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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.”
Supreme Court delivers win to MAGA rioters charged with obstructing an official proceeding
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling that could upend hundreds of January 6th-related cases.
In the ruling, the court ordered that prosecutors who charged rioters with obstructing or impeding an official proceeding must show that they tampered with physical evidence in order to meet the criteria met by the statute.
The vote was 6-3, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissenting, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
In the explainer, SCOTUS Blog wrote, "The court holds that to prove a violation of the law, the government must show that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so."
About 27 individuals are still in prison today and they could be released today because they haven't served their full charge.
ALSO READ: Rep. Byron Donalds, his gigantic Jim Crow myth and a forgotten fact about Black voters
The case the court was deciding involved Joseph Fischer, an off-duty Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and was charged with obstruction of an official proceeding. It's the same crime many other Jan .6 defendants have been charged.
Fischer, Edward Lang, and Garret Miller were indicted for their role in the riot. They were charged with "assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and misdemeanor offenses of disorderly conduct," the indictment read. All of the charges were involved in the broader attempt to obstruct a congressional proceeding.
But Fischer's lawyers argued before that Supreme Court that the obstruction of a congressional proceedings charge should be thrown out because the law that he was charged with violating was only intended to apply to evidence tampering.
The decision will have major impact on Jack Smith's election interference case against Donald Trump, who is charged with the same crime.
ALSO READ: ‘They could have killed me’: Spycraft, ballots and a Trumped-up plot gone haywire
A lower court agreed with him, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. reversed it and it was ultimately sent to the Supreme Court.
"Some justices expressed concerns that the government’s interpretation of the law could sweep in too much conduct, while others appeared to agree with the government that the law was intended as a 'catchall' provision to cover all kinds of conduct," SCOTUSBlog said.
"And still others appeared to propose a narrower reading of the statute that would still allow the charge against Fischer to stand."
About 300 cases for Jan. 6 attackers will be impacted by the decision.
‘Couldn’t get hired as a Walmart greeter’: MAGA meets Biden debate performance with glee
Trump’s supporters took an early victory lap Thursday as President Joe Biden stumbled through a debate performance that had onlookers shocked.
“Biden couldn’t get hired as a Walmart greeter and he has the nuclear codes,” wrote Marjorie Taylor Greene on X.
“Can Joe Biden even live another 4 years, let alone be president?”
Even some Democrats expressed shock as Biden appeared old and confused during the CNN debate, frequently losing his train of thought and speaking with a raspy and weak voice.
“Heads are going to roll,’ wrote The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a staunch Trump supporter, wrote on X, “Dems are going to dump Biden. Get ready for Michelle Obama as their nominee.”
ALSO READ: Rep. Byron Donalds, his gigantic Jim Crow myth and a forgotten fact about Black voters
“What is Joe looking at?” wrote Lauren Boebert (R-CO). “He’s literally staring off into space, lost.”
She added, “President Trump is eviscerating Jacked up Joe on his network, with his moderators, and under his rules."
“The choice couldn’t be clearer in November.”
J.D. Vance (R-OH), a favorite for Trump’s vice president pick, wrote, “Trump has so much more energy and clarity than Biden, it’s just an insane contrast."
“One guy can do the job and the other can’t," he then added.
‘Mop up operation’: Biden campaign has a simple explanation for flawed debate performance
Before the debate even ended on Thursday night, President Joe Biden's team seemed to be in damage control.
Kelly O'Donnell, senior White House correspondent for NBCNews, tweeted that two sources familiar with the "situation" offered a possible explanation: “President Biden has a cold.”
O'Donnell reported, citing multiple sources, that the president tested negative for COVID-19.
The explanation predictably didn't appear to land with social media users watching the debate, which could send Democrats into full-blown panic mode.
ALSO READ: Marjorie Taylor Greene buys condo in 'crime ridden hell hole'
"Mop up operation," wrote @Cernovich.
"Biden has dementia, not a cold," tweeted @pepesgrandma.
"Are you sure he doesn’t have a coma?" chortled @BurtMaclin_FBI.
"Longest cold I’ve ever seen," wrote @GoPackGo541.
Within the first hour, Intelligencer political columnist Jonathan Chait asked what many Democrats across the country were thinking: "Time to panic?"
"Joe Biden has started this debate looking wan," he wrote. "His voice is soft, he has looked down, and he lost his train of thought during one answer, ending on the garbled note 'we beat Medicare.' He meant they beat Pharma by winning a provision to allow Medicare to negotiation prescription drugs, but it did not track in real time."
If Biden does not turn around his performance over the course of this, I think Democrats will reach full-blown panic."
‘Wrong and gross’: Internet recoils after Trump uses ‘Palestinian’ as a slur for Biden
During a portion of the CNN debate on the Middle East and the Israel/Hamas War, former President Donald Trump took a bizarre turn by using "Palestinian" as a slur when addressing President Joe Biden.
Biden has "become like a Palestinian" Trump said — except he's a "weak one."
Commenters on social media barely knew how to process this remark.
ALSO READ: Rep. Byron Donalds, his gigantic Jim Crow myth and a forgotten fact about Black voters
"Trump just throwing around 'Palestinian' as a pejorative. Brazen anti-Palestinian racism has been normalized in America," wrote former MSNBC commentator Mehdi Hasan Thursday night.
"I’m sorry but did Donald Trump just say that Joe Biden is a bad Palestinian?!?" wrote the account @ArmandDoma, a San Francisco-based anti-Trump activist.
"Did Trump just call Biden a 'weak Palestinian'?! this is really bad….." wrote the account @D_Radiance.
"Trump just called Biden a Palestinian... 'a bad one.' So many things are wrong and gross and despicable about this statement..." wrote CUNY presidential professor Marc Lamont Hill.
‘Headed toward doom’: Analyst sees GOP terrified Trump will lose everything at debate
The Republican Party may not survive former President Donald Trump losing his debate against President Joe Biden Thursday night and they know it, a new political analysis finds.
Salon columnist Brian Karem made this case just hours before history is made on a CNN soundstage in Atlanta where a standing U.S. president will debate a convicted felon who has not yet been officially nominated by his own party.
"The fear the [Republican] party could lose control of the Senate and House in the fall elections is palpable," Karem writes.
"If Trump suddenly appears vulnerable in November, the RNC could resemble a roadhouse bar in Mid-Missouri on a hot Saturday night after the beer taps run dry. The Trump faithful will be battling the non-believers for control of a party headed toward doom."
The odds of Trump winning the debate are stacked against him, Karem argues.
ALSO READ: Rep. Byron Donalds, his gigantic Jim Crow myth and a forgotten fact about Black voters
Trump won't be able to play off an audience or dominate the debate by interrupting (moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will have the ability to cut his mic), and Republicans have unwittingly helped Biden by lowering the bar he must clear, according to Karem.
And Biden's position is strong, he adds.
"Biden has several advantages over Trump," writes Karem. "First, he’s not a convicted felon. He’s actually accomplished something as president. He’s less apt to ramble on about shark bites and electrocutions at sea."
But ultimately Karem predicts the debate will be "Trump's last act" not because of his opponent, but because of his own backers: the Republican party.
"The GOP is a party addicted to winning," he writes. "If, in fact, winning were heroin, there’d be a lot of trainspotting going on in Milwaukee in mid-July. And that’s where it gets dicey for Trump."
Up until now, the party of "Law and Order" has ignored Trump's 34 criminal convictions and civil court rulings that found him liable for fraud, sex abuse and defamation.
But that could change.
"We could also be looking at a chaotic situation in both conventions where one or both parties choose a different candidate after the consumption of copious amounts of pizza, alcohol and cigarettes and the rending of hair, gnashing of teeth and blood-curdling screams of despair and doom," Karem concludes.
That's why he wants Americans to tune into the debate tonight.
"If you aren’t sitting at the table, then chances are you’re on the menu," he writes. "Sit at the table."
‘Makes my blood boil’: Justice Samuel Alito’s cancer comment leaves doctor furious
A U.S. Supreme Court decision was leaked Wednesday after Idaho v. United States was accidentally uploaded to the court's website amid the release of other cases.
Though it was quickly removed, the document appeared to detail the decision on the Idaho case regarding women facing emergency care due to pregnancy complications.
In the dissent, Justice Samuel Alito compared an abortion to having an experimental cancer treatment that hasn't been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration.
Read Also: How to fix a Supreme Court filled with corrupt stooges for the morbidly rich
Speaking to MSNBC Wednesday afternoon, Supreme Court reporter Dahlia Lithwick noted that the court claims to publish decisions as they're ready — but Wednesday's slip makes it appear that they are actually releasing whenever they see fit. She speculated that the Court may be more political than previously known.
"Predictable, but depressing and certainly not helpful to the court," said host Nicolle Wallace.
She went on to read the comments from Alito, reading his comparison between cancer drugs and abortion.
"Dr. Patel," Wallace asked, speaking to guest Dr. Kavita Patel, the former Obama White House policy director, "there is still this delusion that women are out there demanding abortions like they demand, you know, Spanx or undergarments, or it is a view obviously seemingly shared in the household. It is wrapped in the disinformation that has been peddled by the extreme wing of the pro-life movement for decades.
"It is incredibly out of step with American public opinion and it is incredibly out of step with anything that happens in a doctor's office. Between a patient and a doctor."
Patel agreed, but said it may help to explain what women are facing in emergency rooms. She said that they come in for a variety of reasons — either high blood pressure or bleeding.
It happened 54 times at St. Luke's in Boise, Idaho, where the case first began.
In one case, a patient's water broke before the fetus could live outside the womb, but the fetus still had a heartbeat. "You could have infection quickly spread. We've talked about sepsis, which is life-threatening. Without a ban in place, what would happen is the doctor would recommend termination of the pregnancy to avoid sepsis and death or potential death of the mother."
In Idaho, that was blocked.
"Keep in mind the nearest place is Portland or Seattle," the doctor explained. "And that is about eight hours away."
The comments by Alito, she said, "just makes my blood boil because we're not talking about on-demand health care. Making that analogy to cancer is disrespectful to cancer patients. And what we're really talking about is access to care. And that's why I think you saw the outrage in Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's statement."
See the full comments in the video below or at the link here.
'Just makes my blood boil': Doctor trashes Alito for comments about cancer patients www.youtube.com
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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.”
