The news as it’s being reported out of the Florida primaries is that the Trump-backed candidate won the Republican race for governor and the Bernie Sanders-backed candidate won the Democratic one.
But the next morning, the real news is that Rep. Ron DeSantis (Rep – FL6) is a racist.
DeSantis called his opponent, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who is African-American, “articulate” just before cautioning that Florida shouldn’t “monkey this up” by electing him governor. Watch the video, painful though it is, and note DeSantis emphasizing the word “monkey.” He practically winks as he pauses slightly to make sure you heard him.
Responses noted that the tweet should have read, “White candidate is making the race for Florida governor about race.”
Gillum’s victory over a moderate with a sense of inevitability is a signal that Florida’s progressives have had it with half measures. DeSantis’ win over a Republican who isn’t on the Trump train shows the same on the right-wing side.
Anyone paying attention is also over and done with the kind of reporting that attempts to paint Democrats with the same brush as Republicans. The news media has been part of the problem. Trying so hard to appear fair and balanced that it can’t even report accurately — which facilitated Trump’s rise — will no longer be overlooked.
In this shot, the flag flies at the top of the pole at the White House, while all the flags at the Washington Monument are at half staff for Sen. John McCain. No opportunity to do the right thing is too big for Trump to waste it.
Don’t skip this ad just because you don’t live in Florida. But first, tie a bow around your chin so your jaw won’t get hurt when it drops to the ground.
Florida’s choices for governor are a Republican who is owned and operated by the NRA and Big Sugar (and whose agency stopped conducting background checks for concealed carry permits because it couldn’t remember its password), a Hillary Clinton-esque moderate Democrat who is almost guaranteed to lose because of the lack of enthusiasm she inspires among voters, and…this putz.
To paraphrase the old saying about Mexico, “Poor Florida — so far from God and so close to the United States.”
If you find yourself growing immune to the trauma we are inflicting on our southern border, watch this video for a little reminder of how shameful our current president’s policies are.
“It’s like we’re an outbreak, and they are the treatment…”
Thank you to our friends in England for making this perfect headline and photo combination possible. Unlike the Republicans in Congress, it appears the Brits are not suffering from battered spouse syndrome.
As we debate whether the numbers of people who were killed when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September, 2017 were deliberately under-reported or just badly counted, there’s one thing Trump knew. It was nothing compared to a “real catastrophe like Katrina.”
Even as Trump made that insulting comment the following month, average Puerto Ricans were certain that many more than the 16 people he touted had been lost.
A new study from the New England Journal of Medicine estimates the actual death toll to be closer to 5,000. Even worse, “one third of the deaths were attributed to delayed or interrupted health care.”
Hurricane Katrina, which hit South Florida and Louisiana in August, 2005, resulted in 1,833 fatalities.
Trump made no secret he considered money spent in Puerto Rico to be both unnecessary (since he believed it to be full of non-citizens) and an annoyance. Could his attitude have led to a tightening of the purse strings that contributed to the death toll?
So as president he’s going to demand that the Department of Justice investigate whether the last president demanded that the Department of Justice investigate something?
To hear Trump talk, he’s the only one
Who’s ever stood trial for crimes he’s done.
But instead of courtroom drama,
We get Trump in his pajamas,
That’s how he earned his new nickname: Don Snoreleone.
“This week has been a howling vortex of suck for the MAGA movement and Donald Trump. Imagine a black hole in the profound interstellar vacuum in the cold emptiness of space, drawing all matter and energy into its brutal singularity, an ineluctable and final journey into nothingness. … That’s the GOP this week. It’s been bad and will get worse.”
“I am not resigning. And it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs. It is not helpful to the cause, it is not helpful to the country, it does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda, which is in the best interest of the American people here — a secure border, sound governance – and it’s not helpful to the unity that we have in the body.”
— Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) on the “resign or be fired” ultimatum from the GOP’s Freedom Caucus just 174 days into his tenure as sp[eaker, reported by Punchbowl News.
“Trump’s head slowly dropped, his eyes closed. It jerked back upward. He adjusts himself. Then, his head droops again. He straightens up, leaning back. His head droops for a third time, he shakes his shoulders. Eyes closed still. His head drops. Finally, he pops his eyes open.”
— Law360 reports from the second day of Donald Trump’s “hush money” criminal trial.
“Functionally, Chris Sununu is as active a part of Trump’s campaign as Matt Gaetz or MTG, or any of the other MAGA freaks. And it seems not to bother him that these people would poleaxe him if given a second’s chance. It seems not to bother him that his political career is over. He’s not just willing to exit public life on his knees—he’s eager to do it. … In the end, it doesn’t matter if Sununu is a mountebank, a coward, or a fool. Those three characters are equally pernicious. … What matters is that the rest of us understand that it is the Chris Sununus of the world who make this ongoing authoritarian attempt possible.”
“He’s f**king crazy! The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I’ll say it this way: I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out!”
— New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), quoted by the Associated Press two years ago. Sununu is now backing Trump for president.
Punchbowl News: The DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] raised $45.4 million in the first quarter of 2024, outpacing the NRCC [National Republican Congressional Committee] by $12 million. That’s the DCCC’s best quarter of the 2024 cycle and includes a $21.4 million March haul. This is a massive show of force for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.The DCCC has $71.1 million on hand. Compare that to the NRCC, which has $45.2 million on hand.
A new Harvard Institute of Politics poll of voters under age 30 finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump 56% to 37% among likely voters. Pollster John Della Volpe: “For a Democrat to comfortably win the Electoral College, he or she needs to win 60 percent of the youth vote. Biden and Obama, ’12 and ’20, won 60 percent. Obama got 66 percent in ’08. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton got 55 percent. Biden is in the mid-50s. Can you improve that to get to 60 percent? It’s within reach.“
Financial Times: “In another troubling sign for Republican fundraising efforts, Trump has 270,000 fewer unique donors than he did at the same stage of his 2020 White House run. His campaign and affiliated political action committees got money from 900,000 donors from July 2023 to the end of the first quarter of 2024, down from 1.17 million four years earlier.”
New York Times: “Of the 96 possible jurors brought into the room, more than 50 raised their hands to say they couldn’t be fair. They were immediately excused.”
“Nationwide, homicides dropped around 20% in 133 cities from the beginning of the year through the end of March compared with the same period in 2023. … Homicides in American cities are falling at the fastest pace in decades, bringing them close to levels they were at before a pandemic-era jump,” the Wall Street Journal reports.