Speaking to a gaggle of reporters this Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked if he watched the House select committee’s first hearing in its investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“Did you watch any of the hearing today?” a reporter asked.
“No, I didn’t,” McConnell replied.
“Why not?” the reporter asked. Continue reading.
It’s an ecosystem in which his false election claims spread unchecked
Fox News didn’t carry Donald Trump’s speech in Arizona this weekend. It’s not hard to figure out why. One could easily have predicted that the former president would say all of the false and potentially lawsuit-spawning things that he ended up saying, and, given that it unfolded on Saturday evening, it’s not as though it was going to yield billions of viewers.
But the speech didn’t need to air on Fox. Before it began, his newly appointed spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, hyped the fact that the speech would instead be carried on the small galaxy of Trump-loyal networks that have emerged in the past few years. For those interested in hearing Trump say the same things he’s been saying for nine months but with a new set of incorrect or misleading details, there was plenty of opportunity to do so.
This is how it works now. Trump has a relatively small footprint in the mainstream media and conversation, including on Fox News. But on the remote media fringes where accuracy dies in obsequiousness, Trump’s message is as loud as it has ever been. Continue reading.
As political battles continue around the nation over voting access and restrictions, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that a majority of Americans (57%) say voting is “a fundamental right for every adult U.S. citizen and should not be restricted in any way.”
Fewer (42%) express the view that “voting is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and can be limited if adult U.S. citizens don’t meet some requirements.”
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overwhelmingly say voting is a fundamental right that should not be restricted in any way – 78% hold this view, while fewer than a quarter (21%) say it is a privilege. Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican leaners say voting is a privilege that can be limited if requirements are not met, compared with about half as many (32%) who say it is a fundamental right. Continue reading.
On Monday, DailyTrib.com reported that a Trump supporter was arrested on charges of assault and resisting arrest following an incident at a rally for rural Democrats in Marble Falls, Texas, a small community northwest of Austin.
According to the report, the incident started when Reynol P. Gray came to the Turn Rural Texas Blue Rally to protest, and things escalated.
“The rally, hosted by local Democratic clubs, featured speeches by Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Mike Collier, state Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa, and others,” reported Brigid Cooley. “Police were called to the rally after Gray began yelling profanities at event speakers and made his way toward the pavilion stage.” Continue reading.
Although MSNBC has a liberal slant, some of its hosts have very conservative backgrounds — including “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough (a former GOP congressman) and Nicolle Wallace, who served as White House communications director under President George W. Bush and was a senior adviser to the late Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. But the 49-year-old Wallace is a scathing critic of former President Donald Trump, and she slams the modern-day GOP as a hotbed of Trumpist authoritarianism in an op-ed published by MSNBC’s website on July 16.
Wallace, who hosts MSNBC’s weekday afternoon show “Deadline: White House,” warns, “I never thought I’d cover the demise of democracy in my own country, but here we are…. The attack on our democracy, spearheaded by the ex-president and enabled by the GOP, represents the greatest threat since 9/11.”
The former Bush official and McCain adviser goes on to say that in one sense, the United States is facing a more perilous national security threat in 2021 than it did after al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. There were no prominent Republicans or Democrats defending al-Qaeda after 9/11, Wallace argues — whereas apologists for the bloody January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building by Trump supporters are plentiful in the Republican Party. Continue reading.
Nearly six months after the U.S. Capitol riot, the Justice Department has begun arresting a new category of alleged criminals — those who attacked reporters or damaged their equipment as journalists documented the violence perpetrated by supporters of President Donald Trump.
The first such charge came last week, when 43-year-old Shane Jason Woods of Illinois was charged with engaging in violence on the Capitol grounds Jan. 6, as well as assaulting a law enforcement officer. Authorities say Woods was caught on video knocking down a cameraman.
The arrests come at a contentious moment for the Justice Department and First Amendment advocates, who have sharply criticized federal law enforcement for secretly issuing subpoenas of reporters’ phone records during the Trump administration. Continue reading.
Arizona’s Maricopa County announced Monday that it will replace voting equipment that was turned over to a private contractor for a Republican-commissioned review of the 2020 presidential election, concerned that the process compromised the security of the machines.
Officials from Maricopa, the state’s largest county and home to Phoenix, provided no estimates of the costs involved but have previously said that the machines cost millions to acquire.
“The voters of Maricopa County can rest assured, the County will never use equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections,” the county said in a statement. “As a result, the County will not use the subpoenaed equipment in any future elections.” Continue reading.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Georgia could place the state’s Republican lawmakers under a microscope to unveil their biased intent where voting restrictions are concerned.
A new piece published by The Daily Beast outlines the details of the complaint, the DOJ’s options, and the legal path it could take. On Friday, June 25, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the DOJ filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Georgia.
The lawsuit, which was also filed before Trump-appointed Judge J.P. Boulee, alleges that some provisions of the Georgia law SB-202 “violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” Continue reading.
GOP voter restriction laws are the “kind of dangerous behavior that we’re going to have to push back on,” said the former president.
Barack Obama on Friday called out GOP voter suppression laws, suggesting companies have “a big responsibility” to at least speak out against them as some did when new restrictions were introduced in Georgia in March.
During a virtual Economic Club of Chicago event, the former president said Republican-sponsored bills being introduced nationwide — and GOP support of ex-president Donald Trump’s election lies — were the “kind of dangerous behavior that we’re going to have to push back on.”
It transcends policy, he said. Continue reading.
Wisconsin Republicans are particularly nihilistic, and they have been ever since the arrival of Scott Walker in the state’s politics.
[State Assembly Speaker Robin] Vos in a Wednesday interview said he was giving the investigators a broad mandate to spend about three months reviewing all tips and following up on the most credible ones. In addition to the grant spending, he said they may look into claims of double voting and review how clerks fixed absentee ballot credentials.
“Is there a whole lot of smoke or is there actual fire? We just don’t know yet,” Vos said…Vos said he is hiring three form er law enforcement officers along with an attorney who will oversee them. As contractors with the Legislature, they will have subpoena power. Anyone they subpoena will be immune from criminal prosecution, he said.
Wisconsin Republicans are peculiarly nihilistic, and they have been ever since the arrival of Scott Walker in the state’s politics. (Thanks again, Charlie Sykes). Wisconsin cops have a history of being particularly biased and violent. So to oversee the farce, Vos is bringing some of these people out of retirement, handing them subpoena power, and turning them loose to ratfck an election result that most of them likely believe was the product of some sort of magical swindle they learned about 1o minutes ago on the radio. Continue reading.
