Meet Marcus. Marcus Will Now Explain 'What Is Vice President?' To Idiot Republicans. Listen To Marcus.
Civics lessons!
One of the Trump/Vance campaign’s favorite (only) rhetorical tricks in running against Kamala Harris has been to blame her for all ills that have ever befallen American society, real or imagined, since she has after all been the supreme leader of the universe lo these past four years, AKA the vice president.
We saw it in JD Vance’s debate performance last night, as he bemoaned Kamala-flation and Kamala-nomics and Kamala-xican immigration policy and maybe even Kamal-ate change, we don’t know.
Last night, Donald Trump, whose senile brain is getting ever more confused about what the conspiracy theories he believes actually say, repeated his new lie that Kamala Harris has a special app — he said this weekend that most people don’t know what phone apps are, which means he doesn’t know what an app is — between her and the cartel heads, telling them where to drop off illegal immigrants. You know, because that’s what cartel leaders do on Saturdays.
The app! The app! Robyn explained it here, so you won’t be sad and ignorant like a common Trump.
But regardless, Kamala did it! President Vice President Lord Emperor Dictator For Life Kamala Harris! Whose name they all still refuse to learn to pronounce!
Of course, most of them (probably) know that the vice president isn’t an all powerful leader, or even a person who sets policy. They (probably) know that, at best, the vice president is one of the last people the president consults on decisions, and that’s in a really harmonious administration. But they don’t make the decision. Similarly, they (probably) know that then-Vice President Joe Biden was simply carrying out Obama administration policy when he demanded the firing of that Ukrainian prosecutor.
We say “probably” because you have to allow for extremely stupid Republican variables like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and their intellectual equals.
But here’s the thing: Trump, Vance, other Republicans, and right-wing media do this because they believe with 100 percent certainty that their base voters are too abjectly stupid to know what the vice president does for a living. And largely, they’re right. They have absolute contempt for their voters, so they feel free to spread bullshit like this, confident that hardly anybody they’re trying to reach ever took high school civics.
Marcus, a guy in Jacob Soboroff’s MSNBC focus group of college students last night in Michigan during the veep debate, he took civics. And Marcus is your new fucking hero. Here is Marcus’s message to idiots who never took civics on the question of “What Is Vice President?”
Marcus said:
“[I]f anybody took high school civics class, they’d know what the vice president can do and what the vice president can’t do. I want to make a quick point: Neither candidate on that stage talked about what executive action they’re going to take on day one, to do what they want. Nor were they asked. Because they know that they can’t. That’s not how the vice presidency works. You don’t get to do what you want, you do what the president delegates you to do.”
Yay, Marcus went to school! Marcus for president of explaining to Republicans why they’re goddamned fools!
Marcus says you can follow him on Twitter here, and you probably should. He will probably be famous pretty soon.
OPEN THREAD.
[video via MaddowBlog]
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Follow up to my story of a gas leak in my building this morning and the cats and I doing an emergency evacuation. Poor kitties(and me) had the hell scared out of us. Better than blowing up! The gas is off till at least Friday when they will test the system to see if the gas can be turned back on. No cooking unless it's using electricity. All the stoves are gas here. So takeout for dinner and I ordered a cheap hot plate that I will get tomorrow. Because microwaved eggs are not that good.
Also advice to all pet people: always have a plan to get them out, make sure the crates are easy to get to. But plan in your head what you will do, because you will only have a few minutes, you don't want to think you want to just act. My plan worked. Got my babies out of there really fast.
I am having a beer to celebrate not being blown to bits this morning. This is just a guess: Some dummy cut into a gas line because they were rushing to install a stove. I know they were rushing because I overheard the top construction guy on the phone the other day arguing with someone about needing to get the stove installed right away. That is how people get killed.