DL Open Thread Monday April 18 2022
Ladies and Gentlemen, your modern GOP…Crabs in a bucket. Trump holds Bum fights in his Plan Beach palace to decide who is going to endorse.
Mar-a-Lago Machine: Trump as a Modern-Day Party Boss
Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, the former president is dominating the G.O.P., preparing for another race and helping loyalists oust officials who thwarted his attempted subversion of the 2020 election.
PALM BEACH, Fla. — On any given night, Donald J. Trump will stroll onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago and say a few words from a translucent lectern, welcoming whatever favored candidate is paying him for the privilege of fund-raising there.
“This is a special place,” Mr. Trump said on one such evening in February at his private club. “I used to say ‘ground zero’ but after the World Trade Center we don’t use that term anymore. This is the place where everybody wants to be.”
For 15 months, a parade of supplicants — senators, governors, congressional leaders and Republican strivers of all stripes — have made the trek to pledge their loyalty and pitch their candidacies. Some have hired Mr. Trump’s advisers, hoping to gain an edge in seeking his endorsement. Some have bought ads that ran only on Fox News in South Florida. Some bear gifts; others dish dirt. Almost everyone parrots his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Working from a large wooden desk reminiscent of the one he used in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump has transformed Mar-a-Lago’s old bridal suite into a shadow G.O.P. headquarters, amassing more than $120 million — a war chest more than double that of the Republican National Committee itself. Federal records show that his PAC raised more online than the party on every day but two in the last six months of 2021, one of which was Christmas Eve.
On ‘Face the Nation’ Coons Opens Door to Direct US Involvement in Ukraine
MARGARET BRENNAN: In some public remarks this week, you said the country needs to talk about when it might be willing to send troops to Ukraine. You said if the answer is never, then we are inviting another level of escalation and brutality by Putin. Are you arguing that President Biden-
SENATOR CHRIS COONS: Margaret-
MARGARET BRENNAN: -was wrong when he said he would not send troops to Ukraine? Are you asking him to set a red line?
SENATOR CHRIS COONS: Margaret, (…long preamble about how great Biden is doing…) If Vladimir Putin, who has shown us how brutal he can be, is allowed to just continue to massacre civilians, to commit war crimes throughout Ukraine without NATO, without the West coming more forcefully to his aid, I great- I deeply worry that what’s going to happen next is that we will see Ukraine turn into Syria. The American people cannot turn away from this tragedy in Ukraine. I think the history of the 21st century turns on how fiercely we defend freedom in Ukraine and that Putin will only stop when we stop him. I’ll close with this, Margaret. This is a weekend when so many families gather to celebrate the very best in the human spirit and where we grieve the loss of many to do due to COVID, we should also be prayerful and mindful of those who are fighting for freedom in Ukraine and how much their heroism and patriotism inspires the rest of us.
I had to drive from Ocala FL to Dover yesterday and passing through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, as the radio reported mass shooting after mass shooting I passed billboard after billboard for gun store after gun store, each on emblazoned with some version of of an AK-47.
I fail to see how Coons’ vacillating statement “opens the door” to anything any more than any of his other blatherings open doors to anything else.
It’s the kind of dumb-ass question that invites this kind of vague answer that people can then use to say, “See? He didn’t say never!”
This is the kind of horseshit you get if you pay attention to our so-called “news” media.
If you confined all news about Chris Coons to what he actually did, instead of what he says, you’d go weeks if not months without ever hearing his name.
I’d say that it still matters in a strange way. In the carnival side-show that is the DC media bubble, what Coons says has effect without impact. It is the perfect setup for him.
Agree with Alby, Coons has mastered the art of being a slippery political snake, Carney is still a piece of work in progress, such as it is. Old enough to remember the cold war era, Mutually Assured Destruction remains in place, perhaps it’s a good thing. Suggest we not push it, Putin remains the Hitler of our day and as such a bit insane.
Come to think of it, I rarely hear from Coons anymore. I don’t get cable news, and now working from home (no car commute) I don’t llisten to NPR that much.
Since the Ukraine war I have been watching English-language news on France24 and Deutsche Welle. Free, no commercials, and no Coons.