This guy is so fucking stupid:
Adam Laxalt teed off on Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, his Democratic opponent in Nevada's
Senate race, at a campaign event here Wednesday, accusing her of failing to stand behind law enforcement in 2020 after a
George Floyd protest turned violent.
But after the event, Laxalt, a Republican who was once Nevada's top law enforcement official, refused to support the FBI.
“The FBI is far too political right now, and we need to do something to take the polarization out of that,” Laxalt said in a response to a question from NBC News. "We just can't afford to have our top law enforcement agency that politicized."
The FBI has increasingly come under attack from Republicans after last month’s seizure of government documents, some of them classified, from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Laxalt, the state's former attorney general, who is now locked in a margin-of-error race with Cortez Masto, tweeted last month that the FBI's actions in Florida were “just another example of the growing weaponization of our federal agencies by the Left.”
“Starting Nov. 8th, this power grab will come to an end,” he added, referring to Election Day.
I’ll let MSNBC’s Steven Benen provide some context here:
Evidently, as Laxalt sees it, if law enforcement is investigating possible crimes from someone the Nevada Republican likes, then there must be something wrong with law enforcement. It’s emblematic of a rather twisted vision in which the rule of law must succumb to partisan preferences.
Part of what makes rhetoric like Laxalt’s so problematic is the irony: He is, after all, Nevada’s former attorney general. Another part is the hypocrisy: If Laxalt is going to slam Cortez Masto for failing to support law enforcement, perhaps he should show greater caution before failing to show support for law enforcement.
But even if we put these relevant details aside, the most glaring flaw in the GOP candidate’s criticisms is the plain fact that Laxalt is just wrong: By any fair measure, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is, and has long been, one of the single most conservative institutions in the federal government.
If Laxalt genuinely believes that “the Left” has politicized the FBI, then the Nevadan has no idea what he’s talking about.
Yeah, here are the type of people working for “Mister Law & Order”:
The new communications director for the Republican Senate nominee in Nevada – a key state that could determine control in Washington – marched to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, with two members of the far-right extremist group the Oath Keepers including one who was later charged with sedition and another with breaking into the Capitol and at least two others who were charged for illegally entering the building, according to videos reviewed by CNN’s KFile.
Courtney Holland, a Nevada-based political activist who does not appear to have entered the Capitol building herself and has not been charged with crimes related to January 6, was named Adam Laxalt’s top spokeswoman in early July. Laxalt is running against Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and the race is considered a toss up.
Holland traveled to Washington, DC, for the January 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally where she was listed as a speaker for a rally to be held near the Capitol following then-President Donald Trump’s speech near the White House. That second rally did not take place as scheduled. She had previously spoken at a November event in Washington, DC, and was photographed with several “Stop the Steal” organizers who also spoke. The “Stop the Steal” movement believes Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Early on the morning of January 6, Holland walked with a group to the main rally, which featured Trump, according to a video in a since-deleted tweet on her account archived on the Internet Wayback Machine. The group included three other speakers listed for the rally near the Capitol.
Following Trump’s rally, Holland was part of a group that now-included four other scheduled speakers for the second rally that made their way toward the Capitol guided by three Oath Keepers, according to videos and photos reviewed by CNN’s KFile. Holland said in a statement to CNN on Tuesday that she did not know the men, describing them as “security.” Two of those Oath Keepers, Kenneth Harrelson and Jason Dolan, have since been charged by the Department of Justice for their role in the Capitol attack. Also walking with Holland was Dr. Simone Gold, an anti-vaccine doctor who pleaded guilty in March to entering the Capitol and was recently sentenced to 60 days in jail, and John Strand, a co-defendant in her case who has pleaded not guilty.
Then again, Laxalt was a pretty shitty Attorney General:
Starpoint Resort Group — a Nevada-based timeshare company that has for years maintained financial ties to the campaigns of Republican Senate candidate and former Attorney General Adam Laxalt — generated dozens of customer complaints sent to the attorney general’s office during Laxalt’s tenure, according to documents reviewed by The Nevada Independent.
Those documents, including hundreds of pages of redacted complaint filings and emails, show at least 56 customer complaints against Starpoint filed with the attorney general’s office between 2015 and 2019, with another 35 filed to the state's Department of Business and Industry.
Several of the complaints allege that the company — through its subsidiary timeshare companies — misled or deceived customers and violated the state’s deceptive trade practices law. However, the documents do not show that Starpoint was ever implicated in any criminal wrongdoing, nor do they show that the company ever faced any penalties from the state government.
The state’s Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP), which handles such complaints and scams more broadly, is an independent state agency housed within the attorney general’s office and led by the state’s consumer advocate. Though the complaints were sent to Laxalt’s office, such complaints are routed through the BCP as a clearing house, and the documents obtained by The Nevada Independent do not show that Laxalt himself was ever aware of the complaints.
Who would rather talk about:
Even as Republican candidates continue to pummel incumbent Democrats on a faltering economy and sidestep anger over the overturning of Roe v. Wade, they have launched a fresh salvo of attacks over immigration.
Last week, Republican Senate hopeful and former Attorney General Adam Laxalt tied his opponent, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), directly to the Biden White House in a new TV ad accusing Democrats of “dismantling border security” and denying the existence of “open borders.”
That ad does not cite sources on those claims, though on his website, Laxalt has backed the completion of the Trump border wall and the reinstatement of the “Remain in Mexico” policy. His campaign did not respond to a request for more details on other policies he would support.
But Jeremy Hughes, a longtime Republican strategist in Nevada, told The Nevada Independent that the timing of a surge in migrants — alongside media attention generated by the push by some Republican governors to bus or fly migrants to Democrat-controlled “sanctuary” cities — has created another opportunity for the GOP to campaign on immigration, especially amid growing online interest in the issue.
There is no empirical evidence that immigration trends match with crime rates, and studies show undocumented immigrants are statistically less likely to commit crimes than citizens. However, the number of encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border have surged to record numbers in recent weeks, and increasingly large amounts of fentanyl have been seized by border authorities (though data shows much of those seizures come from legal border crossings and checkpoints).
Than talk about this:
For months, the campaign website for Adam Laxalt, the Republican Senate nominee in Nevada, greeted visitors with a huge banner exalting his endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump in all capital letters. Now, that information is nowhere on his home page.
Representative Ted Budd, the Republican Senate nominee in North Carolina, also made Mr. Trump’s endorsement far less prominent on his website last month. And Blake Masters, the party’s Senate nominee in Arizona, took down a false claim that the 2020 election had been stolen from Mr. Trump and softened his calls for tough abortion restrictions.
Republican leaders are increasingly worried that both Mr. Trump and the issue of abortion could be liabilities in November, threatening the advantages the party expected from President Biden’s unpopularity and voters’ distress over inflation. At least 10 Republican candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to downplay their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust uncompromising stances on abortion. Some have removed material from their websites altogether.
The changes to the websites for Mr. Laxalt and Mr. Budd have not been previously reported. Mr. Masters’s overhaul, in which he deleted, among other elements, a call for an anti-abortion constitutional amendment that would give fetuses the same rights as infants and adults, was first reported by NBC News and CNN. Other news outlets have identified editing by several House candidates, including Yesli Vega in Virginia and Barbara Kirkmeyer in Colorado, Bo Hines in North Carolina and Tom Barrett in Michigan.
Whereas Senator Cortez Masto has already been building up her support:
There are some indications Cortez Masto’s efforts are helping her build a broad base. During the second quarter of 2022, her average donation was $40, and 97 percent of campaign contributions were $100 or less. And she’s picked up some unlikely supporters. In June, the former Republican county commissioner for rural Churchill County, an hour east of Reno, publicly endorsed her over Laxalt. Two local Republicans—one current mayor and one former—did so as well; in a press statement explaining his endorsement, Nathan Robertson, mayor of Ely, Nevada (population estimate: 3,858), said that “Catherine has earned our support in rural Nevada by blocking new taxes on our mining industry and supporting funding for local infrastructure needs. I know she will continue to work hard in the Senate to champion issues important to all rural Nevadans.”
Cortez Masto is also working to reach Latino voters, who made up nearly 20 percent of the state’s electorate in 2020. In Nevada, as in many places, Latino voters have shifted away from the Democratic Party since President Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012. In 2020, 59 percent of Latino voters nationwide chose Biden, down from the 66 percent who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “Right now, there is a trend among the Latino population where Democrats are losing some of those voters,” Swers says. “And so maybe Cortez Masto can lean on her own background to try to win some of those voters back.”
When the senator talks of the Latino vote, she is quick to note what many understand: “We are not a monolith.” In Nevada, the first generation often works in the service industry, she adds, while their children frequently become essential workers (“they’re doing other things—it’s exciting to see”). And how she goes about securing their votes is no different than for anyone else. “It is about reaching out and just talking to families: What are the issues? What are your challenges? Letting them know who you are, where you come from, why this is important for you,” she says. “I don’t like labels; it’s not about are you Hispanic, Latinx, Latino. Just let’s have a conversation. I hear you; I see you; let’s engage.” And what she learns from these encounters is that “like with every other family, it’s the kitchen table issues that are impacting them right now,” she says. “They’re looking for somebody who’s going to be there with them, support them, fight for them—someone who understands them.”
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