Republicans Finally Plan 2024 Platform—With Most Troubling Architect

The Republican National Committee has decided to draft a 2024 party platform, and it’s hired a leader of the “Stop the Steal” election-denier movement to help.

On May 15, Ed Martin, a former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, was hired to serve as the ​​deputy policy director of the platform committee, reported NBC News. Martin is well known for supporting Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, even giving a speech in Washington, D.C., the day before the January 6 Capitol riots in 2021 to rally Trump’s supporters.

“No matter what happens tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after, we still need to be in the fight. There’s no summer soldiers and springtime patriots here. There’s the die-hard true Americans,” Martin said in that speech. “We start today, go through tomorrow and every day till we have a last breath and go home to the Lord because we will stop the steal.”

On January 6 itself, he was present on the Capitol grounds, posting on social media the entire time and claiming that the crowd was “rowdy” but otherwise fine, even after rioters had already breached the Capitol building.

“I’m at the Capitol right now,” Martin posted on Twitter. “Rowdy crowd but nothing out of hand. Ignore the #FakeNews.”

“Like Mardi Gras in DC today: love, faith and joy,” Martin tweeted minutes later.

Martin would later be subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee, which said it had evidence that he helped plan the rally preceding the riots and paid some of the costs for the rally’s vendors. Martin didn’t show up to a deposition with the committee, though. He later spread conspiracy theories about the riots, claiming that government operatives were responsible, and attended events with other election deniers such as Michael Flynn and Ali Alexander. 

The GOP is drafting a party platform for the first time in eight years, after deciding in 2020 that it would recycle 2016’s platform and “continue to enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda,” referring to Trump. Martin’s appointment suggests that 2024’s platform will include challenging the integrity of any election that Republicans lose. And he’s not the first election denier the RNC has hired since Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump took over as the committee’s co-chair. Lawyer Christina Bobb, who faces charges in Arizona for helping to overturn the state’s election results, was tapped to head the committee’s “election integrity” division.

Donald Trump thinks that everyone needs to lay off covering the bad things he’s done, for his family’s sake.

In a one-on-one interview on Dr. Phil Primetime Thursday, Trump fretted over the consequences of his actions from a gold-plated hall at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

“It has to affect my family, and I think that’s really unfair,” Trump said. “Because I have a very good family, I have good kids, I have a wonderful wife. I mean, it’s not easy for her to read this kind of stuff that’s fake. That’s fake stuff. And—but that’s the way it is. It certainly is not a good thing.”

That “fake stuff” to which Trump refers is the ongoing barrage of lawsuits he finds himself engaged in, as a result of his own alleged duplicitous actions. It’s impossible to imagine which of these legal battles, which Trump has deemed a “witch hunt,” would affect his wife Melania the most.

Most recently, Trump was found guilty by a New York jury of 34 felony counts for efforts to cover up hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels so she wouldn’t spill about an affair the two had. But Trump has a lengthy laundry list of bad acts that anyone with an internet connection could read about, including his family.

Before that, he was convicted of civil fraud, for which he owes hundreds of millions, and found guilty of sexual abuse and defamation, for which he owes tens of millions. He is also facing racketeering charges for an alleged scheme to overturn Georgia’s election results, and another suit for lifting classified documents from the White House.

This would embarrass any normal husband or father, but Trump has been shameless about his many alleged (and proven) crimes. To him, the attention functions more like a badge of honor in his campaign to be the most persecuted man in America.

In all this time, it would never occur to Trump that to stop having his family read about the bad things he’s done, he should simply stop doing them.

Donald Trump’s glitches are getting worse: During an appearance at a Turning Point USA rally in Arizona on Thursday, Trump incoherently declared, “When I’m president, I will use title 42 to end the tri—” before glitching to “and we have to do this.”

It’s not clear what exactly he was trying to say, but Trump’s mental rainbow wheels of death have become more prominent in recent months. He froze for more than 30 seconds during an NRA convention in May, and has been caught slurring his words at numerous campaign stops. Clips of Trump’s glitches, the verbal equivalent of watching a train crash unfurl in slow motion, have circulated widely among critics questioning his cognitive fitness as he touts a new cognitive test that does not exist as evidence of his mental prowess—and who can forget the infamous “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV” fake cognitive test Trump took during his presidency.

When he’s not glitching, he’s word association-style rambling himself into the sunset. During his lackluster Bronx campaign rally in May, Trump fantasized about someone in awe of his ability to put on his pants after veering off-script. At his meandering post-conviction press conference, Trump claimed witnesses were “literally crucified” and described Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as looking “so nice and so soft.” It’s unclear what verbal faux pas Trump will stumble over next, but you can rest assured The New Republic will cover it, and it will be glabghrasrsnbed-ahhh.

One of the primordial rules of running a newsroom sounds simple: Don’t mix editorial with business. And yet that’s exactly what The Washington Post’s publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, has done since taking the reins of the prestigious D.C. publication in January—over and over and over.

NPR’s David Folkenflik reported Thursday that the British tabloid journalist had offered him an unsavory exchange: an exclusive on the Post’s health if he promised to squash a story about Lewis’s involvement in a phone-hacking lawsuit filed by attorneys for Prince Harry, Guy Ritchie, and Hugh Grant. The suit named Lewis at the center of a cover-up at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK—accusing Lewis of “giving a green light” to erase millions of emails pertaining to the phone-hacking accusations, even after authorities had instructed the company to retain all of its records.

“In several conversations, Lewis repeatedly—and heatedly—offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations,” Folkenflik reported. “At that time, the same spokesperson, who works directly for Lewis from the U.K. and has advised him since his days at the Wall Street Journal—confirmed to me that an explicit offer was on the table: drop the story, get the interview.”

That’s on top of another scandal that seemingly fueled the unceremonious departure of the Post’s editor in chief Sally Buzbee on Sunday. Buzbee reportedly refused to cave to Lewis’s demands, in conversations about the paper’s own coverage of his legal battles in March and May, though the discussions left her “rattled.”

“When Ms. Buzbee said The Post would publish an article anyway, he said her decision represented a lapse in judgment and abruptly ended the conversation,” reported The New York Times.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case, may be in over her head due to a serious lack of experience, according to a new report from CNN.

The news outlet spoke to 10 attorneys who had cases before Cannon in the Southern District of Florida—and they painted a picture of a judge with limited trial experience, who’s prone to getting bogged down by irrelevant legal questions and struggles to manage her docket of cases efficiently.

Before Trump appointed her to the federal bench in 2020, Cannon was an attorney in the Justice Department for seven years and only took part in four criminal trials. In her four years as a judge, she hasn’t presided over many criminal cases either—and attorneys said it shows.

“She just seems overwhelmed by the process,” one lawyer told CNN. Other lawyers said that she lets small, marginal issues overwhelm the major details of cases. She also has rejected joint motions, agreed upon by both parties in a case with no dispute.

“You can’t assume that just because there’s agreement between the parties that she will go along,” one lawyer said, describing her as “incredibly hands on.”

“She wants to be the decision-maker of everything,” the lawyer said.

Defense attorneys that spoke to CNN described her as tough on defendants and notoriously strict on sentencing. But in Trump’s classified documents case, she has given him a long leash, which has not gone unnoticed.

“She’s certainly not sympathetic to most defendants, and she’s certainly playing a different game with the current defendant before her,” one lawyer told CNN regarding Trump.

Whether Cannon’s odd handling of Trump’s case is due to inexperience or a deliberate attempt to help Trump, he seems to be happy with her.

After a weekend full of crisis-actor-level tears from right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he has officially moved to liquidate all of his assets in order to pay the $1.5 billion he owes to the families of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary.

The “hoax”-pushing supplement hawker, who was found guilty of defamation in 2022, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 that same year, allowing him to maintain operations of his businesses and rely on reorganization to come up with the funds. But it wasn’t enough, with the families warning in 2023 that Jones’s plan fell “woefully short.”

In a filing on Thursday, Jones’s lawyers wrote that there was “no reasonable prospect for a successful reorganization” and that filing for liquidation under Chapter 7 was the massacre denier’s only option. This latest decision lays the groundwork for Alex Jones to lose his stake in InfoWars, the pulpit from which the podcaster has continued to spew misinformation.

Earlier this week, a judge prolonged Jones’s slow financial death and allowed him to continue running his media company Free Speech Systems until June 14. This newest move signals that Jones’s ownership will more than likely be sold, according to Avi Moshenberg, an attorney for the families, who spoke to CNN on Thursday. Free Speech Systems had nearly $4 million in cash on hand at the end of April.

The decision came after Jones posted several videos of himself in hysterics, in which he wailed over the prospect of selling his media company. “All we’re trying to do is save America, and they’re fucking us over, over and over again,” he sobbed in an “emergency broadcast” on Saturday. “And it’s just so sick—it’s sick, it’s sick. I want to leave—because it’s going to be over, folks.”

On Thursday, a lawyer for the families, Chris Mattei, said that Jones’s decision to liquidate his assets “will hasten the end of these bankruptcies and facilitate the liquidation of Jones’s assets, which is the same reason we have moved to convert his company’s case to Chapter 7.”

Mattei had accused Jones in court Monday of “manufacturing a crisis.”

Last month, Jones was granted permission to sell his ranch, which is valued at $2.8 million, one large chunk of his approximate total $9 million in assets.

A unique detail of Jones’s case is that he can’t skirt payments by declaring bankruptcy. The judge who presided over Jones’s bankruptcy filing last year made his debt “non-dischargeable” through bankruptcy, meaning he has to continue paying the families until he has fully settled the $1.5 billion debt.

As a result, Jones will likely be “basically broke now for the rest of his life,” Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, told MSNBC at the time.

During an appearance Thursday on a web show hosted by Phil McGraw, also known as Dr. Phil, Donald Trump spoke of his recent conviction on 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial—and his appetite for revenge against his political rivals.

Dr. Phil McGraw—once an acclaimed talk show staple—now hosts a web show sympathetically interviewing far-right trolls and peddling extremist conspiracies, going the way of innumerable has-beens. McGraw griped that the country is in such shambles that Trump regaining office would be too busy to “have time to get even.”

“Well, revenge does take time,” Trump replied. “And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil. I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.”

Trump has repeatedly spoken about his revenge fantasies after being convicted, at least three times alone this week. On Newsmax Tuesday, he suggested he may pursue charges against Biden in retaliation for his hush-money trial—an investigation that he blames on Biden but which began in 2018—more than a year before Biden announced his 2020 run for president.

“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to,” Trump said on Newsmax, framing his felony conviction by a New York jury as a dangerous precedent instead of a rare instance of the criminal justice system asserting that no one is above the law. “And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them,” Trump added.

“Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question,” Trump continued.

On Wednesday, he repeated his promise for retribution, telling Fox’s Sean Hannity that he has the “right” to send the Department of Justice against his political enemies.

Aspiring to imprison political enemies is nothing new for Trump. He infamously led calls to “lock her up” while running against Hillary Clinton—a phrase Trump now claims he never said.

Two police officers who were injured by rioters during the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol were met with an appalling cacophony of boos and hisses from several Republicans during a visit to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Some lawmakers even stormed out of the hall.

Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and former Sergeant Aquilino Gonell had been touring through Pennsylvania as part of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, but according to The Washington Post, several so-called conservative state lawmakers just couldn’t handle their presence Wednesday and threw a complete tantrum.

Dunn, who was pepper-sprayed and injured in hand-to-hand combat during the insurrection, said it was “sad though unsurprising that [Donald] Trump’s allies in the Pennsylvania state House followed his lead in mocking the January 6 attack.”

“The fact they’re scared to listen to those of us who were there and witnessed the political violence of January 6 firsthand speaks volumes,” he said Thursday in a statement.

Gonnell, who was battered during the riot three years ago, wrote in a post on X that Pennsylvania House Republicans had “abandoned the truth” and “sided with those who attacked us.”

Pennsylvania Democrats rallied to the former officers’ defense. Representative Arvind Venkat told the Post that he was “shocked and appalled” to see eight to 10 of his Republican colleagues walk out as the two were announced. Representative Mike Schlossberg said that a majority of Republicans did not stand and applaud the two men, who were introduced as “heroes” by House Speaker Joanna McClinton.

McClinton released a statement about the incident, saying, “The GOP members’ shameful behavior was unbecoming of our institution for any guest, let alone two of the men responsible for defending our democracy during a dark day in our nation’s history.”

Representative Jordan A. Harris, also a Democrat, criticized the Republican response to honoring members of law enforcement. “We talk about backing the blue, but people turned their backs on blue yesterday,” said Harris.

But Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler hit back at the criticism from Democrats, accusing them of “antagonizing members and inviting division and discord for their political and campaign purposes.” He insisted that he had stayed on the floor.

The shocking incident is a sign of how divisive the January 6 insurrection is, with many Republicans continuing to insist that rioters had not been in the wrong and that the 2020 election was rigged.

Joe Biden’s continued support of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza has crossed a line for the NAACP.

The civil rights organization on Thursday released a statement urging the Biden administration to end weapons shipments to Israel and calling for “an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”

“As the nation’s leading civil rights organization, it is our responsibility to speak out in the face of injustice and work to hold our elected officials accountable for the promises they’ve made,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “Over the past months, we have been forced to bear witness to unspeakable violence, affecting innocent civilians, which is unacceptable.”

The statement cites Israel’s offensive in Rafah, where displaced Palestinians from across Gaza have been forced to flee, noting that over Memorial Day weekend, the Israeli military killed 45 Palestinians (with U.S.-made weapons) and injured over 200 people, many of whom were young children. Johnson also said in the statement America’s efforts were key to ending the conflict.

“The Middle East conflict will only be resolved when the U.S. government and international community take action, including limiting access to weapons used against civilians,” Johnson said. “The NAACP calls on President Biden to draw the red line and indefinitely end the shipment of weapons and artillery to the state of Israel and other states that supply weapons to Hamas and other terrorist organizations.”

“It is one thing to call for a ceasefire, it is another to take the measures necessary to work towards liberation for all.”

The statement is unexpected, especially since the organization has historically been on good terms with Democrats. Last month, Biden spoke at the Detroit NAACP’s sixty-ninth annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, where he received a lifetime achievement award.

“My name’s Joe Biden, and I’m a lifetime member of the NAACP. Matter of fact, the first organization I ever joined was the NAACP,” Biden said at the event.

Will this statement sway Biden’s support for Israel’s war, though? The Biden administration has shown no sign of changing its policies, even though, as the war’s eighth month begins, Israel has killed nearly 37,000 Palestinians, including at least 15,000 children, with thousands more civilians missing.

The right thing to do now, as it has been for a long time, is what the NAACP, as well as the The New Republic’s, editors recommend: End weapons shipments to Israel.  

House Democratic candidate Mondaire Jones has united pretty much everyone against him after his petty endorsement of Westchester County executive George Latimer over progressive Representative Jamaal Bowman. Latimer is largely considered to be running a Republican-backed campaign solely to oust Bowman, and Jones’s endorsement of his campaign has rankled several progressive groups.

On Thursday, Jews for Jamaal—a coalition of Jewish constituents in NY-16 and supported by local progressive nonprofit Jews for Racial and Economic Justice— released a statement condemning Jones’s endorsement of Latimer and fiercely criticized Latimer’s prominently right-wing-backed campaign.

“As a diverse coalition of New York Jews, we reject continued use of Republican money to interfere with Democratic Party primaries with the aim of unseating a popular progressive Black Democrat,” the statement reads in part.

Also on Thursday, both New York’s Working Families Party and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC rescinded their endorsements of Jones. The Working Families Party, which revoked financial support for Jones’s campaign, issued a statement saying Jones’s endorsement of Latimer made clear he “strayed from the values and principles that made us proud to support him in 2020.”

“Over the course of his campaign, Mondaire has strayed from the values and principles that made us proud to support him in 2020,” NYWFP co-directors Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila said in a statement to Gothamist. “His decision to back George Latimer, who uses racist dog whistles, rejects core parts of [President] Biden’s economic agenda, and shares donors with Mondaire’s own MAGA extremist opponent, runs counter to our values as a party.”

Jones, a former Bowman ally, endorsed Latimer on Tuesday, citing “Jewish residents in my district who feel anxiety, fear, and anger due to Representative Bowman’s words and actions in particular and an overall climate in this country.”

Bowman—a vocal critic of Israel’s deadly war on Gaza and Biden’s continued arms shipments to the country—has decried Latimer as a “Republican sock puppet” with his campaign’s significant support from MAGA conservatives, AIPAC, and pro-Israel opportunists hungry for the incumbent progressive’s ouster. Now Jones’s endorsement of Latimer threaten his own race against aggressively pro-Israel Republican incumbent Representative Mike Lawler, who represents a Biden district that Jones could have recaptured in November.

* This piece originally misstated that Latimer’s recent campaign video was not filmed in his district.