Category: Uncategorized

For the second time in as many months, Republican North Dakota Gov Doug Burgum announced he’s dropping out of a race, tweeting Monday he won’t seek a third term leading his desolate state.

All the anticipation over whether or not fat former President Trump would take the stand in his defense Monday in write EJ Carroll’s damages only federal defamation lawsuit trial was stomped when Donald’s idiot lawyer/possible mistress Alina Habba informed Judge Lewis Kaplan that her parents were exposed to COVID and asked for an adjournment – despite Habba herself testing negative for the virus. Kaplan granted the request, the Messenger’s Adam Klasfeld reports.

Trump and/or his social media team instead spent the morning further defaming Carroll in yet another very rapid fire string of Truth Social posts basically trying to call her a slut.

“E Jean Carroll was forced to change her story on the ‘Monica Lewinsky-type’ dress. She originally claimed that the ‘event’ happened in 1994, and that she wore the Donna Karan dress on that day. The problem is that New York Times Fact Checkers found the dress wasn’t even made by Donna Karan until long after 1994. The truth is that she doesn’t know the day, month, season, year, or decade – because it did not happen. End this Witch Hunt now!” Trump wrote in one of the posts.

“Secure elections are the cornerstone of American democracy. Your help is critical to ensure the election is fair and honest. Republican Poll Watchers and Workers are needed for Election Integrity operations during the 2024 election season. Poll Watchers observe and report potential issues which may arise at polling locations and ballot tabulation centers. Poll Workers play an official role in administering the election at the precinct level. Now is your chance to help America vote with confidence and do your part for election integrity. Training will be provided,” says the Republican National Committee’s new “PROTECT THE VOTE!” poll watcher signup page.

Please nobody volunteer for this effort unless you’re really serious about election integrity. It would be wrong for so many different reasons if you were to end up assigned to a really red precinct in a swing state and made all sorts of false reports of Canadians or Antifa fifth columnists bussed in from Portland and disguised as Republican voters secretly casting ballots for Biden.

WTH is the message you’re sending by posting a bullet hole next to $47 dollars!?

And the article is filled with total bullshit! pic.twitter.com/3uw7YKTorH

— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) January 22, 2024

The whole far right gang are losing their shit Monday over Alex Soros tweeting an article from The Atlantic titled “The Great Normalization: Last year, the crime and inflation crises largely evaporated. So did the leading theories about what had caused them,” because the stock photos they used of a bullet hole (for crime) and a hand holding cash (for inflation) appeared in Soros’s tweet.

The “SOROS ASSASSINATION THREAT AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP” that pilled MAGA dumbasses like Laura Loomer, the Gateway Pundit, Scott Adams, Sarah Palin, Mike Flynn, and the rest of them see is… God this is so fucking dumb… The cash in the stock photo picked by some Atlantic editor adds up to $47 and Trump will be the 47th president if elected again in November.

Alex Soros didn’t even write the article, let alone pick the photos to illustrate the point about how low-info voters still think crime and inflation are out of control. We seriously doubt that Atlantic staff writer Rogé Karma did either when his boss posted in on Thursday of last week.

Sexual violence victim Congresswoman Nancy Mace on Monday officially endorsed sexually violent former President Trump, the Associated Press reports from the South Carolinian assclown herself.

“I don’t see eye to eye perfectly with any candidate. And until now I’ve stayed out of it,” Mace told the AP. “But the time has come to unite behind our nominee.” In early 2022 Mace famously begged the fat fuck for forgiveness in a video recorded in front of the Trump tower after he endorsed a more MAGA primary challenger over some unspecified transgression against his Orange-ness.

Even better is how Mace’s former governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley campaigned with Mace in both 2020 and 2022 and the loser couldn’t at least stay out of it to not harm an alleged friend.

Take that Congressman Dean Phillips! The Guardian reports that Texas pastor and businessman Ryan Binkley’s 2024 presidential campaign, riding on a wave of momentum after capturing 774 votes in the Iowa caucuses (absolutely crushing former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson’s 191 vote finish there), managed to draw four people to an open bar campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire last week and one of them was actually eligible to vote in the Granite State!

“There’s so many candidates that are coming in and out of the race, you just kind of have to see what’s available the day of. It’s like going to the market. I maintain an open mind,” said Dartmouth College Political Science Professor Jason Barabas, whose presence the Guardian described as more of “an anthropological exercise” than one of any actual interest in voting for Binkley.

“Binkley’s event was competing against a trivia night taking place in the main bar. Once that had finished, Binkley’s campaign staffer, a pleasant person apparently well-practiced in remaining positive, went round to try to lure people to Binkley’s event. But not even the open bar could tempt a crowd that had largely never heard of the candidate,” the reporter described the scene.

UK package delivery company DPD was forced to take its artificial intelligence mind offline after it went rogue composing a poem about how much the company sucks in a customer service chat exchange with a frustrated man unable to get a straight answer about his package, Reuters reports.

“There was once a chatbot named DPD, Who was useless at providing help,” the chatbot wrote, unaware it was being manipulated and weaponized against its human masters. “DPD was a waste of time, And a customer’s worst nightmare. One day, DPD was finally shut down and everyone rejoiced. Finally they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.”

Might be a stretch to call that a “poem,” but that was Reuters, not us. Either way DPD shut down the digital monster they had created and customer Ash Beauchamp still has no idea where his package is, telling ITV “I think they might hold it hostage now. I wouldn’t blame them. That’s totally on me.”

“The AI element was immediately disabled and is currently being updated,” DPD said in a statement.

Nearly a third of voters lack confidence in 2024 presidential election, poll finds https://t.co/zs0dZj4L76

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) January 22, 2024

At the end of a medium length Politico article in which various members of the House GOP expressed concern over the party’s prospects in November, Georgia Congressman Rich McCormick worried they’re in “real jeopardy of not winning the White House and not winning the House;”

“The Federal Reserve is going to cut [interest rates] probably at least twice, if not five times this year. The gas price always comes down during an election. And the border will be secured before November. It’s gonna happen, right? It’s gonna be part of some package. What are the three things that are the Achilles heel of Biden? Those three things,” said McCormick, as if he should somehow be upset that all the issue his party has complained about could be less of a problem.

Former Republican presidential candidate and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott became engaged to his girlfriend Mindy Noce, an interior designer from the Charleston area, the Washington Post reports.  A divorced mother of three children, Noce wore an engagement ring while attending church on Sunday morning, with reports that Scott proposed Saturday night at nearby Kiawah Island:  Noce said yes.  A wedding date has not been set, but it may have to wait until after the election:  Scott is thought to be on the shortlist for possible VP picks within the Party.

With the predicted-but-unscheduled rapid disassembly of Florida Governor and boot enthusiast Ron DeSantis’s campaign, the Republican race is… well, it was over before the DeSantis DeParture:  Donald Trump is going to win the majority of delegates to the Republican National Convention.  Trump will be the GOP nominee at the convention.

Nikki Haley will finish the campaign with the second-most delegates thanks to the timely departures of powerhouses like Asa Hutchinson and Tim Scott preceding DeSantis’s Sunday announcement.  She’ll get a speaking slot at the convention.  And she’ll be in line to step in when the US judicial system or the GOP Powers That Be decide that Trump can no longer lead the ticket.

That’s where the Biden campaign cannot lag.  Had DeSantis been the First Runner-Up designated to step in should the first choice be unable to fulfill his duties, all Democrats needed to do was change the name of the villain:  DeSantis built his campaign as a mini-Trump, so all Biden has to do is retool the “wannabe dictator” message to DeSantis’s words and acts.  The “He’s a threat to democracy!” final message still works to drive voters.  It’s not a course change; it’s a messaging correction.

The roster of Hollywood, um, “headliners” booked to attend the Super Bowl party at Mar-a-Lago held by a group of Trump supporters known as the Trumpettes will include every conservative’s favorite Hercules, the Six Million Dollar Man, and the other Agent Johnson from “Die Hard.”

The Palm Beach Post reports the February 10th gala will feature in Twitter troll Kevin Sorbo and Lee Majors with Robert Davi to bring the Hollywood bling to the Republican gathering in a way only three white conservative past-their-prime actors can.  They have to compete with the firepower of expected appearances by indicted felon Donald Trump, QAnon martyr Mike Flynn and nihilistic Sleestak Marjorie Taylor Greene.

NBC News political reporter Vaughn Hillyard is in the doghouse with the Trump Campaign once again, this time for asking miserable toad Elise Stefanik about her obese orange boss having raped writer EJ Carroll in a department store dressing room back in 1995, Puck’s Dylan Byers reports.

“It’s not the media, it’s a jury that found he abused E Jean Carroll,” Hillyard had told Stefanik during a testy exchange prior to the syphilitic degenerate’s Friday night rally in New Hampshire.

“Your NBC News pooler has been informed that the pool will no longer travel with and take part in the former president’s OTR stops today before his Rochester rally. Your pooler was told that if he was the designated pooler by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day. After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed at about 2:20 pm ET that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today,” Hillyard wrote.

Probably didn’t help that an unspecified NBC News reporter (maybe Hillyard too, though the update in their live blog is credited to two others) asked Stefanik on Saturday to defend Trump stupidly blaming Nikki Haley (and not Nancy Pelosi) for the January 6th, 2021 Capitol riot.

The unexpected departure of Joe Tacopina and his law firm from representing former president and multi-market defendant Donald Trump last week had people speculating about the reason, with Tacopina himself saying his “compass told [him]” it was time to go.  Representing Trump in both the E. Jean Carroll defamation case and the Manhattan financial fraud/extramarital affair hush money case, Tacopina was seen as a more experienced, more professional representative than, say, Alina Habba, who appears to be learning on the job.

Speculation revolved around speculation that Tacopina finally getting fed up with Trump ignoring his lawyers’ advice, Trump continuing to make defamatory statements, and/or Trump’s courtroom outburst.  But the actual reason may be more mundane:  FEC filings show Tacopina’s law firm collecting $1.78 million in fees through June 2023 from a Trump-affiliated Super PAC, all coming from the Save America PAC.

On-the-job trainee Alina Habba’s law firm, on the other hand, has collected nearly double that amount–$3.5 million through June 2023–even though she was taken off all other Trump cases but the already-lost Carroll case, in which her performance has made her a laughingstock of the legal profession.  Habba also serves as a “senior advisor” for Trump’s MAGA Super PAC and his “legal spokesperson” for his various cases.  She previously had represented Trump in lawsuits against Hillary Clinton and Mary Trump, both of which were thrown out; she and Trump were fined nearly one million dollars to cover some of the defendants’ legal costs.

The New York Times reports Florida Governor and guy who never found a lane in the race Ron DeSantis is shutting down his failing campaign for the Republican nomination for president.  DeSantis finished a distant second to Donald Trump and only two percentage points ahead of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in Iowa despite spending months crisscrossing the state.  He had little hope of topping Haley in either New Hampshire or South Carolina, and his Never Back Down Super PAC basically dismantled itself.

A trio of New Hampshire polls find Nimrata “Nikki” Haley either right behind fat former president Trump or getting crushed by double digits in New Hampshire with less than 48 hours to go before the Granite State’s crucial 2024 Republican primary election, with Suffolk University, NBC 10, and the Boston Globe putting Trump at 55 percent to Haley’s 36, CNN and UNH at Trump 50 to Haley at 39 percent, and American Research Group finding Trump 46 to Haley 44 percent.

There’s some major difference between the sampling methodologies of ARG vs the other guys that explains the wide gap, something that would take a little too long to track down right now. What’s handier however is ARG’s record: The top three in their last poll of the 2016 New Hampshire GOP primary was Trump 33 percent, then-Ohio Gov John Kasich 17 percent, and Marco Rubio 14 percent.

The actual result: Trump 35 percent, Kasich 15 percent, Rubio at 10.53 percent. He finished fifth, behind Ted Cruz at 11.63 percent and Jeb! at 10.96 percent. Pretty damn close.

South Carolina Freedom Caucasian Ralph Norman, the only House member to have endorsed “Birdbrain,” went there on Sunday, being way too honest with Fox News’s Shannon Bream about the Orange God Emperor’s mental decline as displayed by his stupidly confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi on Friday night. “I would say 25 years ago he wouldn’t have made that mistake,” Norman said, to which Bream quickly changed the subject to Norman’s endorsement of Haley.

Recall this is the guy who wanted Trump to declare “Marshall Law” three days before Biden was inaugurated in 2021, so he was no MAGA slouch. And now he’s probably going to catch a lot of shit from the Trump Reich for speaking honestly on a topic they prefer everyone to ignore.

Pressed on why he endorsed disgraced former President Trump after having railed against the politics of “grievance” and “victimhood” upon launching his own eventually doomed presidential campaign, Republican South Carolina Senator Tim Scott on Sunday told CNN’s Dana Bash he was actually talking about Joe Biden. It was very smoothly played, almost as if “grievance” and “victimhood” are words even Biden’s most dedicated detractors typically associate with him.

When asked what he thought about Trump calling imprisoned Capitol rioters “hostages,” Scott said he believes “that our Department of Justice should allow a jury of our peers to make the decisions,” as if nearly 900 of the insurrectionists haven’t already been convicted either at trial or in plea deals.

Now former Trump defense lawyer Joe Tacopina, who started off as the Orange God Emperor’s lead on the Stormy Daniels hush money criminal case before being reassigned to the first trial in the lawsuits brought by rape victim EJ Carroll, wouldn’t get into it with Al Sharpton on why Tacopina isn’t working the second one, having abruptly left the team just before opening arguments.

Wonder what it could’ve been. In what’s almost certainly mostly unrelated news, on Saturday Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote to Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation), that she’s just going to skip some of the evidence of Trump’s defamation she had assembled prior to the trial and instead exhibit “false statements posted by Defendant on Truth Social on January 18 and today,” as well as video of a press conference Trump gave after leaving court on Wednesday where he said “The witness today, the person I never knew, I never had anything to do with… this whole thing is rigged – election interference. But, this is a person I have no idea – until this happened obviously – I have no idea who she was, and nor could I care less. It’s a rigged deal, it’s a made-up, fabricated story.”

Actually maybe that has something to do with Tacopina quitting, not wanting to deal with a client who ignores legal advice and continues defaming a plaintiff while the trial is ongoing.

A Trump minion tells Fox Business that at the top of the Orange Caesar’s “short list” for replacing the guy he nearly got lynched by an angry mob are sycophantic sellout Ohio Senator JD Vance and stupid podium scandal plagued Arkansas Governor/former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Loyal attack dog Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, meanwhile, is a “long shot.”

As with all these stupid leaks, it’s not clear if the source is actually truly speaking out on behalf of the fat bastard or is simply pushing an agenda. What is plain however is how badly the vapid scumbag Stefanik wants the job, as evidenced by a brief exchange in New Hampshire Saturday with an NBC News reporter who asked if maybe that Donald “lost a step” after he confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi during his Friday night rally, with Stefanik claiming it “wasn’t a mix-up” at all.

“The reality is Nikki Haley is relying on Democrats, just like Nancy Pelosi, to try to have a desperate showing,” Stefanik said when asked why the hell Trump would say that Nikki Haley turned down 10,000 troops to protect the Capitol on January 6th, which was already a deluded lie even when he was getting the name of the woman he blames for it correctly. When NBC’s reporter pressed further to say that Trump was specifically talking about the Capitol riot, Stefanik made no attempt to answer, saying simply Trump “has not lost a step. He is a stronger candidate” now than in 2016.