Tucker carlson

One of the accepted media tales about the Republican Party is that because Donald Trump dominates it politically and stylistically, he also dominates its policymaking process. There are several examples where this hasn’t been true, both during his presidency and after it — but perhaps none more prominent than the TikTok debate on Capitol Hill, which resulted in that modern rarity of a sweeping 352-65 bipartisan vote in the House last week, a vote immediately applauded by populist conservative leaders such as Missouri senator Josh Hawley and institutions such as the Heritage Foundation.

Congress struck a major blow against TikTok's Chinese ownership Thursday morning, by passing the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which would require parent company ByteDance to sell its US entity within six months in order to retain access to American app stores and web hosting services. The bill, passed by a 352-65 margin, now heads to the Senate. It offered a rare time that former president Donald Trump found himself allied with progressive members of the Squad in opposition, while Representatives Mike Johnson and Hakeem Jeffries joined forces in voting for the bill, which would help combat the espionage concerns that intelligence officials in the Biden administration have repeatedly raised.

It’s been almost twenty-four hours since President Joe Biden trotted out to the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room to deliver remarks about Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on the president’s retention of classified documents. If you’d like a recap of how that went, you can read my piece here. It’s safe to say that, with the exception of a few shameless administration apologists, DC collectively saw the press conference as an absolute trainwreck. Now, journalists are trying to get to the bottom of who planned the ill-fated public appearance for the president. Was it the president himself, furious at Hur’s report, who demanded he appear in a previously unscheduled event that was announced fifteen minutes prior to its start time?

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.

Roseanne Barr, the QAnon Shaman and a gang of angry white teenagers walk into a bar. This may sound like the start of a horrible joke, but it was also the scene in downtown Phoenix, Arizona as Turning Point USA hosted its annual AmericaFest at a local convention center. Normal speeches by GOP mainstays such as Senator Ted Cruz were overtaken by some of the shenanigans afterwards — most glaringly headlined by a group of purported white supremacists at a fringe event reportedly shouting “nigger,” “gay sex,” and “faggot” at Rob Smith, who is black, gay and conservative. In one video, posted by @ValleyZoomerVZ, Smith is asked “how does anal sex help us win the culture war?” among other highly relevant questions. Smith calmly left the premises.

An admission of personal bias: I have little to no respect for academics or intellectuals who write about the Congress of the United States. As a student, I was taught by brilliant professors about the dynamics of legislative decisions and negotiation, the nooks and crannies of process and debate, the give and take, the game theory at play. Then, when I arrived on Capitol Hill, within a month I discovered that a certain member had completely changed his position on a piece of legislation — a 180-degree reversal from where he stood before. When I asked an aged veteran legislative aide about why this was possibly the case, he looked at me, bemused, and asked — “He’s getting a divorce. Which lobbyist do you think his wife slept with? This is personal, not politics.

What, if anything, is at stake in tonight’s Republican primary debate?  The front-runner is skipping the event, instead providing voters with a pre-taped interview he did with Tucker Carlson, before heading to Fulton County, Georgia, tomorrow to turn himself in. As for the eight candidates who will be on the stage — and I don’t want to sound uncharitable here — none has shown any hint of being capable of making a dent in the former president’s commanding poll lead. Underscoring the extent to which this primary is proving to be a rerun of the Trump show, Fox News will reportedly be playing clips of the former president as part of the debate.