Raw Story

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ testimony began Thursday with a wink and a bang when she signaled hello to someone in the courtroom — then accused the lawyer questioning her of lying.

“It is ridiculous to me that you lied ... and yet here we still are,” Willis told Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer hoping to remove the district attorney from Donald Trump’s Georgia election racketeering case.

“It seems today like a lawyer writes a lie then it's printed for all the world to see.”

Merchant hopes to prove at Thursday’s hearing that Willis’ personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade disqualifies her from prosecuting Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election in the state.

Willis came out on the offensive and appeared to stagger Merchant, whose questions were peppered with ums, with the strength of her anger.

“I told you what happened,” snapped Willis, when Merchant repeated a question. “Is there something you didn’t understand?”

At another point, when confronted about the dates that the relationship started, she responded, "That's a lie, that's one of your lies."

Willis said she probably uttered some “choice words” when she received Merchant’s motion because she was not a “southern gentleman” like Wade.

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Wade testified earlier that he did not date Willis before she hired him in 2020 because he was battling cancer and was afraid to socialize during the pandemic.

Willis snapped when Merchant demanded information about a 2019 conference that she and Wade both attended.

“You tried to implicate I slept with him at that conference, which I find to be extremely offensive,” Willis said.

“When someone lies on you and it's highly offensive when they implicate that you slept with somebody the first day you met with them.”

People who watched the live stream were stunned by Willis’ courtroom battle with Merchant.

“Wow,” wrote Victor Shi, a 2020 delegate for Joe Biden, on X. “Willis is on absolute fire right now.”

Watch the video below or click here.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley seemed to forget the date of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, moments after calling for mental fitness tests for presidential candidates.

During a Sunday interview on CBS, Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan noted that Haley was pushing the cognitive tests.

"You have made mental acuity a signature issue for your campaign for the better part of the past year," Brennan observed. "You're handing out paper copies now of a cognitive assessment. When do you plan to take it?"

"I have no problem taking it," Haley insisted. "And what I've said is we need to have mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75. I don't care if we do it for 50 and up."

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Haley suggested that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump had been "diminished" by age.

But moments later, it was Haley who couldn't remember the date of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The last thing we ever want to do is side with Russia," she said during a defense of NATO. "What we always need to remember is America needs to have friends."

"After September 10th, we needed a lot of friends," Haley added. "We can never get to the point where we don't need friends."

Watch the video below from CBS or at the link.

The super PACs backing former President Donald Trump's political rivals for the 2024 nomination were "money pits" that did next to nothing to challenge the former president's dominance, former GOP strategist Tim Miller wrote in a scorching analysis for The Bulwark.

This comes after extensive reporting about Never Back Down, the super PAC of failed Trump rival and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who himself called out how inept their efforts had been.

"Much can be said about about the incompetence, self-dealing, and cowardice of the Republicans who were charged with challenging Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign. Marc Caputo covered it colorfully and thoroughly earlier this week," wrote Miller. "But after you have cut through all the tweets and trivia and backbiting and biorhythmic disruption that spilled out of the DeSantis 'campaign' — if you can even call it that — there is one strategic choice that stands out."

READ MORE: Biden connects the dots: Trump’s 'Big Lie' is the new 'Lost Cause'

Namely, wrote Miller, records show that the major super PACs representing the non-Trump Republican candidates -- like DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, which raised a combined $225 million -- spent just 2 percent of their revenue targeting Trump, versus supporting their candidates and attacking the non-Trump rivals.

And when these super PACs did target Trump, contended Miller, they only released "limp-wristed" efforts.

"With these resources, Trump’s opponents availed themselves of the best Republican consultants money could buy," wrote Miller. "Those political strategists in turn had titans of industry — millionaires and billionaires — at their disposal. These wealthy individuals were willing to offer their private-sector expertise and burn ungodly sums of their personal fortune to advance the interests of Tim, or Nikki, or Ron. DeSantis even had the world’s richest man giving him free rein and free PR in his personal global town-square on the campaign’s announcement day."

A similar pattern happened in 2016, noted Miller. But "at least in 2016, those choices were defensible. We had never seen a candidate like Trump before, and there was reason to believe that in the end, Republican voters would come to their senses — as they had in every other nominating contest in living memory. We didn’t know what we didn’t know."

"There was no excuse to make the same mistakes this time," he concluded.

Former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway recently wrote a story for the New York Times making some recommendations for whom he should select as his next vice president.

However, The Daily Beast's Michael Ian Black speculates that the entire point of the Conway column was to manipulate Trump into seeing her as VP material, despite the fact that she's never held elected office.

Black argues that Conway has proven herself to be a very deft power player in the Trump White House, where she worked for four years and never suffered Trump's wrath the way countless others did during his tenure.

READ MORE: MTG swears Trump not behind border bill attack: 'Anyone voting for it is a traitor'

In particular, Black argues that Conway is "shameless" enough to unlock the keys to Trump's "syphilitic mind" with a combination of all-out flattery and the promotion of Trump's own business interests.

"She happily promoted Trump brands during her time in the White House, to the point that the Office of Special Counsel recommended she be fired for multiple violations of the Hatch Act," writes Black. "Further, she understands that loyalty-as-obsequiousness is precisely what Trump desires."

As an example of this, he cites Conway's claim that "Trump is someone who is not fully understood for how compassionate and what a great boss he is to women," despite the fact that Trump "was ordered to pay over $80,000,000 for defaming E. Jean Carroll, who had previously been awarded millions in damages when a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting her."

The bottom line, he concludes from reading her op-ed, is that "Kellyanne wants in."

Taking down House Speaker Kevin McCarthy paid off for his Republican enemies.

Six of the eight GOP lawmakers who joined Democrats to oust the former speaker saw an increase in small-dollar donations from the third to fourth quarter of last year, according to a Politico analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

And ringleader Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) enjoyed the biggest boost.

“As the only Republican in Congress who refuses all lobbyist and PAC donations, we are humbled and honored by the support we have received from across the country,” Gaetz said in a statement. “And we hope folks keep giving!”

Between the third and fourth quarter, the Florida Republican raked in an additional $725,000 from individual donors giving less than $200 and saw the second-highest percentage growth, only behind likely Senate candidate Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT).

ALSO READ: Trumped-up nonsense: Smearing Fani Willis won’t get Donald off the hook in Georgia

Gaetz made McCarthy's route to the speakership tortuous and made life difficult for the California Republican throughout his brief tenure holding the gavel, and he used that notoriety to raise nearly $770,000 in the third quarter of the year. His fundraising exploded to $1.8 million over the last three months of 2023.

Three other members — Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Bob Good (R-VA) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) — also saw a boost in the fundraising, but the other four Republicans — retiring Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), first-term Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), Rosendale and Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) — raised less money in that period.

McCarthy allies, led by Brian O. Walsh, are recruiting primary challengers to the so-called "Gaetz Eight" as revenge for taking him down as speaker, and they've identified Crane, Good and Mace as particularly vulnerable, according to a report.

Former Barack Obama campaign manager Dan Pfeiffer is calling the new Republican culture war against Taylor Swift a gift for Democrats.

Writing Thursday, he explained that the GOP's freakout over Swift is another example of how "out of touch" they have become.

Swift, who began her career in the right-leaning world of country music, revealed in the past has openly said she couldn't vote for Donald Trump. It comes after the pop star registered 35,000 people to vote with a single social media post. Then, she began dating a Kansas City Chiefs football player, infiltrating the conservative stronghold of the NFL.

The conspiracy theorists went wild.

READ MORE: A neuroscientist explains how Donald Trump exploits the minds of conspiracy theorists

"The Right Wing’s bizarre conspiracy theory about the Deep State scripting the Super Bowl so that Taylor Swift could help Biden win has been THE topic of the week; one of the few things that actually broke through in our disaggregated, chaotic, confusing media ecosystem," wrote Pfeiffer in his newsletter, The Message Box.

He explained that it brought the country together, mocking the idea that Swift is some "deep state" psyop.

"Beyond making fun of these yahoos, there is something notable about the Right Wing picking a fight with America’s most popular singer, one of its most popular athletes, and the most popular sport by far on the occasion of what will be the most watched television event of the year," Pfeiffer continued.

"The 'Taylor Swift is an op' accusation is an example of the Democrats’ continuing and too often unrealized opportunity to paint the Republicans as out-of-touch."

It's a similar take that Republican communications strategist Ana Navarro made on CNN Thursday, saying it "takes the cake as the stupidest conspiracy theory" that she's heard from "a group of people who have come up with some of the stupidest conspiracy theories we have ever heard."

Navarro explained that it has nothing to do with Swift and Travis Kelce, love or even football.

"Their issue is that the woman tweeted out and said, go register to vote, and she burst the internet. It blew up, that she has that kind of political influence. If she was a MAGA person, they would love all sorts — they would all be Swifties," Navarro explained.

Pfeiffer explained that the right-wing endeavors to "otherize" the opposing side. He used John Kerry as an example. Despite being a war hero, they painted him as an "elitist, wind-surfing Boston Brahmin who hated his fellow troops." The Obama "birther" campaign was another attempt by the right to "otherize."

"All of the 'Defund the Police,' Critical Race Theory, DEI bulls--t were attempts to make Democrats seem extreme," he said. "And all of this is why, dating back to Richard Nixon, Republicans have worked so hard to claim ownership of the words 'freedom' and 'patriotism.'"

"Democrats are often ahead of public opinion on issues of civil rights and reproductive and sexual freedoms and, therefore, on the defensive over these sorts of cultural issues. But those days are no longer. Republicans are on the wrong side of public opinion and backing themselves into a corner by picking some truly bizarre fights," Pfeiffer noted.

He named not only the right's Swift war, but baseball, football, Bud Light, Target, Disney and a slew of other big brands that they've tried to go after.

"While this whole Taylor Swift psyop thing has gotten some attention, most voters don’t know just how far from the mainstream Republicans have wandered. Therefore, it’s our job to tell them," he said, before detailing how to do so.

Read the full piece here.

See the Navarro video below or at the link here.

The Swiftie war shows just how angry Republicans are youtu.be