This may be the quote of the year in politics. First, here’s the quick backstory.
Kansas state Rep. Steve Brunk (R) is entertaining a job offer from the policy arm of Focus on the Family. (They say they’ve already hired him, but he says he won’t make a decision until January, which seems fishy in its own right.) But Brunk has no plans to step down from his legislative seat when (ahem … if) he takes the new job with the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage outfit. In fact he says why wouldn’t you want to hire the guy who chairs the committee where the group’s most pressing legislative items are decided?
Via the very capable Bryan Lowry at the Wichita Eagle, here’s Brunk’s epic quote:
Donald Trump dares Ted Cruz to criticize him in public.
Meanwhile, Ben Carson is threatening to leave the party if GOP ‘elites’ don’t stop meddling with the convention.
Trump says he’ll mandate that all cop-killers will be executed by executive order.
Who do you think will win the GOP nomination? Well, I’ll tell you what you think. Or at least what our latest poll of TPM Readers says. We asked 1024 qualified respondents in our latest Insight poll: “Regardless of who you support, who do you believe will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2016?”
Answers after the jump.
Top Trump aide says that when it comes to Hispanics it’s only those who “aren’t even here legally” who don’t like Donald Trump. So not a problem.
Photos showing Citadel military academy students wearing white hoods surface online.
These are still allegations from unnamed law enforcement officials. So keep that in mind. But several major news organizations this morning are reporting that the man who bought the two assault weapons for Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a friend and relative by marriage named Enrique Marquez, says that he and Farook had planned but eventually called off another attack in 2012. That sounds like a pretty big deal to me – in terms of how far back Farouk’s radicalization went and that he had at least one other person in his circle with whom he felt comfortable discussing and plotting a terror attack.
Rep. Steve King (R) went on MSNBC last night to explain why he thinks Reps. Ellison (D) and Carson (D) need to renounce Sharia Law.
Re-upping this post from this morning. People are comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. But let’s give Benito Mussolini his due as the true proto-Trump.
Meanwhile we have three weeks to go in our 2015 Prime sign up drive. We have just 14 sign ups to go to get to 2500 new members and just 514 new members to get to our admittedly wildly aspirational goal of 3000 new members. Today was a day I was really proud of our whole crew. We had Tierney Sneed up at the Supreme Court to hear today’s oral arguments and Justice Scalia’s comments about affirmative action condemning black students to schools that are too advanced for them. I think she was one of the first and perhaps the first to file a story on it. Then later in the day, Lauren Fox was up on the Hill pressing far-right Rep. Steve King (R-IA) about Donald Trump’s Muslim immigration ban and captured this priceless, bizarre and quite sad exchange between King and one of the two Muslims currently serving in Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison (R-MN).
That mixed with a lot of amazing work from our team of Sneed, Fox, Caitlin Cruz, Sara Jerde, Allegra Kirkland, Katherine Krueger, Caitlin MacNeal and our new New York City editor Catherine Thompson to put together a day we felt very good about even as the news itself left little to feel good about. As I’ve mentioned a few time in recent posts, our whole team is focused on reconnecting with what we do best, the specific way we cover the news and ways to do it faster, smarter and better in the new news and technology environment we’re in on the cusp of 2016. Prime is the way we invite you to join us, become part of what we do, get more from TPM and help us build the resources to do even more. If you’re a regular reader and you haven’t had the chance yet or haven’t found the right moment, click here and join Prime.
Thank you.