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Josh Marshall
For everyone who enjoyed our recent series on The Chesebro Document Trove and our exclusive on Ken Chesebro’s sock puppet Twitter account (BadgerPundit) I wanted to flag this follow up on Badger Pundit from CNN, which kinda sorta credits TPM breaking the story, even if the reference and link are buried pretty far down in the piece. (But seriously, who’s complaining!?!?) In any case, thank you to our members for supporting our original reporting and independent journalism. And if you’re not a member yet please consider joining our team.
The Nikki Haley campaign tells Fox News that the campaign has taken in $1 million in contributions online since her defeat last night in South Carolina. But the Koch Network, which put its ample funding apparatus behind Haley’s campaign last fall, announced that it’s suspending that support and shifting its focus to congressional races. They haven’t soured on Haley. They say they just don’t think more money can make Haley’s nomination any more likely. By that standard, of course, this has been clear for months. What’s not entirely clear is how much immediate effect that will have. Koch had already significantly scaled back its spending on Haley after she fell short in New Hampshire.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL): “IVF is something that is so critical to a lot of couples. It helps them breed great families.”
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss visited CPAC this weekend and announced that her record-breaking 50 day stint as Prime Minister had been brought to an early end by none other than the British “deep state.” It’s another illustration of how one of America’s many cultural exports, or soft power, is now Trumpism. In most ways early 21st century revanchist nationalism really began in Europe, building on existing parties like the French National Front but taking it in significantly new directions. But Trumpian branding, if not always the substance, has mostly won out.
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The networks announced Donald Trump’s victory tonight in South Carolina shortly after the polls closed. The headlines speak of a decisive victory. The Times reported Trump “trounced” Haley, landing a “crushing blow,” a “big win” over Haley who “lost decisively.” But as I write 87% of the vote is in and Donald Trump has 60% of the vote to Nikki Haley’s 39.4%.
Read MoreSen. Steve Daines (R) of Montana heads the Senate Republican campaign committee, which today sent out a memo to all its candidates instructing them to vigorously defend IVF fertility treatments which the Alabama Supreme Court just effectively outlawed in the state. Donald Trump put out a statement so wildly endorsing IVF that he appears all but ready to undergo IVF himself just to make the point. But Sen. Daines himself recently cosponsored (along with numerous Senate colleagues) a law based on precisely the same theory used by the Alabama court.
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For weeks political observers have been having fun with Donald Trump’s decision to launch if not a hostile then what we might call an abusive takeover of the RNC. Of course, one might ask what was left to take over exactly. Since the day before his inauguration in 2017 the RNC has been under the management of Trump’s pliable toady Ronna McDaniel (née Romney McDaniel) who has served in that role for the unheard of span of seven years. But that was clearly not a tight enough bond to the Trump family. Trump wants to replace McDaniel with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who has become an increasingly visible Trump political surrogate. Technically, it’s not just Lara Trump. They propose a kind of co-leadership with North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley and Lara Trump serving as cochairs. Presumably Whatley is there for the operational experience and management; Lara is there for the control. Trump campaign senior advisor Chris LaCivita will become the RNC’s COO.
Trump campaign sources tell pliant media outlets that this is to assure a “seamless operation,” uniting the campaign and the RNC. And there’s no arguing that point. They will become in effect the same organization. You can’t get more seamless than literally no seams. But I think we should not underestimate the odds that the takeover of the RNC is for reasons beyond the mere crony-fication of political institutions. Trump clearly needs the money. Certainly for legal expenses and quite possibly to pay legal judgements to the state of New York and E. Jean Carroll.
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As I noted yesterday, the Alexander Smirnov news is either confirmation of what we already knew or else spurs a kind of mass outburst of incredulity about how it is we’re still as a country, as a media, as a national political conversation getting led around by the nose by these same transparent scams?
Let’s stipulate that these are rhetorical questions.
But let me note a tendency I’m already seeing in a lot of coverage. House Republicans seems surprisingly candid that their holy grail of Biden impeachment isn’t going to happen. Quite a few press reports are taking a different tack. Some are playing this as “the Smirnov news may undermine the whole Biden investigation.” (Who’s gonna tell ’em?) To others it’s like a hot start up that failed. It just didn’t pan out. Oh well.
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I know that’s a big headline that promises a lot. But I think it’s true. David has a good rundown of the events in the Morning Memo. But I want to do my best to set them out on a larger canvas that goes back to the “Hunter Biden laptop” and really all the way back to 2015, a continuing Russian information operation that has been ongoing for almost a decade.
Let’s review recent events. First came the news that prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’s office had decided that the confidential FBI informant who had been one of Biden’s top accusers had been lying and that they were charging him for lying to the FBI. That next step is critical. Informants lie to prosecutors all the time. They seldom get charged. It’s one standard to decide your informant isn’t telling the truth and/or won’t hold up at trial. It’s an entirely different one to think that you can prove they knowingly lied beyond a reasonable doubt. Clearly investigators felt they had caught Alexander Smirnov dead to rights. Yesterday came news that Smirnov has admitted that he got his false stories from Russian intelligence officers. Smirnov isn’t just at the center of the DOJ investigation, he’s at the center of what we have to generously call James Comer’s House inquiry, the premise for Joe Biden’s increasingly wobbly impeachment.
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Two updates from the Josh regional news mail bag.
First, remember the Central Bucks (County) School Board? This is the school board north of Philadelphia that got caught up in the Moms for Liberty tide in 2021 and then flipped back in 2023 when the locals — good upstanding folks, which I know from personal experience — got sick of the crap and turned out the Moms for Liberty crowd and gave Democrats a 6-to-3 majority on the board. This is the place where there was a very suspicious sweetheart deal cut with the departing superintendent — about which there’s now ongoing litigation. It’s also the stomping ground of our good friend “Cool Mom” Clarice Schillinger.
Well, now it turns out that two of the remaining three right-wingers — Lisa Sciscio and Debra Cannon — are done. Like they’ve resigned. First, they verbally resigned on February 13th. And apparently you can’t do that. So now they’ve resigned in writing, which you can. A special meeting of the board will be held this Friday to officially accept those resignations.
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