MAGA Candidate Says He’s Worried About Babies Who Might Get an Abortion

A gubernatorial candidate in Missouri is arguing against abortion access for rape victims on the basis that it would technically allow babies to gain access to the medical procedure.

Republican Missouri State Senator Bill Eigel took the draconian (and idiotic) stance during a debate last week, over an amendment to the state’s already restrictive abortion ban. Missouri has only allowed abortions in the event of medical emergencies since shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The new amendment, proposed by Democratic state Senator Doug Beck, would permit abortions for children aged 12 and under if they are victims of rape or incest, raising health concerns for child rape victims if their pregnancies were carried to term.

“You want to bring back the institution of abortion so that kids can get abortions in the state of Missouri. A 1-year-old could get an abortion under this,” Eigel said, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

The uneducated response immediately called for a fact-check from Beck.

“I don’t know that a 1-year-old could get pregnant, Senator,” he retorted, before asking if Eigel was “OK” with the “forced birth of a child being raped.”

“I don’t support the institutions of rape or of incest. But your amendment doesn’t address those,” Eigel replied.

But Eigel isn’t alone in his condemnation of the bill. Another Republican, Missouri State Senator Sandy Crawford, claimed the incest and rape provision shouldn’t pass because “God is perfect.”

“God does not make mistakes. And for some reason he allows that to happen, bad things happen,” Crawford said. “I’m not gonna be able to support the amendments because I am very pro-life.”

Also last week, GOP representatives in the state unanimously voted down another amendment to the ban, proposed by Senator Tracy McCreery, which would have legalized abortion in all cases of rape or incest.

While the world continues to reel after Donald Trump claimed he told a European leader that he’d allow Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies if they didn’t “pay” their “bills,” some former members of his inner circle aren’t even sure he said it at all.

On Tuesday, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton cast doubt on the incendiary story, claiming that it just didn’t sound real to him.

“I never heard him saying anything like that, and the way the conversation goes doesn’t sound real,” Bolton told Politico. “You know, he makes up a lot of conversations where people are always calling him ‘Sir.’ You know, maybe his subordinates are calling him sir, because that’s the right thing to do. But foreign leaders don’t call him sir. They either call him Mr. President or Donald, number one.”

“But number two, the fact that it’s an imaginary conversation that makes Trump look very good—as all of Trump’s imagined conversations do—doesn’t mean that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying,” Bolton continued.

To that end, Bolton believes that Trump’s desire to force the United States out of the strategic military alliance is very real.

“Look, I was there when he almost withdrew, and he’s not negotiating,” Bolton said. “His goal here is not to strengthen NATO, it’s to lay the groundwork to get out.”

Trump’s comments—even outside of the White House—may have the impact he’s looking for. On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Trump’s bombastic story may force what was once a quiet conversation out into the open: how the 75-year-old Western alliance might prepare for a world after America removes itself as the centerpiece.

Republicans unquestioningly have quickly fallen in line behind the GOP front-runner, brushing Trump’s veiled threats off as something not to be taken “literally” and claiming that Trump should not be considered a “traditional politician.”

“I think there are some Republicans who support Trump out there saying, ‘Oh, it’s, you know, it’s not a big deal. He’s not going to do it, so on and so forth.’ I’m telling you, I was there in Brussels when he damn near did it,” Bolton said, referring to the 2018 NATO summit.

According to Bolton, a policy hawk who also served under Ronald Reagan’s administration, the consequences of exiting the Cold War alliance could be dire, effectively resulting in the end of NATO, leaving behind a fractured and significantly weakened European alliance, while devastating America’s international credibility as an ally.

“If we’re willing to throw NATO over the side, there is no American alliance that is secure,” Bolton said, questioning if Trump would do the same to Israel while in office if it suited his political purposes.

Trump has long aggressed America’s relationship with the international military alliance, baselessly asserting that other NATO members have failed to pay their dues, which are determined by guideline rather than mandate, and even though the United States has never been shortchanged by other members. The Cold War organization has “no ledger that maintains accounts of what countries pay and owe,” according to former Obama staffer Aaron O’Connell, who explained to NPR in 2018 that “NATO is not like a club with annual membership fees.”

“When Trump complains that NATO allies are not spending enough on defense, he’s not complaining to get them to strengthen NATO. He’s using it to bolster his excuse to get out,” Bolton explained.

Debate over the $95 billion foreign aid bill in the Senate reached the prime minister of Poland. Well, sort of.

On Monday night, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham lit into a poster of a tweet by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk castigating Republican senators for voting against giving aid to Ukraine. (Just a few hours after this meltdown, Graham would join 25 other members of his party in voting against the aid package to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.)

Graham seemed to take particular offense at Tusk’s invocation of Ronald Reagan, who, according to the prime minister, “must be turning in his grave” at his party’s turning a blind eye to Russian aggression. “Shame on you,” tweeted Tusk.

Addressing (and gesticulating at) the poster directly, Graham admonished Tusk’s Twitter avatar for suggesting that Republican senators had abandoned Reagan’s legacy.

“To the prime minister of Poland, if Ronald Reagan were alive today, we wouldn’t have this broken border.… How would you feel if seven million people came in illegally into Poland? Would you have this attitude: We’ve got to put Ukraine ahead of Poland?”

Graham has been supportive of military aid to Ukraine in the past. As recently as September, he called it a “good investment.” But he has recently changed his tune, parroting Donald Trump’s talking points that any aid to Ukraine should instead be a loan. Graham also seems more interested in attacking Democrats over the border, even after killing a draconian bipartisan “border deal” last week.

Adhering to a rapidly disintegrating GOP party line of theoretical support for Ukraine, Graham assured his piece of cardboard that he “[wants] to help Ukraine … and make a stronger NATO,” but claimed that before he could support an ally facing invasion, he needed to get a bill bundling aid to Ukraine with border security provisions—presumably a different bill from the one already rejected by Graham and his colleagues—through the House of Representatives.

The $95 billion aid bill eventually passed without Graham’s support, but it faces resistance from House Republicans. In the meantime, Graham claims he “could care less what” Tusk thinks about him. His red-faced poster routine suggests otherwise.

The Senate early Tuesday morning passed a $95 billion aid package, which dedicated $60 billion of assistance to Ukraine—but not without objection from some Republican senators, including Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who filibustered through the night.

Johnson’s objection? Certainly not the $15 billion of aid to Israel also included in the bill, or the decoupling of border security funding after Senate Republicans killed the bipartisan border deal last week at Donald Trump’s behest. Instead, Johnson was apparently swayed to vote against the bill after Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson.

Johnson, in an interview on far-right news network Real America’s Voice, explained that, while Putin “is a war criminal [who is] obviously not telling you the whole truth,” his conversation with ousted Fox News host Carlson was “very interesting,” and that “an awful lot of what Vladimir Putin said was right … accurate, and obvious.”

“Putin won’t lose. He will not lose. He’s not gonna lose,” Johnson repeatedly warned in the interview, just hours before he voted against giving more aid to Ukraine.

Echoing Putin’s talking points, Johnson also baselessly claimed U.S. economic sanctions against Russia  threaten the supremacy of the U.S. dollar by forcing Russia to trade with foreign currencies.

Without referring specifically to the $60 billion earmarked for Ukrainian military aid, which has divided the Republican caucus for months, Johnson inveigled against “so many people in Washington ignoring [Putin’s comments] … making people believe that Ukraine can win.”

Twenty-two Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined 48 Democratic senators to pass the bill, where it will meet the continued opposition of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has already attempted to eliminate Ukraine funding from a much smaller aid package exclusively for Israel. GOP holdouts in the Senate and House, including Johnson, have been locked in an intraparty battle over Ukraine for over a year now. Putin’s rambling, off-the-rails interview with Carlson seems to have convinced at least one senator to dig in his heels. Not that he needed another reason to back an authoritarian, anyway.

The Republican candidate vying for George Santos’s House seat has suddenly changed her stance on immigration, as she apparently seeks to fearmonger her way to victory in Tuesday’s special election.

Nassau County legislator Mazi Pilip is running to fill the seat vacated by  serial fabricator Santos in New York’s 3rd congressional district. And in hopes of winning votes, she’s taking some hard-line positions on immigration, despite having emigrated from Israel and, before that, Ethiopia.

Campaign ads for Pilip warn about a “record invasion” of migrants and Democrats’ “open border agenda.” Just last week, she used the same language again, claiming the Senate’s bipartisan immigration deal “puts into law the invasion currently happening at our southern border.”

But only a few months ago, Pilip was singing a very different tune.

In an October interview with local outlet The Island 360, when Republicans hadn’t yet settled on Pilip as their replacement pick for the House seat, she was stressing the need for a humane immigration policy.

Steven Blank, the publisher of The Island 360, asked Pilip what should be done about the migrants coming to New York City.

“As you know, this country was founded by immigrants. I am immigrated twice,” replied Pilip, whose native language is Amharic. She then described migrants as simply “people coming for better life.”

“Right now the way the situation is, it doesn’t help the American people. And it doesn’t help the migrants as well. So I think this is time for the federal and the state to think better plan, how we can help them.”

Pilip went on to shoot down a proposal to use Nassau Coliseum as a shelter for asylum-seekers, urging more care for migrants.

“How you can bring people and put them in Nassau Coliseum? That’s not right. That’s not correct,” she said. “That’s not the way you welcoming migrants. That’s not the way we welcoming migrants, and I’m sorry that’s the plan. That’s not the right plan, not to the Americans, not to the migrants. So the federal government better come up with ideas, and ways, and policies how you are willing to absorb those migrant and give them, you know, the good life they was seeking.”

“Go back to the federal government … to come up with a plan to house those people,” she stressed.

Since then, a whole new Pilip seems to be running for the House.

Tuesday’s special election is so critical that Pilip, and her new anti-immigrant stance, has Nassau County’s entire Republican machine behind her. In fact, she has such strong backing that not a single person is shown on her campaign payroll, according to The New York Times.