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- The sentient husk that is Newt Gingrich doing his best to stay relevant
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[Rubs temples furiously] I watched the Republican primary debate and Trump’s interview with Tucker Carlson so you don’t have to. Spoiler: Republicans are letting their weird-looking asses hang all the way out.
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The debate started off…weird…with a video of the viral song “Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony (obviously a GOP flytrap as a White guy singing about how he hates taxes and that some fat people receive welfare) as a way of framing the “issues” facing Americans today. Once that was over, things picked up with shockingly, a question about climate change. Vivek Ramaswamy was quick to call it a “hoax” and said that no one is dying as a result of climate change, actually, just climate change-fighting policies. He actually received a decent amount of boos for that declaration, so at least that’s something.
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Ramaswamy—the youngest and most obnoxious candidate onstage— involved himself in almost every belligerent exchange of the night (because he’s a huge prick!), campaigning openly in the hope that disgraced former president Donald Trump will one day give him a kiss on the head. On top of echoing Trump’s claim that climate change is a hoax, he also genuflected to Vladimir Putin, and promised to pardon Trump, hitting all those sweet Trump’s-VP notes.
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The candidates were extremely animated about banning abortion, as we knew they would be. Former Vice President Mike Pence once again established himself as the most staunchly anti-abortion candidate in the GOP, and provoked an exchange with Trump’s United Nations Secretary Nikki Haley who, while calling herself “unapologetically pro-life,” said it was dishonest of Pence to tell the public that passing a 15-week federal abortion ban, as he proposed, is politically possible. The candidates were mixed on whether they would support a 15-week federal ban, but most of them made sure to trot out false talking points about Dem-run states like California and New York, saying that they have no limits on abortion and allow abortions up until the time of birth. Nice fearmongering you’ve got there, folks!
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About halfway through the debate (after an hour and two commercial breaks), the heavily-bronzed Fox News moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum finally acknowledged “the elephant not in the room,”—Donald Trump.
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Baier asked the candidates to raise their hand if they would support Trump should he be the Republican nominee. Of the eight candidates on the dais, only New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson did not raise their hands. Nikki Haley did raise her hand, but further clarified her belief that the American people do not want to see a Trump vs. Biden matchup in 2024, and called Trump “The most disliked politician in America.” Though Hutchinson and Christie condemned Trump’s conduct, neither of them were able to make the other candidates look ridiculous or cowardly for sucking up to him.
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Meanwhile, Trump used his truly unhinged interview with equally-unhinged Tucker Carlson to say a lot to say about Jeffrey Epstein, lol. This interview—if you can even call it that—was completely off the rails. You can watch the full video for yourself here, but just know that it will take years off of your life, as it has mine. He started off by singling out the GOP primary challengers he hates most (his critics in the field Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson), calling Christie a “savage maniac lunatic” before Tucker swooped in to drag Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr and ask if Trump believes that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. That’s what we’re dealing with here! Then, Trump played the hits. “These people are sick.” “I think they hate our country.” “The election was rigged.” You know the drill by now. Democrats who opposed him? “Savage animals.” Windmills? They “don’t work!” At one point he launched into a sustained rant (at least 5 full minutes) about the…Panama Canal. He closed things out by bragging that January 6 was the “largest crowd” he’s ever spoken in front of, and couldn’t bring himself to say the country isn’t headed for civil war. Throughout the 45-minute waking nightmare, Tucker only interrupted occasionally in an attempt to transpose the true nonsense Trump was spewing into human English, or offer yet another egregiously-leading question.
One debate down, God knows how many more to go. I pray for us all, but mostly myself.
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If you’re looking for a no bullsh*t analysis on the republican debates that happened tonight, make sure to tune in to tomorrow’s special Pod Save America episode. Host Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes will be joined by Republican strategist Sarah Longwell to break down what went right - and wrong - for the contenders. Listen to new episodes on Tuesdays & Thursdays of Pod Save America, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary group chief who launched and aborted a coup attempt against Vladimir Putin and his military brass earlier this year, was on board a plane that crashed Wednesday evening north of Moscow. Weird coincidence! All 10 people aboard the plane were killed. Neither the Kremlin nor the Russian Defense Ministry has provided a comment. A Telegram channel linked to Wagner, however, pronounced Prigozhin dead and hailed him as a hero and a patriot who died at the hands of unidentified people the post referred to as “traitors to Russia.” When asked for comment, President Biden said, “I don’t know for a fact what happened. But I’m not surprised…There is not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer.”
For more insight, I spoke with Crooked’s foreign affairs contributor/guy in the office who is most obsessed with Yevgeny Prigozhin, Max Fisher, who had this to say:
- The big question isn't why the Russian government would want to kill the leader of a humiliating armed mutiny, but why now, two months later? And the answer is probably that Moscow needed that time to consolidate control of Prigozhin's privately operated empire. His mercenaries operated in Ukraine and controlled valuable mining operations in some African countries, among other functions that Moscow couldn't do without. As part of the amnesty deal after the mutiny, Prigozhin agreed to start handing those over. [Russian General Sergey] Surovikin probably got a similar deal. You have to wonder if both men really thought they might be spared, or if they knew all along they were setting themselves up for this.
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You’d like to think after living through the world’s hottest month on record, and the devastating extreme weather events that came along with it, that public concern about climate change would finally break through to the right wing. Unfortunately, this is America we’re talking about. A new Washington Post-University of Maryland Poll shows that Americans remain deeply divided along—you guessed it—party lines over whether man-made climate change is driving these extreme weather events. Twice as many Democrats as Republicans attribute extreme weather events to climate change (the scientific consensus). Republicans have dug their heels in on “skepticism” about climate change, and even when they acknowledge personally experiencing extreme weather events with greater frequency. Although when polled, fewer Republicans say extreme weather is becoming more severe now than in 2019. Denial is one hell of a drug!
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