Joe biden

Tuesday

Juan P. Villasmil

Four things to keep an eye on Super Tuesday

Today is Super Tuesday, when sixteen states and one territory cast ballots in presidential primaries and caucuses throughout the country. More than a third of all delegates are set to be awarded. Traditionally, Super Tuesday has served as an ender of campaigns, giving a clear indication of which two candidates will move forward to the general election. This time around, there are little doubts of who each of the party’s nominees will be. Still, there are other significant trends worth keeping an eye on.  1. Will uncommitted voters show up and scare Biden? “Uncommitted” voters showed up in droves last week in Michigan, casting over 100,000 protest ballots.

super tuesday

Friday

The Spectator

Trump and Biden’s border battle

President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump made dueling visits to the southern border this Thursday, as the issue of immigration becomes the political priority of millions of Americans. The latest Gallup survey (February 1-20) reveals that immigration ranks as the most important problem ahead of the 2024 presidential election. For context, 28 percent of Americans see the issue as the most crucial one, which is more than the following issues combined: federal deficit (3 percent), crime and violence (3 percent), foreign policy/foreign aid/focus overseas (3 percent), poverty/hunger/homelessness (6 percent) and inflation (11 percent).

biden trump border

Wednesday

Charles Lipson

The message from Michigan

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump won overwhelming victories in Tuesday’s Michigan primary, but their undeniable success doesn’t answer the hard questions facing each candidate in the general election. They won’t get the answers next week on Super Tuesday, either, even though both candidates are expected to win easily. What are those questions, on which victory in November depends? Oddly, some are the same for Biden and Trump. Can they recapture the reluctant wings of their party, the factions that have refused to vote for them so far? Can they move beyond consolidating support within their parties to win over independent voters, who outnumber both Republicans and Democrats? Despite that similarity, there is a fundamental difference between the refusenik wings of each party.

michigan

Tuesday

Cockburn

Is ‘Dear White Staffers’ losing favor with the left?

“Dear White Staffers”, an Instagram account that blew up just a couple of years ago for reporting alleged mistreatment of staff on Capitol Hill, is now under fire from some members of the progressive left for allegedly engaging in performative activism. The account joined Instagram in 2020 and quickly built a reputation for being a place where congressional staffers could anonymously share horror stories about their offices and dissuade others from joining toxic work environments. The account has more than 100,000 followers and is closely watched by members of Congress — and now the Biden administration, as White House employees have started making their own submissions to the “Dear White Staffers” DMs.

dear white staffers
joe biden gaza gaffe
Daniel DePetris

Biden’s Gaza gaffe risks relations with the Democratic base

One of the first rules of politics and policy is to keep expectations low, lest you disappoint your constituents and embarrass yourself for being hopelessly naive.  Apparently President Joe Biden didn’t get the memo.  During a stop in New York City this week for a taping of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, Biden was eager, if not downright giddy, about the prospects of a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. Ice cream cone in hand, the president told the White House press corps that Jake Sullivan, his national security advisor, believes a truce is close at hand.  “My hope is that, by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden said.

aaron bushnell airman fire
Cockburn

Can the US airman who set himself on fire ‘Rest in Power?’

The war in Gaza has claimed another victim — this time on American soil. Airman Aaron Bushnell died on Sunday night after lighting himself on fire in protest of the war. Bushnell filmed his protest in front of the Israeli Embassy on Sunday and livestreamed it on Twitch, quickly becoming a martyr for the far left. Well, some of them. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” Bushnell said in the video. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all.” Bushnell then lit himself on fire while screaming, “Free Palestine,” until he fell to the ground. The video shows police officers working for more than a minute to put the fire out.

Monday

The Spectator

Ronna McDaniel hits the eject button

Ronna Romney McDaniel confirmed months of reporting on Monday by officially announcing her resignation as chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. She will step aside on March 8, a few days after the Super Tuesday primary contests.  “I have decided to step aside at our Spring Training on March 8 in Houston to allow our nominee to select a chair of their choosing,” McDaniel said in a statement. “The RNC has historically undergone change once we have a nominee and it has always been my intention to honor that tradition.” Given that former president Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee — and that he has received McDaniel’s endorsement — he will choose her successor.

Joseph Moreno

Biden’s absurd student loan ‘solution’

You’ve got to hand it to President Biden — when he puts his mind to something he doesn’t let mere semantics like the rule of law stop him. Despite an earlier Supreme Court slap down, “Middle Class Joe” provided an upper-class gift to some 150,000 college graduates in the form of $1.2 billion in student loan forgiveness. That brings total educational loan forgiveness under this White House to $137 billion effectuated by nothing more than a stroke of Biden’s pen via executive order. Biden openly boasted of his defiance, all but inviting the justices to try to stop his patronage gambit. It’s not that anyone can blame him, because it’s a political win-win for the White House.

Friday

Cockburn

Where are all the big names at CPAC?

National Harbor, Maryland Hello from the press pen at CPAC — the only part of the convention center that’s as full as previous years. There have been ten empty rows in front of Cockburn in the auditorium for most of the conference. President Trump’s address tomorrow lunch time should change that — but which other speakers will? South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, apparently: people filed in to see her when she spoke this afternoon. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris... they suck,” she said, to applause. The media row outside is half as populated as previous years. The attendees are noticeably older: you’d be hard-pressed to find a college student here (Cockburn’s nieces skipped it).

Wednesday

The Spectator

Trump backs the GOP establishment

Former president Donald Trump helped out the GOP establishment with his latest round of congressional endorsements — including one particularly notable one where he passed over a guy he endorsed in the last election cycle.Just two years ago, Trump endorsed Darren Bailey for governor of Illinois, snubbing the state’s GOP establishment, which had been firmly behind Aurora mayor Richard Irvin. Bailey blew Irvin out of the water in the primary — thanks to additional support from Democrats who successfully meddled in the primary —and was dismantled by J.B. Pritzker in November.This time around, Trump is backing Congressman Mike Bost, who’s been fending off a primary bid from Bailey.

Tuesday

Matthew Foldi

Biden campaign recruiting ‘director of celebrity outreach’

President Joe Biden is planning to use his upcoming State of the Union address to “reset” his image with voters — and if the jobs section of his campaign website is any indication of his priorities, he’ll be leaning a lot on celebrity backers. Amid an onslaught of speculation about a potential second Taylor Swift endorsement of Biden, The Spectator scrolled through the Biden job board and found several interesting open positions, including a director of celebrity outreach role that will pay a lucky applicant up to $120,000. In a tenor befitting of a scatterbrained president, the job posting is pretty confusing: it says that it is for the director and deputy director role in different places.

celebrity

Friday

Cockburn

Who wants to cruise in Joe Biden’s Cadillac?

Interested in swapping seats with President Joe Biden? The Oval Office desk chair isn’t up for grabs — at least, not yet — but you are welcome to bid on a Cadillac once leased by Amtrak Joe. Since the DMV presumably took the keys away from the well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, Biden will no longer need those hot wheels with the custom Kona Brown interior. If you’re lucky, the sedan may even come with a few boxes of classified documents in the trunk, assuming the DoJ didn’t find them all during its last sweep. The car, which Delaware Cadillac is selling, has fewer than 16,000 miles on it, perhaps another testament to Biden’s purported love of public transportation.

navalny opponents
Ben Domenech

Will the West make Putin regret the death of Navalny?

The death of Alexei Navalny, announced a week after Vladimir Putin's sit-down interview with Tucker Carlson and reported as senior officials gather for a security summit in Germany, is an expression of the ruthlessness of the Russian authoritarian. Add Navalny to the list of foes Putin's regime has assassinated — the most prominent since Boris Nemtsov was shot to death while crossing a bridge — and know that so long as the current regime is in power, it will continue to assassinate anyone who rises up against it. Whether they die by poison or bullet or walking in a prison yard north of the Arctic Circle, it's all the same to him. Navalny's defiant stand in opposition to the corrupt Putin regime is the definition of courage.

Thursday

Stephen L. Miller

The media’s war on your eyes and ears

Ever since the release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s illegal handling of classified materials and documents (he “stored” them in open boxes and grocery bags in his home garage, where Hunter Biden crashed during the pandemic), there has been a media blitz to combat its characterization of the president as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” Notes in the report also revealed that Biden had trouble remembering key dates from his personal and professional biography, like when he served as vice president or the year that his son Beau died of brain cancer.

Amber Duke

How Biden is planning to up-end Title IX

Earlier this month, Biden’s Department of Education finally submitted its proposed Title IX rule changes over to the White House for review. Biden’s DoE has been hard at work to unravel Title IX rules made by its secretary under the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos. DeVos, you might recall, had enshrined all sorts of due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct on campus amid a spate of high-profile false accusations.

Ben Domenech

The big 2024 question for Democrats isn’t Joe Biden’s age

Welcome to Thunderdome, where this week I want you to consider: what’s the biggest 2024 question for Democrats? You might assume that it’s Joe Biden’s age, infirmity and feeblemindedness — particularly after the Robert Hur report dropped last week. It certainly set the White House and the Biden campaign on edge — and now they’re dealing with the thorny question of whether they should release the transcript of Hur’s interviews with the president. On the one hand, it could provide information useful to Democrats pushing back against critics — see, he was just distracted by Israel, he just botched a few dates, Joe’s fine!

Tuesday

Cockburn

WATCH: Jon Stewart jabs at Biden and Trump’s age in Daily Show return

After more than eight years away from the anchor desk, Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Monday night for its election 2024 coverage. The late-night host came out swinging with pointed jokes at both eighty-one-year-old Joe Biden and seventy-seven-year-old Donald Trump. "They are the oldest people ever to run for president, breaking, by only four years, the record that they set,” Stewart said.  https://twitter.com/thedailyshow/status/1757253512625586177?s=46&t=KTzG0soGgiCKUdkuiUQOwA Cockburn can’t say that Stewart’s attacks on the elderly presidential candidates are all that original, but it’s a marked improvement on the hackneyed, partisan commentary of his successor Trevor Noah.

jon stewart
warren wealth tax
Lewis M. Andrews

The trouble with the progressives’ proposed wealth tax

As the level of US debt zooms past the $34 trillion mark, it has become increasingly clear that the American left has no intention of trying to help control government spending. To the extent that annual deficits must be trimmed to protect the integrity of the nation’s currency, Democrats and their allies are instead planning to go beyond the current progressive tax on income and institute a new levy on citizens’ assets. Some such as Senator Elizabeth Warren openly advocate taking the conventional idea of a property tax and applying it to everything a person owns — cash, savings accounts, stocks, jewelry and even art.

Sunday

Charles Lipson

The stalemate on illegal immigration

Few moments are less promising to reach a bipartisan deal than the months before a presidential election. And few issues present greater obstacles than limiting illegal immigration. Even the word “illegal” is contested. Progressives say it is too harsh. Conservatives say it is simply truthful. It is no surprise, then, that the compromise “border-security bill” gasped its final breath this week. The Senate bill, negotiated by a Democrat, a Republican and an Independent, met a hostile reception as soon as the text was released. House Speaker Mike Johnson declared it “dead on arrival.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reluctantly brought it up for a procedural vote, where it went down in flames. Why such stiff opposition?

james lankford border illegal immigration

Saturday

Teresa Mull

Trump goes through the motions for the NRA

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Having lingered a little too long at a Scottish outfitter’s booth learning about the art of falconry, I assumed I’d be relegated to the overflow arena of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex, where Donald Trump was addressing attendees of the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show last night. I was surprised to learn from a friendly security guard, however, that there were said to be some seats still available in the nosebleeds of the main arena. I tried my luck at the handiest entrance, and a kind man with a cane and his three companions all stood up and made way for me to sit in a prime seat.

trump nra harrisburg