LIVE: Jim Jordan's House Un-American Fap-Tivities Committee Tries Again
Like liveblogging a wrestling coach trying to teach calculus.
All the headlines right now about Jim Jordan's House Un-American Dumpster Clown Committee are that Jim Jordan is a failure and he should feel bad. He's literally doing interviews so he can swear up and down that he's not a failure. After the first loser hearing, Fox News's Jesse Watters was having meltdowns because he really thought he was going to get bombshells, and there were no bombshells.
And wait, didn't Jim Jordan just get caught ... LOL OMG ... paying his whistleblowers? Aren't they all paste-snorting bananapants weirdos who still haven't managed to blow any whistles?
This is what happens when you get a coach to teach a real class.
But maybe he'll turn it around with today's hearing, because today it is Matt Taibbi and TWITTTRURRR FILES!
Wait what?
It's Matt Taibbi and the TWURRRRRIRTUR FILRES!
What what?
Matt Taibbi! He's going to say the TWTTITIITIIIIITIITRUR FLIRES!
But wait, weren't those an entire waste of time, a futile exercise that revealed absolutely nothing of any value, unless you think it is "of value" to watch a formerly respected journalist give Elon Musk a big handy in public?
Yes.
TWIRRTTRRRTUR FFRRRRRILES!
If Jim Jordan is going to fail, we're gonna be the ones pointing and laughing at him in real time. Let's liveblog!
10:07: By the way, Jim Jordan is out there bragging that this IS NOT JUST A RIGHT-WING MASTURBATION CHAMBER, because his first hearing had known liberal Tulsi Gabbard. Just so you know how much Jim Jordan understands who is a liberal and who is a pro-Russian clown stooge.
Also we should note that hardly any news organizations are carrying this live, not even on YouTube.
BUT WONIKETTE IS HERE.
10:10: Jim Jordan is mad because the FBI warned Twitter that there might be a hack-and-leak operation about Hunter Biden before the 2020 election but then there wasn't one. How did the FBI know this? Was it because they had Hunter Biden's ...
cat laptop GIFGiphy
WELL WAS IT?
Jim Jordan is also very mad that the FBI briefed people like GOP Senator Ron Johnson and told them they were being used for a Russian active measures campaign to fuck with the 2020 election. There is no evidence Russia was not doing that, despite how Jim Jordan will lie and say there is.
He is just babbling, like he always is.
Did we mention no news organizations are even covering this, even on YouTube? OK fine Fox News has it live, but we said news organizations.
10:15: Democratic ranking member Stacey Plaskett is noting that some new info has released info in the last 20 minutes or so that hasn't been given to the Democrats.
Then begins her opening statement. She's talking about how the first hearing was such a flaming turd that revealed nothing, and that hearing had actual Twitter executives. "The Republicans have brought in two of Elon Musk's public scribes" today, she says, because Republicans think these morons are going to tell a story that will help them.
LOL Plaskett is just being openly mean to Republicans.
10:19: PLASKETT: "There's something going on between congressional Republicans and Elon Musk."
Now she's questioning all the foreign sources that blew money up Elon's butthole to allow him to buy Twitter and asking if those foreign sources have access to Twitter users' private information.
10:22: Plaskett is playing video of former Twitter exec Yoel Roth explaining all the horrible harassment and threats and danger Elon's and Matt Taibbi hate campaign have caused to him and others. Some Republican pig is mad and accusing Plaskett of impugning the integrity of the witnesses.
Oh damn, Plaskett and Jim Jordan are just openly yelling at each other.
Also Jim Jordan just protested that Matt Taibbi is a Democrat, therefore this isn't a right-wing smear job lololol.
Yep, Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Taibbi! Those people that real Democrats respect!
The other babbling Elon idiot Michael Shellenberger is babbling now, about "censorship." Then Taibbi will babble.
10:30: Sooooooo hilarious.
10:32: We think this Shellenberger nerd is saying the government is censoring people for being wrong on the internet. Mat
10:33: Matt Taibbi is mad Stephanie Plaskett called him a "so-called journalist."
Hey you guys remember when he was a respected journalist? Honestly we cannot remember it. We know it happened and that during some decade of our life we read his articles and he was smart, but it's fading away, like memories do.
Anyway, he just talked about Bari Weiss joining his TWITTTTTUR FILES journalism project, that is what Matt Taibbi is talking about in 2023.
10:36: Matt Taibbi seems to be mad that government organizations were allowed to submit moderation requests to tech companies. He says this is "digital McCarthyism" and that this is bad because he grew up a "traditional ACLU liberal."
So much babbling.
10:40: Mike Johnson is a very stupid Republican congressman from Louisiana and he says that "documents" show that Twitter was basically a "subsidiary" of the FBI and that they worked together for their left-wing Twitter/FBI agenda.
LOL.
10:42: JOHNSON: Matt Taibbi is the best journalist ever. Is Twitter Files your favorite of all your journalism?
TAIBBI: It is more important than the financial crisis!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
10:45: The Shellenberger nerd says fighting against "domestic misinformation" is INHERENTLY tantamount to totalitarian censorship of opinions. This is an idiot take.
10:47: Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch notes that literally everyone -- the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was led by Republicans at the time, the Mueller Report, all intelligence agencies -- agrees that Russia attacked the 2016 election. Does Matt Taibbi agree? No he does not, but he wants to babble a bunch of conspiracy theories to qualify his answer. Lynch is like fuck you.
Matt Taibbi is mad because he says the stuff the Russians hacked and released was TRUE! You can't censor the Russians if they want to say true things!
LOL what a fucking clown.
Also Lynch notes that the very Russian oligarch who ran the social media influence campaign in 2016 also runs the Wagner group, the mercenaries massacring people in Ukraine right now.
10:52: Here's Taibbi's apologetics for Russia:
10:56: Darrell Issa questioned for five minutes but it was boring.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz just asked if journalists should avoid being spoonfed cherrypicked bullshit with predetermined conclusions. Matt Taibbi is not sure.
She's calling him Elon's "handpicked journalist" and saying that's an oxymoron and quoting things he said on Joe Rogan about literally eveyrthing he's doing now goes against everything he used to say. She's explaining how he's just creating right-wing conspiracy bullshit and profiting off it.
"Don't interrupt me," she said.
"Attention is a powerful drug," she said.
"Hypocrisy is the hangover of an addiction to attention," she said.
Wasserman Schultz is just pants-ing Taibbi over and over and over again here.
11:01: Dan Bishop, a very stupid congressman from North Carolina, is giving Matt Taibbi a chance to explain why Debbie Wasserman Schultz is wrong and mean and he is a real journalist. He has to re-explain every five minutes that he is a real journalist, like real journalists always have to do.
11:08: What we're noticing is that when Republicans and Taibbi start tickling each other's undersides, they just babble words that would make NO SENSE to anybody watching if they just came across it.
Democrat Gerry Connolly is curious if Matt Taibbi has noticed that the Trump White House also bothered Twtter a whole lot with moderation requests, like fucking constantly. The Shellenberger nerd has not seen that!
You know, like when Chrissy Teigen called Trump a "pussy ass bitch" and Trump was so apoplectic for days that they begged Twitter to take it down. Matt Taibbi has seen that. He says he saw one from Adam Schiff and one from Angus King.
Gerry Connolly says "Nice try."
Here's Debbie Wasserman Schultz beating the shit out of Taibbi over and over again from earlier:
11:13: Matt Taibbi is explaining to Gerry Connolly the purpose of Jim Jordan's clown committee, and how it is not even to expose bias against conservatives at all!
Jim Jordan is now taking five extra minutes for himself because he wants to.
11:17: Jim Jordan's latest incoherent conspiracy theory is about the FTC. It is his latest big scoop that will go nowhere.
Also Jim Jordan says Matt Taibbi is brave to show up today because the federal government's got its eye on him. LOL.
11:19: Now Plaskett takes some time for herself. The Shellenberger nerd says Elon gave them so many emails that it's not even possible they didn't give them all the emails they had. Because that makes logical sense. "If you get bunches of emails from Twitter, that's too many emails for them to take some out!"
Plaskett is asking these idiots about their conversations with Elon Musk and Jim Jordan just interrupted to accuse Plaskett of trying to get them to expose their sources.
12:24: That's for damn sure. Both the videos right here.
Plaskett also is not hiding her disdain for Matt Taibbi.
Now we are going to go to the clownfuck Harriet Hageman who replaced Liz Cheney. But first Plaskett and Jim Jordan are going to have a fight because Jordan AGAIN is accusing Plaskett of demanding Taibbi's sources.
11:26: This is the clownfuck who replaced Liz Cheney.
LIZ CHENEY: I will protect democracy from fascist presidents who try to overthrow the government and incite terrorist attacks against America, even when they are part of my own party
HARRIET HAGEMAN: Twittttttturrrrrrrr filllllles!!!!1!!111111!!!!
11:30: Taibbi thinks the government can't even get involved in going after disinformation. This is a childish belief that fails to even try to grasp the realities of the world we live in.
Hageman just referred to Jim Baker as "allegedly a former FBI employee." You know, ALLEGEDLY.
11:33: Rep. John Garamendi is reading studies that show that ACTUALLY Twitter's algorithms over-promote conservatives and over-weight conservatives. His thesis is that Taibbi is a fucking clown, but he's saying it quietly and slowly, even when he tells Taibbi to shut the fuck up.
11:35: GARAMENDI: Is banning QAnon accounts BAD?
Also he is taking the opportunity to note that Fox News is currently being exposed for actively and willingly lie to its viewers about the 2020 election, and about Trump inciting the terrorist attack of January 6. Because sure why not? It's not like anything important is happening in this hearing.
11:38: Here comes weird thin-lipped Utah Republican Chris Stewart. He is accusing the FBI of laundering its censorship banning through Twitter. Which is ... OK, cool. These people are just hallucinating. Literally delusional.
The Shellenberger nerd accuses the White House of demanding Twitter take down factual information. Is he talking about when Chrissy Teigen called Trump a pussy ass bitch?
Because the thing with Hunter Biden's penis pictures came from the Biden campaign. And it was nonconsensual nudes.
11:42: While Matt Taibbi babbles words that don't matter to anybody who matters, let's talk about why none of these idiots can ever find a suit jacket that fits them.
Finally, it is time for a Democrats to beat the shit out of them again. It is Sylvia Garcia from Texas.
She asks when Elon Musk snuck up Taibbi's butt and started begging him to be his journalistic scribe. Taibbi says this is REVEAL SOURCES! So Elon is your source? MATT TAIBBI DIDN'T SAY THAT!
11:46: Now Sylvia Garcia is like "what even is Substack?"
The Shellenberger nerd is not going to "reveal his sources" by saying when he first talked to Elon Musk. He is a journalist who knows about journalism like Matt Taibbi knows about it.
GARCIA: Also who is Bari Weiss?
SHELLENBERGER/TAIBBI: She is a journalist!
GARCIA: Are you boys in a threesome with Bari Weiss?
The word "journalist" is doing such hard work today.
11:52: Now it is time for the Shellenberger nerd to explain why it's wrong to tell people if Russian disinformation is Russian disinformation, because he is a journalist. This is about Hunter Biden's penis obviously.
11:56: Rep. Colin Allred asks Taibbi to read Kanye's anti-Semite tweets. He won't do it because his eyes are bad, he says. Was it right to take those "death-con 3 tweets" about Jews from Kanye down?
Matt Taibbi just does not know.
What about tweets with the N-word?
Matt Taibbi says hate speech is protected in America!
And as we all know, the First Amendment definitely applies to private companies.
Allred just said Taibbi is making up conspiracy theories to discredit the facts of Russian attacks on our elections. Taibbi mutters in his own defense.
TAIBBI: Can i ask a question?
ALLRED: No you don't get to ask questions.
ALSO ALLRED: Take off your tinfoil hat.
Tells the story of Russian attacks on HIS OWN ELECTION.
Little men like Matt Taibbi shouldn't fuck with people like Colin Allred.
Anyway, now it is time for weird Kentucky Republican prepper weenus Thomas Massie, to say some COVID vaccine conspiracy theories.
12:06: Massie isjust very upset that Twitter said his anti-vaxx tweets were lies. Matt Taibbi agrees that some truths about vaccine side effects have been censored. The Shellenberger nerd doesn't like labels being put on tweets because they "discredit" the person who put out the lie tweet. "The First Amendment protects our right to lie!" He said that.
12:09: Time for hot impeachment lawyer Dan Goldman to beat the shit out of everybody.
12:10: GOLDMAN: Did you know Rudy Giuliani was the only source of the laptop? Did you know he was hanging out with Russian agents constantly? Did you knokw they were the same Russian agents who were up Ron Johnson's ass? Did you know the FBI had nothing to do with pausing the dissemination of the New York Post's laptop story? Did you know even Fox News thought the laptop story was sketch?
Did you know the laptop the FBI had was different from the hard drive Giuliani gave the New York Post? Did you know the analysis of the hard drive found it HAD been altered? Do you get that it had been tampered with?
Did you know the New York Post's FIRST SENTENCE OF ITS LAPTOP STORY ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN'S PENIS was wrong?
12:15: Haha Matt Gaetz thinks he is qualified to follow that.
Here's some Dan Goldman video:
He is too good at this.
Meanwhile, Matt Taibbi is worried that the Twitter Files are a canary in the coal mine for worse things. What? Who even knows.
Goldman is back!
GOLDMAN: My turn again. I understand why y'all might not like that it's my turn again.
GOLDMAN: Do you agree with Mueller's indictments?
TAIBBI: durr durr durr durr durr.
GOLDMAN: Do you think it's legitimate for the FBI to try to stop foreign intervention in our elections?
TAIBBI: Can I answer the question?
GOLDMAN: IT'S A YES OR NO QUESTION!
TAIBBI: No it's not, I have opinions! I have Twitter Files!
GOLDMAN: Hey other nerd, did the FBI ever order Twitter to take things down?
OTHER NERD: Yes! When they flagged things! That's an order!
GOLDMAN: No it's not. You fucking idiot.
Goldman is just killing it.
Hey, who wants to hear from craven hack Elise Stefanik? Long time ago people thought she might have a soul.
12:33: Stefanik asks the idiots how they've been targeted ever since TWITTTRUR FILES.
They got nothin'. Other nerd didn't go viral on Facebook or something. We imagine this is whataboutism to distract from how Elon's campaign against former Twitter employees has put them in danger.
Now it is time for true asshole Florida Rep. Kat Cammack. We are sure she will say something important, because she's a Republican on this committee.
12:37: Now we are back to babbling about things that would make no sense to literally anyone who just happened to come across it.
Cammack just said "experimental vaccine," drink!
And here's some more Dan Goldman to finish you up!
And that's it. Jim Jordan's latest failed hearing has come to a close. And nothing of value was gained.
But Democrats kicked a lot of hilarious ass. We didn't think Matt Taibbi could be any less credible than he was three hours ago, but he did it.
If you love these liveblogs, TIP YOUR BARTENDERS!
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Uh Oh, Idaho MAGA Found Some Woke, It Is In This 6000-Student Tech Training Community College
Is the woke in the welding program or the commercial truck driver certification?
It's always worrying when I see that Idaho, my home state, has made the New York Times again, and the headline on Monday's story was a doozy: "The MAGA-fication of North Idaho College." It turns out that the community college, which is hardly a hotbed of wokeness, has been subjected to the tender mercies of board candidates backed by the super-rightwing Kootenai County Republican Party, that fun-loving bunch of MAGA loons who endorsed a raving antisemitic creep for a local school board (he lost) and also unsuccessfully tried to take over the local Democratic Party and steal its donations, through ratfucking most foul.
Read More:
North Idaho GOP's Batsh*t Plan: Take Over Local Democratic Party, Steal Donations, ?????, PROFIT
Local GOP Proudly Endorses Sweaty Anti-Semite For Post Falls, Idaho School Board
Once the Kootenai GOP decided to push candidates for the board of trustees for North Idaho College (NIC) — officially nonpartisan seats, but nothing is nonpartisan here — things went weird quickly, as the Times explains.
For most of the past two years, the college’s governing board has been a volatile experiment in turning grievances into governance. Trustees backed by the county Republican Party hold a majority on the board. They have denounced liberal “indoctrination” by the college faculty and vowed to bring the school administration’s “deep state” to heel and “Make N.I.C. Great Again.”
The problem for the culture warriors who took over the NIC board of trustees seems to be that there simply wasn't a lot of radical Marxism to weed out at the school, which as the Times says is "better known locally for its technical training programs than the politics of its faculty."
But that was no reason not to sow chaos: The conservative majority on the board has chewed through several NIC presidents, resulting in votes of no confidence from the college faculty and the student government and departures of faculty and administrators, and all that instability led to warnings from the regional accrediting agency that the college was in danger of losing its accreditation. The agency put the college on notice in late February that it must "show cause" for keeping its accreditation, and that was quickly followed by a downgrade of NIC's bond rating by Moody's, which cited the warning and the "dysfunction" in the college's governance.
If North Idaho College loses accreditation, that would essentially shut it down after 75 years of operation, since students' credits for any future classes would no longer be transferable. We bet that would really own the libs, should any be found.
In the latest development, a degree of stability has been imposed on the college. Last Friday, a judge ordered the board to reinstate NIC President Nick Swayne, whom the board voted in December to put on administrative leave ... for no reason. Monday night, the board voted, grudgingly, to reinstate Swayne and put Greg South, the interim president with whom it replaced Swayne, on leave.
Swayne had sued the board, arguing that his contract didn't allow the board to put him on leave without cause, and Kootenai County District Judge Cynthia Meyer ordered he get his job back, at least until the lawsuit is resolved. The Spokane Spokesman-Review reports that when the board voted unanimously to reinstate Swayne, "about half the crowded meeting room inside the student union erupted into applause."
So how the hell did this mess get started? This being North Idaho, a magnet for far-Right crazies of all sorts, the local population is already full of angry MAGA folks and anti-government loons; Donald Trump won 70 percent of the vote in 2020 and some Republicans think the election had to be rigged because how was it that low?
Still Moar!
North Idaho Has A New Wingnut News Source, And It's A Doozy
Idaho Election Officials Not So Sure They Agree 100% With MyPillow Guy's Forensic Work
Idaho Wingnuts Fret Imaginary Hordes Of Antifa Super Soldiers Coming To Get Them
So it's not too surprising that the Kootenai GOP felt it had to get involved for the first time ever in the NIC board elections back in 2020, after the college's diversity council endorsed protests for social justice in the wake of George Floyd's murder, including those organized by Black Lives Matter. For context, also remember that Idaho was one of several places where armed wingnuts freaked the fuck out that summer over bullshit internet rumors of huge gangs of Antifa and BLM supersoldiers heading for every town to cause mayhem.
As the Times notes, a precinct committeewoman wrote an op-ed in the local paper complaining that the diversity council "states, in writing, that it supports Black Lives Matter, the radical, racist and Marxist organization," and claimed that a "seminar sponsored with your taxes validates the white male privilege theory. This translates into NIC supporting Black Lives Matter and guilting white male students."
So clearly, voters needed to take action, and they did, electing the two candidates endorsed by the Kootenai GOP. They joined up to form a rightwing majority with incumbent member Todd Banducci, who "had clashed on occasion with other trustees and the school’s administrators and staff." He seems nice!
In an email to a conservative student, Mr. Banducci wrote that he was “battling the N.I.C. ‘deep state’ on an almost daily basis,” and complained that “the liberal progressives are quite deeply entrenched.” [...]
In a conversation after the election, Mr. Banducci chided [Rick] MacLennan, then the college president, for his wife’s support for Hillary Clinton and told him that he would give him “marching orders,” according to Mr. MacLennan.
Well that's certainly proof of Marxist indoctrination at the college. Friction between MacLennan and the board continued, and a local civil rights group filed a complaint with the regional accrediting body, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, saying Banducci was interfering with faculty and staff at the college.
Ultimately the the board shitcanned MacLennan — without cause, because it could, and then hired NIC's wrestling coach to be interim president. We should note here that it was not Jim Jordan; that was Ohio. The Times sums up the ensuing clusterfuckery:
A power struggle ensued, with the state education board at one point appointing several interim trustees who hired a new president. [That's Swayne, just to keep things clear-ish — Dok] In the November 2022 election, candidates backed by the G.O.P. committee once again claimed a majority and replaced him, too.
Along the way, there have been other ... moments, let's say. In December far-Right antisemitic podcaster Vincent James Foxx, who lives in the area, bragged online about harassing a student at a NIC board meeting:
“He’s like, ‘Oh wow, you’re like a literal Nazi, aren’t you?’ And I was like, ‘You’re like a literal f—t, aren’t you?” Foxx said, laughing. “He walked away with his head down. He did, like, the virgin walk down the whatever, down the hallway.”
The Times notes that Foxx also showed up at a January board meeting in January to offer the rightwing bloc his "100 percent support," which was nice of him. Another board meeting, in December, "was interrupted twice by fire alarms."
With the reinstatement of Swayne this week, the temperature may be dialed down a bit, maybe, as the college prepares its reply to the "show cause " order and tries to keep its accreditation. But the board is still plenty contentious. At Monday's meeting, chair Greg McKenzie, part of the GOP-endorsed faction, said that the "majority of the board members doesn’t necessarily agree with the court order, but the college will abide by the court’s ruling." The board also voted to keep South, the interim president, on paid leave, presumably to have him handy should Swayne lose his ongoing lawsuit.
Minority board member Tarie Zimmerman questioned the wisdom of keeping South at all.
“I think we should actually terminate his contract,” she said. “We have a president. We will as soon as we follow the court’s order. We don’t need the services of Dr. South any longer.”
McKenzie did not allow discussion about South’s compensation while on leave, calling it a personnel matter.
“You’re welcome to try to overrule the chair,” he told Zimmerman.
Sounds like everything should be smooth sailing, then. No wokeness has yet been discovered at NIC, but clearly fighting over who gets to be in charge is a dandy substitute for a culture war. And if worse comes to worst, and NIC loses accreditation, we bet the State of Florida would be happy to accredit whatever's left.
[NYT / Spokesman-Review / Coeur d'Alene Press / Spokesman-Review / Image: North Idaho College on Flickr]
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Tucker Hates Trump 'Passionately.' Trump May Not Have Heard That News Yet.
And more fallout from Tucker's 1/6 treason porn and those Dominion texts!
Another day, another tranche of texts in the Dominion case against Fox News, and oh boy, some of these are a barrel of laughs. Some are brand new, while others are hard copies of texts we already knew about. Seeing them makes it even more special, and also provides important context at times.
They all fall somewhere along the lines of exposing Fox News's contempt for its viewers, as it actively filled those morons' heads with lies about an election it knew wasn't stolen. And golly, the things these people say to each other when nobody's lookin'!
Savor every bit of this from Tucker Carlson:
Two days before Jan. 6, Carlson texted [reportedly his producer Alex Pfeiffer], “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
He added, “I hate him passionately,” and then, of Trump’s four years in office: “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”
Tucker was so excited about being able to ignore Donald Trump. He couldn't wait. He hates him passionately. He acknowledges Trump's presidency was a total dud.
All of that is so awesome.
Here's a screengrab for you to savor:
\u201cTucker Carlson on Trump: "I hate him passionately"\u201d— John Whitehouse+ (@John Whitehouse+) 1678233338
Aaron Blake tweeted the other part:
\u201cTucker saying "I hate [Trump] passionately" is headline.\n\nBut don't sleep on: "That's the last four years. We're all pretending we've got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn't really an upside to Trump."\u201d— Aaron Blake (@Aaron Blake) 1678241881
"There isn't really an upside to Trump." Oh boy, the things these people say when they're freely expressing their feelings, when they think their idiot viewers will never find out.
Another exchange with Pfeiffer reveals what Tucker thinks of Donald "Art of the Deal" Trump and his business acumen:
[Pfeiffer] tells him, “One [sic] the bright side — Trump has a pretty low rate at success in his business ventures.”
Carlson responded: “All of them fail. What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong. It’s so obvious.”
Inject all of this into our veins.
We are sure we'll have much more on the new texts, but in the meantime, the Washington Posthas a good tick-tock going. We want to pivot to what Donald Trump was saying about Tucker last night.
GREAT JOB, TUCKER! Trump was so impressed! The "Unselect Committee" is "totally discredited" now! Blah blah blah blah blah.
And people started tweeting, "Who wants to tell him?" All of us do, Katie. We all want to tell Trump to his face what Tucker Carlson says about him behind his back, how he isn't admired even by the power people who pretend they admire him. They all think he's a joke. We want to watch the subtle expressions on his face as he absorbs the news. The devastation he tries and fails to conceal.
Here's a fun side-by-side of what Tucker says privately vs. what he says to the feral hogs watching at home:
\u201cTucker Carlson on October 30, 2020: \u201cReporters hate Trump with an all-consuming mania. They hate him so intensely that at times it's been amusing to watch.\u201d \n\nTucker Carlson on Trump in private on January 4, 2021: "I hate him passionately." https://t.co/4Icc3BgOxp\u201d— Eric Hananoki (@Eric Hananoki) 1678234692
So anyway, Trump was really impressed with Tucker's second night of his January 6 recruitment porn video for Stupid Redneck ISIS. He may be the only one. (Actually Elon Musk was probably impressed. Elon Musk is breathtakingly stupid and gullible and really thought the first night was a banger.)
But again, it really seems like Tucker blew his load the first night and the rest is just weak, traitor jizz dribblings. Nikki McCann Ramirez watched it for Rolling Stone — we sure didn't — and reports that he showed hardly any of his 40,000-some-odd hours of footage on night two, and instead just bitched and moaned that people are laughing at night one and calling him a lying fraud.
Carlson opened the show by lambasting lawmakers who had criticized his coverage, particularly the widespread condemnation he received from members of his own party. The Fox host accused lawmakers criticizing him of degrading themselves and endorsing lies and censorship.
Hahahahahaha.
Ramirez notes that Fox News barely deigned to mention Tucker's sad flaming turd on air yesterday — a fact that made the stupidest of the homeschooled MAGA legal communityvery angry — and it was Bret Baier, and it wasn't exactly flattering to Tucker. Apparently he mostly just had guests on to spread lies and propaganda for him, since we guess he's out of video to manipulate.
Meanwhile the disgust from even Republicans continues to roll in. Rep. Dan Crenshaw said, "if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.” Senator John Kennedy said, “I was here. It was not peaceful. It was an abomination." And of course there was Mitch McConnell:
McConnell held up Manger’s letter during his weekly briefing with reporters, saying that he would “associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6th.”
Here's McConnell saying it:
\u201cMcConnell: With regard to the presentation on Fox last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6th\u201d— Acyn (@Acyn) 1678217912
So that's where we are now. Tucker's treason dick is limp, but now we know how much he truly hates Donald Trump when the cameras are off.
But we don't know if anybody's had the distinct pleasure of telling Trump that to his face. Can somebody please videotape his reaction? America needs to see it.
[Washington Post / Rolling Stone / Politico]
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Red States Nope Out Of Data Sharing To Catch Double Voters, Because That Is Like Every Person In Florida
But more importantly, they also don't want to have to offer to register people to vote.
Yesterday Republican secretaries of state in Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia demonstrated their deep and abiding concern for the integrity of elections by pulling out of the interstate organization that helps maintain voter rolls. Citing vague concerns about partisanship, the three states withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the non-profit partnership that helps states maintain their voter rolls by pooling information about voters who have died or moved, allowing deletion of duplicate registrations.
As NPR notes, the Florida Secretary of State claimed in January to have "used data provided by ERIC to identify approximately 1,177 voters who appear to have voted in Florida and in one of the other member states, in the same election" during DeSantis's performative crackdown on supposedly ineligible voters. And yet the state pulled out yesterday, mumbling about an "obligation to protect the personal information of Florida’s citizens, which the ERIC agreement requires us to share." But of course the compact has always required data-sharing — that's kind of the point. So perhaps the the real reason lies in vague insinuations about "limiting the power of ex-officio partisan members of the ERIC board."
As Politico notes, this is a reference to David Becker, a former leader in the Voting Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, who was instrumental in getting ERIC off the ground and remains an ex-officio member of its board. Becker went on to found the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which distributed hundreds of millions of dollars from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan's family foundation to register voters and ensure ballot access. CEIR features prominently in rightwing conspiracy theories about a stolen election, because apparently it is cheating to register voters in the park in urban areas or subsidize new voting machines in places where brown people might use them. So between his association with CEIR and his vocal pushback against claims that the election was stolen in 2020 and 2022, Becker was always going to wind up crosswise with the MAGA faithful.
But then Gateway Pundit got involved in January of 2022, and things got totally out of hand. Just days after the Stupidest Man on the Internet starting babbling inanities about ERIC and CEIR, Louisiana's secretary of state pulled out, noting "concerns raised by citizens, government watchdog organizations and media reports." And while former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill noted that ERIC is the only way for states to identify duplicate registrations, his successor promised to and indeed did withdraw from the compact immediately upon taking office.
But could there be some other reason besides Becker for Republican states to want out of the program? Might there actually be some policy dispute aside from ranting by Jim Hoft and his merry band of glue sniffers?
Indeed there would! And leave it to Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft to say the quiet part out loud.
"ERIC focuses on adding names to voter rolls by requiring a solicitation to individuals who already had an opportunity to register to vote and made the conscious decision not to be registered," he huffed in the letter announcing his state's exit from the partnership. As Politico notes, this is a reference to the requirement that member states contact eligible but unregistered voters every two years to invite them to register. And civic participation is very much not Republicans' bag, baby. Because if you get minorities and young people voting, they can overwhelm almost every GOP gerrymander. And we can't have that now, can we?
Naturally Florida just used the ERIC database and refused to contact the eligible voters — YOLO. But no more, since Peepaw Knockoff Tweets told them it's not allowed now.
All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that “pumps the rolls” for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up. It is a fools game for Republicans….And while these Governors are at it, GO TO SAME DAY VOTING, ALL PAPER BALLOTS, AND VOTER I.D. (VOTER IDENTIFICATION). Mail-In Voting ONLY for FAR AWAY MILITARY and those that are VERY SICK! PROBLEMS ON ELECTION’S SOLVED!
Trump routinely votes absentee, of course. But his edict has the force of law in the GOP, so look for a stampede to the exits by Republican secretaries of state as they flee the one organization that helped them prevent the very fraud and illegal double voting they are sure is allowing Democrats to steal elections.
MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!
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