the Conservative Party with McCain & Romney," replied one X user. "I can add you to this list along with Liz Cheney. Conservatives know better and deserve better."
But not all conservatives shared these sentiments.
"You are banned from the GOP," replied AFSOC Vet.
Kari Lake calls Kamala Harris ‘not intelligent’ in echo of Trump’s new attack
Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake (R) took a cue from her party's presidential nominee, Donald Trump, claiming that Vice President Kamala Harris was "not intelligent."
In an interview on the right-wing War Room program Monday, Trump adviser Jason Miller pushed Lake to blame Harris for a stock market downturn.
"How is that impacting — and then Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket — how is that impacting your race and the people that you're talking to, to say, the economy is going to hell, and we're potentially heading into World War III?" Miller asked.
"I mean, it's the worst of all things, kind of a culmination of the worst of all things that could happen," Lake opined. "And this is what happens when you allow two people who are not intelligent, don't know what they're doing, as president and vice president, to sit in the White House."
"And this is exactly what happens," she added. "We need competency, not incompetency and corruption."
ALSO READ: Don’t be fooled: Project 2025 is already happening
Over the weekend, Trump defended his decision to back out of an ABC News debate with Harris.
In a series of posts on his Truth Social platform, the former president said Harris had a "low IQ" and lacked the "mental capacity" to debate him.
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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.”
