Eminem Has Had Enough, Sends Cease and Desist to Vivek Ramaswamy

Eminem has asked Vivek Ramaswamy to stop using the rapper’s songs on his presidential campaign.

Ramaswamy often performed (badly) as a libertarian rapper while he was at Harvard, and Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” was one of his favorite songs. Ramaswamy has since tried to reclaim his rapper status, freestyling terribly on Fox & Friends and performing “Lose Yourself” at the Iowa State Fair.

In a letter dated August 23, Eminem’s lawyer informed Ramaswamy’s campaign that Eminem objected to their repeated use of his music during their campaign stops.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Eminem opposes Ramaswamy using his music. The rapper has long made his political stances clear. He released a protest song against George W. Bush in 2004 that criticized the then president for invading Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. In 2017, Eminem wrote a song in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and released a freestyle rap railing against Donald Trump’s morals, policies, and racist behavior.

Ramaswamy, on the other hand, is more interested in sucking up to Trump, battling “wokeness,” and insisting that 9/11 was an inside job.

Ted Cruz on Monday seemed to endorse using trucks to plow into peaceful protesters, when he shared a video of law enforcement doing exactly that.

Protesters set up a blockade on the road to Burning Man on Sunday to demand the Nevada festival ban the use of private jets and single-use plastics. Video captured by one demonstrator shows a police ranger driving a pickup truck into the blockade, knocking one person out of the way. The ranger then gets out, aims a weapon at the protesters and shouts at them to get on the ground. As one protester screams at the rangers that they are peaceful and unarmed and begs them to stop, the officer pushes another protester to the ground and kneels on top of them while handcuffing them.

Cruz retweeted the video, writing, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

This isn’t the first time that Cruz has denigrated peaceful protesters. When the Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade leaked last year, crowds of peaceful protesters gathered outside the homes of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts. Cruz inaccurately slammed the demonstrations as “mob violence.”

For someone who talks so much about protecting First Amendment rights, Cruz seems to have forgotten that the First Amendment includes the freedom of assembly.

Kevin McCarthy is making it increasingly clear that he intends to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden—but some of his Republicans are furious with him for it.

Republicans have insisted for months that Biden is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas, despite producing no actual evidence. McCarthy has suggested opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden next month, once Congress returns from recess, so that Republicans can access more information and witnesses, which will supposedly lead them to the truth.

McCarthy is doubling down on his threat behind closed doors, CNN reported Monday, but Republicans are not unified behind him.

“There’s no evidence that Joe Biden got money, or that Joe Biden, you know, agreed to do something so that Hunter could get money. There’s just no evidence of that,” one GOP lawmaker, speaking anonymously, told CNN. “And they can’t impeach without that evidence. And I don’t I don’t think the evidence exists.”

Republicans have (inadvertently) admitted before that they have zero proof of wrongdoing by Biden. But even lawmakers who support impeachment proceedings don’t back opening an inquiry now.

Representative Matt Rosendale, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, on Monday called an impeachment inquiry into Biden “long overdue” but accused McCarthy of using the threat to distract from upcoming appropriations votes.

“I’m afraid now that he’s bringing it up just to use it as a distraction so that he can try and push forward this continued resolution which many of us are not going to sign off on,” Rosendale told Newsmax.

Congress has not passed all the necessary appropriations bills, and it is unlikely to do so by its September 30 deadline. Party leaders on both sides have suggested passing a continuing resolution to keep funds flowing until all the bills have passed. But the Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right House Republicans, says it will not support a stopgap. If Congress fails to pass the stopgap measure, the government is at risk of a shutdown.

McCarthy has warned a shutdown would prevent Republicans from continuing to investigate Biden, including by opening an impeachment inquiry, in an attempt to bridge the gap between sides. But it doesn’t seem to be working.

Ken Buck, another member of the Freedom Caucus, slammed all the impeachment inquiry talk in July. “This is impeachment theater,” the Colorado Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash.

“What [McCarthy’s] doing is he’s saying, ‘There’s a shiny object over here, and we’re really going to focus on that. We just need to get all these things done so that we can focus on the shiny object,’” Buck said. “Most of us are concerned about spending.”

Donald Trump’s election interference case is set to begin on March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan made the decision on Monday. The trial date makes Trump’s upcoming campaign calendar incredibly tricky. Super Tuesday is one of the most important days in the primary calendar. It is the day when the largest number of states hold primary elections and caucuses. Trump will have a harder time rallying voters ahead of Super Tuesday because he needs to prepare for the trial.

Trump was indicted for his role in the January 6 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, one of four indictments. He faces four counts that include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump for this indictment and for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, requested that the trial begin in January. Trump’s team proposed the trial begin in April 2026, well after the presidential election. The hope was likely that Trump would have been re-elected by then and could avoid federal charges.

“These proposals are obviously very far apart,” Chutkan said Monday. “Neither of them is acceptable.”

She said Trump will have to prioritize the trial, and the schedule will not change based on his professional obligations, meaning campaign events. She pointed out that this is no different from how she would treat any other defendant.

This trial will also land just two months before Trump’s trial in the classified documents case. The second trial, which is set for May 20, is expected to take two weeks. If it does, it will overlap with primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. The schedule also would leave no time to host events ahead of primaries in Washington, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota, which will all occur immediately after the trial.

This article has been updated.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is doubling down on his comparison of Representative Ayanna Pressley to a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.

On Sunday, Ramaswamy received a grilling from CNN’s Dana Bash on his remarks.

“The KKK wasn’t just about rhetoric—they lynched people, they murdered people, they raped people, they burned their homes,” Bash argued. “If you want to have an intellectual discussion do you think that maybe comparing [Pressley] to the grand wizard and the notion of what she said to being a modern leader of the KKK was maybe a step too far, or you stand by what you said?”

Ramaswamy told Bash he stands by what he said.

Ramaswamy first compared Pressley to the KKK grand wizard during a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday.

He was criticizing Pressley, the first Black representative from Massachusetts, for remarks she made in 2019 on how “we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice.”

The GOP presidential candidate also attacked How to Be an Antiracist author Ibram X. Kendi, pushing the idea that progressives are the real racists. 

“The greatest racism I’ve experienced—and I have experienced racism—comes from the modern left at a scale unimaginable,” Ramaswamy said. “These are the words of the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.”

Ramaswamy refused to back down from the incendiary words on Sunday, telling Bash he believed Pressley’s comment had the same “spirit” as the KKK.

“I stand by what I said to provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,” he said. “We need to have real, open, honest, raw conversations as Americans. That is our path to national unity.”

Pressley, for her part, called Ramaswamy’s comments “deeply offensive.”

“The verbal assault lobbied against myself and Dr. Kendi is shameful. It is deeply offensive. And it is dangerous,” she said. “I remain squarely focused on the work of undoing the centuries of harm that has precisely been done to Black Americans and charting a path of true restorative justice and racial justice forward.”