McCarthy’s win last week was a squeaker.
The wingnuts got strong while McCarthy got weaker.
They handed Kevin his nuts
And a thousand small cuts,
Now he’s less of a man and even less of a Speaker.
House Republicans are knuckle-dragging cretins
Masquerading as tough-talking ruffians.
Touting the Second Amendment,
Don’t they look resplendent
Wearing suits with AR-15 lapel pins.
— Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Ut), greeting Rep. George Santos (R-NY) before the recent State of the Union address. To clear up any doubts about what he REALLY meant later, Romney added, “He should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room.”
“Imagine members strutting around the corridors of Congress in late 2001 with a Boeing 747 lapel pin, or wearing a spiky replica of the coronavirus when New York City’s morgues were overflowing in the spring of 2020. Explain to me how worshiping an AR-15 — when the blood stains are still being scrubbed off a dance studio in Monterey Park, Club Q in Colorado Springs, or a bus in Charlottesville — is any different, really?”
— Will Bunch, commenting on the AR-15 lapel pins being worn by many Republican members of Congress.
“No, I wouldn’t do that because I want to bring our country forward. No, I wouldn’t do that. I would be entitled to a revenge tour if you want to know the truth, but I wouldn’t do that.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Rolling Stone, when asked if he would use the powers of the presidency to punish the people who punished him.
“When you separate a person from their creator and reduce their identity to a group, sexual preference, or skin color, you often create a victim in search of a villain, which becomes a community organizer euphemistically, an agitator historically, and a Marxist ultimately.”
— — Eddie Speir, one of six conservatives Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to the board of Sarasota’s New College of Florida, in an email to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Speir has used Twitter to promote conspiracy theories about climate change and COVID, according to Axios Tampa Bay.
“If there was no Trump, there would be no Bolsonaro in Brazil. And if there was no invasion of the Capitol, there wouldn’t have been the invasion we saw yesterday. Bolsonarismo tries to copy Trumpism, and Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil try to copy what Trump supporters do in the United States.”
— Guga Chacra, a Brazilian political commentator, quoted by the New York Times.
“The employment picture started off 2023 on a stunningly strong note, with nonfarm payrolls posting their strongest gain since July 2022,” CNBC reports. “Nonfarm payrolls increased by 517,000 for January, above the Dow Jones estimate of 187,000. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4% vs. the estimate for 3.6%.”
Just over half of American voters think Ukraine is winning the war against Russia and nearly two-thirds want to keep helping them in their fight, according to a new Fox News survey. Sixty-four percent favor the U.S. continuing to provide weapons to Ukraine and 63% support ongoing financial aid. Those numbers are up a touch compared to six months ago, when approval was 61% for weapons and 59% for money.
“A federal judge sentenced pro-Trump livestreamer Anthime ‘Baked Alaska’ Gionet on Tuesday to 60 days in prison for his actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, calling his raucous conduct ‘shocking’ amid the chaos of the mob,” Politico reports.
“Donald Trump’s tax returns show he extended sweetheart loans to his three eldest children—Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric—saving them a small fortune while adding to the intrigue surrounding the former president’s tax maneuvers,” Forbes reports. “The younger Trumps owed their father a collective $4.55 million and paid him roughly $50,000 in annual interest from 2015 to 2020… That figure suggests the heirs paid an overall interest rate of about 1.1%.”
A new CBS News poll found that most Republican voters expect the party to follow Donald Trump’s policies and 2020 views, if not the former president himself. The results indicate 35% of Republicans think party loyalty to Trump is “very important,” and another 30% called it “somewhat important.”