Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Scott Perry, who has been avoiding questions from local media for months, fled up a little used trail into the woods to avoid questions from a Harrisburg television station, WHP CBS-21 reports.

After attending a public ceremony noting the historic status of a 130-year-old iron truss bridge in his Cumberland County district, a WHP reporter who had been trying since the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol to interview Perry attempted to ask Perry questions.  Instead of accompanying the group up the paved walkway to a parking lot, Perry and his communications director took off up a little used footpath through the trees… to the parking lot where the TV news crew had parked.

Perry has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the November 2020 election, and was one of more than 140 members of the House to vote to not certify the results of the Electoral College vote.  In that election, he won the traditionally-Republican Pennsylvania 10th Congressional district by just 2.6 percentage points, and he faced calls to resign the seat after it was revealed that Perry pushed for the dismissal of the acting US Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who refused to pursue Trump’s claim of fraud in the Georgia election. 

Washington Post: “The FBI is investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in connection with campaign fundraising activity involving his former business, according to people familiar with the matter and a spokesman for DeJoy. FBI agents in recent weeks interviewed current and former employees of DeJoy and the business, asking questions about political contributions and company activities, these people said. Prosecutors also issued a subpoena to DeJoy himself for information, one of the people said. That person, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing and politically sensitive investigation. Mark Corallo, a DeJoy spokesman, confirmed the investigation in a statement, but insisted DeJoy had not knowingly violated any laws. ‘Mr. DeJoy has learned that the Department of Justice is investigating campaign contributions made by employees who worked for him when he was in the private sector, He has always been scrupulous in his adherence to the campaign contribution laws and has never knowingly violated them.'”

Apparently this intra-party convenience store rivalry will have been going on for just over four years by the time the “debate” happens, as it was June 6th, 2017 when The Hill reported “Pennsylvania rep. takes side in Wawa vs. Sheetz war“. Last June Boyle and Fetterman squared off in a point-counterpoint editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer, so this live face-off represents a serious escalation in the battle. The best part is they don’t have to go off on any tangents about politics, as Boyle announced in April he won’t be entering the Pennsylvania Dem Senate primary race, where Fetterman currently polls with a commanding lead over other current and potential candidates.

Spotted by Scott Braddock, editor of Texas political nerd site Quorum Report. There’s no koozies or any campaign gear for sale whatsoever on Bush’s website, so I’m guessing these were handed out for free at his campaign launch event Wednesday night.

CNN: “Political conservatives are more likely to believe untrue news reports than liberals are, researchers reported Wednesday. It’s the latest in a series of studies that show people on the political right tend to not only be targeted by fake news, but to believe it’s correct.”

“The small but intensive study, conducted by communications specialists Kelly Garrett and Robert Bond at Ohio State University, shows more engaging but false stories tended to support beliefs held by conservatives, while viral news stories that were also true tended to support beliefs held by liberals. It does not cover the pandemic period, although the research team is running a similar study now looking at pandemic information and misinformation. ‘The idea that U.S. conservatives are uniquely likely to hold misperceptions is widespread but has not been systematically assessed,’ Bond and Garrett wrote in the journal Science Advances.”

Judge’s order spotted Wednesday by Houston attorney Jack Edwards.

Retired Army Lt. Colonel Barnard Kemter was in the middle of his keynote Memorial Day speech to a crowd of three hundred people in Hudson, Ohio when his mic went out.  Thinking it was a technical glitch, he asked for help, but the public address system wasn’t restored, so he carried on in his “Army command voice” without the mic.

According to the Washington Post, after he finished his speech, he learned that the outage wasn’t due to a technical glitch; it was done intentionally by the organizers of the event, the Hudson American Legion Auxiliary, who objected to Kemter including the fact that Memorial Day commemorations started with freed Black slaves in Charleston, South Carolina honoring the slain Union soldiers who liberated them in the months after the Civil War ended.

“We asked him to modify his speech, and he chose not to do that,” Cindy Suchan, president of the Hudson American Legion Auxiliary, told a local media outlet. 

Adam Serwer, The Atlantic: “Republicans say they would like to move on from the 2020 election. ‘A lot of our members, and I think this is true of a lot of House Republicans, want to be moving forward and not looking backward,’ John Thune, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, told CNN on May 19. ‘Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections I think is a day lost on being able to draw a contrast between us and the Democrats’ very radical left-wing agenda.’ After Thune and 34 of his Republican colleagues used the filibuster last week to block a vote on creating a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Republicans of fearing the wrath of former President Donald Trump. ‘Shame on the Republican Party for trying to sweep the horrors of that day under the rug because they’re afraid of Donald Trump,’ Schumer said on the floor.”

“But Republicans are not blocking a bipartisan January 6 commission because they fear Trump, or because they want to ‘move on’ from 2020. They are blocking a January 6 commission because they agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized. Because they regard such victories as inherently illegitimate – the result of fraud, manipulation, or the votes of people who are not truly American – they believe that the law should be changed to ensure that elections more accurately reflect the will of Real Americans, who by definition vote Republican. They believe that there is nothing for them to investigate, because the actual problem is not the riot itself but the unjust usurpation of power that occurred when Democrats won. Absent that provocation, the rioters would have stayed home.”

See what these friggin worms did? Kilmeade asks Lara Trump if Donald actually believes that story that he’ll be reinstated, but her answer is “there’s no plan” to reinstate him. Of course there’s no fucking plan to make that happen. She does not address his belief in that nonexistent plan however, which effectively confirms that Maggie Haberman’s reporting from Tuesday is in fact accurate.

Also note how Kilmeade doesn’t ask her to clarify or anything. He just lets it go and moves on to whatever the white cultural grievances Fox News is complaining about today.

AP: “Donald Trump was calling into yet another friendly radio show when he was asked, as he often is, whether he’s planning a comeback bid for the White House. ‘We need you,’ conservative commentator Dan Bongino told the former president. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ Trump responded. ‘We are going to make you very happy, and we’re going to do what’s right.’ It was a noncommittal answer typical of a former president who spent decades toying with presidential runs. But multiple people who have spoken with Trump and his team in recent weeks say such remarks shouldn’t be viewed as idle chatter. Instead, they sense a shift, with Trump increasingly acting and talking like he plans to mount a run as he embarks on a more public phase of his post-presidency, beginning with a speech on Saturday in North Carolina. The interest in another run, at least for now, comes as Trump has been consumed by efforts to undo last year’s election, advancing baseless falsehoods that it was stolen and obsessing over recounts and audits that he is convinced could overturn the results, even though numerous recounts have validated his loss.

“He’s also facing the most serious legal threat of his career. New York prosecutors have convened a special grand jury to consider evidence in their criminal investigation into his business dealings – seen by many as a sign that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is moving toward seeking charges in the two-year, wide-ranging investigation that has included scrutiny of hush money payments, property valuations and employee compensation. Trump has slammed the probe as ‘purely political,’ and those around him insist he isn’t concerned about potential legal exposure even as they suggest his political posture is evolving. ‘I have definitely picked up a shift that there’s more of an intentionality to be leaning on the side of it’s going to happen than it’s not,’ said Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, who is close to the former president. ‘I think it’s a very real possibility.'”

“The last days folks. Get right with Christ.”

– The current top comment on the Gateway Pundit article “Report: Benjamin Netanyahu Ousted as Israeli Prime Minister after 12 Year Reign – Fake Conservative Joins with Islamist and Leftist Parties to Replace Netanyahu” posted Wednesday night.

The US Department of Justice has filed federal hate crime charges against Montana man for firing his gun on March 22nd into the house of a neighbor he believed was a member of the LGBTQ community and saying that he wanted to “get rid of the lesbians [and] gays,” Fox 29 Philadelphia reports.

Spoiler alert:  he’s a middle-aged, overweight white man with anger issues.

John Russell Howald, 44, of Basin, Montana is being charged under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which puts hate crimes under federal rule.  He’s also being charged with a federal firearms charge.  If convicted, he could face a life sentence on the hate crime charge and another 10 years for the firearms violations.  Howald is already serving a 10-year sentence in Montana State Prison for state charges stemming from the same incident. 

Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz is reportedly being investigated for potential obstruction of justice and witness tampering charges for participating in a phone call with one of the women who was part of the sex trafficking ring run by Gaetz’s declared “wingman,” Politico reports.

The inquiry stems from a phone call initiated by Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend to a woman who was connected to Joel Greenberg, a friend of Gaetz’s who is a former Seminole County, Florida tax collector.  Greenberg pleaded guilty last month in a plea bargain to six crimes, including sex-trafficking a 17-year-old in 2017, and the woman is a witness to Gaetz’s involvement in the various incidents with Greenberg.

Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend was speaking to the woman when she patched Gaetz into the call, and Gaetz had a conversation with the witness.  The witness later spoke with prosecutors and told them she talked with Gaetz.

Talking with the witness is not inherently illegal; any charges would depend on what was said on the call and by whom, which presumably the witness told prosecutors.

Was Fauci lying to protect Communist China?

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) June 3, 2021

https://youtu.be/orxqyd46rd8

“Pretty much everybody agreed that segregation was the … [preps to say ‘best’ by pursing his lips]… worst thing we ever did,” Fox New host (and man who didn’t read the script before the show) Tucker Carlson struggled to say on Wednesday night’s show.

And apparently, Tucker doesn’t think that slavery was the worst sin of the nation.  Shocking.

The Trump administration seized the phone records of multiple New York Times reporters shortly after taking office, adding to the list of journalists Trump monitored and whose civil rights were potentially violated.

According to the New York Times, the Trump administration secretly obtain four months worth of reporters’ communications records in an effort to uncover their sources.  The seizure happened for records of communications the journalists made just four months after Trump took office.  The Biden Administration disclosed the action of the Trump administration on Wednesday.  Previously, the Biden Administration disclosed that Trump seized records from multiple reporters at the Washington Post and at least one reporter at CNN.

“Seizing the phone records of journalists profoundly undermines press freedom,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the Times, said in a statement. “It threatens to silence the sources we depend on to provide the public with essential information about what the government is doing.”

Is the world ready for another George Bush?

George P. (for Prescott) Bush has announced that he will launch a Republican primary challenge to incumbent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Dallas Morning News reports.

Bush, who holds the surprisingly powerful position of Texas Land Commissioner, the state officer who oversees the state’s school fund for some odd reason, as well as the state’s mineral rights such as drilling permits, is the grandson of the 41st President George H.W. Bush and the nephew of the 43rd President George W. Bush.  He’s the eldest child of Jeb! Bush.

“Enough is enough, Ken. You’ve brought way too much scandal and too little integrity to this office,” Bush said. “It’s time to go.”

June 2nd, 2021: Earlier today Twitter users were outraged after a tweet from VOX reporter Aaron Rupar. Rupar looked at Trump’s Facebook page and saw the “zombie page”, which is still there, but which Trump is no longer able to post content to.  He then erroneously claimed that Trump’s page had been reactivated by Facebook. Rupar later retracted his claim, deleted the erroneous tweets, and issued a retraction: 

Mo Brooks is playing hide and seek with Eric Swalwell’s process servers. Swalwell is trying to serve a summons and a copy of Swalwell’s legal complaint regarding the January 6th insurrection attempt by MAGA terrorists to Mo Brooks. Mo Brooks is refusing to waive service, but is trying to evade process servers from Swalwell’s law firm so he can try to eke his way out of a lawsuit on a technicality. Swalwell has now filed a request for an extension citing “the inherent difficulties of attempting service on a sitting Member of Congress.” Swalwell requested an additional sixty days to serve Brooks, and the assistance of the US Marshals service to perform the service.