AOC Brutally Roasts Vivek Ramaswamy Over Wild RNC Speech

Vivek Ramaswamy’s speech at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night included a strange invitation to young people, which quickly got dumped on by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Our message to Gen Z is this: You’re going to be the generation that actually saves this country,” Ramaswamy said at the RNC. “You want to be a rebel? You want to be a hippie? You want to ‘stick it to the man’? Show up on your college campus and try calling yourself a conservative. Say you want to get married, have kids, teach them to believe in God and pledge allegiance to their country.”

Ocasio-Cortez called out the former presidential candidate on X, saying, “If you want to be cool so badly, try giving a damn about other people beyond yourself. Might open a few doors.”

“Young people don’t take well to bigoted leaders who attack LGBTQ+ rights, outlaw abortion, cozy up to gun manufacturers + oil execs, and support a rapist for President,” Ocasio-Cortez posted.

The New York congresswoman has a point, as Ramaswamy doesn’t have much credibility when it comes to what’s “cool,” unless you count his insane temperature demands while on the campaign trail. He tried to be a libertarian rapper in college known as “Da Vek,” with his out-of-breath bars drawing few, if any fans. On the campaign trail, he tried to use rap to pander to voters, covering Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” his college favorite. But this led to a cease-and-desist from Slim Shady himself, who is completely against Donald Trump and embraces left-wing causes like Black Lives Matter.

If Ramaswamy thinks contrarianism is cool, maybe it’s because he has implied in the past that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job. That’s something he didn’t mention at the RNC, along with his ideas to take away birthright citizenship and severely restrict young people’s right to vote. Young people probably won’t like the fact that he was once very critical of Donald Trump before becoming one of the convicted felon’s biggest fans.

If Ramaswamy wants the Republican Party to attract young people, he might consider keeping his mouth shut. Because if there’s one thing that repels them, it’s an older, out of touch guy telling them how to be cool.

After Senator Bob Menendez was convicted Tuesday on all 16 counts in his federal corruption trial, many of his Democratic colleagues swiftly called for his resignation.

“In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said shortly after the news broke.

Many others now urging the New Jersey congressman to step down had also done so after the charges first came to light. For example, Representative Andy Kim, the Democratic challenger for Menendez’s Senate seat this election, echoed previous calls for his opponent’s resignation, tweeting: “Our public servants should work for the people, and today we saw the people judge Senator Menendez as guilty and unfit to serve. I called on Senator Menendez to step down when these charges were first made public, and now that he has been found guilty, I believe the only course of action for him is to resign his seat immediately.”

Senators Cory Booker, Dick Durbin, and Amy Klobuchar, and Representative Katie Porter all similarly reiterated their previous calls for Menendez’s resignation. “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em,” Senator Tom Carper said, advising Menendez to do the latter.

Some have gone further, advocating for Menendez’s expulsion from the Senate should he fail to resign. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy issued a statement saying, “If [Menendez] refuses to vacate his office, I call on the United States Senate to vote to expel him. In the event of a vacancy, I will exercise my duty to make a temporary appointment to ensure the people of New Jersey have the representation they deserve.”

A statement by New Jersey Representative Mikie Sherrill similarly said, “If he refuses to resign from the Senate, he should be expelled. New Jersey deserves leadership that puts the people and our country first—not profit or self interest.”

Vowing to appeal the verdict, Menendez has not answered questions about whether he will heed these calls and resign.

Georgia’s Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that it will hear oral arguments for Donald Trump’s appeal to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from his election interference case after the presidential election has already taken place.

In a new order, the court scheduled the proceedings for December 5. As a result, the case likely will not resume until well into 2025, if at all. If Trump is reelected to the White House, the case against him would be postponed until his term ends in 2029—or possibly longer.

Earlier this month, the court ordered a stay in Trump’s election interference case pending the outcome of several appeals from Trump and his co-defendants seeking to remove Willis from the case, appealing a lower court decision to keep her on.

Since then, the Supreme Court has issued a ruling on Trump’s immunity, making it impossible to prosecute any president for what they claim to be “official acts” taken in office. One of Trump’s attorneys has already started claiming that Trump and his allies’ fake elector scheme constituted an “official act.”

In a sneaky footnote in Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion, the court also affirmed that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted, meaning that should Trump be elected again, all of his criminal trials will come to an abrupt end.

The Georgia court’s decision comes a day after Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Trump’s classified documents case in Florida. Cannon ruled that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance once gave a strange defense of disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones during an event held by a shadowy dark money–backed conservative network, according to video obtained by ProPublica.

In 2021, when Vance had just entered the race to replace Ohio Senator Rob Portman, he spoke at a closed-door event hosted by the secretive Teneo Network, an organization backed by conservative billionaire Leonard Leo.

Leo, who is the co-chairman of the Federalist Society, and single-handedly responsible for installing the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court, tracelessly infuses hundreds of millions of dollars into the conservative legal movement every year. With the Teneo Network, Leo said he hoped to create “networks of conservatives that can roll back” liberal influence in all spheres of life, including business, media, and entertainment, according to an informational video about the group obtained by ProPublica.

Vance joined the network in 2018, years before he would run for office. At the time, he was a bestselling author running a nonprofit and investment fund.

During his speech at Teneo’s 2021 Retreat, Vance tried to explain his defense of Jones, the right-wing podcaster and supplement pusher who infamously insisted that the Sandy Hook massacre of children was a hoax. Vance had recently sparked a tidal wave of backlash after he tweeted that Jones was more reliable than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

In front of the audience, Vance tried to defend himself, saying he was “just trolling,” before walking back his denial to insist “that doesn’t mean what I said is in any way untrue.”

Vance explained that it was important to “have a little fun” when you might end up as a political prisoner in your own country. “It’s OK to troll when you make and speak fundamental truths. But, look, I do think what I said was correct,” he said.

“If you listen to Rachel Maddow every night, the basic worldview that you have is that MAGA grandmas who have family dinners on Sunday and bake apple pies for their family are about to start a violent insurrection against this country,” said Vance. “But if you listen to Alex Jones every day, you would believe that a transnational financial elite controls things in our country, that they hate our society, and oh, by the way, a lot of them are probably sex perverts too.”

“Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that’s actually a hell of a lot more true than Rachel Maddow’s view of society,” said Vance.

Vance urged conservatives to listen to conspiracists and ignore the baseless, dangerous claims they make. He used himself as an example. “I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society,” he said. “That’s a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well-educated people in this country right now.”

“A lot of the things that are ultimately gonna get revealed as truths are gonna be advocated originally by crazy people. It doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with them,” Vance said, adding that conservatives should stand up for “nonconventional people.”

Vance has a pretty solid track record of ignoring the more heinous things his buddies say. In 2022, the soon-to-be senator gave a friendly 90-minute interview with right-wing activist Jack Murphy, who had once claimed that “feminists need rape,” according to Mother Jones. And of course, there’s his newfound support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whom Vance once called “America’s Hitler.”

House Democrats are raising objections to the Democratic National Committee’s plan to nominate Biden via a “virtual roll call” vote weeks before the party’s August convention.

The DNC initially turned to the pre-convention virtual roll call to work around an Ohio requirement that parties’ candidates be certified 90 days before the general election. The issue was averted as Ohio passed legislation extending the deadline, but the DNC is poised to move forward with the virtual roll call nonetheless.

A drafted letter by dozens of House Democrats calls this a “terrible idea.”

According to Politico, the letter, authored by House Democrats who span the “spectrum of views” regarding Biden remaining in the race, says, “There is no legal justification for this extraordinary and unprecedented action which would effectively accelerate the nomination process by nearly a month.”

The authors say the move would “stifl[e] debate” by “prematurely shutting down any possible change in the Democratic ticket,” and implore the party to instead “nominate its presidential ticket at the Democratic National Convention, in regular order, as we always have.”

Representative Jared Huffman, who reportedly circulated the letter, told Politico that the DNC sees the virtual roll call vote as “a clever way to lock down debate and I guess by dint of sheer force, achieve unity, but it doesn’t work that way.” Axios reports that many Democratic lawmakers and aides intend to sign on to it, with one House Democrat saying that “the ‘replace Biden’ movement is back.”

The letter represents the chorus of Democratic critics of Biden crescendoing again, after the assassination attempt against Trump briefly superseded conversations about Biden’s electability or lack thereof. Dissatisfaction with Biden remains widespread among Democrats; a recent NBC News poll reports that more than 60 percent of blue voters would prefer an alternative to Biden, whose nomination is now all but inevitable.

We will soon see whether the DNC will heed House Democrats’ exhortations to delay Biden’s nomination until the convention, as Politico reports that the rules committee is “expected to vote on setting up the rules and dates for a virtual roll call vote” at a meeting set for Friday.