If you want a legitimate issue to “blame Trump” for, and he will give you some, here you go.
Just stop blaming him for the shortcomings of party leadership, especially if you aren’t willing to give the man any credit for all the good he’s done.
This is just stupid, and hopefully this will cost him the nomination. He should apologize, step aside, and endorse DeSantis.
I was genuinely excited to see a primary fight between these two. I think that’s what would be best for the country.
But apparently Trump is going to just embarrass himself and go down in flames and I’ll be honest, it saddens me a little. Not how the Trump era should end. https://t.co/CYVIcIsW4i
There’s plenty of blame to go around, Trump included, and this doesn’t even touch on the 2 clowns known as McConnell and Graham and what their PACs did and didn’t do.
“The biggest winners coming out of the 2022 midterms are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — heralded by The New York Post’s Wednesday cover as “DeFUTURE” — J.D. Vance, who succeeded in Ohio, and New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin, who came within striking distance of unseating Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul while driving turnout that carried down-ballot candidates to victory. It’s worth noting that Zeldin’s colleague Elise Stefanik also is due credit for Empire State Republicans’ success on Tuesday night.
But when it comes to the midterms’ losers, there’s RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, NRCC Chairman Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), NRSC Chairman Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), and former President Donald Trump. After hearing what they said in the first 10+ months of 2022 and then watching results come in since Tuesday, one can only ask: What were these Republicans doing?
In a Wednesday Tipsheet, I dove into the answers and accountability that these GOP leaders owe to their party’s voters — what the heck happened in the border district House races, the supposedly easy pickup seats in Virginia, and the gubernatorial races that saw GOP challengers seeking to topple unpopular Democrats who failed their citizens during COVID and have overseen a surge in violent crime?
But, now facing calls from Republican voters and probably more than a few of their own candidates for some accountability, these Republican leaders are doubling down on their inexplicable actions and seemingly trying to make things even worse for themselves.
On Fox News Wednesday afternoon, Ronna McDaniel claimed that the RNC never used the term “red wave” in 2022 before confusingly saying a red wave “did happen.” But, in fact, the RNC did refer to a coming “red wave,” and Tuesday definitely did not see a Republican surge.
Just a cursory search of the GOP and McDaniels’ tweets finds numerous examples of “red wave” hype being used earlier in 2022. So why claim the national party “never” raised hopes of a “red wave” in November?
When it comes to the committees tasked with securing, protecting, and expanding GOP majorities in Congress, we’ve already covered how Sen. Rick Scott was on a yacht in Italy in August while the NRSC was running low on funds just as voters began tuning into the midterm races en masse. Was that a result of misplaced confidence? The wrong priorities? Just poor planning?”
—
“Then there was House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy. As Vespa reported, McCarthy’s “victory” (huh?) speech came more than six hours after he told supporters to be at a D.C. party to celebrate what he promised would be a decisive victory for Republicans.
Vespa noted the remarks were “beyond tone-deaf” when, around 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday, McCarthy finally showed his face and promised, “When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority, and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority.” But by the time most Americans woke up on Wednesday, that was still not the case.
McCarthy had rolled out his “Commitment to America” as his rendition of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” with the promise it would win over voters and be the blueprint for their healthy majority in the new Congress. What happened there?
Last but certainly not least is Trump. What on earth was he doing Tuesday night into Wednesday morning? First, he made a celebratory post on Truth Social cheering the fact that GOP nominee Joe O’Dea had lost the Colorado U.S. Senate race which made…zero sense.
If Trump really intends to run and win in 2024, he’s going to need friendly senators, or at least as many with an “R” next to their name as possible, if he wants to get anything done. Sure, Murkowski, Collins, and Romney aren’t always on board with the rest of the Republican conference, but they’re more likely to be of help than a Democrat.
Trump also ripped one of his own candidates, Don Bolduc, whom he’d endorsed in New Hampshire, for losing his Senate race against incumbent Maggie Hassan. According to Trump, Bolduc was unsuccessful because he didn’t keep talking about the 2020 election outcome as much as the former president wanted.
But where was Trump’s financial support in New Hampshire and elsewhere across the country after his endorsements helped push primary candidates through to the general election? He bragged about how much he fundraised for his midterm candidates, but the amount he spent was a fraction of what his PACs brought in. Why the hesitancy to spend the money that could have helped push Bolduc and Oz to victory or helped Herschel Walker avoid a runoff in Georgia?”
Day one of the new Congress should see both removed from leadership positions.
These are the tired, self-serving, unreliable faces of the old GOP. Let’s give them both a farewell reception and show them the door. A new GOP is forming and these two antediluvian duds are not the guys to run it pic.twitter.com/lNzPN9XkhF
I defy anyone to watch this full video or read the full transcript posted at the Substack and a say the 4000 percent increase in trans-identifying kids is anything other than social contagion or affirmative policies anything other than entrenching kids in a passing phase https://t.co/fXaoqqACx5
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is making a play for another term in leadership next week while control of the upper chamber remains in the balance after the Kentucky lawmaker’s chess game sabotaged chances for a GOP majority.
In September, McConnell inaugurated the fall midterms by undermining Republicans in key races when the GOP Senate chief complained of “candidate quality.”
—-
“McConnell’s Money Prioritized Allies, Not Majority
McConnell’s super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, went on to gut desperately needed campaign cash from conservative candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire who refused to kiss the ring of Washington monarchs. In Arizona, McConnell axed $18 million from the race where Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters sought to bring down a well-funded Democrat incumbent. While the Masters race remains too close to call, Gen. Don Bolduc in New Hampshire was comfortably defeated by Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan, who captured a second term despite multiple polls showing the Republican within the margins of error. Bolduc was similarly abandoned by the GOP leader with $5.6 million cut from the contest. Both Bolduc and Masters signaled support for another candidate to lead the Senate conference if elected to the upper chamber.
McConnell took money from the competitive pick-up contests and redirected resources into Alaska and Colorado, the former featuring a race between two Republicans and the latter featuring a candidate who alienated the base. Alienating the base, however, has become routine practice for McConnell, who boasts a lower favorability rating than President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In other words, McConnell is the most unpopular politician in the country, a fact Democrats used to their advantage in this election cycle by villainizing McConnell as the new GOP “boogeyman.”
It wasn’t just former President Donald Trump that Democrats ran against, it was McConnell, and McConnell ran just as hard against Republicans who threatened his perch in leadership.
In Alaska, McConnell’s PAC spent more than $6 million to boost Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski over the state party’s endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. The spending that could have benefitted tight races to pick up seats in Arizona and New Hampshire instead earned McConnell a formal censure by the Alaska Republican Party for the Senate leader’s intraparty interference. Meanwhile in Colorado, Republican construction executive Joe O’Dea, who benefitted from $1.25 million of McConnell’s money, lost by 11 points with 88 percent of precincts reporting.”
McConnell Surrendered to the Biden Agenda
While Republicans ran on a platform hammering crime and inflation with few specifics, McConnell handed Democrats major wins during President Joe Biden’s first two years in office. In August, Federalist Senior Contributor Chris Jacobs outlined “3 Big Blunders Showing Mitch McConnell Isn’t The Legislative Genius He Thinks He Is.” McConnell capitulated to Democrats on raising the debt limit, passed a colossal infrastructure package with items that have nothing to do with infrastructure, and shepherded the CHIPS Act corrupted by corporate special interests.
“For someone held up as a legislative genius/strategical mastermind, Mitch McConnell sure has had a run of clunkers lately,” Jacobs wrote this past summer. “In reality, Schumer has out-maneuvered McConnell on most of the important legislative packages during the 117th Congress.”
McConnell also worked with Democrats to secure passage of gun control legislation in June littered with vague language about “dating partners” and red flag laws.”
If Trump is to BLAME for Oz losing in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker going to a runoff in Georgia, shouldn’t he get CREDIT for launching DeSantis in Florida, for J.D. Vance winning in Ohio and for Kari Lake who is almost certainly going to win the gubernatorial race in Arizona?
D’Antuono led investigation into Jan 6; still hasn’t found the “pipe bomber”; sent agents to arrest Peter Navarro at Reagan airport; sent agents to Mar A Lago raid.
Now he’s hightailing it out of the bureau before GOP (likely) takes House https://t.co/wN8nPg5JYQ
“The much-anticipated “red wave” in Tuesday’s midterms ended up barely a red trickle, with the GOP set to win a narrow House majority and control of the Senate likely coming down to a runoff in Georgia. The White House is reportedly “giddy” and “gleeful” to have avoided electoral disaster despite high inflation, widespread concern about crime and the natural tendency for midterm elections to favor the party out of power.
Republicans are not so giddy, to say the least. When analyzing what went wrong, the GOP shouldn’t overlook how President Joe Biden blatantly bribed some young voters to save him from the red wave — and they don’t even need the cash.
That’s right: The kids actually did show up to vote this time around. Per the Edison Research National Election Pool’s exit polling, 27% of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 cast ballots. That makes this the second-highest youth turnout in a midterm in nearly 30 years. And Edison estimates that in key competitive states, the youth turnout was even higher, around 31%.”
“A federal judge struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program on Thursday, declaring it unlawful.
District Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, ruled that the program, which would have provided borrowers with up to $20,000 in student loan relief, was “an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power.”
The Biden administration has argued that it has authority to forgive student loans under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003. However, Pittman rejected this argument on Thursday, finding no “clear congressional authorization” for the program.”
“In an Election Day interview, Donald Trump quipped something to the effect that if his endorsed candidates won on Tuesday, he should get all the credit, and that if they lost, he should get none of the blame. As Trump surely knew when he made the joke, what would actually happen on election night was always destined to be the exact opposite. From the moment the polls closed, the media pundits and establishment Republicans eager to dispatch the former president from the stage were working frantically to ensure that where Trump’s endorsed candidates lost, he would get all of the blame—and where they won, he would get none of the credit.
But this predictable attempt to make Donald Trump the scapegoat for closer-than-expected midterm election results is highly misleading, and an oversimplification in the extreme.
The results of Tuesday night’s elections do not tell an easy story for those looking to pin the blame on Trump.
Many Trump candidates—including J. D. Vance, Ted Budd, almost certainly Kari Lake and Adam Laxalt, potentially Blake Masters, and possibly (after the runoff) Herschel Walker—will have won their races in highly competitive swing states despite most being outspent by tens of millions of dollars.
Where Republican candidates faltered, it was not just those who were chosen by the former president: numerous strong House candidates handpicked by Kevin McCarthy lost races the consultant class had expected to win, including Yesli Vega running against vulnerable Democrat Representative Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, Rhode Island Republican Alan Fung, Mayra Flores and Cassy Garcia on the Texas border, and many others.
If Washington, D.C. consultants and establishment leaders are truly looking for someone to blame for the lack of a red tsunami on Tuesday, there are far more suitable candidates than Trump. First among them would be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose allies appear to be behind much of the Blame Trump campaign.
Whatever virtues McConnell may have as a legislative tactician and fundraiser—and they are evidently considerable—the fact is that McConnell failed to use his power over the past two years to shape the political terrain in ways that would support an overwhelming Republican victory. Even worse, he actively undermined Republican candidates at critical junctures.
At no point in the past two years have Americans seen McConnell and other top Republican leaders in Washington pick real and effective fights with the Biden administration. At no point have they managed to focus the nation on controversies that would be politically advantageous to their party. In Trump’s absence, the GOP establishment has reverted to McConnell’s preferred style of opposition, one of passivity and accommodation.
Time and time again, the Senate Minority Leader has proved fundamentally unserious about opposing the overreaches of the radical left. If establishment Republicans believed that the border crisis was the existential national security disaster they claimed in their speeches, nothing about McConnell’s actions in the Senate would suggest they actually believed it. There were no threats of a government shutdown if the border was not restored. There were no real conflicts over spending bills. There was no significant effort to block key nominees or exact a price for the Biden administration’s extremism. Worst of all, there was virtually no effort whatsoever to use McConnell’s considerable power in a 50-50 Senate to set up strategic fights—to force Joe Biden to finish the wall, or to stop the Department of Homeland Security from trying to censor free speech.
Instead, in a Senate that routinely needed Republican votes to pass Democrat priorities, McConnell ensured that Democrats routinely got them with as little fanfare as possible.”
Since January 2021, McConnell’s Senate minority has greenlighted some of the left’s most unpopular legislative and foreign policy initiatives—from the $550 billion “infrastructure” package to emptying out America’s arsenals and sending them to Ukraine. Even if he intended to pass the tens of billions for Ukraine, an effective Republican opposition leader would have insisted on including provisions to secure America’s own border in the process. The American people would have rallied to the Republicans’ side.
That would be the kind of leadership that could have forced the media to give some coverage—any coverage—to Congressional Republicans doing something useful.
Instead, McConnell’s theory appears to have been that he could win the Senate majority by default. When asked what Republicans would do if given the Senate majority, he famously replied that he would tell us after they had won. When NRSC Chairman Rick Scott attempted to put forward a positive vision for the party to rally around, McConnell slapped him down.
In retrospect, these appear to have been grievous mistakes. Republican leaders in Congress succeeded only in making themselves effectively invisible and allowing Democrats to drive the subject of national conversation to other issues—abortion, “democracy,” January 6th.
To make matters worse, McConnell actively attempted to sabotage pro-Trump Republicans on the general election ballot, presumably because he believed they would not back him as majority leader, and concluded that he’d rather be leader of a Republican minority than part of a Republican majority with someone else at the helm.
At a pivotal moment of the campaign, just as voters were tuning-in late in the summer and many were evaluating the Republican nominees for the first time, McConnell—who over the years has forced upon us any number of losing milquetoast clunker candidates—decided the time was right to publicly attack the Republican Party’s nominees. He baselessly called into question the competence and credibility of candidates like Masters, Vance, Walker, and Oz—thus advancing the left’s narrative that the GOP’s candidates were weird, fringe, and extreme, doing immeasurable damage to their prospects just as countless voters were forming their impressions. In fact, all of these candidates were remarkably impressive and accomplished people in their own ways. The “candidate quality” deficit is a convenient self-serving and blame-deflecting myth. But voters got the message: even Mitch McConnell didn’t think they deserved to win.
For all the venom hurled at Donald Trump by establishment Republicans since Tuesday night, perhaps the most selfish and shocking act of the cycle was when, in the closing weeks of the campaign, McConnell poured $9 million into the state of Alaska, saturating the state’s airwaves not in an effort to ensure that the Republican Party’s candidate won, but that she lost. McConnell spent those precious resources to bolster RINO Lisa Murkowski against Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka. Murkowski, a McConnell ally, has repeatedly insisted on running in the general election after being roundly rejected by Republican primary voters, and was personally responsible for the imposition of the ranked-choice voting system that foiled Republican voters’ desires this year in the state’s House race as well. McConnell spent big on Murkowski’s behalf, despite the fact that she recently voted to confirm Biden’s radical Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, after she had voted against Brett Kavanaugh. If any Republican candidate deserved to lose, it was her.”
“Two days after Republicans dramatically underperformed in the midterms, but even as control of Congress remains too close to call, Sen. Josh Hawley has completed his autopsy and offered it to his party’s leaders for consideration. The topline: The failure is all their fault.
The Missouri populist believes the Republican Party offered voters plenty in the way of generalized gripes about Democrats and President Biden – but no actionable alternative. Hawley blames that on what he calls “Washington Republicanism,” specifically Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He also thinks it was a bad idea to talk about making changes to Social Security and Medicare.
“Republicans just said, ‘Well, the other side sucks, and Biden sucks.’ Well, no doubt! But it’s pretty hard to convince folks, particularly independent-minded ones who don’t tend to trust the process much, to vote for you, if you don’t have something affirmative to say and offer,” Hawley said in a Friday interview.
“I lay that at the feet of the Washington establishment that set the tone for these races,” he added. “They failed to offer that kind of vision.”
Republicans certainly placed their hopes in voter resentment. They banked on the electorate rebuking a less-than-popular president overseeing historic inflation rates and high gasoline and food prices. And a policy prescription-free midterm was what Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted. After President Trump ran for reelection in 2020 without so much as releasing a party platform at the convention, McConnell was asked if the GOP would lay out their priorities should they retake the Senate majority.
“That is a very good question. And I’ll let you know when we take it back,” McConnell told NBC News in January. “This midterm election will be a report card on the performance of this entire Democratic government: the president, the House and the Senate.”
According to Hawley, that strategy “was a pretty serious mistake.” He says that many voters, particularly “Obama-Trump voters,” just stayed home, essentially reporting back to both parties in Washington through their non-participation that “‘I just don’t trust either of you guys.’””
“If anything was less impressive on election night than the “red wave,” it was the abortion wave. Blue states protected abortion rights as expected, but public officials who have supported or enforced limits on abortion in nearly 20 red states were re-elected.
Americans have learned since June that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t make abortion illegal in the Dobbs decision. Instead, after decades of jurisprudence that effectively taught Americans to embrace abortion, the Court made abortion an issue for voters, for Congress, and for states.
Since June, the states have been actively forming their own policy. California, New York, and Illinois have maintained their policy of abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, while a dozen other states have moved in various ways to abolish abortion or embrace pain-capable or similar protections.
Yet, since June, there has been a political, financial, and media onslaught to repudiate the Dobbs decision by denouncing officials who enforced state laws and running hard against Republicans who support abortion abolition or simply limits to the killing. A reported $500 million have been spent attacking Republicans who supported pro-life law and policy. Abortion was an election issue in virtually every state’s elections because Democrats made it an issue with their ads.
The first national election after the Court overruled Roe was destined to be raucous, but the issue has fizzled in many states for abortion activists.
If Democrats had consolidated control of the U.S. Senate, they could have suspended the filibuster and changed the make-up of the Supreme Court by majority vote. If Democrats had consolidated control of both the U.S. House and the Senate, they could have enacted a federal statute that legalized abortion for any reason, at any time of pregnancy, which President Biden promised to sign. That didn’t happen.
Abortion activists did even more poorly at the state level. Democrats didn’t crack state governor, state attorney general, or state house seats in red states that have enforced abortion limits since June. Abortion activists couldn’t defeat public officials in those states or win the U.S. House or Senate to block those state laws.
Thirteen states have aimed to enforce early gestational limits on abortion. In Alabama, Governor Ivey won with 67 percent. In Arkansas, Sara Huckabee Sanders won with 63 percent. In Idaho, Republican Brad Little was reelected with 60 percent. In Oklahoma, Republican Governor Stitt was reelected with 55 percent of the vote. In South Dakota, Governor Noem was reelected with 62 percent. And in Texas, which got the most media attention for a year leading up to the Dobbs decision, Governor Abbott was reelected with nearly 55 percent.
In four additional states with early gestational prohibitions, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was reelected with 53 percent, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds won with 58 percent, Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine was re-elected with 62 percent, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee was re-elected with 65 percent. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who signed an early gestational limit in August, was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who supported and signed a “pain capable” prohibition on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, was reelected with nearly 60 percent.
The claim that the abortion issue held back Republicans never asks how much the abortion issue spurred votes for Republicans and against Democrats.”
“Shockingly the news breaks right after the midterm elections: the 2nd largest Democrat mega donor after George Soros turns out to be a total fraud.
Call me cynical, but does it surprise anyone that the news hits just after all that money was spent on campaign ads, and not a day or two before? Do you think voters might like to know that $40 million of the money spent to influence their choices was stolen?
Sam Bankman-Fried–a billionaire of whom I never heard before today– donated more than $40 million to Democrat candidates and super-PACs, including providing the initial funding for the Protect Our Future PAC. He was the second largest donor to the 2020 Biden campaign, pouring over $10 million into Biden-related campaign organizations.
Crypto megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried helped bankroll Democrats’ overperformance in the midterms. But any friends he may have had in Washington won’t be there for him as his crumbling business empire threatens to torpedo the entire digital currency market.
Bankman-Fried’s Washington influence — as well as billions of dollars of his personal wealth — nearly vanished in the span of 48 hours, after it emerged that the giant crypto exchange he founded was insolvent and unable to meet customer withdrawals.
His billions–he was worth up to $26 billion at the peak of his wealth–was built on a pack of lies. He created a cryptocurrency of his own, while also handling other cryptocurrencies for his clients. He then, apparently, took the money of his clients and used it himself, substituting his fake crypto as an “asset” backing the more legitimate currencies. It was a fraud.
He essentially created an asset out of thin air, took legitimate assets for himself, and called it a day. Except, of course, he used a ton of that ill-gotten gain to bankroll Democrats and lobby for regulations that would benefit his business.
Quite a scam. And part of the plan was influencing legislators through donations paid for with his clients’ money. He wasn’t just a donor, but was highly influential in Washington.
Now there is no evidence as of yet that any of the recipients of his largesse reciprocated with political backing based upon those contributions–although he was known as a power broker in Washington DC. In fact, he had promised earlier to spend up to $1 billion backing Democrats in 2024.
When he talked, Democrats listened. Carefully.
It is far too early to know the details of his scam, although you can read about what is known in the Politico story linked above. The Atlantic wrote a profile of him from his glory days–a few weeks ago, that is–when he was riding high. Clouds were beginning to form, but he was still rhapsodizing about all the good he could do.
Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is a $15 billion enigma. As one of the richest and most powerful men in crypto, “SBF” is already a political megadonor in the vein of Peter Thiel and George Soros: He spent millions in support of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, and was one of the biggest Democratic donors in the country in the lead-up to this year’s midterm elections. Among his PAC’s expenditures was a whopping $10 million donation to a virtually unknown Oregon House candidate who lost his primary badly. Still, his political ambitions have had Democrats salivating: In a podcast interview earlier this year, SBF suggested that he would be willing to spend up to $1 billion on political donations before 2024.”
“During Donald Trump’s presidency, The Washington Post kept a running tally of his alleged lies and/or misleading statements. But, when Joe Biden became president, the Post fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, announced an end to the database operation, saying: “Maintaining the Trump database over four years required about 400 additional 8-hour days over four years beyond our regular jobs for three people.” Looks like supply-chain issues at the Post.
So, while the Post continues to fact-check Biden, it discontinued the Trump-era practice of running the tote board because, after all, Biden is not Trump, and the Post undoubtedly expects Biden to be more truthful.
How’s that working out?
Recently Post fact-checker Kessler wrote: “President Biden is a self-described ‘gaffe machine.’ That’s no excuse, of course, for a president making false or misleading statements. Readers have asked for fact checks of a variety of recent Biden statements, but none of them seemed big enough for a stand-alone fact check.” Really?
Set aside Biden’s decades of falsely claiming, as he did again during the 2020 campaign, that he “was raised in the black church” where, as a teenager, he would meet on Sundays to strategize how to “desegregate movie theaters and restaurants” in Wilmington, Delaware. The New York Times found no evidence of any Biden desegregation activity and congregants of the black church he supposedly attended did not recall seeing Biden there.
Then there is Biden’s decades long claim that he and former United Nations Ambassador and Rep. Andrew Young were “arrested” in apartheid South Africa while attempting to visit the imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Young said it never happened.
Biden, on two occasions, publicly and falsely claimed the truck driver who struck and killed his first wife and young daughter was drunk at the time. But he wasn’t, and the claims brought much dismay to the driver and his family.
As to the precipitous and disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, Biden claimed that no one advised him against it, a claim refuted by two top generals who insisted, under oath, that they advised Biden against the move.
On at least two occasions Biden claimed that his son, Beau, died in Iraq. Biden’s son, a military veteran who served in Iraq, died of brain cancer six years after returning home.
In late October, Biden said: “The most common price of gas in America is $3.39. Down from over $5 when I took office.” Two problems. When Biden took office the average price of gas was $2.39, and AAA says the average price on the day he made that statement was $3.76, 37 cents more than asserted by Biden. For good measure, the following day Biden said, “Since the elections, we’ve been — we’re taking gas prices down from where they were.” Given the importance of gas prices, a concern that many voters put at the top of their list, do Biden’s back-to-back gas claims amount to a gaffe or a blatant lie based on the expectation of more lenient media by Biden compared to Trump?
What of Biden’s recent characterization of his student debt forgiveness program, via executive order, that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost $400 billion? Biden, during an online discussion with progressive organization NowThis News, also in late October, said: “It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two, and it’s in effect.” Except he signed an executive order, currently under challenge and blocked by a federal appeals court. No Congress, no votes, and not in effect.
After Trump’s election, Democrats and the media raised such concerns about Trump’s mental capacity, that the president undertook a cognitive test. Trump then allowed the White House doctor to answer questions from reporters for a full hour, during which the doctor said Trump registered a “perfect” score. It does not appear that Biden undertook the same cognitive test. But despite Biden’s frequent displays of confusion, neither the Democrats nor the media care much about the mental acuity of a Commander-in-Chief not named Trump.”
Daily Caller) – A Colorado elementary school attempted to socially transition a young child — using pronouns and a name that does not align with the child’s biological sex — despite the parents explicitly asking educators not to, according to emails.
The emails, obtained by the concerned parent group Parents Defending Education via a public records request, appear to show the assistant principal of Laurel Elementary School asking the Poudre School District’s “Chief Academic & Equity Officer” what to do when parents asked educators not to use a child’s preferred pronouns and name.
“I’m wondering about what to do when an elementary school student has expressed their pronouns and chosen name but their parents directly tell school staff not to call the student by those pronouns,” an April 4 email from the assistant principal read. “I feel very strongly about supporting the student but have heard we legally have to follow the parents’ direction due to the age of the child (elementary school).”
The district’s equity officer responded April 5 and stated that educators should use the preferred pronouns and names of students, despite parents’ objections.
“Schools should use the student’s affirming name and pronouns at school and use their legal name and corresponding pronouns when talking with the family until they are supportive of the student’s new name and pronouns,” the equity officer responded.
A separate email from the district’s LGBTQIA+ coordinator reaffirmed the inquiry officer’s sentiment.
Oh, not smart enough to fill out mail-in ballot correctly the first time? You get a chance to fix—or cure it—even AFTER Election Day. These votes should be tossed but no. In WI in 2020, election workers actually filled in missing fields w/o voter presenthttps://t.co/fHiDUv0bl6
'Morning Joe' joins Donald Trump in hammering Ron DeSantis via former Republican-turned-liberal David Jolly: "Ron DeSantis famously has a glass jaw, fragile ego. You get him on the ropes & you start to see a Ron DeSantis that is not the manufactured package you see today." pic.twitter.com/AswurFkMBx
'Morning Joe' guest & Atlantic columnist Peter Wehner also trashes DeSantis, adding the GOP could struggle in 2024: "He may not be as impressive in reality as he is on paper. Very few…have seen [him] for any length of time & when Trump unleashes…we'll see how he holds up." pic.twitter.com/GwTdEPBQ8X
I've seen several people say DeSantis has a "glass jaw" and all I can say is that I was so impressed with him during the pandemic b/c the FL press were constantly attacking him & he fended them off easily by simply telling the truth https://t.co/0G3tIf9t8G
The Constitution is certainly not on his side. And shame on you for immediately claiming any judge who stands in your way “MAGA.”Were all the Trump appointed judges who threw out Trump’s bogus stolen election claims “MAGA”? Or does MAGA just mean “stuff you don’t like”? https://t.co/6GlRrqrP7o
Kind of weird for a senator being OK with the president unilaterally making a decision that is clearly under Congress's purview. https://t.co/qI06E6wlEi
I wouldn’t complain. Way better than the current choice. Or as someone else said, he’s one of the least worst options. 🙂
If a united GOP is a strong GOP, Rubio is clearly a solid candidate for Leader. While an establishment figure in many good ways, he also embraces and is embraced by many America First folks, doesn't have Mitch's baggage of utterly despising voters, and is appealing and savvy. https://t.co/2HAnhBc3r5
The challenge for DeSantis will be reconciling his sales pitch (i.e. "Trump without the downsides") with the only lane in the race available to him (i.e. the anti-Trump candidate). The former attracts MAGA, but the latter attracts squishes, who repel MAGA. Tough needle to thread.
"Election Day showed what kind of conservatism can win: a populist agenda paired with strength and competence in governance. It’s not more complicated than that," writes @bdomenechhttps://t.co/bpLjLsf9oG
Wandering Views 
If you want a legitimate issue to “blame Trump” for, and he will give you some, here you go.
Just stop blaming him for the shortcomings of party leadership, especially if you aren’t willing to give the man any credit for all the good he’s done.
This is just stupid, and hopefully this will cost him the nomination. He should apologize, step aside, and endorse DeSantis.
LikeLiked by 3 people
This makes me smile. 🙂
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There’s plenty of blame to go around, Trump included, and this doesn’t even touch on the 2 clowns known as McConnell and Graham and what their PACs did and didn’t do.
https://townhall.com/columnists/spencerbrown/2022/11/09/gop-leaders-ignoring-the-midterm-reality-are-making-things-worse-n2615773
“The biggest winners coming out of the 2022 midterms are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — heralded by The New York Post’s Wednesday cover as “DeFUTURE” — J.D. Vance, who succeeded in Ohio, and New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin, who came within striking distance of unseating Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul while driving turnout that carried down-ballot candidates to victory. It’s worth noting that Zeldin’s colleague Elise Stefanik also is due credit for Empire State Republicans’ success on Tuesday night.
But when it comes to the midterms’ losers, there’s RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, NRCC Chairman Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), NRSC Chairman Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), and former President Donald Trump. After hearing what they said in the first 10+ months of 2022 and then watching results come in since Tuesday, one can only ask: What were these Republicans doing?
In a Wednesday Tipsheet, I dove into the answers and accountability that these GOP leaders owe to their party’s voters — what the heck happened in the border district House races, the supposedly easy pickup seats in Virginia, and the gubernatorial races that saw GOP challengers seeking to topple unpopular Democrats who failed their citizens during COVID and have overseen a surge in violent crime?
But, now facing calls from Republican voters and probably more than a few of their own candidates for some accountability, these Republican leaders are doubling down on their inexplicable actions and seemingly trying to make things even worse for themselves.
On Fox News Wednesday afternoon, Ronna McDaniel claimed that the RNC never used the term “red wave” in 2022 before confusingly saying a red wave “did happen.” But, in fact, the RNC did refer to a coming “red wave,” and Tuesday definitely did not see a Republican surge.
Just a cursory search of the GOP and McDaniels’ tweets finds numerous examples of “red wave” hype being used earlier in 2022. So why claim the national party “never” raised hopes of a “red wave” in November?
When it comes to the committees tasked with securing, protecting, and expanding GOP majorities in Congress, we’ve already covered how Sen. Rick Scott was on a yacht in Italy in August while the NRSC was running low on funds just as voters began tuning into the midterm races en masse. Was that a result of misplaced confidence? The wrong priorities? Just poor planning?”
—
“Then there was House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy. As Vespa reported, McCarthy’s “victory” (huh?) speech came more than six hours after he told supporters to be at a D.C. party to celebrate what he promised would be a decisive victory for Republicans.
Vespa noted the remarks were “beyond tone-deaf” when, around 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday, McCarthy finally showed his face and promised, “When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority, and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority.” But by the time most Americans woke up on Wednesday, that was still not the case.
McCarthy had rolled out his “Commitment to America” as his rendition of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” with the promise it would win over voters and be the blueprint for their healthy majority in the new Congress. What happened there?
Last but certainly not least is Trump. What on earth was he doing Tuesday night into Wednesday morning? First, he made a celebratory post on Truth Social cheering the fact that GOP nominee Joe O’Dea had lost the Colorado U.S. Senate race which made…zero sense.
If Trump really intends to run and win in 2024, he’s going to need friendly senators, or at least as many with an “R” next to their name as possible, if he wants to get anything done. Sure, Murkowski, Collins, and Romney aren’t always on board with the rest of the Republican conference, but they’re more likely to be of help than a Democrat.
Trump also ripped one of his own candidates, Don Bolduc, whom he’d endorsed in New Hampshire, for losing his Senate race against incumbent Maggie Hassan. According to Trump, Bolduc was unsuccessful because he didn’t keep talking about the 2020 election outcome as much as the former president wanted.
But where was Trump’s financial support in New Hampshire and elsewhere across the country after his endorsements helped push primary candidates through to the general election? He bragged about how much he fundraised for his midterm candidates, but the amount he spent was a fraction of what his PACs brought in. Why the hesitancy to spend the money that could have helped push Bolduc and Oz to victory or helped Herschel Walker avoid a runoff in Georgia?”
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Democrats have already started attacking the 2024 R nominee.
And they still can’t do basic math.
Indeed.
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Let’s hope so.
Day one of the new Congress should see both removed from leadership positions.
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I also can’t shake the feeling that something doesn’t smell right.
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Social contagion and social engineering.
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McConnell cares about McConnell, nothing else. Remove him from leadership.
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is making a play for another term in leadership after he sabotaged chances for a GOP majority.”
https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/10/the-case-against-mitch-mcconnell-for-leader/
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is making a play for another term in leadership next week while control of the upper chamber remains in the balance after the Kentucky lawmaker’s chess game sabotaged chances for a GOP majority.
In September, McConnell inaugurated the fall midterms by undermining Republicans in key races when the GOP Senate chief complained of “candidate quality.”
—-
“McConnell’s Money Prioritized Allies, Not Majority
McConnell’s super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, went on to gut desperately needed campaign cash from conservative candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire who refused to kiss the ring of Washington monarchs. In Arizona, McConnell axed $18 million from the race where Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters sought to bring down a well-funded Democrat incumbent. While the Masters race remains too close to call, Gen. Don Bolduc in New Hampshire was comfortably defeated by Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan, who captured a second term despite multiple polls showing the Republican within the margins of error. Bolduc was similarly abandoned by the GOP leader with $5.6 million cut from the contest. Both Bolduc and Masters signaled support for another candidate to lead the Senate conference if elected to the upper chamber.
McConnell took money from the competitive pick-up contests and redirected resources into Alaska and Colorado, the former featuring a race between two Republicans and the latter featuring a candidate who alienated the base. Alienating the base, however, has become routine practice for McConnell, who boasts a lower favorability rating than President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In other words, McConnell is the most unpopular politician in the country, a fact Democrats used to their advantage in this election cycle by villainizing McConnell as the new GOP “boogeyman.”
It wasn’t just former President Donald Trump that Democrats ran against, it was McConnell, and McConnell ran just as hard against Republicans who threatened his perch in leadership.
In Alaska, McConnell’s PAC spent more than $6 million to boost Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski over the state party’s endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. The spending that could have benefitted tight races to pick up seats in Arizona and New Hampshire instead earned McConnell a formal censure by the Alaska Republican Party for the Senate leader’s intraparty interference. Meanwhile in Colorado, Republican construction executive Joe O’Dea, who benefitted from $1.25 million of McConnell’s money, lost by 11 points with 88 percent of precincts reporting.”
McConnell Surrendered to the Biden Agenda
While Republicans ran on a platform hammering crime and inflation with few specifics, McConnell handed Democrats major wins during President Joe Biden’s first two years in office. In August, Federalist Senior Contributor Chris Jacobs outlined “3 Big Blunders Showing Mitch McConnell Isn’t The Legislative Genius He Thinks He Is.” McConnell capitulated to Democrats on raising the debt limit, passed a colossal infrastructure package with items that have nothing to do with infrastructure, and shepherded the CHIPS Act corrupted by corporate special interests.
“For someone held up as a legislative genius/strategical mastermind, Mitch McConnell sure has had a run of clunkers lately,” Jacobs wrote this past summer. “In reality, Schumer has out-maneuvered McConnell on most of the important legislative packages during the 117th Congress.”
McConnell also worked with Democrats to secure passage of gun control legislation in June littered with vague language about “dating partners” and red flag laws.”
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No silly, only the bad stuff is his fault.
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Told you, a set-up from the start.
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Well they figure if America would elect one mentally incompetent old fool, why not another medically and mentally unfit clown?
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Well it worked.
Imagine how burnt they feel this morning after a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional the day after the election.
Haha, suckers. 🙂
https://nypost.com/2022/11/10/bidens-illegal-student-loan-bailout-bought-off-gen-z-and-staved-off-red-wave/
“The much-anticipated “red wave” in Tuesday’s midterms ended up barely a red trickle, with the GOP set to win a narrow House majority and control of the Senate likely coming down to a runoff in Georgia. The White House is reportedly “giddy” and “gleeful” to have avoided electoral disaster despite high inflation, widespread concern about crime and the natural tendency for midterm elections to favor the party out of power.
Republicans are not so giddy, to say the least. When analyzing what went wrong, the GOP shouldn’t overlook how President Joe Biden blatantly bribed some young voters to save him from the red wave — and they don’t even need the cash.
That’s right: The kids actually did show up to vote this time around. Per the Edison Research National Election Pool’s exit polling, 27% of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 cast ballots. That makes this the second-highest youth turnout in a midterm in nearly 30 years. And Edison estimates that in key competitive states, the youth turnout was even higher, around 31%.”
—-
Womp, womp, womp….
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3730347-federal-judge-strikes-down-biden-student-debt-relief-program/
“A federal judge struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program on Thursday, declaring it unlawful.
District Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, ruled that the program, which would have provided borrowers with up to $20,000 in student loan relief, was “an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power.”
The Biden administration has argued that it has authority to forgive student loans under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003. However, Pittman rejected this argument on Thursday, finding no “clear congressional authorization” for the program.”
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This…. ⬇
“The Absurdity of the Blame Trump Campaign”
https://amac.us/the-absurdity-of-the-blame-trump-campaign/
“In an Election Day interview, Donald Trump quipped something to the effect that if his endorsed candidates won on Tuesday, he should get all the credit, and that if they lost, he should get none of the blame. As Trump surely knew when he made the joke, what would actually happen on election night was always destined to be the exact opposite. From the moment the polls closed, the media pundits and establishment Republicans eager to dispatch the former president from the stage were working frantically to ensure that where Trump’s endorsed candidates lost, he would get all of the blame—and where they won, he would get none of the credit.
But this predictable attempt to make Donald Trump the scapegoat for closer-than-expected midterm election results is highly misleading, and an oversimplification in the extreme.
The results of Tuesday night’s elections do not tell an easy story for those looking to pin the blame on Trump.
Many Trump candidates—including J. D. Vance, Ted Budd, almost certainly Kari Lake and Adam Laxalt, potentially Blake Masters, and possibly (after the runoff) Herschel Walker—will have won their races in highly competitive swing states despite most being outspent by tens of millions of dollars.
Where Republican candidates faltered, it was not just those who were chosen by the former president: numerous strong House candidates handpicked by Kevin McCarthy lost races the consultant class had expected to win, including Yesli Vega running against vulnerable Democrat Representative Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, Rhode Island Republican Alan Fung, Mayra Flores and Cassy Garcia on the Texas border, and many others.
If Washington, D.C. consultants and establishment leaders are truly looking for someone to blame for the lack of a red tsunami on Tuesday, there are far more suitable candidates than Trump. First among them would be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose allies appear to be behind much of the Blame Trump campaign.
Whatever virtues McConnell may have as a legislative tactician and fundraiser—and they are evidently considerable—the fact is that McConnell failed to use his power over the past two years to shape the political terrain in ways that would support an overwhelming Republican victory. Even worse, he actively undermined Republican candidates at critical junctures.
At no point in the past two years have Americans seen McConnell and other top Republican leaders in Washington pick real and effective fights with the Biden administration. At no point have they managed to focus the nation on controversies that would be politically advantageous to their party. In Trump’s absence, the GOP establishment has reverted to McConnell’s preferred style of opposition, one of passivity and accommodation.
Time and time again, the Senate Minority Leader has proved fundamentally unserious about opposing the overreaches of the radical left. If establishment Republicans believed that the border crisis was the existential national security disaster they claimed in their speeches, nothing about McConnell’s actions in the Senate would suggest they actually believed it. There were no threats of a government shutdown if the border was not restored. There were no real conflicts over spending bills. There was no significant effort to block key nominees or exact a price for the Biden administration’s extremism. Worst of all, there was virtually no effort whatsoever to use McConnell’s considerable power in a 50-50 Senate to set up strategic fights—to force Joe Biden to finish the wall, or to stop the Department of Homeland Security from trying to censor free speech.
Instead, in a Senate that routinely needed Republican votes to pass Democrat priorities, McConnell ensured that Democrats routinely got them with as little fanfare as possible.”
Since January 2021, McConnell’s Senate minority has greenlighted some of the left’s most unpopular legislative and foreign policy initiatives—from the $550 billion “infrastructure” package to emptying out America’s arsenals and sending them to Ukraine. Even if he intended to pass the tens of billions for Ukraine, an effective Republican opposition leader would have insisted on including provisions to secure America’s own border in the process. The American people would have rallied to the Republicans’ side.
That would be the kind of leadership that could have forced the media to give some coverage—any coverage—to Congressional Republicans doing something useful.
Instead, McConnell’s theory appears to have been that he could win the Senate majority by default. When asked what Republicans would do if given the Senate majority, he famously replied that he would tell us after they had won. When NRSC Chairman Rick Scott attempted to put forward a positive vision for the party to rally around, McConnell slapped him down.
In retrospect, these appear to have been grievous mistakes. Republican leaders in Congress succeeded only in making themselves effectively invisible and allowing Democrats to drive the subject of national conversation to other issues—abortion, “democracy,” January 6th.
To make matters worse, McConnell actively attempted to sabotage pro-Trump Republicans on the general election ballot, presumably because he believed they would not back him as majority leader, and concluded that he’d rather be leader of a Republican minority than part of a Republican majority with someone else at the helm.
At a pivotal moment of the campaign, just as voters were tuning-in late in the summer and many were evaluating the Republican nominees for the first time, McConnell—who over the years has forced upon us any number of losing milquetoast clunker candidates—decided the time was right to publicly attack the Republican Party’s nominees. He baselessly called into question the competence and credibility of candidates like Masters, Vance, Walker, and Oz—thus advancing the left’s narrative that the GOP’s candidates were weird, fringe, and extreme, doing immeasurable damage to their prospects just as countless voters were forming their impressions. In fact, all of these candidates were remarkably impressive and accomplished people in their own ways. The “candidate quality” deficit is a convenient self-serving and blame-deflecting myth. But voters got the message: even Mitch McConnell didn’t think they deserved to win.
For all the venom hurled at Donald Trump by establishment Republicans since Tuesday night, perhaps the most selfish and shocking act of the cycle was when, in the closing weeks of the campaign, McConnell poured $9 million into the state of Alaska, saturating the state’s airwaves not in an effort to ensure that the Republican Party’s candidate won, but that she lost. McConnell spent those precious resources to bolster RINO Lisa Murkowski against Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka. Murkowski, a McConnell ally, has repeatedly insisted on running in the general election after being roundly rejected by Republican primary voters, and was personally responsible for the imposition of the ranked-choice voting system that foiled Republican voters’ desires this year in the state’s House race as well. McConnell spent big on Murkowski’s behalf, despite the fact that she recently voted to confirm Biden’s radical Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, after she had voted against Brett Kavanaugh. If any Republican candidate deserved to lose, it was her.”
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“Josh Hawley Blasts GOP Leadership for Midterm Showing”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/11/11/josh_hawley_blasts_gop_leadership_for_midterm_losses_148459.html
“Two days after Republicans dramatically underperformed in the midterms, but even as control of Congress remains too close to call, Sen. Josh Hawley has completed his autopsy and offered it to his party’s leaders for consideration. The topline: The failure is all their fault.
The Missouri populist believes the Republican Party offered voters plenty in the way of generalized gripes about Democrats and President Biden – but no actionable alternative. Hawley blames that on what he calls “Washington Republicanism,” specifically Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He also thinks it was a bad idea to talk about making changes to Social Security and Medicare.
“Republicans just said, ‘Well, the other side sucks, and Biden sucks.’ Well, no doubt! But it’s pretty hard to convince folks, particularly independent-minded ones who don’t tend to trust the process much, to vote for you, if you don’t have something affirmative to say and offer,” Hawley said in a Friday interview.
“I lay that at the feet of the Washington establishment that set the tone for these races,” he added. “They failed to offer that kind of vision.”
Republicans certainly placed their hopes in voter resentment. They banked on the electorate rebuking a less-than-popular president overseeing historic inflation rates and high gasoline and food prices. And a policy prescription-free midterm was what Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted. After President Trump ran for reelection in 2020 without so much as releasing a party platform at the convention, McConnell was asked if the GOP would lay out their priorities should they retake the Senate majority.
“That is a very good question. And I’ll let you know when we take it back,” McConnell told NBC News in January. “This midterm election will be a report card on the performance of this entire Democratic government: the president, the House and the Senate.”
According to Hawley, that strategy “was a pretty serious mistake.” He says that many voters, particularly “Obama-Trump voters,” just stayed home, essentially reporting back to both parties in Washington through their non-participation that “‘I just don’t trust either of you guys.’””
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“Abortion Didn’t Hold Back Republicans
Tuesday may have been disappointing for Republicans, but pro-abortion fanatics didn’t win big either.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/abortion-didnt-hold-back-republicans/
“If anything was less impressive on election night than the “red wave,” it was the abortion wave. Blue states protected abortion rights as expected, but public officials who have supported or enforced limits on abortion in nearly 20 red states were re-elected.
Americans have learned since June that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t make abortion illegal in the Dobbs decision. Instead, after decades of jurisprudence that effectively taught Americans to embrace abortion, the Court made abortion an issue for voters, for Congress, and for states.
Since June, the states have been actively forming their own policy. California, New York, and Illinois have maintained their policy of abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, while a dozen other states have moved in various ways to abolish abortion or embrace pain-capable or similar protections.
Yet, since June, there has been a political, financial, and media onslaught to repudiate the Dobbs decision by denouncing officials who enforced state laws and running hard against Republicans who support abortion abolition or simply limits to the killing. A reported $500 million have been spent attacking Republicans who supported pro-life law and policy. Abortion was an election issue in virtually every state’s elections because Democrats made it an issue with their ads.
The first national election after the Court overruled Roe was destined to be raucous, but the issue has fizzled in many states for abortion activists.
If Democrats had consolidated control of the U.S. Senate, they could have suspended the filibuster and changed the make-up of the Supreme Court by majority vote. If Democrats had consolidated control of both the U.S. House and the Senate, they could have enacted a federal statute that legalized abortion for any reason, at any time of pregnancy, which President Biden promised to sign. That didn’t happen.
Abortion activists did even more poorly at the state level. Democrats didn’t crack state governor, state attorney general, or state house seats in red states that have enforced abortion limits since June. Abortion activists couldn’t defeat public officials in those states or win the U.S. House or Senate to block those state laws.
Thirteen states have aimed to enforce early gestational limits on abortion. In Alabama, Governor Ivey won with 67 percent. In Arkansas, Sara Huckabee Sanders won with 63 percent. In Idaho, Republican Brad Little was reelected with 60 percent. In Oklahoma, Republican Governor Stitt was reelected with 55 percent of the vote. In South Dakota, Governor Noem was reelected with 62 percent. And in Texas, which got the most media attention for a year leading up to the Dobbs decision, Governor Abbott was reelected with nearly 55 percent.
In four additional states with early gestational prohibitions, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was reelected with 53 percent, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds won with 58 percent, Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine was re-elected with 62 percent, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee was re-elected with 65 percent. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who signed an early gestational limit in August, was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who supported and signed a “pain capable” prohibition on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, was reelected with nearly 60 percent.
The claim that the abortion issue held back Republicans never asks how much the abortion issue spurred votes for Republicans and against Democrats.”
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Clowns….
Sure inflation is down….
If you don’t count food, gas, heat, housing….
Won’t stop the Senile One from taking his victory lap though, or his media psychophants from playing along.
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I believe they call this “virtue signaling”:
Actor who played Dwight on ‘The Office’ changes name to protest climate change
https://t.co/NLkqMXxpua
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That’s like epic level virtue signaling. lol. 🙂
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Of course….
“Who funded Dems’ super-PACs? A crypto-fraud, apparently”
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2022/11/10/who-funded-dems-super-pacs-a-crypto-fraud-apparently-n509974
“Shockingly the news breaks right after the midterm elections: the 2nd largest Democrat mega donor after George Soros turns out to be a total fraud.
Call me cynical, but does it surprise anyone that the news hits just after all that money was spent on campaign ads, and not a day or two before? Do you think voters might like to know that $40 million of the money spent to influence their choices was stolen?
Sam Bankman-Fried–a billionaire of whom I never heard before today– donated more than $40 million to Democrat candidates and super-PACs, including providing the initial funding for the Protect Our Future PAC. He was the second largest donor to the 2020 Biden campaign, pouring over $10 million into Biden-related campaign organizations.
Crypto megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried helped bankroll Democrats’ overperformance in the midterms. But any friends he may have had in Washington won’t be there for him as his crumbling business empire threatens to torpedo the entire digital currency market.
Bankman-Fried’s Washington influence — as well as billions of dollars of his personal wealth — nearly vanished in the span of 48 hours, after it emerged that the giant crypto exchange he founded was insolvent and unable to meet customer withdrawals.
His billions–he was worth up to $26 billion at the peak of his wealth–was built on a pack of lies. He created a cryptocurrency of his own, while also handling other cryptocurrencies for his clients. He then, apparently, took the money of his clients and used it himself, substituting his fake crypto as an “asset” backing the more legitimate currencies. It was a fraud.
He essentially created an asset out of thin air, took legitimate assets for himself, and called it a day. Except, of course, he used a ton of that ill-gotten gain to bankroll Democrats and lobby for regulations that would benefit his business.
Quite a scam. And part of the plan was influencing legislators through donations paid for with his clients’ money. He wasn’t just a donor, but was highly influential in Washington.
Now there is no evidence as of yet that any of the recipients of his largesse reciprocated with political backing based upon those contributions–although he was known as a power broker in Washington DC. In fact, he had promised earlier to spend up to $1 billion backing Democrats in 2024.
When he talked, Democrats listened. Carefully.
It is far too early to know the details of his scam, although you can read about what is known in the Politico story linked above. The Atlantic wrote a profile of him from his glory days–a few weeks ago, that is–when he was riding high. Clouds were beginning to form, but he was still rhapsodizing about all the good he could do.
Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is a $15 billion enigma. As one of the richest and most powerful men in crypto, “SBF” is already a political megadonor in the vein of Peter Thiel and George Soros: He spent millions in support of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, and was one of the biggest Democratic donors in the country in the lead-up to this year’s midterm elections. Among his PAC’s expenditures was a whopping $10 million donation to a virtually unknown Oregon House candidate who lost his primary badly. Still, his political ambitions have had Democrats salivating: In a podcast interview earlier this year, SBF suggested that he would be willing to spend up to $1 billion on political donations before 2024.”
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Hypocritical clowns….
“Biden’s Versus Trump’s ‘Lies’ — What a Difference an Administration Makes”
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/larry-elder/2022/11/10/bidens-versus-trumps-lies-what-difference-administration-makes
“During Donald Trump’s presidency, The Washington Post kept a running tally of his alleged lies and/or misleading statements. But, when Joe Biden became president, the Post fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, announced an end to the database operation, saying: “Maintaining the Trump database over four years required about 400 additional 8-hour days over four years beyond our regular jobs for three people.” Looks like supply-chain issues at the Post.
So, while the Post continues to fact-check Biden, it discontinued the Trump-era practice of running the tote board because, after all, Biden is not Trump, and the Post undoubtedly expects Biden to be more truthful.
How’s that working out?
Recently Post fact-checker Kessler wrote: “President Biden is a self-described ‘gaffe machine.’ That’s no excuse, of course, for a president making false or misleading statements. Readers have asked for fact checks of a variety of recent Biden statements, but none of them seemed big enough for a stand-alone fact check.” Really?
Set aside Biden’s decades of falsely claiming, as he did again during the 2020 campaign, that he “was raised in the black church” where, as a teenager, he would meet on Sundays to strategize how to “desegregate movie theaters and restaurants” in Wilmington, Delaware. The New York Times found no evidence of any Biden desegregation activity and congregants of the black church he supposedly attended did not recall seeing Biden there.
Then there is Biden’s decades long claim that he and former United Nations Ambassador and Rep. Andrew Young were “arrested” in apartheid South Africa while attempting to visit the imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Young said it never happened.
Biden, on two occasions, publicly and falsely claimed the truck driver who struck and killed his first wife and young daughter was drunk at the time. But he wasn’t, and the claims brought much dismay to the driver and his family.
As to the precipitous and disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, Biden claimed that no one advised him against it, a claim refuted by two top generals who insisted, under oath, that they advised Biden against the move.
On at least two occasions Biden claimed that his son, Beau, died in Iraq. Biden’s son, a military veteran who served in Iraq, died of brain cancer six years after returning home.
In late October, Biden said: “The most common price of gas in America is $3.39. Down from over $5 when I took office.” Two problems. When Biden took office the average price of gas was $2.39, and AAA says the average price on the day he made that statement was $3.76, 37 cents more than asserted by Biden. For good measure, the following day Biden said, “Since the elections, we’ve been — we’re taking gas prices down from where they were.” Given the importance of gas prices, a concern that many voters put at the top of their list, do Biden’s back-to-back gas claims amount to a gaffe or a blatant lie based on the expectation of more lenient media by Biden compared to Trump?
What of Biden’s recent characterization of his student debt forgiveness program, via executive order, that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost $400 billion? Biden, during an online discussion with progressive organization NowThis News, also in late October, said: “It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two, and it’s in effect.” Except he signed an executive order, currently under challenge and blocked by a federal appeals court. No Congress, no votes, and not in effect.
After Trump’s election, Democrats and the media raised such concerns about Trump’s mental capacity, that the president undertook a cognitive test. Trump then allowed the White House doctor to answer questions from reporters for a full hour, during which the doctor said Trump registered a “perfect” score. It does not appear that Biden undertook the same cognitive test. But despite Biden’s frequent displays of confusion, neither the Democrats nor the media care much about the mental acuity of a Commander-in-Chief not named Trump.”
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Time to homeschool!
Daily Caller) – A Colorado elementary school attempted to socially transition a young child — using pronouns and a name that does not align with the child’s biological sex — despite the parents explicitly asking educators not to, according to emails.
The emails, obtained by the concerned parent group Parents Defending Education via a public records request, appear to show the assistant principal of Laurel Elementary School asking the Poudre School District’s “Chief Academic & Equity Officer” what to do when parents asked educators not to use a child’s preferred pronouns and name.
“I’m wondering about what to do when an elementary school student has expressed their pronouns and chosen name but their parents directly tell school staff not to call the student by those pronouns,” an April 4 email from the assistant principal read. “I feel very strongly about supporting the student but have heard we legally have to follow the parents’ direction due to the age of the child (elementary school).”
The district’s equity officer responded April 5 and stated that educators should use the preferred pronouns and names of students, despite parents’ objections.
“Schools should use the student’s affirming name and pronouns at school and use their legal name and corresponding pronouns when talking with the family until they are supportive of the student’s new name and pronouns,” the equity officer responded.
A separate email from the district’s LGBTQIA+ coordinator reaffirmed the inquiry officer’s sentiment.
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I have no idea why people might be suspicious….
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Lol. 😂🤣
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They want it to be Trump, because they fear DeSantis.
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Awwww… Poor thing. 🙂
Yeah, except it’s not. A real judge just said so.
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They’re clowns, it’s what they do.
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Yikes.
Another NTer exposed as the joke he is.
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I wouldn’t complain. Way better than the current choice. Or as someone else said, he’s one of the least worst options. 🙂
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Indeed.
No to Trump, but double no to the usual squishes.
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Don’t be a Boomer.
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