Donald trrump

SCOTUS seems ready to side with Trump

Welcome to Thunderdome, where we could be about to witness a “dog who caught the car” moment for the MSNBC set that pushed this Colorado case so vociferously. I wonder if they regret this move? Do they understand that a nearly unanimous rejection makes them look very silly? And do they understand that every legal win Donald Trump has from here on out hurt their overall lawfare plan of attack? The WSJ reports on the morning’s oral arguments: A Supreme Court decision affirming that ruling would “take away the votes of potentially tens of millions of Americans,” Mitchell said.Signaling sympathy for that argument, Justice Samuel Alito said the Colorado ruling could have severe consequences if upheld.

Ronna waves goodbye to the RNC

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is reportedly preparing to step down from her post after seven years on the job. Multiple sources told the New York Times that McDaniel intends to resign after the South Carolina GOP primary at the end of the month; she had been facing years of pressure as the longest-reigning RNC chair with seemingly few tangible successes. The RNC expressed plans at its Winter Meeting last week to take out a credit line amid disappointing fundraising and cash-on-hand numbers, and McDaniel took sharp criticism for her failure to produce a “red wave” in the 2022 midterms and her unwillingness to get financially involved in Virginia’s state elections in 2023.

ronna

CNN rearranges the deck chairs… again

After CNN ousted Chris Licht, who attempted, at least, to moderate CNN’s biased news coverage, the floundering network has found itself in limbo, unsure of how much more it wanted to lean into a professional, “definitely not biased” news infotainment network. Now, new boss Mark Thompson has signaled a clear direction for the network in this election year: All Donald Trump, All the Time, with changes once again to its morning and midday line-up. All CNN is really doing, though, is shuffling deck chairs around the network as ratings continue to languish behind networks like the History and Hallmark channels.

cnn

WATCH: Nikki Haley appears in Saturday Night Live intro

How is Nikki Haley going to stage an upset in her home state’s Republican primary later this month? By appealing to a key conservative constituency: Saturday Night Live viewers. Haley appeared “live from New York” this evening in a cold open aping a Donald Trump town hall. (She even got to say the line!) Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

nikki haley snl

Waiting on the world to change

Welcome to Thunderdome, where we must pretend that this primary isn’t over for another week or three, thanks to the brilliant decisions of Nikki Haley’s donors. No, seriously, they think she still has a shot! Or at least that’s what they're telling people: Billionaire Ken Griffin, one of the nation’s top GOP donors, said Tuesday he has backed Haley and a source familiar with his donations confirmed he gave $5 million in January to the super political action committee supporting her...During an earlier appearance Tuesday on CNBC, Griffin said he thought Haley would “run away with the general election” if she became the Republican nominee. But he also acknowledged her path is “a narrower road than it was eight weeks ago.” How narrow you ask? Oh, very, very narrow.

Is Taylor Swift a psyop?

In 2024, right-wingers are facing a doddery, often incoherent Democratic president, an even more incoherent VP (who doesn’t have the excuse of being eighty-one) and a host of oil-leaking charlatans like Gavin Newsom. Why, in this target-rich environment, are some conservatives focusing their ire on Taylor Swift? Don’t get me wrong — America is a free country. You can criticize who you like. Me, I happen to think that Ms. Swift’s music is annoying and tedious. But to see the most popular singer in the world as an avatar for everything you hate politically seems misguided from a tactical perspective, no? Sure, it might be annoying to see her on TV at NFL games. It might vex you that she opposes Donald Trump.

taylor swift psyop
scott presler

Trump allies want Scott Presler to head the RNC — there’s just one problem

As the Republican National Committee launches its annual Winter Meeting in Las Vegas, Trump allies are once again calling for the GOP to oust Ronna McDaniel as its chairwoman. Their preferred replacement? Scott Presler. Presler, for those unfamiliar, first rose to social media and political fame by organizing a clean-up in Baltimore after the former president Donald Trump called the Maryland city a “disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess.” Since then, the activist better known on X as “#ThePersistence” launched a Republican voter registration effort and, subsequently, Early Vote Action, a political action committee aimed at getting Republicans to cast their votes before Election Day. Prior to all this, Presler was a co-founder of Gays for Trump during the 2016 election.

e. jean carroll

E. Jean Carroll’s victory lap

The past few days have been all smiles for E. Jean Carroll. She flashed her pearly whites at the jury after defeating Donald Trump in a defamation case on Friday. She beamed for the cameras outside the courtroom. And she’s been radiant in her CNN and MSNBC interviews. But it's not justice or vindication that has Carrol elated: it's the promise of a brand-new wardrobe.  Carroll plans to foot the bill with the $83.3 million in defamation damages that a federal jury ruled Trump must pay her. Carroll appeared on MSNBC Monday night, alongside her lawyers, to dish about her winnings with Rachel Maddow. She had previously hinted that she would use the “money for something that Donald Trump hates,” like a fund for women that he has reportedly sexually assaulted.

Both parties are fumbling the border debate

Given just how unpopular illegal immigration is, it is stunning to see both the likely nominees for president fumbling the issue. That’s political malpractice.  For Biden, the malpractice consists not only in keeping the border open, which is already killing him in the polls, but in resisting the strongest Republican proposals to close it. Every time Republican congressional leaders visit the White House to negotiate, they come away empty handed.   In stiff-arming the Republican proposals, the White House has put itself in the awkward position of saying it will grudgingly accept their efforts but only if Republicans make concessions on other issues.

border

Biden’s media allies want to talk about Trump’s cognitive issues

As another Trump presidency starts to look more likely, the incessant conversations about age are bubbling back up. Roundtable discussions about “cognitive capabilities” took a hiatus over the last few years in the mainstream press, as a slow-jogging, hair-sniffing, Joe Biden restored normalcy to the White House. Normalcy, for those who haven’t been paying attention, looks like said octogenarian falling up the stairs of Air Force One, falling asleep at COP26, forgetting the names of his own cabinet members and of course, being escorted around the White House lawn by the Easter Bunny.

america trump-biden

Is the RNC about to back Trump?

A new report from the Dispatch claimed that David Bossie, a Republican National Committee member and former advisor to the Trump campaign, had drafted a resolution that would effectively end the primary and put the RNC symbolically behind former president Donald Trump. The draft resolution was immediately met with concerns that only two states had voted in the GOP primary and that the RNC should preside over a fair process, although it would not have ended the primary nor changed how state parties ran their elections.

Who’s afraid of Nikki Haley?

Welcome to Thunderdome, fresh from New Hampshire, tired as all get-out and ready to rumble on to South Carolina and its welcoming warmth and palmetto-framed cobblestone streets, as opposed to the watery coffee and stained fingers of the Northeast. The strangest thing seems to be happening, though: with Nikki Haley’s insistence on staying in the race, and the apparent flood of donations she’s received since overperforming against Donald Trump, the people around the former president are taking on a newly aggressive tone — even to the point of trying to anoint him the nominee before anyone else votes!

donald trump donors

Trump bars Haley donors from the ‘MAGA camp’

Cockburn wondered last week what would happen to anti-MAGA voters after their chosen candidates dropped out of the race. Would they be able to return to the Trump fold? Though Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have reignited their months-long feud after the Florida governor dropped out Sunday, it’s last woman standing Nikki Haley who has drawn the bulk of Trump’s ire since. Taking a page from Kari Lake’s “get the hell out” playbook, Trump decreed on Truth Social Wednesday night that Haley donors will be blacklisted from his campaign.  “Anyone that makes a ‘Contribution’ to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and we will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL,” Trump posted.

Trump’s giant leap toward the GOP nomination

Last night, former president Donald Trump all but sewed up the Republican nomination for president in 2024. Former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley finished eleven points behind Trump in a state that she needed to win in order to justify her continued presence in the race. Next up is Nevada, where Haley is not participating in the state GOP’s caucuses, as she has instead chosen to be listed on the irrelevant primary ballot. Then, Trump and Haley will square off in the latter’s home state of South Carolina. Trump enjoys a hefty lead there according to early polling, and Haley will be hard-pressed to improve her position with another $31 million of ad buys like she did in New Hampshire, as she is already a known quantity to voters there.

Trump

A bad primary makes for a worse general election

The US primaries are over. Trump whacked Nikki Haley in New Hampshire; if she could win anywhere it was there, and she didn’t, so she’s done. Joe Biden didn’t even bother. The result? The most inadequate, boring primary season in living memory. North Korean elections are more unpredictable than this. For those of us who love politics, primaries are usually more interesting than the November general election. In the general, candidates run to the center; in the primary, they run to the edges, articulating a philosophy and galvanizing its constituency. You get contests of insider versus outsider (Clinton versus Obama, 2008); establishment versus radical (Clinton versus Sanders, 2016).

primary

For the moment, Haley holds on

Bedford, New Hampshire Virtually everyone agrees that regardless of the outcome in New Hampshire last night, Donald Trump is destined to be the GOP’s 2024 nominee. In exit polls, even the New Hampshire voters who cast a vote for Nikki Haley agreed. He has all the advantages now — a flood of fresh endorsements from the party establishment, including from his handpicked head of the Republican National Committee, and the clear backing of virtually every major conservative partisan. He has the advantage of incumbency, every party resource working in his favor, no expectations that he will debate or change his rather lackluster approach to campaigning, and the map ahead looks very good for him.

nikki haley new hampshire

MAGA ecstasy at the New Hampshire Trump victory party

Nashua, New Hampshire Spirits were high at the Sheraton in Nashua as Donald Trump claimed victory in the New Hampshire Republican primary for the third consecutive time. Local Trump fans and Republicans poured into the hotel ballroom — a number of whom made the very short trip up from Massachusetts. “That’d be huge, if Trump signed my Zyn,” said one young New Englander to another as they headed back into the melée.

maga election night trump donald trump new hampshire

Why Donald Trump won New Hampshire

Nashua, New Hampshire Former president Donald Trump won the GOP primary contest in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, dulling any perceived momentum behind former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. A crowd of supporters at an election night watch party in Nashua cheered as Fox News called the race for Trump shortly after 8 p.m. The Associated Press pulled the trigger a few minutes earlier for the former president. The Beatles’ “Revolution” played on speakers (“You know it’s gonna be alright”) as the group celebrated.

donald trump
nikki haley

Haley and Sununu hit a polling place

Bedford, New Hampshire The scene at Bedford High School is orderly but very crowded, requiring repeated requests from town moderator Brian Shaughnessy to curve the line of waiting voters round the corners and down hallways, creating a centipede-like chain of puffy coats and Timberlands chattering politely about how they've never seen so many people this time of day. The concerns about apathy after the low turnout in Iowa seems utterly absent here, formerly a Republican stronghold that has trended more Democrat in recent years. The crowd of sign-waving Nikki Haley supporters outside is chanting happily at the handful of Trump supporters, who are quieter and more grim.

haley

The fall of Nikki Haley’s comet

In the waning days of 2023, the last weeks of the before-time — the moments before the Republican Party would inevitably crown the once and future king who rules upon high from Mar-a-Lago — the billionaire donor class of the Republican Party decided en masse that it would endorse a candidate in a final desperate attempt to block Donald Trump. They settled on Nikki Haley, the erstwhile South Carolina governor turned United Nations ambassador, whose star had risen oh-so-very slightly in early state polling, if you squinted hard enough. She would be their choice for a last stand against The Donald Redux, whose return they publicly claimed to fear and loathe as a threat to democracy while privately admitting they would unanimously support him. The question is: why?