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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.”
Former Democratic presidential candidate endorses Whitmer for VP
Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio endorsed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to be vice president Sunday evening, calling a ticket combining Vice President Kamala Harris and the Michigan governor “the winning hand” for Democrats after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign Sunday afternoon.
“The heroic, selfless decision by Joe Biden has given us the chance to nominate two leaders who will wipe the smirk off Donald Trump’s face and allow us to come roaring back,” de Blasio said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The best way to beat Trump? Team up @VP Kamala Harris and @GovWhitmer!
The heroic, selfless decision by @JoeBiden has given us the chance to nominate two leaders who will wipe the smirk off Donald Trump’s face and allow us to come roaring back. A Harris-Whitmer ticket is the…
— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) July 22, 2024
De Blasio ran for president during the 2020 cycle and participated in the presidential debates held in Detroit in 2019.
Biden endorsed Harris to be the Democratic nominee for president shortly after ending his own campaign, and Harris has started the process of taking over his existing campaign apparatus.
Several Michigan officials quickly endorsed Harris on Sunday, including U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing) and Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Twp.), U.S. Reps. Hillary Scholten (D-Grand Rapids), Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), Dan Kildee (D-Flint), Shri Thanedar (D-Detroit) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), Attorney General Dana Nessel and former governors Jim Blanchard and Jennifer Granholm.
Granholm also serves as Biden’s energy secretary. Another member of Biden’s cabinet, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who lives in Traverse City, also quickly endorsed Harris.
Buttigieg is among the names who have been floated as a potential replacement for Biden or running mate for Harris, along with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who also endorsed Harris on Sunday, and Whitmer.
Whitmer did not endorse anyone Sunday but said that her “job in this election will remain the same: doing everything I can to elect Democrats and stop Donald Trump, a convicted felon whose agenda of raising families’ costs, banning abortion nationwide and abusing the power of the White House to settle his own scores is completely wrong for Michigan.”
Other officials being floated as potential running mates for Harris include Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.
We need a Harris-Whitmer ticket now!
Think of the excitement and energy that would bring! @KamalaHarris and @GovWhitmer: That’s a team we can win with. https://t.co/Pz2Kc7CqzV
— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) July 22, 2024
While some have indicated they believe Harris may select a male running mate to “balance” the ticket, de Blasio urged delegates to “think of the excitement and energy” a Harris-Whitmer ticket would bring.
“We need a Harris-Whitmer ticket now!” de Blasio said.
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.
DNC panel to meet in public to set ‘transparent, fair’ framework to pick nominee
WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee will move forward with the process to formally nominate a presidential candidate Wednesday when one of its committees meets in public amid ongoing efforts to set up a virtual roll call vote ahead of the convention, States Newsroom has been told.
The nomination process has been playing out for months as the DNC committees with jurisdiction have been meeting to iron out the details for a virtual roll call.
The need for a virtual roll call was triggered by deadlines in Ohio and some other states that required the political parties to have their nominee certified before or during the Democratic National Convention, scheduled to take place from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22.
Following President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, the co-chairs of the DNC Rules Committee announced that it will be the panel’s “responsibility to implement a framework to select a new nominee, which will be open, transparent, fair, and orderly,” according to an individual familiar with their statement.
The committee is scheduled to meet publicly from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday. The meeting will be live-streamed on the DNC’s YouTube page.
DNC Rules Committee co-chairs Bishop Leah D. Daughtry and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the “process presented for consideration will be comprehensive, it will be fair, and it will be expeditious,” according to an individual close to the process who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and X.
‘Grasping’: Obama’s ex-campaign manager laughs that Trump team caught off guard by Biden
Republicans are scrambling to regain their footing after President Joe Biden dropped his re-election campaign and threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.
The 81-year-old president ended his campaign Sunday following weeks of mounting pressure from other Democrats over concerns about his age, and Barack Obama's former campaign manager David Plouffe told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Donald Trump and his GOP allies were left grasping at straws following the shakeup.
"I've been impressed by Kamala's interviews the last few weeks," Plouffe said. "She's a prosecutor, he's a criminal – I like the matchup.
"Listen, let's not forget, the biggest issue in this campaign was Joe Biden's age. If Donald Trump gets elected, he'll be older than Joe Biden [was] on Inauguration Day. This guy is showing serious signs of unfitness — yes, in terms of character and the positions he holds, but in terms of his decline. He is really, really having trouble reading the Teleprompter. Obviously, the [Republican National Convention] speech was bad in tone, but he couldn't follow instructions there. This should give us great pause."
ALSO READ: 'You babbling baboon': Nonsensical Trump post spurs Truth Social taunts
The former president had been counting on a rematch with his 2020 rival, and although his team has been preparing for the possibility that Biden would drop out, Plouffe made fun of Trump adviser Jason Miller for coming out of the chute by attacking Harris for supporting a ban on plastic straws for environmental reasons.
"I'm excited about this," Plouffe said. "I think the Trump campaign doesn't seem like they were as prepared for this switch as perhaps they might have been. They seem like they're kind of grasping. I guess they're talking about plastic straws and whatnot – not a compelling message."
Watch the video below or at this link.
MSNBC 07 22 2024 07 17 29 youtu.be
‘Damn shameful’: J.D. Vance met with uproar as questionable speech claims debunked
Sen. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican former President Donald Trump has picked as his running mate, was shamed this week for the questionable claim that undocumented immigrants caused his mother's addiction to drugs.
An X community note was added Wednesday to a Vance 2022 campaign ad called "Are you a racist?" in which he suggested undocumented people were the lone source of the narcotics that took over his mother's life.
"I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border," Vance says. "Joe Biden's open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country."
The simple narrative Vance presents in his ad is challenged by the context of his mother's descent into addiction.
While Bev Vance ultimately did find herself addicted to heroin, which a 2022 White House report notes comes primarily from criminal organizations in Mexico, her substance abuse problems began with alcohol, multiple reports show.
The gateway between the two substances appears in a Washington Post report about Vance's "radicalization" that was published the same year as Vance's ad.
It notes Vance's mother "worked regularly as a nurse until she started stealing prescription narcotics and getting high."
Bev Vance's prescription opioid habit developed in the mid-1990s, about the same time the Food and Drug Administration approved Purdue Pharma's OxyContin and triggered an opioid crisis that plagues the nation to this day.
ALSO READ: ‘Creepy weirdos’: Senator fears Trump WH staff would destroy government from ‘inside’
It's that context referenced in this week's Community Note, which reads, "Vance’s mother utilized her position as a nurse to steal prescribed medication from her patients, not because of undocumented immigrants."
And it was that context that outraged X users who viewed the ad and challenged its message.
"Damn shameful," replied X user @AspieJames.
"Even without the lie, this ad was disgusting," wrote @ChristinaKilis.
"This tells us exactly who he is," wrote X user Sandy. "He runs with the hares and the hounds."
Another X user reminded readers of criticism Vance faced for a failed nonprofit for people with opioid addictions that "didn’t spend one nickel on anybody," as a political opponent argued in 2022.
"Bold talk coming from a man who set up a fake charity to 'help those affected by the opioid crisis,'" replied Jesse Denney, "and then used all of the proceeds to fund his Senatw [sic] campaign instead of, you know... helping people."
A New York Times report notes, "Some of the nonprofit group’s own workers said they had drawn a different conclusion: They had been lured by the promise of helping Ohio, but instead had been used to help Mr. Vance start his career in politics."
‘Journalism at its worst’: Washington Post columnist blasts CNN’s ‘fawning’ RNC coverage
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin accused CNN and other broadcast networks of a "new low" with their coverage of the Republican National Convention (RNC).
In a post on X, Rubin called out CNN on Thursday.
"CNN and other broadcasts have reached a new low in RNC coverage, fawning over 'unity' and 'young Vance' - ignoring we are seeing a fascist party overflowing with criminals plot the downfall of America, a VP who is the single most radical and unqualified in history," Rubin wrote.
ALSO READ: Do presidents’ popularity increase after assassination attempts? History has an answer.
"No pushback on lack of information on Trump's injury. It's access journalism at its worst. It's not the media we need to defend democracy," she lamented.
Throughout the Republican convention, CNN has devoted a scant few minutes each night to fact-checking the falsehoods repeated by speakers.
Vance’s ties to Trump foes and ‘elites he railed against’ revealed in leaked Venmo data
J.D. Vance's semi-public Venmo account reveals former President Donald Trump's running mate mingling with lobbyists, never Trumpers and leaders behind the notorious campaign platform Project 2025, Wired reported Thursday.
Wired analyzed more than 200 payments and a public "friends list" the outlet said reveals "the populist's close ties to the very elites he rails against."
ALSO READ: Sen. J.D. Vance finally dumps stock in 'slave labor' company
"Friends" — which the app culls from cellphone and social media contacts — include vocal Trump critic former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), a Manhattan federal court prosecutor and lawyers in President Joe Biden's Justice department, Wired reports.
It also reportedly includes government relations director Amalia Halikias, from the Heritage Foundation, several lobbyists and pundits Bari Weiss and Tucker Carlson.
Lanny Davis, "a well-known political operative and former lawyer for Trump antagonist Michael Cohen," may also appear on Vance's Venmo account, Wired reports.
It remains possible that the account belongs to another Lanny Davis, Wired reports, but adds, "the account in question, which Davis declined to confirm or deny was his, was also linked to someone named Michael Cohen."
"Gladden Pappin, for instance—president of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and a figure with close ties to the intellectual wing of the far right—shows up as one of Vance’s friends," Wired reports.
There are other "far-right activists like Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe, Laura Loomer, and Ali Alexander," also on the list of "friends," according to the report.
The Venmo account "was first discovered by a law enforcement and extremism researcher who asked to remain anonymous, citing security concerns," Wired reports.
Very few of Vance's transactions are public and appear mundane, Wired notes. But his former Senate campaign manager, Jordan Wiggins, appears to have more "eyebrow-raising" transactions, according to Wired.
"Some labeled for things like 'Back waxing & Happy Ending,' and adult 🎥,'" Wired reported. "While these descriptions are likely jokes between friends, Wiggins didn’t respond to a request for comment."
The campaign refused to respond to Wired's request for comment. After the request was made, Vance's transactions were made private.
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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.”
