MAGA Republican Pledges “End of Democracy” to Rabid Cheers at CPAC

Conservative activist Jack Posobiec joyfully hailed the “end of democracy” at the Conservative Political Action Conference, further emphasizing Republicans’ apparent desire to completely overthrow America as we know it.

Posobiec, who helped popularize the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, appeared at CPAC’s opening day on Wednesday. He spoke during a panel moderated by former White House adviser and white supremacist Steve Bannon.

“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely,” Posobiec said as the event began.

“We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this, right here,” he said, gesturing to the crowd and holding up his fist.

As he spoke, Bannon laughed and said, “Amen!”

Posobiec then said, to cheers from the audience, “All glory is not to government. All glory to God.”

Republican primary front-runner Donald Trump has repeatedly indicated he intends to embrace authoritarianism if he is reelected to the White House. Trump has paraphrased Adolf Hitler, floated horrifying and fascistic policy ideas, and joked (so he says) about being a dictator on the first day of his new term.

Trump’s closest allies in Congress have also indicated they would be willing to throw out the rulebook for him. Senator J.D. Vance and Representative Elise Stefanik, both reportedly on the shortlist for Trump’s running mate, have said they would have carried out a coup on January 6, 2021, to keep Trump in power.

Posobiec’s comments, even delivered in a lighthearted tone, are a chilling reminder that Trump and his supporters are not speaking rhetorically. They mean everything they say.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville is clearly gunning to win the award for “Dumbest Senator” a second year in a row, fully demonstrating that he has no idea what in vitro fertilization is, nor does he have basic knowledge about the recent Alabama court ruling that effectively banned the assisted family conception procedure from his state.

“Yeah, I was all for it,” Tuberville told reporters at CPAC on Thursday when asked about the state Supreme Court ruling that classified frozen embryos as children. “You just gotta look at everything going on in the country. It’s just an attack on families, an attack on kids. You know, anything we can do for the future of our young people, because they’re our number one commodity.”

“We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do,” he added.

“But IVF is used to have more children, and right now IVF services are paused at some of the clinics in Alabama,” prodded an NBC News reporter. “Aren’t you concerned that this could impact people who are trying to have kids?”

“Well, that’s for another conversation,” said a stumped Tuberville. “I think the big thing is right now you protect, you go back to the situation and you try to work it out to where it’s best for everybody. That’s what the whole abortion issue is about.”

“But this isn’t really about abortion, it’s about IVF and the concern that now families might not have access to it,” the reporter responded.

“But it’s about the same direction, but I agree,” Tubberville said, seemingly bewildered before doubling down on the party line. “People need to have access. People need to—we need more kids. We need people to have the opportunity to have kids.”

Yet one glance at the state’s recent politics would indicate that’s absolutely not a priority in the state. Infertility impacts one in five women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But last week, the Alabama Supreme Court decided that embryos created through IVF would be protected under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, classifying single-celled, fertilized eggs as children. The decision has spelled certain doom for IVF clinics across the state, three of which have already announced that they will no longer be offering the procedure for fear of being hit with wrongful death suits.

Still, that wasn’t enough for Tuberville to pay it any mind, and he at first mistook the judicial decision for a “bill” before admitting that he “hasn’t looked at it” and that he didn’t consider it a “big conversation” with regard to the general election.

“But women aren’t going to be able to have IVF to get kids already, in some places,” the reporter responded. “What do you say to them?”

“Yea, that’s unfortunate,” Tuberville said, repeating “unfortunate” a few more times.

“IVF is not a Democrat or Republican issue. Families across the board use it. What is your message to the Supreme Court if this does in fact stop families from using IVF?” the reporter asked.

“We don’t need that,” Tuberville said.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is frantically trying to quell the controversy over comments she made about IVF after an Alabama court’s recent ruling that frozen embryos are children.

“We don’t want fertility treatment to shut down, we don’t want them to stop doing IVF treatment, we don’t want them to stop doing artificial insemination,” Haley said on CNN on Thursday. “But I think this needs to be decided by the people in every state. Don’t take away the rights of these physicians and these parents to have these conversations.”

It was Haley’s second such attempt to explain away her controversial stance on the issue. On Wednesday evening, Haley blurted out a much more gibberish response.

“Well first off all, this is, again, I didn’t say that I agreed with the Alabama ruling. The question that I was asked is, ‘Do I believe an embryo is a baby?’” Haley said on CNN Wednesday evening. “I do think that if you look in the definition, an embryo is considered an unborn baby. And so yes, I believe, from my stance, that that is.”

But calling an embryo—the stage before the microscopic cellular mass is labeled a fetus—an unborn baby is not exactly correct.

In Handmaid’s Tale–esque fashion, Haley has tried to toe the line on the issue of third-party fertility in a futile effort to keep voters from turning away from her floundering campaign, even though she conceived her son via artificial insemination.

Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court decided that embryos created through in vitro fertilization would be protected under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, effectively classifying single-celled, fertilized eggs as children. The decision has spelled certain doom for IVF clinics across the state, three of which have already announced that they will no longer be offering the procedure for fear of being hit with wrongful death suits.

So when Haley initially claimed that embryos “are babies” and that she could see where the court was “coming from” on the issue, people were stunned.

“Embryos, to me, are babies,” Haley told NBC News. “When you talk about an embryo, you are talking about, to me, that’s a life. And so I do see where that’s coming from when they talk about that.”

House Oversight Republicans have yanked a reference to their major flop of an FBI informant on the committee website, where it previously had pride of place as part of the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.

Republicans have hinged their Biden investigation on accusations from a supposedly credible but confidential FBI source that Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. But the Justice Department has since charged that source, former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, with making false statements and revealed his accusation may have been Russian disinformation.

As of Thursday, the House Oversight website displays a list of key evidence in the committee’s Biden family investigation, including an error-ridden timeline of the president’s supposed corruption, the family’s bank records, and a transcribed interview with a witness who actually debunked all of the Republicans’ claims.

But an archived version of the website shows the key evidence list used to include a link to “FBI Form 1023 alleging then-Vice President Joe Biden engaged in a bribery and extortion scheme and ultimately received $5 million from a Burisma executive.”

FD-1023s are forms that the FBI uses to record anonymously sourced, unverified information. The form in question alleges that a source reported Biden and his son Hunter each accepted a $5 million bribe from an executive at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter served.

Republicans have repeatedly cited this form as concrete proof that Biden is guilty of corruption, despite the fact that the FBI could not prove the information was credible. GOP leadership was warned as much, but it still pushed forward with the investigation into the Bidens.

As it turns out, the story was totally made up. Last week, the Justice Department charged the source, businessman Alexander Smirnov, with making a false statement and creating a false record related to the bribery allegation. And on Tuesday, the department revealed Smirnov confessed that Russian intelligence officers helped him smear Hunter Biden.

With the investigation going up in smoke around them, Republican leaders have started to erase references to Smirnov. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Oversight Chair James Comer, who have spearheaded the probe, sent a letter Tuesday evening to former State Department official Amos Hochstein requesting an interview. The GOP has accused Hochstein of advising Hunter Biden at Burisma.

The original letter, which was obtained by The New Republic, included a section explaining the reason for the Biden investigation, with a paragraph that described a credible, confidential source’s accusation that a Ukrainian gas company executive had bribed the president. This background information has been standard for Republicans’ interview request letters during the impeachment inquiry thus far.

But an hour later, Republicans sent out a second version of the letter, also obtained by TNR. This time, the entire paragraph about the informant had been deleted.

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman can’t seem to wrap his head around negative reviews of President Joe Biden, claiming on Thursday that Democrats who criticize the president are only helping Donald Trump return to the White House.

“I don’t understand why,” Fetterman said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “I don’t know what’s in it for you to do that, whether you’re just chasing clout or you want to make it in the news or anything like that. But if you’re not willing to just support the president now and say these kinds of things, you might as well just get your MAGA hat, because you now are helping Trump with this.”

Fetterman’s attack comes as Democratic strategists and voters are raising concerns about the 81-year-old president—whether in regard to his age, his immigration policies, his stance on Gaza, or something else.

“The president is going to win here in Pennsylvania, and I’ve always believed that whoever wins Pennsylvania is going to be the next president as well, too,” Fetterman said, adding that it’s going to be “difficult,” and Democrats have to “lean in on that.”

It’s not the first time that Fetterman has dismissed criticism of the sitting president, adding to what seems to be a developing portrait of a DNC bootlicker rather than an independent lawmaker. In December, Fetterman resorted to the political strategy of a middle schooler to push back against a dire 2024 prediction for Biden by longtime Democratic political strategist James Carville.

“I’ll use this [as] another opportunity to tell James Carville to shut the fuck up,” Fetterman told Politico at the time, responding to a question about Biden’s floundering polling results. “Like I said, my man hasn’t been relevant since grunge was a thing. And I don’t know why he believes it’s helpful to say these kinds of things about an incredibly difficult circumstance with an incredibly strong and decent and excellent president. I’ll never understand that.”

Fetterman has spent the last few months transforming himself into a full-blown liberal, insisting that he was never a progressive politician despite previously leveraging the label for fundraising, claiming to be one online, and calling himself a “Bernie Sanders 2.0.”