Elise Stefanik Shredded for Idiotic Comments about 2020

Representative Elise Stefanik is a lot of things, but this week, she made a good case that she’s not a historian.

During a speech on Super Tuesday, Stefanik tried to insert a callback to a famous campaign line by Ronald Reagan, in which he coyly questioned the progress made during President Jimmy Carter’s term. But the House Republican Conference chair had none of the charm—or apparently any memory—of what happened during the previous administration.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The answer for hard-working Americans around the country is a resounding no,” Stefanik said.

This time four years ago, the nation was being ravaged in a dystopian way by the Covid-19 pandemic, with former President Donald Trump ordering sick passengers to stay quarantined on the Grand Princess cruise ship to keep case numbers inside the country low.

Droves of viewers with working memories were quick to glom onto the scripted error, including several of Stefanik’s Democratic colleagues.

One user on X (formerly Twitter) pointed out that “4 years ago this month Covid exploded out as Trump endlessly lied about the seriousness of it and there were so many dead bodies from it that cities had to rent trailers to stuff full of corpses.”

“Four years ago people were rationing toilet paper and dying in hospital hallways,” posted Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly.

“The gentlelady from NY seems to have forgotten about body bags in Central Park, a collapsing economy, loss of faith in US democracy around the world and a tax-dodging, COVID-denying rapist President who was preparing his final act of sedition,” said Illinois Representative Sean Casten.

Vermont Representative Becca Balint accused Republicans of “trying to literally rewrite history.”

“Four years ago we were on the brink of a deadly pandemic that killed millions of Americans because of Trump’s failed response and this same kind of denialism,” Balint said.

It’s no surprise that Stefanik is trying (and failing) to gaslight Americans. She is reportedly being weighed as a potential option for Trump’s vice president, though the presumptive GOP nominee’s shortlist is starting to look a little long.

Other contenders to be Trump’s Number Two include one-time Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Florida Representative Byron Donalds, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the last of whom has already outright rejected the offer (“I am not doing that.”) And the list continues to grow. Just last week, Trump added Texas Governor Greg Abbott to his dumpster fire pick list.

Donald Trump is currently facing federal charges for involvement in the January 6 riot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. In an effort to save his own skin, Donald Trump has claimed that he, as a former president, has legal immunity for any actions committed while he was in office.

The legal question, despite being discredited by several experts, has made its way to the Supreme Court, which announced last week that it would begin to hear the case the week of April 22. That announcement was already seen by many experts as a victory for Team Trump, as the federal election interference trial can’t begin until the Supreme Court weighs in. In other words, perhaps the biggest case against Trump has been pushed back by months.

On Wednesday, however, the nine-member court, three of whom were appointed by Trump, once again decided “what’s the rush?” and declared the case’s arguments will begin April 25. Putting the case on almost the last day of the week suggests another lengthy delay to ultimately decide it.

While seemingly minor, the change undoubtedly benefits the former president, the latest such decision from the Supreme Court to do so. The fact that the court is hearing the case at all could delay Trump’s January 6 case until after the election, giving him the benefit of voters not seeing him as a convicted felon on their ballots. Trump is still enjoying a victory from the Supreme Court ruling that Colorado, as well as other states, can’t enforce the Constitution’s disqualification clause against federal officeholders and remove him from their ballots. The entirety of that ruling also drew criticism from legal experts, even those who agreed with the gist of it.

Every legal case against Trump, a former president, is unprecedented. With the Supreme Court’s decision to drag its feet on the immunity question, Trump could potentially be reelected and then be found guilty of federal crimes shortly afterward. How would the country navigate that thorny legal question?

After winning a sum total of zero delegates in the Democratic Super Tuesday primaries, Dean Phillips has called it quits on his long-shot bid for the White House.

“I ran for Congress in 2018 to resist Donald Trump, I was trapped in the Capitol in 2021 because of Donald Trump, and I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again—because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options,” Phillips wrote in a statement Wednesday.

“But it is clear that alternative is not me. And it is clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be,” he said.

The Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden had brought several memorable moments to the 2024 presidential race, such as  when he announced he would run as a “generic Democrat” to no fanfare, when he forgot about population density, or when he launched a very human A.I. chatbot to help voters get to know him. 

Apart from his age, Philip’s only major policy differences with the sitting president included lowering costs for housing, health care, and childcare; changing the tax code to allow parents to deduct the cost of childcare; raising the minimum wage; and a proposal to legalize weed at the federal level.

Still, on his way out, Phillips couldn’t resist one last shot at the 81-year-old president.

“In 2011, I hosted then VP Biden at my home. Most notable was his empathy and kindness to my daughters and the catering staff, with whom he sat and had ice cream (surprise-surprise). His decency and wisdom were rarities in politics then, and even more so today,” Phillips said in his statement.

“Over a decade later, the only thing that has changed is time—which slows all of us down a bit, including presidents.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t disavowing her theory that Jewish space lasers were the cause of the California wildfires, but she definitely wants to stop being pestered about it, going so far as to tell one journalist to “fuck off” with the questions.

At a Super Tuesday event at Mar-a-Lago, Greene was approached by former BBC journalist Emily Maitlis, who after a perfectly civil interview on the topic of Nikki Haley dared to follow up on the Georgia Republican’s bonkers conspiracy.

“Can you tell me why so many people that support Donald Trump love conspiracy theories, including yourself? He seems to attract lots of conspiracy theorists,” prompted Maitlis, who now works for The News Agents.

“Well, let me tell you, you’re a conspiracy theorist,” Greene shot back. “And the left and the media spreads more conspiracy theories. We like the truth, we like supporting our Constitution, our freedoms, and America First.”

As Greene turned around to leave, Maitlis got in one more question.

“What about Jewish space lasers? Tell us about Jewish space lasers,” she asked, referring to a 2018 Facebook post in which Greene linked alleged sightings of “lasers or blue beams of light” to the cause of the California wildfires. She then, apropos of nothing, further tied those sightings to the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family often targeted by antisemitic conspiracies, whom she believed were clearing the land for rail stations.

“Why don’t you go talk about Jewish space lasers?” Greene replied to Maitlis. “And really, why don’t you fuck off? How about that?”

It’s not even the first time in recent memory that Greene has had a sour moment with a British broadcaster over the theory. During an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored in November, Greene refused to acknowledge that she had written the infamous Facebook post, insisted that she was not an antisemite, and claimed that Morgan was twisting her words as he read the post verbatim.

“I talk about Jewish space lasers in my book because that was something I never said,” Greene said at the time, referring to her memoir. “Excuse me, Piers, I never said that phrase. That was a lie about me. If you read my original Facebook post, I never said it. That’s why I had to write this book.”

In a 2021 interview, Greene claimed ignorance, alleging that she “didn’t even know and didn’t find out until recently that the Rothschilds were Jewish.”

He took his time, but ultimately Senator Mitch McConnell has fallen in line and endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2024.

The Senate minority leader and longtime leader of the Senate Republican caucus said in a statement to The Washington Post Wednesday, “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States.”

McConnell announced his decision just minutes after Trump’s lone remaining challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race after only winning one of Super Tuesday’s 16 state contests. McConnell himself announced last week that he will step down as GOP leader in November.

The endorsement was long sought after by Trump, with coordinated efforts from staffers for both politicians seeking to secure a rapprochement. Trump and McConnell have not spoken since December 2020, when the Senate minority leader recognized Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Over the years, McConnell and Trump have had an acrimonious relationship, to say the least. McConnell has privately and publicly criticized Trump for his role in fomenting the January 6 riots, although he didn’t vote to convict Trump afterward in impeachment proceedings. Trump has called McConnell a “dumb son of a b----” and remarked that he would like to replace McConnell as majority leader if he were reelected president.

Trump has also made racist attacks against Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, an Asian American, despite the fact that Chao served as Trump’s secretary of transportation, and accused McConnell of conflicts of interest, alleging that Chao has ties to China that compromise McConnell. But, as Senator Ted Cruz can attest, attacks on one’s spouse can easily be forgiven in Trump’s Republican Party.