Election

Reality TV heavyweight "Judge Judy" Sheindlin endorsed Nikki Haley for president on Tuesday. "I'm proud to endorse Nikki Haley because she is whip smart, has executive credentials and was a superb governor," Sheindlin said. "She has international gravitas as ambassador to the United Nations. She is principled, measured and has that elusive quality of real common sense. I truly think she can restore America and believe she is the future of this great nation." Haley is undoubtedly excited to have the support of her own reality-TV star to leverage against Donald Trump’s Apprentice fame. "Judge Judy is a no-nonsense lady who has earned the respect of millions of Americans from her courtroom by being thoughtful, fair and honest,” Haley said in a press release.

It wasn’t the Fantastic Four on stage but the squabbling verged on the epic as the quartet of Republican presidential candidates sans Mr. Big faced off in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The stakes were higher for the fourth and final GOP debate that Donald Trump ducked and didn’t want to take place in the first place. But his baleful spirit hovered over it.  Both Florida governor Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy looked like Trump Mini-Mes, dressed in the full Trumpian regalia — blue suit, white shirt and iridescent red tie. DeSantis talked about using the military to end the drug menace while Ramaswamy fantasized about wiping out the “administrative state” overnight.

I’m old enough to remember when Joe Scarborough spent most of his show kissing Donald Trump’s ass. Those were the days. Cast your mind back to 2015. Mika and Joe were still just “co-workers” and they would constantly yuck it up with then candidate Donald J. Trump. Don’t take my word for it — even the Washington Post wrote about their love affair with the Donald, describing the theme of these interviews as “bonhomie.” Erik Wemple explained, “Trump is often on the phone; some decent, journalistic questions get lobbed at Trump, often by Willie Geist; Trump makes more claims than the crew can possibly fact-check; and there’s a great deal of talk about polls.” When Willie Geist is asking the hard-hitting questions, you know you are in friendly territory.

Since she began speaking out against trans athletes competing in women’s sports, former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines has received her share of threats from the mob. Just this year, she was allegedly punched by a transgender protester in California. Now she finds herself in the sights of one of Trumpworld's most rabid advocates. Laura Loomer, a self-described investigative journalist and Trump supporter, accused the athlete of shilling for Ron DeSantis and posted her address to X, sparking a cat fight between the two women.   In the post, which has since been deleted, Loomer claimed that Gaines had been bought off by DeSantis. “In June 2023, Riley announced that she was endorsing DeSantis over Trump,” the post read.

MAGA shaman Jake Chansley is trading in his horned helmet, bare chest and spear for a suit and tie. The January 6 rioter who led the charge into the Senate chamber is hoping to return to the Capitol in 2024 as a congressman.  Chansley filed paperwork last week to run in Arizona’s 8th congressional district as a Libertarian. The seat is currently held by Representative Debbie Lesko, a sixty-four-year-old Republican, who announced last month that she would not seek re-election.   The announcement comes after Chansley was released early from prison this past year. Chansley was sentenced to forty-one months in federal prison for obstructing election proceedings but was transferred to a community correctional center in Phoenix after serving just twenty-seven months.

Donald Trump’s ninety-one felony charges can’t keep him down, nor the thunderous applause of his fans. The former president and well-known mixed martial arts fan was given the celebrity treatment at UFC 295 at New York's Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, complete with his own walkout song.   Kid Rock’s “American Badass” blared as UFC announcers turned their undivided attention to Trump’s arrival. The 20,000-person stadium erupted in cheers as Trump made his way to his ringside seats flanked by his entourage — UFC president Dana White, Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson and Don Jr.  https://twitter.com/ufcontnt/status/1723536824843243833?

Joe Manchin’s decision to retire from the US Senate is not surprising. The tea leaves have been there for a long time. But what is surprising is how immediately and explicitly he made clear that he is entertaining the possibility of entering the 2024 presidential contest. It is a decision that could prove monumentally important to the 2024 outcome — and unlike most third party candidates, Manchin has a real shot at being more than a protest vote. For the last true independent-minded moderate in the Democratic Party, it should be an easy choice: he has every reason to run. The Republicans and Democrats are both headed toward nominating two of the most unpopular politicians in America. The challenges they face are unique and unavoidable.

It looks like the Republican National Committee will partner with just about anyone to put on a presidential debate. In a press release released Thursday morning, NewsNation, an upstart cable news network with less than 65,000 nightly viewers as of last year, announced that they will be hosting the fourth GOP debate in December.  It will take place in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “All of us at NewsNation are incredibly honored to be hosting a presidential primary debate and to be part of what will be another historic election season,” said Sean Compton, president of Nexstar Networks which owns NewsNation.

Do you believe in coincidences? I used to. But like Macbeth I have just “supped full with horror.” That is, I have been flipping back and forth between the glitzy but pointless Republican debate in Miami and Donald Trump’s rally in nearby Hialeah, Florida.  And here’s Exhibit One in my brief against coincidences: my office reading group is just now, as I write, reading Dante’s Inferno. Yes, could there be any more apposite reading?  I am going to take a page here from that priest W. H. Auden talked about who advised the people who came to him for confession to “be brief, be blunt, and be gone.” An admirable imperative which I intend to obey.

Iowa governor Kim Reynolds endorsed Florida governor Ron DeSantis yesterday. While endorsements don’t typically matter, this one could be the exception — both because of what it says about the Republican Party, and what it says about Donald Trump. When DeSantis decided to take the plunge into the presidential race, Team Trump has tried to depict him primarily as one of two things. First, they framed him as a fraud — a faux conservative establishment type, a Jeb Bush acolyte beloved by the donor class, a secret neocon with zero charisma.

This is the intro paragraph that will be written at some future date.

Former vice president Mike Pence is suspending his bid to be the 2024 GOP nominee for president of the United States, following months of financial troubles and lagging polls.   Pence made the surprise announcement at the end of a speech given before the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference in Las Vegas on Saturday afternoon.    “After much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today,” Pence said. “We always knew this would be an uphill battle, but I have no regrets.”   Pence launched his bid in early June but had struggled to raise money from the start. According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, his campaign was $620,000 in debt entering October and had just $1.

Had you blindfolded me yesterday morning, led me to the front lawn of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, removed my blinder and asked me to guess where we were, I would have said, “A James Taylor benefit concert for NPR.” In the crowd on this sunny fall day was a heavy contingent of the boomer delegation, of various stripes and checks. There were even some traditional tweed, and, with blazers out in full force, on both men and women, paired mostly with denim — though late-season red chinos and season-rushing corduroys were on display, too — and invariably some statement eyewear, leather dress shoes, and baseball caps keeping flowy silver hair tamed and sun-spotted skin safe. It was plain from their collective style that this group was at least self-aware.

A week from today, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to make an announcement in Philadelphia that will almost certainly entail running for president as a third-party candidate. The signs have been there for months that RFK’s politically unique appeal would be crushed by the Democratic Party’s process, which is heavily skewed toward renominating Joe Biden by acclamation. The possibility of Biden debating Kennedy was always out of the question — not because they don’t take his challenge seriously, but because for all their dismissiveness, Democratic leadership takes it very seriously indeed.

Wednesday night’s Fox Business and Univisión Republican primary debate offered some of the most amusing attempts to pander to Latinos on record. Five seconds in and moderator Stuart Varney half had a stroke pronouncing his co-moderator’s last name, Calderón. Additionally, Varney, who also has a funny accent and wasn’t born in the US, couldn’t properly pronounce "Univisión," an even less forgivable faux-pas. Didn’t he practice? Couldn’t he ask for the teleprompter to read “uh-knee-bee-sion”? Initial blunders aside, the inclusion of Jorge Ramos’s sidekick, Ilia Calderón, as a moderator was not bright at all. There are are hundreds of great Hispanic journalists out there that have good pronunciation, went to college in the US and don’t hate Republicans.