#democratic primary debates

[memingursa]

[lightscamerabitchsmileee]

To my American followers or any American on Tumblr that are sick of Biden and are looking for other candidates to vote for in the primaries

A debate in New Hampshire took place yesterday between candidates Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips its worth the watch please give it a listen and hear them out

Both Biden, the DNC and mainstream media are trying to blacklist them and deny them a fair shot in the primaries by not doing public debates, rigging the primary schedule in Biden's favour, smearing the other candidates and now to the point of cancelling primaries and only having Biden as the choice in some states like Florida and North Carolina denying voters a say in who they want to choose kinda hypocritical with Biden's "Democracy is at Risk" shtick so small debates like this one will really help get the word out that Americans have other options in the Democratic primary despite what the DNC is trying to force on voters with Biden

Anyways signal boost this, reblog and give it a watch the debate video is in 2 parts on Marianne's page and start around the 23 minute mark in the first video 😊😊

[viv-hollande]

It is the first 2024 Republican debate. Ron DeSantis is nervous. Across from him, Trump stands, an unshakable pillar of confidence. DeSantis speaks first. He lays out his plan to power the grid by incinerating orphans and trans people. The crowd is silent. Some yawn, others are already asleep. Nothing is working. They don’t love him. They will never love him. Finally, it is Trump’s turn to speak. The moderator unmutes his mic. From backstage, March of the Gladiators begins quietly, slowly crescendoing. With bated breath, the crowd watches as he opens his mouth, and pauses. The tension is unbearable. Finally, at long last, Trump turns to DeSantis. He smirks, then speaks clearly and slowly into the mic.

“Rhonda SandTits.”

The crowd goes wild. March of the Gladiators blares at a fevered pace. Trump ambles offstage as DeSantis begins to cry. The cameras zoom in on his tearstained face as the whole nation cheers. Offstage, Trump starts listing the most gropable statues. Obama is there.

[menopause-diary]

Kamala, Trump, Tariffs, and the Quest for Common Ground: A Comedy of Errors in Politics

Ladies and gentlemen, grab your popcorn and settle in—it’s time for another thrilling episode of “As the Filibuster Turns.” This week’s plot twist: Kamala Harris, the Vice President who’s about as powerful as a coffee shop’s Wi-Fi password, trying to juggle promises, legislative gridlock, and the delightful chaos of American politics. Snoozanne showing her American pride 🇺🇸 Kamala Harris: The…

[unpopularly-opinionated]

Two things that I think can be true yet equally fucked at the same time:

1: Joe Biden and Donald Trump are going to be their respective party's presidential candidate.

2: It's incredibly fucked that we've already scheduled not just one, but two debates with these candidates who technically-speaking have not won their primaries yet.

This is what I mean when I say elections are rigged. None of that "voter fraud" nonsense that gets overhyped in the media, no. The rigging happens in the primaries via the DNC and the RNC. We saw this plain as day in 2016 when Bernie won the vote, but Hillary was still the one nominated.

It's just so fucked.

[crookedfandomquill]

This is very situational, and sadly may not be realistic for everyone, but I need y’all to understand that a very important part of political activism is fucking talking to your conservative or moderate friends and family.

My dad voted for Trump in 2016. He’s a middle class white evangelical from Arkansas. He raised me with conservative Christian values, just like his parents raised him. When he voted Trump, he was holding his nose, but he didn’t feel too bad about it, and went on to vote red down the ticket in the 2018 midterms, as well.

But I started college in 2017. Higher education and independence changed everything for me, and I went home over holidays and summers with fire in my belly and a thousand arguments ready at the drop of a hat, to my father’s dismay.

I remember crying in my room after emotional, intense arguments with him. I told him over and over that I felt betrayed by his choice to vote for a man who admitted to sexually assaulting women, who built his platform on dehumanizing immigrants and the disabled, who spread overtly-racist rhetoric, who flouted the values of kindness and self-discipline that I’d been raised on. And my dad always had some justification about the “greater good”: fighting against abortion, bolstering the economy, getting other Christian politicians into office.

But over time, as we grew further apart and I lost my will to discuss anything with him at all, he softened. He started asking me why I thought the way I did about the things we disagreed about. He would listen to my answers without interruption, and mull them over afterward instead of expressing his own opinion. And all the while, he watched the Trump presidency become cruel and absurd and devastating.

The first time he openly expressed regret to me, I had come home for a weekend after Kavanaugh was confirmed to SCOTUS. My dad realized he had helped elect a man who preyed on women… and that man had opened the door to more predators. I can’t tell you what it felt like for him to admit that he’d made a mistake, not just in voting for Trump but in defending him for so long. We kept arguing, but it was more debating than fighting. I knew he was capable of seeing my side of things, even if it took a while, and he knew I wasn’t just a sensitive college student with shallow new ideas about the world.

And then 2020 hit. Specifically, George Floyd was murdered, and the events that followed played out on the national stage. My dad was incredibly shaken by it. He asked me if I had any books from college about racial issues. I loaned him The New Jim Crow, one of the required readings for my Race and the Law class. Then I gave him Just Mercy. Then he watched the documentary 13th. Then he joined a racial harmony group he learned about through one of the few Black families at our church and insisted our whole family come. He held up signs at a protest against Confederate monuments in our conservative southern town. In three years, he went from defending Trump’s comments about “Black-on-Black crime” to publicly advocating for racial justice and opposing the death penalty.

We went together to vote in the 2020 primaries. I couldn’t help asking who he’d voted for; I didn’t even know if he’d asked for the Republican or Democratic ticket. He admitted he’d voted for Bernie. fucking. Sanders, then made me promise not to tell my grandma he’d voted liberal. When the election rolled around in November, he voted Biden. I’m sure he held his nose to do it, just like he held his nose voting in 2016. But I know he doesn’t regret it.

I am, of course, unbelievably lucky to have a parent who loved me enough, and was empathetic enough, to choose his relationship with me over his strongly-held opinions. He kept searching for truth because, as much as he’ll deny it, he’s a very smart and curious person. No degree of intelligence or curiosity makes you immune to propaganda, especially if you were raised not to question the party line. It’s easy to dismiss our conservative, conspiracy-pilled loved ones as stupid, hypocritical, and cruel. Sometimes they are. But sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they will bend to keep their relationships from breaking. Sometimes, if they can be made to understand that their beliefs and actions are harming someone they love, they will make concessions. And sometimes they just need one person in their life to put a foot down, to be vulnerable and assertive and argumentative, to bring the impact of their politics close to home.

As the most important election of our lifetimes approaches, do not put peace over progress. If you have someone like my dad, someone who is good-willed and smart and loves you more than their own opinions, tell them how you feel. Tell them what their choices will mean for you, for your friends, for your community. Tell them what they could lose: your trust, your affection, your respect. Don’t avoid conflict if it could be productive. Because my conflict with my dad didn’t just win him over–it won over my moderate mom and one of my conservative brothers. And it put us in community with other like-minded people and led my parents to a healthier and kinder faith.

All of this to say, there is hope in conflict. There is hope in our relationships with people who think differently from us. There is hope in exposing your fear and anger and pain to people you love. And hope is a form of activism.

[qqueenofhades]

oh god is biden dropping out? i don't know what happens then

Jesus effing Christ.

Few thoughts:

The billionaire Democratic donors got their way, apparently. All I saw was that the big-dollar donors were secretly putting pressure on the rank-and-file Democratic elected officials (i.e. House and Senate) to denounce Biden or not get any more money, and other shameful backroom maneuvering to knife Biden. I will refrain (lol, no I won't) from speculating that billionaires of any political stripe feel threatened by Biden's increasingly progressive tax/wealth redistribution policies, and saw their chance after the bad debate performance to knife him. Because until further notice, I'm going to think that was the biggest factor.

I don't know if there's an actual health condition that made Biden agree it was the best time (in fucking July) to step down, but if this was an issue, there needed to be planning last year, at the earliest, to prepare for a new successor. I don't know what's going on. This is a clusterfuck on many, many levels.

However: it is true that this does change things and not necessarily only for the worse, as long as Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee and this stupid Democrats In Disarray nonsense, which is giving the media exactly what they want, is put to a fucking end. If Harris is also swept aside and the billionaire donors try to install their preferred "Centrist!!!" candidate (lol Manchin or some shit) with an equally antidemocratic closed-door Star Chamber convention, then yes, we're fucked. Because the Congressional Black Caucus and African American voters saw exactly what the rich white man billionaires were trying to do by torching Biden and then Harris, and they are not going to play ball with some Magical White Man replacement.

If Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee (and to the best of my knowledge Biden has endorsed her), then she has a chance of reinvigorating the race. There were a lot of Americans who did not want either Biden or Trump. I suspect they were fucking braindead, but so be it. Harris has apparently polled pretty and increasingly well in recent days (in some cases actually better than Biden) and again, there is no remotely small-d democratic alternative to her. The billionaire donors already trashed the duly elected (by the primary process) Democratic nominee. If they do the same to Harris, then yes. We will have Trump and there won't be any more democracy in this country on either side, because the Republican big-bucks donors will gleefully pick up where the Democratic big-bucks donors left off.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The message needs to be "Harris is Joe's successor, she is younger and already has four years of experience and is the only candidate." Anything else is a fucking gift from god to the Republicans, once more getting trashed after Trump's terrible RNC speech. Maybe she can then pick Whitmer or Shapiro (both popular and effective Democratic governors of swing states, MI and PA respectively) as a running mate, but the nominee has to be Kamala. There is no other fucking choice. This is already enough of a mess.

If that can happen, and the fucking donors can refrain from fucking it up, then... okay. It's not great, but it does change things. It makes the ticket younger. It makes it historic (first Black female president beating Trump would be amazing). It could reach people disenchanted with the current two-old-white-guys setup.

This is an incredible sacrifice on Biden's part and I only wish that I could believe he did it voluntarily, rather than being forced out by a small class of rich people worrying about his policies getting too progressive.

I wish him only the best and I recognize this decision was taken under extreme pressure. If we then lose to Trump, I hope everyone who forced Biden out burns in hell.

I was a diehard Biden supporter not because I loved the guy personally, but because he was the only choice for preserving democracy in America. The essential stakes of the election have not changed, even if the billionaires just knifed us in the fucking back, possibly to nobody's surprise, because R or D, they are not our friends.

Kamala is the only choice. I will now have to defend her as hard as I did for Biden. She needs to beat Trump. There is nothing else to it. If you think she can't, then you need to work at helping her do that. There is already enough calamity and doom. We do not have a choice. We cannot lose sight of what is at stake here.

Kamala Harris/Whitmer and/or Shapiro and/or Buttigieg 2024.

The end.

[simply-ivanka]

This packs a punch.

“In his speech in Arizona endorsing Trump, Kennedy said:

“The DNC deployed aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail. It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden. Then, when a predictably bungled debate performance precipitated the palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election. They installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate,” Kennedy said.

“My uncle and my father both relished debate. They prided themselves on their capacity to go toe-to-toe with any opponent in the battle over ideas. They would be astonished to learn of a Democratic Party presidential nominee who, like Vice President Harris, has not appeared in a single interview or unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days. This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to choose when they don’t know whom they are choosing, and how must this look to the rest of the world?”

[batboyblog]

On Top of the totally fictional story of black immigrants eating their neighbors cats and dogs here are some more totally fictional stories Trump made up in the last month, does he believe these are real things that happened? or does he just not care at all if he lies making things up at will?

1 Harris and the military draft

At a rally in Las Vegas last week, Trump claimed his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is talking about forcing Americans to serve in the military: “She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, and draft your child, and put them in a war that should never have happened.” That’s absolute bunk. Harris is not talking at all about bringing back the draft.

2 Harris’ CNN interview

Trump claimed during a Fox News event in Pennsylvania in early September that Harris “had notes” to assist her during the television interview she did with CNN in late August. He even performed an impression in which he portrayed Harris supposedly looking down at these notes. She didn’t actually have any notes.

3 Transgender children and schools

At an event held by a conservative group in late August, Trump claimed that schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ knowledge. He said, “The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.” Trump’s campaign subsequently made clear to CNN that it could not find a single example of such a thing having happened anywhere in the United States. Parental consent is required for gender-affirming operations; schools have not performed or approved these surgeries for minors behind their parents’ backs. Even after Trump’s campaign demonstrated that it couldn’t substantiate the story, he repeated it days later at a Wisconsin rally in early September.

4 Harris and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Trump told a vivid story on Fox News in late August about how President Joe Biden supposedly sent Harris to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 in an effort to prevent an invasion of Ukraine. Trump claimed Harris was sent “to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went. She said – she gave her case. He attacked three days later. He attacked three days later. He laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.” Trump also told a version of the story at the September debate. But this story, too, is wholly false. Biden never sent Harris to negotiate with Putin – in fact, the Kremlin said in July that Harris and Putin have never spoken – and Harris did not travel to Russia just prior to the invasion. Rather, Harris traveled to a conference in Germany to meet with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky.

5 Harris’ identity

Trump claimed at a convention of Black journalists in late July that Harris used to “only” promote her Indian heritage, then “all of a sudden” made a “turn” and “became a Black person.” Defending the claim, Trump reiterated at the September debate that Harris had “put out” at some point that “she was not Black.” None of that is true. Harris – who was raised in a Black community and graduated from a historically Black university – has embraced her Black identity since her youth. While she has also fondly discussed her South Asian heritage, she never “put out” that she wasn’t Black.

6 Harris’ 2020 primary performance

Trump has repeatedly claimed during the last month that Harris was so unpopular when she previously ran for the presidency, in 2019, that she was the very first candidate to drop out of the crowded Democratic primary. “She was one of 22 people that ran. She was the first one to quit,” he said at a Pennsylvania rally in late August. Not even close. In fact, 13 other Democratic candidates dropped out of the race before Harris did – including the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City; and sitting or former members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

7 Opinions of Roe v. Wade

Facing heavy criticism from Harris and others for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision in 2022, Trump concocted a tale that this unpopular decision fulfilled the wishes of “everybody” – including “every Democrat.” “Every Democrat, every Republican, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated and brought back to the states,” Trump said on Fox News in late August. This is not even remotely accurate. Roe was consistently supported by a majority of the American public, and it was overwhelmingly popular among Democrats – with 80% support or better among Democrats in many polls.

8 Elections in California

At a September press conference in California, Trump claimed that “if I ran with an honest vote counter in California I would win California, but the votes are not counted honestly.” He had delivered an even more colorful version of the claim in an interview in late August, saying, “If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay?” More rubbish. The votes are counted honestly in California, as they are in every other state; Trump loses California because it is an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has not chosen a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. He lost the state in 2020, fair and square, by more five million votes and more than 29 percentage points.

9 A ‘Man of the Year’ award in Michigan

Since 2016, Trump has told a lie that he was named “Man of the Year” in Michigan before he entered politics. Media outlets including CNN have repeatedly noted that Trump never got such an award and that the award doesn’t even appear to exist. But Trump claimed at a Michigan event on Tuesday that he has now been vindicated. “The press said, ‘Oh, it never happened.’ Well, then it did happen. They found out where it was,” Trump said. “But it was like 15 years ago, a beautiful area, but nobody remembered it; nobody remembered it all. All of a sudden, like through a miracle, they found out it did exist.” That’s a lie on top of a lie. The media has not discovered proof that Trump got a Michigan Man of the Year award. His campaign didn’t respond Wednesday to a request to explain what he was talking about.

10 Migrants, prisons and ‘the Congo’

For months, Trump has told a story about how “the Congo” has deliberately emptied prisons to somehow get its criminals to come to the United States as migrants. “Many prisoners let go from the Congo in Africa, rough prisoners,” he said at an August event in Arizona. At an August rally in Pennsylvania the week after, he said, “In the Congo, in Africa: 22 people deposited into our country. ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘The Congo.’ ‘Where in the Congo?’ ‘Jail.’” But Trump has presented zero evidence that “the Congo” has actually emptied any prisons for migration purposes. Representatives for the governments of both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN on the record that the claim is fiction, experts on the two countries say they have seen no evidence it is true, and Trump’s campaign has ignored requests to offer any substantiation.

11 The jobs revision

After the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in August that its annual revision of jobs data found that the economy added about 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported for the 12 months ending in March, Trump told a story about how the government had been planning to announce this downward revision “after November 5th,” Election Day, but was forced to do so before the election because of “a whistleblower” – “a patriot leaker.” Another fabrication. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly releases the preliminary revised data in August, and it had disclosed the precise date of this particular data release – August 21 – weeks in advance. William Beach, a conservative economist who was appointed by Trump to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wrote on social media: “For those who think the big revision to the BLS jobs numbers ‘leaked’ and was meant to come out after the election, remember that BLS always announces its draft revisions in August and announced this year’s date, August 21, many months ago. It is important to check your facts.”

[infamousbrad]

Biden's "Dean Scream"?

A week and a half ago, I was convinced that "Biden had one bad debate performance" was going to be a 3-day story. But now I see why it wasn't. (I mean, aside from the fact that summer is Silly Season in US journalism.) How well do you remember Howard Dean's final run for the Democratic nomination?

Howard Dean was a "progressive" by the standards of his time, that is to say, slightly to the left of, say, Richard Nixon at a time when the post-Bill-Clinton center-right wing of the Democratic Party totally controlled the nomination process, and he was running on an FDR-liberal type platform.

And the press spent the whole time he was in the race asking him the same question over and over again, "Does this mean that you're angry at the 'Third Way' Democrats? I'll bet you're angry at Bill Clinton and the 'Third Way' Democrats? Governor Dean, why don't you say a word about how angry you are?" Because if he was still running against "militant centrism" in a post-liberal party, he must be angry, right?

But he really wasn't. I never saw him actually get angry that whole campaign. He was happy to have inspired so many volunteers, and proud of his plan to rejuvenate the state-party apparatuses in written-off "red states," and never not happy to talk to a reporter, any reporter. Which was all the proof they needed to show that he was not only angry, he was nefarious. Because they couldn't imagine any plausible reason why anybody would go to as much effort as he did unless they were genuinely angry.

After the New Hampshire primary, he stood up in front of a group of his campaign volunteers to cheer them on, and they handed him a defective microphone. So he screamed his cheers into the dead microphone, so the volunteers in the back could hear him over the din. But the press microphones? Worked. And he didn't sound excited, he sounded deranged. And I swear to God, 100% of the political press reported it as "Howard Dean finally reveals his inner anger," even though the video shows him grinning and smiling like a child on Christmas.

Why could nothing disprove the "Howard Dean is the Angry Candidate" theory before, why was evidence to the contrary taken as proof it was true?

Because it fit the pre-existing narrative.

Look, we have never not known that Biden's age was going to be a problem. Even as he was sweeping the primaries in 2020, it came up. That's where the "he knows he's too old, he's just reassuring older voters that the party is normal, he's going to step aside for Kamala Harris" rumor got started, remember that? No matter how many times Biden himself denied it?

And if there was any truth to it, there's no point to it now. She hasn't gotten any better at either of the president's jobs, not at public speaking nor at shepherding legislation, so unsurprisingly she polls even worse than Biden.

Should Biden be replaced because he's getting slower and more mumbly as he ages? Did Reagan? He sailed to easy re-election despite the fact he was visibly declining by the end of his first term, way faster than Biden is now. His White House Chief of Staff, Howard Baker, was, by all accounts, acting president for at least three years, making sure that the last person to talk to Reagan before he had to make a decision was the person Baker thought that Reagan would have agreed with if he could remember anything that was happening around him.

(It's not even the most extreme example in US national politics: look up stories about Strom Thurmond's last term in the Senate, which was full-on "Weekend at Bernie's.")

An entirely senile top official who put a good team into place before he sundowned can do a perfectly good job. And trying to replace him would just hand the election to Trump. So no, even if he were as tired and confused as the press and jealous Democrats are painting him, that wouldn't be a good reason to replace him, not at this late of a date.

(If the entire party apparatus had discussed this behind closed doors and agreed to set up, say, Michigan's governor Whitmer or Pennsylvania's governor Shapiro as an agreed-upon backup candidate in case something like this happened, and gotten it done no later than, say, spring of '23, we'd have a minimally plausible option. But we didn't, so we don't. The choice isn't Biden or someone better, it's Biden vs Trump or Trump unopposed.)

But even given how weak-sauce the argument that a few verbal slips and mutters mean that Biden can't perform the duties of the president is, I suddenly realize now why it wasn't a three-day story. Just like the Dean Scream, he handed them the proof they needed of something they've been saying for four years, long before it was true, and everybody loves being "proved" right. Because, as I always say:

Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

[lightscamerabitchsmileee]

To my American followers and well any Americans on Tumblr that are of (or will be) voting age that don't want or are unsure of Biden in the primaries...

NewsNation hosted a Democratic debate on Dan Abrams Live last night with the 3 other candidates that are in the primaries: Marianne Williamson, Dean Phillips and Cenk Uygur (Biden was invited but didnt even respond what a coward...😒) please give this a watch and hear them out it was a very professional respectful debate and they had a lot of great ideas and my blood boils that the DNC is trying to shut them out at every turn (not allowing Biden to debate, rigging the schedule to get the upper hand, smearing them and cancelling primaries in some states, etc. Kinda ironic given Biden's "Democracy at risk" message) because the DNC shouldn't be forcing Biden on the voters through whatever means necessary that should be up to you as a voter whether you want to keep Biden or not as the nominee there are other options in the race and you deserve to hear them out and make an informed decision that's what Democracy is all about 😊

I know I'm Canadian but I really do care about my fellow American neighbours because honestly whatever affects you guys would eventually affects us too in the end whether its Trump or Biden or anyone else so please be informed and hear them out and make your vote count when the primaries come

[eraserdude6226]

Footage of Brandon being helped off of the debate stage after Thursday's debate.

I love the situation the Democrats Communists find themselves in now. Looking back on it, they probably wished they had run a primary season against Brandon!!

[mariacallous]

The tragedy of New York Mayor Eric Adams, who’s facing a dizzying number of investigations targeting him and his inner circle, was foreseeable. Indeed, it was foreseen. 

“We all know you’ve been investigated for corruption everywhere you’ve gone,” a rival candidate said to the then-Brooklyn borough president during a mayoral debate in 2021. “You’ve achieved the rare trifecta of corruption investigations.”

That didn’t deter Democratic voters, and Adams — an ex-cop and native son of the city who ran on his biography and a promise to restore public safety after crime rates and fears shot up during the pandemic — eked out a victory in the party’s closed primary, which made him a sure thing to be the city’s 110th mayor and just its second Black one. 

nce that was official, Adams proclaimed himself the “future” and the “face of the new Democratic Party.” He also started publicly partying all night at clubs, sometimes with felonious friends, when he wasn’t talking about how God had told him 30 years ago he’d be the mayor in 2022 and should share that good news with the world — something he’d never publicly mentioned before winning the election. 

The new mayor immediately brought in a crew of cronies with sullied records, including a deputy mayor for public safety overseeing the NYPD, Phil Banks, who’d abruptly retired as the chief of department in 2014. 

Banks left that post about a year before it came out that he’d been an unindicted co-conspirator in a case involving two guys who went to prison for bribing the previous mayor. One of them testified they’d treated the police chief to plane trips around the world and the services of a prostitute when they weren’t smoking cigars and storing their diamonds in the chief’s office at One Police Plaza. 

Banks, who’s denied any wrongdoing but says he regrets the association, had his home hit and his phones seized in the FBI’s synchronized early-morning raids last week. Again, he said through an attorney he’s done nothing wrong. 

Those raids, though, are a sign that this new probe is far enough along for prosecutors to go public with it — and get a federal judge to sign off on their concerns that the deputy mayor for public safety and the police commissioner might destroy evidence if given the opportunity. 

Last week’s raids were reportedly distinct from earlier raids of top Adams allies in two previously reported probes being conducted by two different federal prosecutors, who both needed sign-off from Justice Department bosses in Washington, D.C., to go after the mayor of America’s biggest city. 

There’s the ongoing investigation into Adams’ travel and ties to Turkey, along with campaign cash that appears tied to the Turkish government. And the ongoing investigation into Adams’ travels and ties to China, along with campaign cash given through secret donors. The mayor had his cellphone seized by FBI agents last year as part of that case. 

And now two new investigations that appear to be about influence schemes involving Adams’ appointees at the highest levels of his police department and administration steering public money to family members.

In just three years, Adams has bested his old corruption probe trifecta: There are now four separate, though possibly overlapping, federal investigations targeting his inner circle and the mayor himself.

No one has been charged with any wrongdoing in those investigations, and Adams says he always follows the law while asking the public to respect the process and withhold judgment. 

New Yorkers might know more soon, as the feds have already impaneled at least one grand jury. With the city’s primary next June, prosecutors are up against long-standing Justice Department guidelines about not having cases interfere with elections.

But New Yorkers are already rendering a verdict in the court of public opinion. Adams at the end of last year hit the lowest approval rating ever recorded for a New York mayor as voters have been choking on all this smoke, also including the corruption trial of his former buildings commissioner, the guilty pleas from members of a crew including another ex-cop and old friend of the mayor’s for their own straw-donor scheme involving his campaign, and the guilty plea of a Chinese billionaire who also sneaked money into his campaign, as well as those of other American politicians. 

Tim Pearson, another ex-cop and old friend of Adams’ who now runs a shadowy new mayoral oversight agency, also had his phones seized by the FBI last week. Pearson has been accused in multiple civil suits of ruining the career of a police officer who wouldn’t sleep with him and the supervisors who tried to protect her while hunting for “crumbs” of his own from city contracts. Taxpayers are covering his legal bills at the mayor’s behest and over the objections of the city’s former top lawyer, who was then pushed out. 

So many of Adams’ problems seem to involve the gap between his mantra of “stay focused and grind” and his need to swagger and test limits. 

Polling shows New Yorkers still like much of his agenda but don’t like him or how he’s executing it. He keeps repeating “crime is down” but not saying down from when or how much, and the data is mixed and most New Yorkers don’t really believe him. 

It hasn’t helped that Adams’ police department is increasingly unhinged in its public communications, with one reporter at the cop-friendly New York Post getting attacked this week as a “f---ing scumbag” and the official NYPD account even giving me the wannabe Trump-y nickname “Harry ‘Deceitful’ Siegel” earlier this year. 

No wonder Democratic challengers are lining up to take on Adams next year, assuming he’s still there, in what would be the first contested primary against a Democratic incumbent since David Dinkins upset Ed Koch in 1989. 

Asked at a news conference Tuesday what he would do if he were indicted, Adams said he intended to remain as mayor and run for re-election before adding that he wouldn’t engage with hypotheticals.

The tragedy of Eric Adams is that he’s done this to himself.

[qqueenofhades]

I got political whiplash on Threads. First, everyone was screaming, “All is lost!” I came back an hour later, and everyone was screaming, “We Ride at Dawn!”

The right-wingers are in panic mode. Steven Miller was practically screaming on Feckless news. 🤣

I mean. The right-wingers' entire mentality, the fuel for the January 6 attempted coup, the recent SCOTUS President God-King Immunity ruling, and all the rest, is premised on the simple fact that the president is indeed, Almighty God King who serves for life and will never, ever willingly give up his power. So that's how I can guarantee that the GOP, because they are short-sighted fascist morons, did not plan for this. Their entire strategy was built around attacking Biden, because they hate him. Like, really hate him. He defeated Trump the first time and there was still a good chance that he could do it again. Trump got impeached the first time for trying to extort Zelenskyy for dirt on Biden, because he didn't want to face him. That's why they went after Hunter on largely bogus charges, tossed around the idea of impeaching Biden, actually (uselessly) impeached Mayorkas, etc.

And yet, because Biden (even if he was forced to do it) decided to step away and voluntarily give up his presidential power instead of wrecking American democracy to hold onto it, that has broken their little shriveled fascist brains. They literally can't comprehend it, and I can guarantee they're now shit scared about having to face Kamala, a brown woman, who is the epitome of everything their tiny evil brains hate. As noted by those bangin' fundraising numbers, there is also a lot of excitement around her. And suddenly, after MONTHS of "this election is a referendum on which old and mentally declining man you hate more," that has been removed as a factor. (Watch the media suddenly forget all about age and/or mental competency as a factor now that Biden is out. Does it apply to Trump, you ask? CRICKETS.)

Kamala is going to mop the f'n floor with Trump at the next presidential debate, and I guarantee that the GOP knows that too. Because yes, if Biden had another bad debate, or if he has a bad case of COVID that might end up giving him long-covid symptoms or keeping him off the trail for days or weeks, that would have been very, very hard to recover from. Now the GOP is the one stuck with an old, mentally baffled, virulently hated presidential candidate and the most pro-Russia, anti-woman, demonstrable-sellout whitebread VP pick imaginable, that they had to choose because Trump nearly got the last one killed and he wasn't interested in the job again, for some weird reason. And as we have pointed out before, this is the last-chance saloon for Trump in any number of ways, and he has been demonstrably overconfident the last few weeks as the media was consumed with discussion of Biden's stumbles rather than Trump's manifold unfitness, treason, felonies, and all the rest.

I don't agree with Biden on everything he has ever done in his long career in public service, but I will say that I don't think he would have actually done this if he wasn't eventually convinced, for whatever reason that might be, that it was the right decision. And my one big fear about him stepping down was that the party would instantly fracture, people would start flogging unrealistic Magical White Boy replacements, and otherwise insist on an "open mini-primary!" or some other fucking bullshit. Now, there are still a few idiots trying that, but by and large, the Democratic power apparatus has instantly thrown its weight behind Kamala. That doesn't excuse them for the weeks of wibbling Anonymous Sources self-sabotage beforehand, and I still vote that we destroy the billionaires at our next opportunity, but if we can stick with that and keep up those mongo fundraising numbers, we might indeed actually have a better chance than before, and that was what this was all about.

As I noted yesterday, Black women have been disproportionately influential in taking Trump down (think Leticia James, Fani Willis, etc) and there is undoubtedly a huge, HUGE amount of poetic justice if Kamala can be the one to stick the knife in his greasy orange gut once and for all. I can likewise guarantee the GOP is well aware of that, and the fact that while they can yell even louder and trot out the same old racist, sexist, misogynist fearmongering dirtbag attacks they used on HRC, that is a strategy with demonstrably diminishing returns (it sure as hell isn't going to help them win any more female or suburban or black voters or anyone else we always hear about how they're Making Inroads with). And we're not going to talk about how it's Obvious that America would never elect a black female president. Obama won two terms. Even with all that weight of frothing misogyny and DECADES of Republican smear machines, HRC won the popular vote and was ratfucked out of the Electoral College by the slimmest of margins, after a massive interference campaign by the Russians. It is fucking possible, we are going to do it, and the Republicans are so, SO FUCKING SCARED of having to live in an America run by a brown woman, that can only be for the good.

Kamala Harris 2024. Let's go.

[flightfoot]

The shooter being a registered republican is irrelevant there was a strategy where democrat voters switched to the republican party in hopes to swing the primaries (and the guy donated to act blue the democrat party for the past 8 years has been inciting and advocating for violence calling trump Hitler or endorsing it like summer of love or antifa see Maxine waters

I'm gonna need sources for your claims. I'm mostly going off of the BBC article I found on him, which says that he was a registered Republican and that according to his classmates, he always took the conservative's side during any sort of debate, but that he gave $15 once to a liberal group when he was 17.

Just noting, it would be REALLY impressive if he had been donating to act blue regularly for the past 8 years. Are you saying that he's been donating to them since he was 12 years old? You might want to reevaluate whatever source told you these things.

[simply-ivanka]

Press Failure Inflates the Debate

Coverage of the Harris campaign is biased.

Worse than that, it’s malpractice.

By William McGurn Wall Street Journal

Presidential debates typically don’t determine the outcomes of elections, notwithstanding the large television audiences they draw and the dramatic moments they produce. But Tuesday night’s dustup between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris may be different.

Press failure has inflated it into the seminal event of the Trump-Harris race. Because reporters haven’t insisted that Ms. Harris answer basic questions, the debate, moderated by ABC News, may provide the only moment in the 2024 election when Americans get to see how Ms. Harris performs under pressure.

This failure would be appalling at any time, but the circumstances of Ms. Harris’s campaign turn simple media bias into journalistic malpractice. The vice president secured the top slot on the Democratic ticket without having to contest a single primary—and therefore without having to lay out and defend her record. This leaves her largely unknown to American voters, a situation Ms. Harris is now exploiting to reinvent herself as a moderate challenger rather than a woke incumbent.

In addition, Ms. Harris is a mother lode of unanswered questions on most of the issues that once defined her. This includes her previous support for everything from defunding the police and banning plastic straws to getting rid of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and starting from “scratch,” stances she now apparently disavows.

An appearance by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) on ABC’s “This Week” in August shows how the press lets her off the hook. When Mr. Cotton brought up Ms. Harris’s support for eliminating private health insurance, which the Medicare for All policy she espoused in 2019 would do, host Jonathan Karl interjected that Ms. Harris has said she no longer holds that position. Mr. Cotton pushed back. “She has not said that,” he correctly pointed out. “Anonymous aides,” he said, may have said that she no longer holds the position she once did, but we haven’t heard it from the candidate herself.

Ditto the big CNN interview, for which Ms. Harris brought along running mate Tim Walz to cut in to the time she would have to take questions. Moderator Dana Bash did make a show of asking why Ms. Harris flipped on fracking. But she wasn’t pressed on her biggest non-answer of the evening—“My values have not changed.”

It’s unlikely Ms. Bash or CNN would accept such an evasion from Mr. Trump or his running mate, JD Vance. When Mr. Vance did his own interview with Ms. Bash, she rightly grilled him on abortion and comments he made about Mr. Walz’s characterization of his service in the Minnesota National Guard. But it’s worth watching the two interviews to see the very different tones Ms. Bash took toward Mr. Vance and Ms. Harris.

In short, Ms. Harris is getting a pass. Bad enough that 56 days from the election, she still isn’t giving interviews or holding news conferences. The far greater scandal is that a free press isn’t demanding that she do so.

It’s hard to fault Ms. Harris. Her strategy is a sign that she knows her liabilities. Her campaign is trying to get through the next eight weeks avoiding events where she might have to answer an unscripted question or explain details of, say, inflation. Team Harris knows they don’t go very well for her.

Take the recent rollout of her economic platform, most notable for her call for a federal ban on “price gouging.” Even the Washington Post called her plan full of “populist gimmicks.” And former Obama administration economist Jason Furman told the New York Times that it is “not sensible policy.” Message taken: Better to stick to fuzzy, feel-good themes like “joy” or to call Mr. Trump a felon.

It isn’t the first time a Democratic presidential candidate has benefited from a domesticated press. One reason Ms. Harris is her party’s nominee is that the press covered up President Biden’s mental decline. By the time the June 27 debate with Mr. Trump exposed Mr. Biden’s condition for all the American people to see, it was too late for primaries. It was much the same in 2020, when the New York Post broke the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop three weeks before the election. Because the computer contained evidence of Hunter’s sleazy overseas business dealings while his dad was vice president, the press buried it.

Today the received wisdom is that sooner or later Ms. Harris will have to give interviews and press conferences like a normal candidate. Perhaps. But she has a decent shot at winning the White House because her campaign is running out the clock before anyone can ask her a tough question.

On Tuesday night at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump will have at it for 90 minutes. Ironically the low expectations for Ms. Harris may be an advantage. All she has to do is not humiliate herself and her performance will be hailed as a triumph.

If the press corps did its job, we’d all know more of what we need to know about Kamala Harris and what kind of president she’d make. But because it won’t, it’s all on Donald Trump to do that job himself.