I am building these comments around the live-tweeting I did last night. I am sure we will all have more to say in the coming weeks. Bill Barr began by calling the idea that Biden stole the election “bullshit”: Later,...
Trumpism
Fox News will not air the January 6 committee hearings
Here is Philip Bump at The Washington Post: The Republican Party made a decision early last year that it would rather use the attack at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a cudgel against Democrats than engage in...
What is a RINO?
At The Bulwark, William Saletan tries to define what the right wing means when they accuse someone of being “Republican in Name Only.” (Note: Someone accused me of this the other day and I am not even a registered Republican!)....
The future of Trumpism
William Kristol believes Trumpism will be around for a long time. Here is a taste of his piece today at The Bulwark: We are now six years into the Trump era and one clearly sees—in the donor and media ecosystems,...
On abortion, the Trump court evangelicals need the Supreme Court. On gun violence, all they have are “thoughts and prayers.”
If you read my Current piece on Thursday or Dan Williams’s piece today and want another example of the inherent contradiction in the Christian pro-life movement, just read the recent e-mail Trump court evangelical Paula White-Cain’s “National Faith Advisory Board‘...
“The Great Charlie Kirk,” the wizard of “Dark MAGA”
On Tuesday, North Carolinians dumped evangelical frat boy Madison Cawthorn. Yesterday he gave us more evidence as to why he wasn’t fit to serve in Congress. Perhaps some of you have already heard about the “Dark MAGA” Instagram post. In...
Dinesh D’Souza’s “hilarious mockumentary”
If you read our twice-weekly “Evangelical Roundup” feature, you have heard about conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza’s “Big Lie” movie titled 2000 Mules. The movie premiered at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Over at the conservative website The Bulwark, Amanda Carpenter offers a...
“He rose to prominence as an ambitious plodder — as someone difficult for his colleagues to attack because he never had anything remotely interesting to say”
Read more about what Washington Post columnist and Michael Gerson had to say about House majority leader Kevin McCarthy: Let’s take a moment from the lightning pace of the news cycle to reflect on a disturbing fact of American life:...
The Big Lie and tribalism
Over at The Atlantic, Sarah Longwell writes: “For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose.” Here is a taste of her...
“Dr. Oz is the most normal Republican” running for office in Pennsylvania
Amanda Carpenter nails it: LOL, if you thought Donald Trump’s endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz for Senate was the worst development in Pennsylvania’s 2022 GOP primaries, wait until you hear about the Republicans running for governor. Pennsylvania Republicans will nominate a...
The GOP as Trump Steaks
Tim Miller writes for the conservative online magazine The Bulwark. He was the communications director for the 2016 Jeb Bush campaign and spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. Here is a taste of his piece “The Republican Party Is Trump...
Charlie Kirk: “Huckster. Snake oil salesman. Charlatan”
Charlie Kirk, the pro-Trump pundit who spends most of his time rallying college students to a combative form of conservative populism, regularly appears on the weekends at evangelical megachurches. He is currently visiting churches as part of his “Saving America...
This woman is not alone
She probably represents a small part of the population, but people like this are out there. Watch:...
America’s four-party system
Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. identifies four political factions functioning within our two-party system: The Trump Party (Trump, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Fox News and other conservative cable outlets, conservative talk radio). The GOP Old Guard (Mitch McConnell, Mitt...
Putin is rarely mentioned at CPAC
The speakers at the pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference this week are in a tough spot. I am sure many of them condemn the Putin invasion of Ukraine, but they can’t do that publicly without invoking the ire of their...
Trump’s new social media site is a disaster
Here is Drew Harwell at The Washington Post: Former president Donald Trump, a longtime critic of how Democrats debuted Healthcare.gov, is facing a bungled website launch of his own. His long-promised social network, Truth Social, has been almost entirely inaccessible in...
“‘Crazy’ has become a church-growth strategy”
Are you a pastor who wants your church to grow? There is a new church-growth formula out there. If you are a pro-Trump, anti-critical race theory, anti-mask, and anti-vaccine pastor your church will grow. It will not grow through evangelism,...
Anti-Trump Republicans will gather for the “Principles First” summit
They will meet this weekend at the National Press Club. Speakers include Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Denver Riggleman, Geoff Duncan, Brad Raffensperger, Alexander Vindman, Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock, Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes, Tom Nichols, Peter Wehner, and Harry Dunn. Meanwhile,...
Trump needs to face the facts. He lost.
Recently Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, a Trump supporter, said that the former president needs to stop wasting our time with claims that he won the 2020 election. But Trump won’t let it go. As Peter Wehner writes in The...
The collapse of Charlie Kirk’s “America-first” academy
Pro-Trump pundit Charlie Kirk, the president of the right-wing Turning Point USA, wanted to start an academy to educate K-12 students in “America first” principles. But its major funder abandoned ship after it got a look at the curriculum. Apparently...