Monthly Archives: February 2022

What? You didnt even know about it? Dont worry. Youre not alone. Almost nobody, except for the most die-hard Trump supporters, heard about it ahead of time.Like his earlier MAGA event on Jan.16 inArizona,Trumps Texas rallywas one of the best-kept secrets in American politics.

Of course, the faithful turned out in big numbers.But thats all.Trump wassimply preaching to the choir. You couldnt watch it on TV, either. None of the networks carriedthe rallylive. Neither did CNN or MSNBC. Not even Fox News. Only Fox Nation, the streaming service, and Newsmax, the 24/7 Trump cable channel, bothered to air the rally. And, other than the Houston Chronicle, there was almost zero print coverage. No wonder. It was the same old crowd being fed the same old lies.

Isnt it comforting to know thatthere areat least three Republicanswho believe that assaulting a police officer doesnot merit a presidential pardon?

For the second time in two weeks,Donald Trump laid an egg.And thatshouldtell us something:The Trump show is getting old.Its like expecting people to still watch Dancing with the Stars.Yeah, it was fun at first, but it soon got old. So has Trump. Hesso yesterday. Hes only been out ofofficea year, yet everyday fewer and fewer people care about what he says or does anymore.Especially because he sounds like such a broken record.

Which leads to the obvious conclusion and, no matter what you think, its not just wishful thinkingon my partDONALD TRUMP IS RUNNING OUT OF GAS.

Thats clearto me for three reasons. First because,Trumpstill refuses to admit he lost in 2020. Which is a growing problem for Republicans. They say they want to focus on the future, yet they stick with Donald Trump, and hes stuck in the past. In Arizona and Texas, all he talked aboutwas:the election was stolen; Jan.6 wasnt all that bad; and people are picking on me.

And finally, Trump is more and more mired down in legal troubles he cant just wish away. Every day,the Jan.6 inches closer and closer to charging Trump himself, which the Justice Department may already be considering. New York Attorney General Letitia James has clearly intensified her investigation of the Trump organization. And a Georgia grand jurys been convened to investigate charges of election interference by Trump.

It wont be long beforethe majority ofRepublicans conclude that Donald Trump is more of a liability than an asset. In fact, he already is.

Press is host of The Bill Press Pod. He is author of From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.

Continued here:

Press: Trump is running out of gas | TheHill - The Hill

WASHINGTON Two senators working on an overhaul of the little-known law that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election pledged on Sunday that their legislation would pass the Senate, saying that recent revelations about the plot made their work even more important.

In a joint interview on CNNs State of the Union, Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said their efforts to rewrite the Electoral Count Act of 1887 were gaining broader support in the Senate, with as many as 20 senators taking part in the discussions.

Absolutely, it will pass, Mr. Manchin said of an overhaul of the law, which dictates how Congress formalizes elections.

He said efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to exploit ambiguity in the law were what caused the insurrection the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. That misreading of the statute led to a plan by Mr. Trump and his allies to amass a crowd outside the Capitol to try to pressure Congress and Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over Congresss official count of electoral votes, to overturn the results of the election.

Ms. Murkowski said the rewrite could be expanded to include other protections for democracy, such as a crackdown on threats and harassment against election workers.

We want to make sure that if you are going to be an election worker, Ms. Murkowski said, you dont feel intimidated or threatened or harassed.

A bipartisan group of at least 15 senators which includes Mr. Manchin and Ms. Murkowski and is led by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine recently began discussions with another group that features top Democrats who have studied the issue for months. That group includes Senator Angus King, independent of Maine; Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota; and Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.

Mr. Kings group last week released draft legislative text for a rewrite of the Electoral Count Act that would address deficiencies exposed by Mr. Trumps plan. The bill would clarify that the vice president has no power to reject a states electors and ensure that state legislatures cannot appoint electors after Election Day in an effort to overturn their states election results.

It would also give states additional time to complete legitimate recounts and litigation; provide limited judicial review to ensure that the electors appointed by a state reflect the popular vote results in the state; enumerate specific and narrow grounds for objections to electors or electoral votes; raise the thresholds for Congress to consider objections; and make it harder to sustain objections without broad support by both chambers of Congress.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. King called his groups draft very nonpartisan and said it included the input of conservative and liberal legal scholars.

Hopefully we can join forces and get a good bill, Mr. King said of Ms. Collinss group.

The latest push to clarify the law follows a series of revelations about a campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to try to overturn the 2020 election, including the surfacing of memos that show the roots of the attempts to use so-called alternate electors to keep Mr. Trump in power and the former presidents exploration of proposals to seize voting machines.

On Friday, Mr. Pence offered his most forceful rebuke of Mr. Trumps plan, saying the former president was wrong to insist that Mr. Pence had the legal authority to overturn the results of the election. Those comments came on the same day the Republican National Committee voted to censure two members of the party, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, in a resolution that described the events of Jan. 6 as legitimate political discourse.

Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger are the only Republican members of the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, which left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.

The resolution drew criticism from some congressional Republicans on Sunday.

Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said on ABCs This Week that he did not agree with that statement if its applying to those who committed criminal offenses and violence to overtake our shrine of democracy.

In an interview on NBCs Meet the Press, Marc Short, Mr. Pences former chief of staff, said that from my front-row seat, I did not see a lot of legitimate political discourse.

Mr. Short blamed Mr. Trumps push to overturn the election on many bad advisers who were basically snake-oil salesmen, giving him really random and novel ideas as to what the vice president could do.

He described being taken to a secure room in the Capitol with Mr. Pence on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the building, some chanting, Hang Mike Pence. He said Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence did not talk that day.

Mr. Short and another top Pence aide, Greg Jacob, recently testified before the committee, a step Mr. Pences advisers have hoped would stop the committee from issuing a subpoena for Mr. Pence. Representatives of Mr. Pence have been negotiating with the committees lawyers for months.

That would be a pretty unprecedented step for the committee to take, Mr. Short said of a subpoena for the former vice president, adding that it would be very difficult for me to see that scenario unfolding.

Emily Cochrane and Chris Cameron contributed reporting.

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Overhaul of Electoral Count Act Will Pass, Manchin Says - The New York Times

UFC commentator Joe Rogan has been accused of spreading Covid-19 misinformation on his Spotify podcast and after he issued an apology, Dwayne The Rock Johnson publicly showed support for Rogan. However, a Twitter user brought up how Rogan used the N-word repeatedly during his podcasts and The Rock responded with the following

I was not aware of his N word use prior to my comments, but now Ive become educated to his complete narrative. Learning moment for me.

Twitter users started digging into The Rocks Twitter past and a message he wrote to someone in 2011 resurfaced

Its not our fault youre turning tranny tricks to put yourself thru nursing school.

The tweet was deleted but Donald Trump Jr. publicly called out The Rock and wrote the following

Wow, @TheRock, you cant just try to quietly delete transphobic attacks without giving a groveling apology and expect to ever work in Hollywood again. Do @UnderArmour, @Ford, @Apple, @Netflix and the rest of his sponsors/partners agree with this hateful rhetoric?

Cancel culture really jumping the shark when longtime friends start throwing each other under the bus to please a half dozen woke douchebags going full fake outrage on Twitter like The Rock did to Joe Rogan. Pathetic!

Trump Jr. also commented The Rock referring to John Cena as a bloated transvestite Wonder Woman during a promo

Yikes!!! More transphobia from @TheRock. Starting to notice a pattern here. How do the executives at @UnderArmour, @Ford, @Apple and @Netflix sleep at night when theyre lining their pockets from this type of bigotry and hatred? Unless they agree with it??? (Tweet)

Trump Jr. also retweeted a video of The Rock talking in Chinese during a WWE promo

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The Rock called out by Donald Trump Jr. and accused of 'transphobia' - NoDQ.com

Akron Beacon Journal Editorial Board

Some sad news out of Ohio this week: We lead the nation in per capita COVID deaths. We lag in full vaccination 57% compared to the national rate of 64%.

Its sad, because so many deaths in the past year could have been prevented, if only people had been willing to get vaccinated. More than 33,000 Ohioans have died since the start of the pandemic, nearly 15,000 since vaccines became widely available in April 2021.

Little wonder, with such a low vaccination rate, that hospitalizations started soaring in the fall of 2021.

Fortunately, the worst might be over statewide, hospitalizations have dropped one-thirdover two weeks,from 6,005 on Jan. 18 to 3,968 on Tuesday.

In the Akron area, daily hospitalization levels remain above what they were in the fall and summer, but have sunk from the all-time record of 399 on Jan. 6. Unvaccinated people continue to make up the majority of COVID patients, a Summa Health official says.

Opposition to the vaccine is still strong among many people, often because of misinformation.

But in an interesting development, Donald Trump is promoting the COVID vaccine and booster. He pointed out to a right-wing interviewer that The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don't take their vaccine.

Later, in mid-January, he went further, saying he believes the vaccines have saved tens of millions throughout the world. He called "gutless" those conservative Republican politicians who won't say whether they've been fully vaccinated.

No doubt this is a not-so-subtle way ofreminding everyone that the Trump administration rolled out Operation Warp Speed to help bring COVID-19 vaccines to the American public. Trump, after all, hasnt ruled out a run for the presidency in 2024.

Unfortunately, Trump spent too much time early in the pandemic talking about unproven and dangerous treatments. The easy solutions and wishful thinking that marked Trumps unwise pronouncementscontinue among those who hope to achieve his popularity numbers.

Nobody liked the lockdowns of 2020 that were seen in Ohio and elsewhere, but with lives on the line, some of us did find comfort in bold moves. There were no vaccines and little information about the emerging disease.

Unfortunately, what began as disagreement over COVID safety measures has turned into political opportunity that Trump and his followers have used to form a bond with extremists.

In Ohio, Republicans hoping to replace outgoing Sen. Rob Portman often sound like the 45th president as they hope to gain Trumps endorsement.

The candidate with statewide name recognition, Josh Mandel, tweeted after a Trump rally last month: Incredible speech and right on target END VACCINE MANDATES NOW! This all-cap tweet sure reminds us of Trump.

Our work force and student populations wouldnt need mandates, however, if more people made vaccine appointments instead of excuses. Those folks need some prodding.

But some people are actively rejecting vaccines and finding receptive lawmakers in Ohio, with one Republicanlawmaker offering a bill that virtually would prohibit all vaccine mandates. The Ohio House ultimately passed a different bill, one that would weaken COVID vaccine mandates by adding broad exemptions for most workers.

What exactly do our politicians stand for? Why cater to people on the fringes of society?

Wed like to see our politicians have real discussions about the best ways to approach a crisis like COVID. Once vaccinations became available and we knew more about COVIDs spread, it was certainly reasonable to discuss whether it was time to return children to in-person learning.

But shouting about how awful mandates are isn't preventing deaths and serious illnesses. This inability to hold a discussion might be why we are also plagued by super-rich candidates who fund their own races.

Five GOP candidates for Ohios Senate seat spent a total of nearly $30 million of their own money on campaigning last year. Investment banker Mike Gibbons led the pack, putting $11.4 million toward his run. Businessman Bernie Moreno loaned his campaign $3.75 million, but on Thursday announcedhes dropping out.

Those numbers give new meaning to the phrase "winning at all costs." The sums are shocking. As is this number:155. That's how many Ohioans are dying each day of COVID-19.

When it's time to vote, that latter number should be the one that matters. Ohioans need to elect candidates who care about lowering the death rate and raising the vaccination rate. Being sensible and finding middle ground on theseand other issues would be for the good of all.

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Vaccines, mandates, lockdowns and more: Politicians need to avoid fringe messages - Akron Beacon Journal