Alternet: “The Times of London’s David Charter, the newspaper’s U.S. editor, ‘writes that when he asked Mr. DeSantis how he would handle American relations with Ukraine, the governor referred ‘to Biden being ‘weak on the world stage’ and failing at deterrence.’
“Mr. Charter pressed for more detail: ‘How would a President DeSantis handle the conflict in Ukraine?’
“DeSantis, it appears, grew irritated.
“‘Perhaps you should cover some other ground?’ the governor replied. ‘I think I’ve said enough.’
Alternet: Right-wing activist and lobbyist Matt Schlapp, the embattled chairman of the political organization that hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), avoided a reporter’s questions Thursday about a male Republican campaign operative’s sexual assault allegations against him, and ultimately was pulled away by his arm rather than face the questions.
The Independent’s Eric Michael Garcia tried to get Schlapp to respond to the claims by the man who at the time was an aide to the Herschel Walker campaign. He is reportedly suing Schlapp in a $9.4 million battery, defamation, and conspiracy lawsuit after the CPAC leader refused to admit to allegations he was “aggressively fondling” the man’s “genital area in a sustained fashion” while he was driving Schlapp to his hotel.
In the video (above), Garcia can be heard saying to Schlapp, ‘What’s your response to the allegation –’ but then a woman interjects, asking, ‘How’s your wife?’
“‘She’s great,’ Schlapp responds.
[Mercedes Schlapp was Trump’s director of strategic communications.]
“…At that point another man grabs Schlapp’s arm and pulls him away.”
“Will Republicans honor their campaign commitments to secure the border – yes or no? What I am seeing right now from my Republican colleagues does not give me faith that they will stand up in the breach as did those men who stood on the wall at the Alamo. I am tired of words!”
— Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), in a fiery speech on the House floor.
“Whether DeSantis would actually do more damage to American democracy in office than Trump could remains hard to say. Perhaps, perhaps not. But we should recognize that he is not putting himself forward as a critic of Trump’s authoritarianism. He is promising, on the contrary, to exceed it.”
Vice News: “If Ron DeSantis has his way, what his board did at New College will happen at every public university in Florida.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked board of trustees voted to shutter New College’s diversity, equity, and inclusion office on Tuesday, the latest step in its hostile takeover of the school and a harbinger of what Florida’s entire university system could look like in a few months.
“The board, which has a majority of DeSantis appointees, voted 9 to 3 to abolish the school’s Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence.
“Christopher Rufo, a rightwing education activist and one of DeSantis’ appointees to the board and [who singlehandedly made Critical Race Theory into fake issue], argued during the meeting that diversity efforts undermine fairness. ‘DEI goes against those principles because it restricts academic freedom, it degrades the rigor of scholarship, it treats people differently on the basis of skin color or other inborn identities,’ he said during the board meeting.
“DeSantis has sought to make an example of New College, a tiny liberal arts school with a mostly progressive student body that has a large LBGTQ community. Earlier this year he replaced most of the college’s board of trustees with right-wing loyalists who quickly moved to fire the college’s president, replace her with an ally, and push the liberal-leaning school hard to the right.”
Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: “A simple but obvious fact has been lost over the past few years, amid Trump’s direct attacks on the FBI, and liberal defenses of the FBI against those attacks: FBI agents are cops. Law-enforcement officers, including the FBI, have long been disproportionately conservative, but in the past few decades, like the rest of the nation, they have also become far more polarized by party, a reality reflected in the rhetoric and positioning of advocacy groups such as the Fraternal Order of Police. There are liberal and moderate cops, but they are not close to comprising a majority. Simply put, the FBI is full of people who would prefer not to investigate Donald Trump. He remains under federal investigation only because of his own inability to stop criming.”
It’s Trump’s, not Biden’s, declining acuity on display.
The absurd or the nonsensical, who knows what Trump’ll say.
If you haven’t noticed,
It dates from when Trump was POTUS
To 2017, when he coined his first nonsense term,”covfefe.”
“I’d ask a rhetorical question. If you thought you were best positioned to beat someone who, if they won, would change the nature of America, what would you do?”
— President Biden, quoted by the New Yorker, on his decision to run for re-election.
“While a pregnancy might have been difficult on a 10-year-old body, a woman’s body is designed to carry life.”
— Cincinnati Right to Life leader Laura Strietmann, commenting on the 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and had to travel to Indiana for an abortion.
A new Pew Research Center survey “finds that 80% of U.S. adults say religion’s role in American life is shrinking – a percentage that’s as high as it’s ever been in our surveys. … Most Americans who say religion’s influence is shrinking are not happy about it. Overall, 49% of U.S. adults say both that religion is losing influence and that this is a bad thing. An additional 8% of U.S. adults think religion’s influence is growing and that this is a good thing.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) “boasted shortly after he began soliciting private donations for his controversial migrant busing program that there would likely ‘be no cost to the state’ given the outpouring of support from concerned citizens across the country,” CNN reports. “But after nearly two years of fundraising to offset the program’s costs, Abbott’s operation has collected less than half of 1% of the roughly $150 million spent on busing migrants to sanctuary cities.”
A new Wall Street Journal poll finds a plurality of American voters “think Israel has gone too far in responding to the October attacks by Hamas, and a growing share believes the U.S. isn’t doing enough to help the Palestinian people. … The new poll found that 60% of voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war, 8 points more than in December, with 31% approving of Biden’s actions.”
“More than 8 million asylum seekers and other migrants will be living inside the U.S in legal limbo by the end of September — a roughly 167% increase in five years,” Axios reports. “That’s up from about 3 million in 2019 — a sign of how the underfunded and outdated U.S. immigration system can’t keep up with the rapidly growing migrant population driven by new border surges.”
Pew Research: “No single issue stands out after the economy. Nearly three-quarters of Americans (73%) rate strengthening the economy as a top priority. That is considerably larger than the shares citing any other policy goal.”