[If you appreciate my writing you can join my Substack where I am 5 articles ahead, but it does have a free tier. Subscribe now Thanks.]
Dealing from the bottom of the barrell, the GOP resorts to the rudest, bases, and most vile cheap shots they can take against their opposition.
Case in point: Trump calling the Governor of California “Newscum.”
There should be lines in the sand that can’t be crossed. If we going to have a “great country” we should expect the best and highest aspirations from those we choose for leadership. Instead, we get Trump making fun of Joe Biden’s lifelong stutter because he’s classless like that. He criticized Biden for his apology for calling the killer of Laken Riley an “Illegal.” People people aren’t “Illegal” what they may have done can be illegal. Trump claims that this migrant wouldn’t even be in the country if he had his way, but the fact is that Trump granted Temporary Protective Status to Venezuelans on his last day in office.
Trump is using the little-known Deferred Enforced Departure program, or DED, to offer temporary legal status to Venezuelans fleeing the humanitarian crisis brought on by Nicolás Maduro’s regime. DED, similar to Temporary Protected Status or TPS, protects recipients from deportation and allows them to get work permits. However, it is granted directly by the president instead of the Department of Homeland Security.
“The deteriorative condition within Venezuela, which presents an ongoing national security threat to the safety and well-being of the American people, warrants the deferral of the removal of Venezuelan nationals who are present in the United States,” Trump said in a memorandum released Tuesday.
Based on Trump’s memo, the U.S. will defer for 18 months the removal of certain Venezuelan nationals present in the U.S. on Jan. 20. It also allows those Venezuelans to work during that period of time.
That policy had elapsed when Jose Ibarra, along with his wife and his then 3-year-old son were detained by Border Patrol who followed due process assigning him and his family to an immigration hearing since at that time, Ibarra did not have a criminal record.
Ibarra, an undocumented migrant from Venezuela, illegally crossed the border near El Paso, Texas, and was arrested by Customs and Border Protection on Sept. 8, 2022, before he was paroled and released while his immigration case is pending, ICE said.
If Ibarra had come as a single adult, he would have been blocked and expelled but because he had a family — they were allowed to stay together. If Trump had still been in office he still would have assigned Ibarra for an immigration hearing, but the real difference is that he would have stuck him and his wife in a detention camp to wait for years until their hearing and also might have stolen their child from them.
It doesn’t matter that crime rates generally go down in the cities where migrants are sent. This situation is a dramatic exception to the rule, punishing the many for the sins of the very few. This is the Willy Horton ad campaign all over again. The issue is that Trump would stoop to using this tragic and rare event, the loss of this poor girl’s life for his own political gain. He’s a low life. He’s pond scum. He’s a dangerous racist.
And many of the voters who supported Nikki Haley know that and they won’t vote for him.
Even those on the Right know that Trump has lost the Independant vote and many of Haley’s supporters as noted in this WaPo Op-ed.
Pennsylvanians demonstrated in 2022 that Americans will vote for a Democrat who had a stroke during the campaign if they don’t like the Republican alternative. And though Biden is the most unpopular president in the history of polling, Trump is almost as unpopular. In November, millions of Americans will be choosing between two candidates they dislike. Trump needs them to dislike him less. Yes, Biden is deeply vulnerable, but Trump has to exploit his vulnerabilities and make a concerted effort to win over Haley voters and skeptical swing voters who could very well decide the election.
The issue facing Trump is not “Never Trump” voters who didn’t support him in the past and won’t vote for him now under any circumstances. It is “Not Trump Again” voters, Americans who are open to his policies — and might have voted for him before — but don’t like how he behaved, particularly after the 2020 election, and supported Haley in the primaries. The former group is unpersuadable; the latter might not be.
But Trump has to go out and persuade them. He needs to recognize that right now, the party is not united. It is deeply divided between the dominant MAGA wing, which encompasses about two-thirds of Republican voters, and the not-MAGA wing, which makes up about a third. Trump can’t take back the presidency without bringing the not-MAGA Republicans into his fold. But according to the Fox News Voter Analysis, 53 percent of not-MAGA Republicans in Iowa, 57 percent in South Carolina and 65 percent in New Hampshire say they won’t cast their ballot for Trump in November.
Former MAGA voters have tasted that apple and they don’t want another bite. This is why they supported Haley giving her as much as 43% of the vote in some states and winning in Vermont and Washington DC.
Even longtime Conservative pundit Jonah Golberg says Trump is acting like a jerk and driving away voters.
"There's, there's a weird irony here though, is that a big chunk of the Trump, existing Trump coalition, the one that turned out in primaries, were actually, particularly in southern states, former Democrats, right?" he told the CNN host. "He's won over that part of the FDR coalition that was the sort of working-class whites, you know, the sort of Dixiecratish whites they're already part of the Trump coalition."
"So some of the people that he's talking to aren't the moderates, the middle, all that kind of stuff," he continued. "They're sort of the radicalized very online people that have been moving over anyway. I think this is all weird strategy at the end of the day. Every pollster you talk to who's honest about this stuff? This is going to boil down to what they're increasingly called the 'double haters,' people who dislike both of them."
"While Biden is not reassuring for a lot of people and a lot of people don't like him for legitimate reasons, when you compare Trump's approach, which is to make fun of Biden's stuttering, childhood stuttering and to be a jerk about it, that feels to me like it pushes more double-haters away than and I'm not sure it's going to be a winning strategy."
Trump does have to win them over, but he doesn’t seem capable of taking even the first step towards doing that.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, managed to completely obliterate that “too old” narrative with his State of the Union performance. He was quick, witty, energetic, dynamic and totally in the moment as he handled and humbled his hecklers in the crowd.
He made fun of them as they denied they wanted to cut Social Security to grant tax cuts to the rich. “No? I thought that was your plan. You don’t want another $2 trillion tax cut for the rich?”
Yes, that’s their plan.
Washington, D.C.—According to a report released today by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), extending the Trump tax cuts would add $3.5 trillion to the deficit through 2033.
Written at the urging of Senator Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Senator Wyden (D-OR), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the new report finds the Republicans’ policy priority is a half a trilliondollars more costly than previously estimated. House Republicans’ legislation to make permanent the Trump tax cuts—and blow up the federal deficit—comes at the same time they are holding the federal debt limit hostage to extract disastrous spending cuts to programs and services like veterans’ support, opioid treatment, law enforcement, and affordable energy.
The new report comes the day before a Senate Budget Committee hearing on how the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations have driven recent and projected federal deficits. They have been the largest driver of deficits over the past two decades and account for 57% of the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio since 2001.
“MAGA Republicans don’t give a damn about the deficit, and today’s estimate of the cost of kickbacks for their friends and donors is further proof,” said Senator Whitehouse. “Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them. It is one of life’s great enigmas that Republicans can keep a straight face while they simultaneously cite the deficit to extort massive spending cuts to critical programs and support a bill that would blow up deficits to extend trillions in tax cuts for the people who need them the least.”
The only legislation Trump really passed was his Tax cuts which have added $Trillions to the debt.
During his State of the Union address Biden also slammed the GOP for blocking the Bipartisan Border Package which had been negotiated by Sen. Lankford (R, OK). Lankford has stated that Biden’s claims about the plan — which would better fund and staff the border patrol as well as add immigration judges who would bring down the wait for a hearing from 6 years to 6 months — as “true.”
On Thursday, Biden boasted his administration's work with senators to create a bipartisan immigration bill, which he described as having "the toughest set of border security reforms" the U.S. has ever seen.
The reference to the bill prompted boos from the politicians in the crowd.
"You don't think so? You don't like that bill, huh?" Biden said amid the boos. "That conservatives got together and said it was a good bill? I'll be darned. That's amazing."
The bill would've hired 1,500 more security agents and officers and 100 more immigration judges to help tackle the backload of 2 million cases, Biden said, along with 4,300 more asylum officers and new policy so they can resolve cases in six months instead of six years.
After Biden explained what the bill would've done, politicians in the audience cheered with a standing ovation.
Lankford nodded after Biden's explanation and mouthed, "It's true."
If a bill like that had been passed and implemented someone like Jose Ibarra would have had his deportation hearing already. He probably would have been removed after his “child endangerment” case in New York where he was riding on a motorcycle with his son on the back. He would have been gone. Laken Riley would still be alive.
But we can’t have a bill like that because Trump and the GOP would rather grandstand over this issue than try to solve it.
Just like we had Sen. Katie Britt (R, AL) tell a story about a girl being sexually trafficked in order to falsely blame that situation on Joe Biden when he literally had nothing to do with it.
On Sunday morning the panel on CNN' "Inside Politics" pounced on Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) for her smear of President Joe Biden by linking him to a victim of sex trafficking which occurred 20 years before he became president.
"So this was supposed to be a shining moment for Britt, someone who is being elevated in the Republican ranks given this huge opportunity," he continued. "She's faced enormous criticism for her delivery, but now this passage was not true the way she presented it. What's the fallout?" "I mean, the story itself that she told is not inaccurate," correspondent Melanie Zanona contributed. "What's dishonest is the way she tried to link into the Biden administration, the way she tried to link it to something that was happening in the United States."
Another example is how Maria Bartiromo recently declared that a pair of Democratic Canvasers “looked like Illegals” because they had tattoos on their face.
During a Sunday interview with Lara Trump, Bartiromo noted that Attorney General Merrick Garland intended to oppose voter IDs.
"He said he's going to vow to stop states that have voter IDs," Bartiromo observed. "And you have to question whether or not this is about the 10 million illegals who have come into this country on Joe Biden's watch."
The Fox News host then told a story about a friend allegedly approached by two Democratic Party operatives.
"I had a friend the other day tell me she was standing at a food truck," Bartiromo recalled. "Two gentlemen approached her. One had tattoos all over his face. They looked like illegals, she said."
"And one had a clipboard. And he said to her, hello, miss, do you want to sign up to become a Democrat and vote?" she continued. "So you're talking about people that you want to hire. They're already doing that. And they may be doing it with illegals coming into this country."
Trump agreed.
"And I think you're right. People say, why do we have a fully open southern border?" she opined. "And I think the only thing people can figure is that the Democrats are bleeding and hemorrhaging voters."
Besides the obvious ignorance and bigotry of these statements there is yet again the evoking of the “Great Replacement Theory” claiming that the only reason Democrats support migrants and refugees fleeing destitution, famine, drug cartels and socialism is because we “need them to vote for us” not because it’s the just and humane thing to do.
But Democrats are not “bleeding and hemorrhaging voters” they’ve been winning in various elections in 2022 and 2023. We don’t need illegal voters to win - but the GOP constantly over-estimates themselves and thinks they can’t lose unless we cheat. So that justifies their own cheating.
Merrick Garland is making an issue about voting because protecting the ability to vote is his job. The GOP uses “Voter ID” requirements to implement Voter Suppression against the young, the poor and black people.
Overly burdensome photo ID requirements block millions of eligible American citizens from voting. As many as 11 percent of eligible voters do not have the kind of ID that is required by states with strict ID requirements, and that percentage is even higher among seniors, minorities, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students.
Many citizens find it difficult to obtain government photo IDs because the necessary documentation, such as a birth certificate, is often difficult or expensive to acquire.
[…]
-
Nearly 500,000 eligible voters do not have access to a vehicle and live more than 10 miles from the nearest state ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. Many of them live in rural areas with dwindling public transportation options.
-
More than 10 million eligible voters live more than 10 miles from their nearest state ID-issuing office open more than two days a week.
-
1.2 million eligible black voters and 500,000 eligible Hispanic voters live more than 10 miles from their nearest ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. People of color are more likely to be disenfranchised by these laws since they are less likely to have photo ID than the general population.
-
Many ID-issuing offices maintain limited business hours. For example, the office in Sauk City, Wisconsin is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month. But only four months in 2012 — February, May, August, and October — have five Wednesdays. In other states — Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas — many part-time ID-issuing offices are in the rural regions with the highest concentrations of people of color and people in poverty.
More than 1 million eligible voters in these states fall below the federal poverty line and live more than 10 miles from their nearest ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. These voters may be particularly affected by the significant costs of the documentation required to obtain a photo ID. Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. Marriage licenses, required for married women whose birth certificates include a maiden name, can cost between $8 and $20. By comparison, the notorious poll tax — outlawed during the civil rights era — cost $10.64 in current dollars.
The result is plain: Voter ID laws will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of poor Americans to vote. They place a serious burden on a core constitutional right that should be universally available to every American citizen.
They also implement purges that remove eligible voters from the rolls.
Voter purges are an often-flawed process of cleaning up voter rolls by deleting names from registration lists. While updating registration lists as voters die, move, or otherwise become ineligible is necessary and important, when done irresponsibly — with bad data or when two voters are confused for the same person — the process can knock eligible voters off the roll en masse, often with little notice. Many voters discover they’re no longer listed only when they arrive at the polling place. As a result, many eligible Americans either don’t vote or are forced to cast provisional ballots.
Over the last decade, jurisdictions have substantially increased the rate at which they purge voter rolls. Brennan Center research found that between 2014 and 2016, states removed almost 16 million voters from the rolls — a 33 percent increase over the period between 2006 and 2008. The increase was highest in states with a history of voting discrimination.
These people lie, they cheat and — if you let them - they steal. They’ll stop at literally nothing to gain and amass power. They’ll use a poor murdered girl or one who has been sex-trafficked to smear President Biden. They steal your ability to vote with Voter ID then purge you from the rolls so you vote doesn’t count.
Joe Biden has a problem with those who vehemently support a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. That remains a challenge. But Trump is facing almost 1/3rd of the GOP Base who simply can’t stand him. They can’t stand his lies, his bigotry or his grandstanding.
And since all of those things are core elements of his own personality - how exactly does he overcome that? I don’t think he can.
Have a listen to my new Vocal Cover — "Dashboard Mary" originally by Podunk
Check out my new Patreon where you can download copies of my covers and original songs. You can also stream tracks from my previous Solo CD from ReverbNation.
And You can send Funds to Support me via Paypal