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.

Super Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary on the surface went well for Joe Biden, as he was able to pick up the delegates from all 16 states.

But in seven states, voters had the option of selecting an “uncommitted” or “no preference” option instead of voting for Biden, Marianne Williamson, or Dean Phillips—and the results shattered expectations.

In six of the seven states, the “uncommitted” or “no preference” option received 6 percent or more of the vote, which could translate to deciding votes in November’s tightly contested election. In Minnesota, 15.7 percent of Democratic voters chose to vote “uncommitted” rather than back the president. And in North Carolina, a key state in 2024, nearly 12 percent of voters also showed up to the polls and chose to vote “uncommitted” instead.

The “uncommitted” vote is picking up steam in large part thanks to organizers urging the president to reverse his support for Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza and call for an immediate cease-fire. In Michigan, the effort resulted in more than 100,000 votes for “uncommitted,” or about 13 percent of the vote, a significant margin in a state that Biden only won by 154,000 votes in 2020.

Meanwhile, also on Super Tuesday, in the territory of American Samoa, Jason Palmer, who wasn’t even on many state ballots, won with 51 votes out of the 91 votes cast. Palmer called for a cease-fire in Gaza and withholding military aid to Israel in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) in February.

Although Vice President Kamala Harris called for a temporary cease-fire on Sunday, Biden’s policy toward Israel’s attacks on Gaza hasn’t changed on the ground, with Israel’s bombing campaign continuing unabated. And Trump’s most recent comments signal staunch support for Israel, with the former president answering Fox & Friends about whether he approved of Israel’s actions with “You’ve got to finish the problem.”

Eight years later, Donald Trump still can’t admit that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

During a Super Tuesday special on the Right Side Broadcasting Network, Trump got an unexpected reminder of his 2016 loss from host Brian Glenn (who happens to be Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend), which sent him down a rabbit hole that his advisers have urged him to avoid.

“Let’s talk about winning that popular vote. How would that make you feel to win the popular vote?” Glenn asked.

“Well, look, we have a couple of problems in this country. Number one, mail-in voting. Mail-in voting will always be dishonest. OK? And it’s a shame that we have it,” Trump started, slamming a process that he has used several times to cast his own votes, including twice in the 2020 primary elections.

“Jimmy Carter did a report, along with a couple of other senators that were respected Democrats, Republicans. It [was] like a commission. And the end result of the report was, ‘Never go to mail-in voting. It will always be dishonest.’ That was a long time ago,” he continued.

“France fairly recently switched from mail-in voting to one day, paper ballots, voter ID, very simple. One-day voting. I mean, these elections where they take 61 days and then they want an extension and, you know, they use machines to count it fast. But nobody ever had a—I mean, they last weeks longer. And then you wonder what’s happening and how come that material was moved and it was there. And where is it now?” the GOP front-runner rambled, before adding, “We have to have fair elections.”

But Glenn couldn’t leave it alone.

“So you feel like this time you’re making some really good inroads?” the far-right host asked.

“I do, and the big thing is we have to stop the cheating. I don’t need votes. We have all the votes we need. We have to stop the cheating. Because I actually think that. I actually think we would win the popular vote if it was, if God came down and was your vote counter where it would be honest. I think we win the popular vote. But they’ve cheated for years,” Trump concluded.

The rest of the dizzying segment included a bit in which Trump referred to the 2016 border as a “baby border” compared to today’s situation—despite the fact that Trump’s presidency focused on building “the wall” in the interim and Trump managed last month to kill a bipartisan border security bill.

He also returned to measuring himself against his old enemy, President Barack Obama, claiming the forty-fourth president “won a lot less” than he did.

It’s worth noting that Trump lost the popular vote—and the vote in general—in 2020 too. Despite his repeated claims that the election was fraudulent, no one, including people Trump hired, has found any evidence to back up that conspiracy.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley abandoned her long-shot bid for the White House on Wednesday. Her departure makes it official: Donald Trump owns the Republican Party.

The decision comes after Nikki secured only 89 delegates this entire Republican primary season, with Trump sweeping nearly every election on Super Tuesday.

“I am filled with gratitude for the outpouring of support we’ve received from all over our great country, but the time has now come for us to suspend our campaign,” Haley said in a speech that pinpointed debt, socialism, and “America’s retreat” from the international stage as reasons for the country’s struggles.

She then bizarrely heralded former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and congratulated Donald Trump on becoming the presumptive Republican nominee come July.

“Margaret Thatcher provided some good advice when she said, quote, ‘Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind,’” Haley said. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him.”

Haley did not endorse Trump in her resignation speech Wednesday, instead urging the former president to earn the support of all Republican and independent voters.

Haley was the last major Republican contender to the former president, despite polling gaps that sometimes placed Trump more than 50 percentage points ahead of her, according to aggregated polling data by FiveThirtyEight. Still, the former ambassador was able to drill a sore spot into the Trump campaign, festering insecurities in the typically boorish and bombastic GOP front-runner that took the form of fierce anti-Haley messaging.

Unlike many other Republicans this primary season—especially Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, the last recent major contenders to drop out—Haley revealed herself as one of the few candidates willing to at least somewhat criticize Trump. Despite still promising to pardon him, she also called him a liar, questioned his mental fitness, and argued that Trump used his office to “buddy up with dictators.”

She also took aim at Trump’s legal woes, blasting his victim mentality in particular. “There were a couple more court cases and a couple more judgments, and now he’s been talking about being a victim,” Haley said on Monday. “At no point is he ever talking about the American people.… All he’s doing is talking about himself.”

But Haley’s run was not without controversy. In the final months of her campaign, Haley obviously struggled in her answers to placate both moderate Republicans and increasingly radical voters on the far right, even when it came to answering point-blank questions with obvious answers, like the cause of the Civil War.

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how the government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley said during a town hall in December, notably failing to mention slavery in a long-winded answer.

In January, Haley tried to brush off that failure by playing the “Black friend” card, explaining that she “knew half of South Carolinians saw the Confederate flag as heritage and tradition” and that “the other half of South Carolinians saw it as slavery and hate.”

That same month, Haley—the daughter of Sikh Indian immigrants—tried to argue that America was not and never had been a racist country, despite several passages in her 2012 autobiography, Can’t Is Not an Option, that recount apparent discrimination on the basis of her race.

Regardless of her inability to wrangle her own truths to national voters, Haley’s ability to offer an intraparty alternative to Trump’s politics proved an incredible boon to her campaign. In January CBS News/YouGov matchups between the top Republican contenders and President Joe Biden, Haley came out head and shoulders above her competition, leading with 54 percent of the vote against Biden’s 45 percent thanks to support from moderates, independents, and voters with college degrees. That was a much wider margin than Trump, who was predicted to win against Biden by just two percentage points with 50 percent of the vote.

Some also initially predicted that Haley would have a baked-in advantage against her primary opponent as Trump faced challenges in Colorado and Maine over his eligibility to run on the ballot due to the January 6 insurrection. But the Supreme Court threw cold water on that idea on Monday when it blocked those efforts.

Ultimately, Haley proved to be the final obstacle to Trump before the former president faced down Biden again in a grueling general election rematch. And although she fought the good fight against a Republican conference that largely wanted nothing to do with her, Haley’s resignation proves that the current iteration of the GOP prefers a man who is on the line for 91 criminal charges, has been found liable for rape and defamation, and found guilty of bank fraud that was likened by a judge to Bernie Madhoff’s Ponzi scheme—over everybody else.

Trump wasted little time ripping Haley apart after her announcement, writing on TruthSocial that she got “TROUNCED.”

“At this point, I hope she stays in the ‘race’ and fights it out until the end!” Trump mocked, before extending an invitation to Haley’s supporters to “join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”

Biden also extended an olive branch to the stranded voters, pushing a message of unity with the moderate conservative demographic.

“I know there is a lot we won’t agree on. But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO… I hope and believe we can find common ground,” the president said in a statement.

This story has been updated.

Senator Bob Menedez’s charges just keep adding up.

A new superseding federal indictment on Tuesday charges the senior Democratic senator from New Jersey and his wife, Nadine, with obstruction of justice, adding to previous indictments alleging the couple accepted bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s political position to benefit the governments of Qatar and Egypt.

It’s not the first Qatar-related indictment for Menendez. A superseding indictment in January already accused him of accepting lavish gifts in exchange for helping to secure an investment from a company with ties to Qatar to help New Jersey business tycoon Fred Dabies.

The latest charge claims that Menendez and his wife, Nadine, accepted bribes to help the government of Qatar itself, engaging in a corrupt relationship with Dabies and two other New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Jose Uribe. Senator Menendez faces a dozen new counts, and 16 charges total, including obstruction of justice, bribery, and extortion.

The bribes came in the form of gold, cash, mortgage payments, a luxury vehicle, payments from a low- or no-show job, and other considerations, according to the latest indictment.

When Menedez was first indicted in October, he announced that he would not resign. While he has not yet made clear his reelection plans, he faces a tough primary challenge this June, with Representative Andy Kim and the state’s first lady, Tammy Murphy, both taking him on. Meanwhile, Menendez’s trial is due to start in May. A February poll shows him behind both Kim and Murphy.

After losing the second defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, Donald Trump has a new demand for Judge Lewis Kaplan: Reduce the $83.3 million penalty, or do the whole trial over again.

In a motion filed in court on Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys argued that Kaplan had overstepped by curtailing the bombastic disruptor’s testimony, limiting his answers to just a handful of pre-reviewed questions in an attempt to limit Trump’s courtroom outbursts and to streamline an off-the-rails trial.

“This Court’s erroneous decision to dramatically limit the scope of President Trump’s testimony almost certainly influenced the jury’s verdict, and thus a new trial is warranted,” the motion reads.

Trump’s team also claimed that the harm inflicted upon Carroll was “garden variety,” and that the columnist’s legal team failed to tie the harassment she endured after going public with sexual assault allegations to the GOP primary front-runner. All in all, Trump’s lawyers requested the judge downsize the self-purported billionaire’s penalty to a fraction of the jury-ordered figure, describing some of the fines as “grossly excessive.”

The filing is, frankly, a long-shot bid, and Carroll’s team has already opposed the motion, calling one of his arguments “laughable.”

Meanwhile, Trump insisted in interviews Tuesday that he has “a lot of money” and doesn’t “worry about money,” despite trying to worm his way out of his legal comeuppance—of which Carroll’s judgment amounts to just one small part. Trump has twice asked Kaplan to delay requiring payment to Carroll. The first time was last month, and Kaplan denied but asked Carroll’s attorneys to respond. In a filing last week, Carroll’s lawyers blasted Trump’s legal reasoning for reducing the fine, saying it “boils down to nothing more than ‘trust me.’”

Trump asked again on Monday, requesting a reduced bond of $24.475 million. Kaplan shut him down again.