Year: 2023
Trump Lowers the Bar of Political Discourse — Again
“We have somebody that’s not at the top of his game, never was at the top of a game, never was. We have a guy who is a dumb son of a bitch.”
— Donald Trump, calling President Biden a “dumb son of a bitch” at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, last night:
Congress Is Old
58
Members of Congress born before 1946 only account for about 6% of the entire governing body, which matches their share of the overall US population. But Capitol Hill is no nest of spring chickens: Baby Boomers (those born 1946–1964) make up nearly 49% of Congress compared to 21% of the US population. The average age of a member of Congress is 58 years old.
Old and In the Way
There’s a new meaning to “the world’s ‘oldest’ democracy,”
Where “who lasts longest” has replaced our time-tested meritocracy.
With Trump, Feinstein, McConnell and Biden,
We’re led by septa-, nona- and octogenarians.
Americans of all ages unite! And welcome to the gerontocracy!
Trump Has Spent $40 Million on Lawyers This Year
$40 million
“Donald Trump’s political group spent more than $40 million on legal costs in the first half of 2023 to defend Trump, his advisers and others, according to people familiar with the matter, financing legal work that has drawn scrutiny from prosecutors about potential conflicts of interest between Trump and witnesses,” the Washington Post reports.
Puck Reporter Coins New Term for DeSantis Campaign: ‘DeSantasy’
“It’s been a long, harrowing fortnight for Ron DeSantis, the former putative political wunderkind who I’ve been reporting for months was more of a Republican donor’s fantasy of a candidate than an actual voter’s. But after watching DeSantis shed 38 staffers, and after assessing days of leaked memos and background quotes promising a great reset, those heavily invested in the DeSantasy are now wondering if it’s time to jump ship, and to whom.”
— Tara Palmeri
U.S. Economic Growth Accelerates
2.4%
“The U.S. economy grew solidly last quarter and remained well clear of a recession despite the Federal Reserve pushing interest rates higher,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Gross domestic product grew at a seasonally and inflation adjusted annual rate of 2.4% in the second quarter, picking up slightly from 2% growth in the first three months of the year.”
“The U.S. economy grew solidly last quarter and remained well clear of a recession despite the Federal Reserve pushing interest rates higher,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Gross domestic product grew at a seasonally and inflation adjusted annual rate of 2.4% in the second quarter, picking up slightly from 2% growth in the first three months of the year.”
Life in the American Gerontocracy
“Pardon the morbidity, but I really have to say what everybody is (or should be) saying about what happened with Mitch McConnell yesterday. … Imagine if that had happened to Donald Trump. Or Joe Biden. … Our politics would be upended in the blink of an eye. The margin is that thin. … But this is what living in a gerontocracy is like.”
— Charlie Sykes
Slate: DeSantis 3.0 ‘May Involve Fewer Depictions of Self as a Nazi Emperor God’
Slate.com: “On Tuesday, the Daily Beast published a piece about a Twitter account called @DeSantisCams that is pro–Ron DeSantis and also, even by the standards of the contemporary American right, quite pro-Hitler.
“Last weekend, for instance, the account published a video that culminates in an image of soldiers marching in lockstep toward the Florida governor, whose head turns into a rotating Sonnenrad, or sun wheel. The symbol was installed by Heinrich Himmler in the SS’s Wewelsburg castle and has been adopted in recent decades by white supremacists, including the individuals who carried out mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Buffalo, New York. Conservatives often argue that Democrats are being hysterical for saying that right-wing meme phenomena like the ‘OK’ hand gesture have fascist overtones; there would seem to be some difficulty involved in making that claim about a lightning bolt circle that was created by the leader of the SS for his occult Nazi castle.
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