I’ve heard so much on the PR front from Matt Gaetz that I was curious whether he even has a lawyer, and if so who that person or persons might be. On the PR front Gaetz hired Trump surrogate Harlan Hill, a one time Democrat who went full Trump in 2016 and has been one of Trump’s most devoted supporters ever since. He runs a firm called Logan Circle Group and is now representing Gaetz along with Erin Elmore, a former Apprentice contestant and Trump surrogate. On the lawyer front, Gaetz is also pulling from the Trump inner circle as well.
Gaetz is being represented by Marc Mukasey and Isabelle Kirschner. Kirschner is a respected New York criminal defense attorney who doesn’t, as far as I can tell, have a strong political profile. The same can’t be said for Mukasey. He’s the son of former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and an associate and former law partner of Rudy Giuliani. Mukasey has represented President Trump in the on-going investigation run by New York City DA Cy Vance and he also represented disgraced Navy Seal Edward Gallagher and other Trump loyalists. Trump later pardoned Gallagher.
From TPM Reader MM …
JoinWhen J&J-vaccine-related blood clots first were suspected/observed in Europe, I wrote to you about the statistical insignificance of the number of observed cases, about how and why scientists tended not to make good politicians, and about the obvious need to monitor the evolving situation closely. Not long after, I wrote again to applaud the EU leadership for having listened to their “scientists and technocrats”, who presumably told them more or less the same thing in much more detail. No doubt you’ve followed developments since then more closely than I have, despite the virtual tsunami of other, more purely-political news inviting or demanding your analysis and commentary.
And Senate Republicans know it.
All hope of retaking the majority in the Senate lies with the former president’s ability to put aside his personal grievances for the sake of the Party.
JoinThere is a huge amount of criticism of the CDC and FDA bubbling up on social media about the decision to pause administration of the J&J Janssen vaccine. As I noted earlier, based on these preliminary and unconfirmed rates of risk it is virtually certain that discontinuing use of this vaccine would lead to many more deaths from COVID than any saved from the rare clotting disorder. But before you think the regulators are idiots who are down a rabbit hole of untethered risk aversion, a few points are worth mentioning.
The big news this morning is that the FDA is recommending an immediate pause on the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine because of the same extremely rare but potentially fatal side effect which has led to limits on the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe. Just in recent days the same J&J vaccine has also come under scrutiny in Europe because of the same side effect.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is learning that, in 2021, sowing distrust in basic functions of democracy can be good electoral politics.
JoinWhat strikes me most about the on-going Gaetz clown show isn’t the audacity but the irrelevance. Gaetz has moved full bore into Deep State grievance/conspiracy theory mode. It’s not about statutory rape or sex trafficking, he claims. The Deep State and the Elites are coming after him because he stands for the common man. As he wrote in his Examiner Oped, “They aren’t coming for me — they are coming for you. I’m just in the way.”
There is a new study out over the weekend from Israel suggesting that the so-called South African COVID variant is more able to breakthrough the Pfizer COVID vaccine than the original strain of the virus and other variants. The sample sizes are small and the numbers themselves have been reported in a confusing or incorrect way in a number of write-ups.
Here’s what the study found.
From TPM Reader DG …
JoinI too have experience as a union organizer. What XX says is right on target. Besides what XX said, I believe there are two areas that need to be addressed:
From TPM Reader LV …
JoinLike the previous reader, I too was a union organizer earlier in my career. His/her description of both sides of the campaign as “by the book” are both depressingly accurate and infinitely repeatable if something doesn’t change.
And here is where I have a rather small suggestion that the Biden administration could make to rebalance things.