DNC Faces Uproar From Its Own Party After Denying Palestinian Speaker

Democratic National Convention organizers are facing criticism from their own party after refusing to allow any Palestinian speaker or member of the Uncommitted movement speaking time on the convention stage.

On Wednesday, Jon Polin and his wife Rachel Goldberg-Polin spoke to DNC delegates about their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is being held captive in Gaza.

“In our Jewish tradition, we say ‘kol adam olam um lo’o,’ every person is an entire universe,” Polin said. “We must save all these universes. In an inflamed Middle East, we know the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring hope to the entire region, a deal that brings this diverse group of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza. The time is now.”

But little else has been said on the convention stage about Palestinian civilians suffering from Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. Muslim Women for Harris-Walz announced they would disband after learning of the DNC’s rejection of a Palestinian speaker. The Uncommitted movement also launched a sit-in protest on Thursday to demand a Palestinian speaker be included.

The sit-in has received support from vocal pro-Palestine Democrats, including Squad members Representatives Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley. But it’s not just the Squad. Their demands have also spread to other Democrats, including convention speakers. And the list keeps growing:

• Representative Greg Casar
• Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison
• Representative Maxwell Frost
• Representative Val Hoyle
• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
• Representative Ro Khanna
• Representative Mark Pocan
• Representative Delia Ramirez

Israel’s war has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, including nearly 16,500 children. The Uncommitted delegates represent Democrats who support the party but want action to end the war, including an arms embargo against Israel, and they are only asking for a speaker to voice their concerns to the convention. Their speaker recommendations were pro-Harris and would have their remarks vetted ahead of time. 

“We talked to the DNC, we offered options, we said we’ll identify someone who is willing to express support for Vice President Harris … we did everything right, you know?” delegate Abbas Alawieh told Mother Jones. The question is, does anyone in the Harris campaign even care?

Elon Musk’s X is apparently getting money from some pretty shady people.

A federal judge ordered Tuesday that a list of investors who helped fund Musk’s $44 billion takeover of X, formerly Twitter, in October 2022 be unsealed. Buried among the lengthy list of nearly 100 investors are several particularly troubling figures.

One entity listed is Sean Combs Capital, LLC—better known as Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rapper who has been accused of rape, assault, forcible drugging, and even implicated in a sex trafficking operation.

In the early days of his X takeover, Musk once touted his relationship with Combs to push back on another investor’s concern about increasing racism on the social media platform.

In the forthcoming book Character Limit by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Detavio Samuels, the CEO of the media company Revolt, voiced his concerns about anti-Black speech being emboldened on X.

“As you continue down the path that you’re going, I really recommend that you have conversations with this specific community, and we make sure that whatever solutions are created are solutions that make them feel safe and in a welcoming space,” Samuels said.

While Musk said he wanted to make sure people were comfortable, he thought that Samuels might be comforted to hear that one of his high-profile Black friends had also invested in Musk’s social media site. “I don’t know if you know this, but Puff is an investor in Twitter,” Musk said, using Combs’s nickname. “You know, he’s a good friend of mine, we text a lot.”

The list also includes several Silicon Valley entities run by billionaires like Musk himself and backing Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

One of the first names included is Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm run by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who recently announced that they were backing Trump in 2024. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about,” Andreessen claimed, making clear that he was ignoring Trump’s platform on immigration and abortion, for a more favorable view on issues like crypto—in which Andreessen and Horowitz claim to be some of the world’s largest investors.

Also on the list is Sequoia Capital, run by Douglas Leone and Shaun Maguire, who donated a whopping $1 million and $500,000 respectively to Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC, the America PAC, which is currently under investigation for the shady way it was collecting voter information.

Another investor is 8VC, a venture capitalist firm run by Joe Lonsdale, who also donated $1 million to Musk’s PAC in June. Lonsdale is a co-founder of intelligence contractor and data analysis platform Palantir, which was also headed by Peter Thiel. While it’s hardly surprising that Musk’s billionaire buddies are invested in his social media company, it’s clear that X is being heavily underwritten by the same individuals funding Trump’s campaign.

Also included on the list of investors is Saudi Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, who has long had a stake in the social media company. In 2015, bin Talal owned 5.2 percent of Twitter, more than the company’s co-founder Jack Dorsey.

In November 2017, bin Talal was arrested as part of a sweeping “anti-corruption” purge that forced numerous wealthy Saudis and members of the royal family to sign over their assets to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, an autocratic dictator with no tolerance for dissent. This sparked major concerns that Twitter was being used by the Saudi government to surveil its own citizens.

After Musk’s takeover, bin Talal and Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company maintained their ownership of X shares valued at $1.89 billion, making them jointly the company’s second-largest investors, according to Al Jazeera.

Another notable entity is the Pershing Square Foundation, which is headed by Bill Ackman, the CEO of the giant hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management. Last year, Ackman, a staunch Zionist who funded violent pro-Israel counterprotesters on college campuses, spearheaded the campaign to see Harvard’s President Claudine Gay removed from her seat.

Earlier this week, it was reported that the debt on Musk’s $13 billion in loans borrowed from several banks in order to buy X was never off-loaded from these banks’ balance sheets, leaving his debt “hung” in industry terms. Not only is X the longest-lasting hung deal since the 2008 financial crisis, it’s also reportedly one of the biggest. While the banks have been able to collect a hefty interest, it’s unclear how Musk will ever repay the principal if X continues on its current trajectory.

The internet fell in love with vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s son Gus on the third night of the Democratic National Convention after the neurodivergent 17-year-old started tearing up seeing his father on stage.

But not everybody seemed to be on board the love train. Instead, the so-called “party of family values” decided to take potshots at the emotional high schooler.

“Talk about weird …” posted conservative media pundit Ann Coulter, sharing an article about Gus.

“Walz’ kid is acting just like his dad! BIZARRE!” wrote X user ProudArmyBrat.

Failed MAGA congressional candidates also got in on the action, outright mocking a kid with a learning disability.

“Tim Walz stupid crying son isn’t the flex the left thinks it is,” Mike Crispi, chairman of the America First Republicans of New Jersey, wrote in a since-deleted post on X. “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats.”

Conservatives also spent the week mocking Vice President Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, for her outfit the first night of the convention, which consisted of a camouflage Harris-Walz merch hat and a sleeveless, caped gown that showed off her tattoos. And on Thursday, Donald Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell got into (and badly lost) an argument with 12-year-old content creator Knowa De Brasco.

Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans are embracing something that is objectively weird: Trumpy Trout, an orange, fish-head version of the former president with a matching toupee.

“I am the hugely, bigliest fish in the pond,” the open-lipped animatronic says in a very real advertisement reportedly airing on Newsmax.

Donald Trump threw out a claim on Fox & Friends Thursday morning that the show hastily corrected.

According to Trump, President Joe Biden “sent comrade Kamala to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack [on Ukraine],” falsely claiming that it was a “little-known fact” that the “press doesn’t want to talk about.”

Trump didn’t stop there, saying that in this meeting, Harris “gave her case” to Putin, who still attacked Ukraine days later.

“He laughed at her,” Trump said. “He thought she was a joke. Now he’s really laughing when he sees her. Can you imagine her negotiating with President Xi of China, with Kim Jong Un of North Korea? The whole thing is like we’re living in a fantasy land.”

After the interview, host Brian Kilmeade quickly tried to correct Trump’s comments.

“Just as a quick clarification, we don’t have confirmation that the vice president went to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin,” Kilmeade said. “I know she went over to Europe right before the incursion when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it’s a war that’s still going on right now.”

In true Fox News fashion, one of Kilmeade’s colleagues tried to defend Trump, claiming to have heard about the meeting.

“I’ve heard that said a lot,” Ainsley Earhardt said to Kilmeade. “You don’t have confirmation that that’s true?”

“No,” Kilmeade replied. “I don’t think that—I don’t know if the vice president ever met Vladimir Putin.”

In reality, Harris traveled to the Munich Security Conference in Germany before the 2022 invasion, but Putin did not attend. Instead, she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. And, according to a Russian spokesperson, it’s unclear whether Harris and Putin have ever met at all.

While it’s no surprise that Trump would make something up, it is unusual to see Fox News correcting him, even after the fact, considering the network’s efforts to help his campaign. Even this week, they let Maria Bartiromo repeat lies about noncitizens voting. Maybe in Trump’s case, they’re starting to worry about his cognitive decline.

Former television star Donald Trump might be heartbroken to learn this: His Republican National Convention television ratings pale in comparison to the numbers coming out of the Democratic National Convention.

The number of viewers tuning into the DNC night after night continue to beat out the television ratings from the Republican Convention in Milwaukee last month.

Night one of the DNC reached an average of 20 million viewers, versus the 18 million who watched night one of the RNC. The disparity on night two was even more extreme, with 20.8 million viewers tuning in to the DNC as Barack and Michelle Obama spoke, while only 14.8 million watched the RNC with keynote speakers Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.

Even Fox News couldn’t get its fan base to care. While over 5.1 million people watched the DNC’s late night speeches on Tuesday, Fox News averaged a measly 1.7 million viewers.

Democrats also continue to stream on Twitch, X, Amazon Prime Video, as well as vertically on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Roughly one-third of young Americans under 30 say they regularly watch their news vertically on TikTok.

Data from the third and fourth night of the DNC is still to come—but meanwhile, it’s almost certain Trump is having a full-blown panic attack behind closed doors.