Giselle Fetterman, the wife of Democratic Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman, said on Monday that her husband, who suffered a stroke last month, might not be back to campaigning until next month.
Continue reading “Fetterman Likely To Be Away From Campaign Trail Until July, Wife Says”Fox News Channel Won’t Air Jan. 6 Hearing
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Stay Safely In That Bubble
Fox News announced on Monday that Fox News Channel won’t be airing the House Jan. 6 Committee’s public hearing during primetime on Thursday. The primetime programs will only cover the hearings “as news warrants,” according to the press release.
- That means when the hearing starts at 8 p.m. ET, Fox News viewers can instead watch Tucker Carlson rant about how fake the hearing is and how the Jan. 6 panel’s out to get red-blooded patriots and was it really that big a deal that Trump’s supporters violently stormed the Capitol?
- Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will be shifted over to Fox Business Network to cover the hearing live over there, per Fox’s press release. FBN has fewer than 100,000 viewers tuning in at 8 p.m. ET on average, while Fox News has more than three million viewers, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter notes.
Trump Campaign Urged Fake Georgia Electors To Keep Scheme Secret
Robert Sinners, a Trump campaign director in Georgia, sent an email in December 2020 to the 16 fake Trump electors in the state the day before their meeting at the Georgia Capitol, where they signed certificates falsely claiming to be electors, asking for “your complete discretion in this process.”
- “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia for President Trump — but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion,” Sinners wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Washington Post and CNN.
- Sinners defended the email in a statement to the Post and CNN, saying he was just doing what lawyers had told him to do. “I was advised by attorneys that this was necessary in order to preserve the pending legal challenge,” said Sinners, who now works for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R).
- Federal prosecutors obtained the email, according to CNN.
Fetterman Might Not Return To Campaign Trail Until July, Wife Says
Giselle Fetterman, the wife of Democratic Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman, told CNN on Monday that her husband, who suffered a stroke last month, might not be back to campaigning until next month. However, Fetterman’s doctors are “all confident” that he’ll make a “full recovery,” Giselle Fetterman said.
Texas AG Paxton Plays Cop For Elon Musk
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Monday that his office was investigating Twitter over “potentially false reporting over its fake bot accounts” hours after Tesla CEO Elon Musk cited fake bots in his threat to end his $44 billion deal to buy the social media giant.
- Paxton is demanding that Twitter hand over documents proving its claim that bots make up less than 5 percent of its active daily users–the exact issue Musk is using to try to worm his way out of the deal.
- On Monday, Musk accused Twitter of refusing to give him data on how much of its user count is just spam bots, which he claims take up more than five percent of Twitter’s daily user activity. The billionaire doesn’t care about spam bots.
Primaries Are Upon Us Once More
After a short break, the weekly primary streak resumes in California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota today.
- Ryan Zinke, Trump’s embattled ex-Interior secretary, is running in the GOP primary in Montana’s First Congressional District. Zinke used to represent Montana in Congress before joining the Trump administration in 2017 and getting entangled in a host of ethics violations (besides wearing MAGA socks that broke the law).
Boris Johnson Survives No-Confidence Vote
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson prevailed in the Tories’ no-confidence vote against him on Monday amid the scandal over lockdown parties at Downing Street.
Mo Brooks Announces He Has Zero Dignity
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), who made it to a runoff GOP primary in the Alabama Senate race, is openly begging people to get Trump to “re-endorse” him after the ex-president yanked his coveted blessing away.
- The brown-nosing in Brooks’ plea is off the charts: The Republican praises Trump for withdrawing the endorsement, which “gave our campaign the kick in the pants we needed.” In fact, Brooks making it to the runoffs may have been a result of Trump’s political prowess, the congressman speculates; that Trump thought taking away his endorsement would trick Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) into “thinking we couldn’t win” and would therefore stop attacking Brooks.
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White House Honors Nancy Reagan On Pride Month
First Lady Jill Biden held a White House ceremony to unveil the new postage stamp honoring late First Lady Nancy Reagan on Monday, six days into Pride Month. Also Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was there.
Milo Yiannopoulos Is An Intern For MTG Now
Disgraced far-right Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, whose resume got pretty thin after his comments about pedophilia and who now claims to be “ex-gay,” is now a 37-year-old intern at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) office.
In Honor Of Rainbow Capitalism
This Pride Month, it’s important to remember the corporations that care a whole lot about the LBGTQ+ community and corporate partnerships with The Gays.
(Take a gander at Data for Progress’ “Pride Corporate Accountability Project”)
Anyway, memes:
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Have You Called Your Senator?
I checked to see whether the main anti-filibuster group has done a list of which Democratic senators stand where on the issue. It turns out there’s a list. But it’s basically about a filibuster carve-out for voting rights legislation. And it measures just a generic openness to reforming the filibuster. As we know it has 48 Senators pro and 2 against. You can see it here.
But this isn’t really specific enough. It’s not about a Roe law or specifically what kind of reform they support. Have you called your senator? I’m curious how many senators are willing to commit specifically to passing a Roe bill in the next Congress (assuming Democrats hold the majority and they pick up an additional two Senate seats) and are ready to change the filibuster rules to allow that bill to come up to a clean majority vote. If you call your senator’s office let me know what they say.
Where Things Stand: In Milo’s Hiring As MTG’s Intern, Viral Cruelty Remains The Point
Yes, on its face, it is pathetic and entertaining that the once-relevant, 37-year-old far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos has been hired as an UNPAID intern for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) several years after he was sort of but not really pushed out of his gig at Steve Bannon’s Breitbart for appearing to defend pedophilia.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: In Milo’s Hiring As MTG’s Intern, Viral Cruelty Remains The Point”Report: Biden Likely To Make Decision On Student Loan Forgiveness Later In Summer
President Biden will likely make his decision on partial student loan forgiveness for millions of borrowers later this summer, administration officials told the Wall Street Journal.
Continue reading “Report: Biden Likely To Make Decision On Student Loan Forgiveness Later In Summer”Cisneros Will Request Recount In Tight U.S. Texas House Race
Lawyer Jessica Cisneros is filing for a recount in her primary challenge against incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), she announced Monday.
Continue reading “Cisneros Will Request Recount In Tight U.S. Texas House Race”Drifting Towards a Drubbing
This morning I dipped into the Times comments about the piece I wrote on abortion politics. They made me even more pessimistic about the Democrats’ electoral fate in November. Obviously comments at some level aren’t a good barometer of a larger population. But the level of self-defeating ignorance on display almost defied comprehension. I closed them up and decided to go about my day. The one critique that stood out to me was the argument that none of the abortion stuff matters because this midterm is really about the economy and especially inflation. So Democrats need to focus their message on that. And if possible, resolve those issues by election time.
It goes without saying that 1) inflation approaching 10% is not popular, 2) it is exceedingly unlikely that Joe Biden can materially reduce inflation in the next five months (in fact you probably need big shifts three months out from the election) and 3) taking stock of #1 and #2 if Democrats allow the midterms to be a referendum on inflation they will get soundly defeated since inflation is not popular.
Continue reading “Drifting Towards a Drubbing”Mo Brooks Pleads For Trump To Re-Endorse Him Weeks Out From Alabama Senate Runoff
In a pitiful news, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) is begging for former President Trump to re-endorse him just over two weeks before the Alabama Senate GOP runoff.
Trump yanked his endorsement of the GOP congressman in March after complaining that Brooks made the “horrible mistake” of apparently becoming “woke” by daring to at one point suggest it was time to move on from the 2020 presidential election.
Continue reading “Mo Brooks Pleads For Trump To Re-Endorse Him Weeks Out From Alabama Senate Runoff”Making a Campaign Issue of Oz’s Turkish Citizenship is 100% Legit
During Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary, Mehmet Oz first insisted that he would remain a dual U.S.-Turkish citizen while serving in the Senate. To avoid any conflict of interest he said he would simply recuse himself from any foreign policy issues with any connection to Turkey. Then after intense criticism he agreed that should he be elected to the Senate he would finally renounce his Turkish citizenship.
That appeared to partly settle the issue. It actually got less attention that the fact that Oz isn’t even a resident of Pennsylvania. He lives across the state line in New Jersey. But through the campaign there has also been an oft-repeated suggestion that raising this issue — Oz’s dual citizenship — amounts to a form of prejudice or Islamophobia. In fact, an early May ABC News report claimed that “Oz is not the first high-profile candidate to face accusations of a so-called ‘dual loyalty,’ a claim reminiscent of attacks against Catholics, Jews and members of other religious and ethnic groups in previous generations.”
Continue reading “Making a Campaign Issue of Oz’s Turkish Citizenship is 100% Legit”Proud Boys Leader, Four Members Charged With Seditious Conspiracy
A federal grand jury on Monday returned a superseding indictment charging Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio with seditious conspiracy over his alleged involvement in the Capitol insurrection.
Continue reading “Proud Boys Leader, Four Members Charged With Seditious Conspiracy”