Grabien

BUTKER: “Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia — as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media — all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder. Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people, it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice. He is not alone. From the man behind the Covid lockdowns, to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America, they all have a glaring thing in common — they are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn’t cut it. These are the sorts of things we are told in polite society to not bring up, you know, the difficult and unpleasant things. But if we are going to be men and women for this time in history, we need to stop pretending that the Church of Nice is a winning proposition. We must always speak and act in charity, but never mistake charity for cowardice. It is safe to say that over the past few years I’ve gained quite the reputation for speaking my mind. I never envisioned myself nor wanted to have this sort of a platform, but God has given it to me, so I have no other choice but to embrace it and preach more hard truths about accepting your lane and staying in it.”

Biden: “My name is Joe Biden, I work for Kamala Harris. (laughter) I asked her to be my vice president because I knew I needed somebody smarter than me.”

Reporter: “Can we explain to Californians how we moved from $100 billion surplus to such a significant deficit in just a matter of a few years?” Newsom: “Well, it’s — yeah, we can explain it. Through $149 billion of unprecedent capital gains, 11.6 percent, when traditional capital gains is around 5.18 percent, on average. So it’s almost double. So you have massive volatility. You have requirements under Prop 2, the Gann, you have requirements under Prop 98, which require that set aside, we use 93 percent of our surplus, which is I want to be careful, either on the higher end or without precedent, for one-time purposes. So we anticipated because we didn’t want that surplus to go to ongoing commitments, we anticipated that shortfall. What we didn’t anticipate is these rain bombs in December, January, February and March, these atmospheric rivers that led to a federal declaration that led to FEMA and the IRS moving in a direction where we couldn’t collect our taxes until I believe, November 16th as opposed to April 15th. And so therein lied this blackout period that beguiled all of us, the LAO finance economist experts. And interestingly, I mean, there’s been at the White House recently, had an impact in terms of the IRS collections as well, with their estimates because there were other states that had similar delays and their taxes related to weather events. If there was any indication that climate change has impacts well beyond those that are often promoted, I would consider our financial delays as just another example of why we need to tackle them, another reason I’m looking forward to conversations that we will have next week.”

ENTEN: “Look, these Sun Belt battleground states — frankly, for the Joe Biden campaign, these numbers are an absolute disaster. The smallest lead is in Arizona for Donald Trump, he’s up six. Look at this, 9 in Georgia. 13 in Nevada, my goodness gracious, my God, that is a huge lead. No Democrat has lost that state since John Kerry lost it back in 2004. How about these Great Lake battleground states? This is something that the Joe Biden campaign can work with. Look, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump up three, but that’s well within the margin of error. Wisconsin, Donald Trump up one, well within the margin of error, and actually a Joe Biden lead well within the margin of error up a point here. This they can work with the Joe Biden campaign. This the Donald campaign — Donald Trump campaign absolutely loves, and it looks like a lot of the other polling out of the Sun Belt battlegrounds as well.” BOLDUAN: “When you’re looking into the numbers, why do you think Biden is doing better in the Great Lakes and Trump is doing so much better in the Sun Belt?” ENTEN: “Yeah, the Trump coalition is changing. That’s basically what’s cooking here. This is at least one of the big reasons why. So this is among likely voters in these — in all these battleground states we just spoke about. Back in 2020, 84 percent of the Trump campaign’s — of the Trump coalition was white. Look where it is now. It’s 78 percent. The nonwhite portion of the Trump coalition, it was 13 percent in 2020, look at this now. It’s 19 percent. So the Trump coalition is becoming more diverse. And of course those Sun Belt battleground states are more diverse than the Great Lake battleground states.” BOLDUAN: “You’re talking about — you — you’re looking at the Nevada’s and Arizona’s here.” ENTEN: “Of course, if you look at Nevada, Arizona, heavy Hispanic population, Georgia heavily African-American population, with the Michigan does have some black voters in it, but Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are heavily, heavily white.” BOLDUAN: “Very interesting. OK. Add it all up, what does it say about where the race stands right now, we’re talking Electoral College and the race to 270.” ENTEN: “Yeah. The race to 270. Its advantage Donald Trump, but he’s not over the 270 mark just yet. All right? So if we flip Nevada, Arizona and Georgia here in your lighter shades of Pink, you add them to the states and of course, the second congressional district up in Maine, which Donald Trump won last time around, that gets him to 268 electoral votes. If we keep Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in the too close to call category, along with the Nebrasca’s second congressional district, Joe Biden at 225. So it’s advantage Donald Trump, but Joe Biden does at this point have a path to 270.” BOLDUAN: “Yeah, and right now as you’re pointing out neither —“ ENTEN: “Yeah.” BOLDUAN: “— neither there.” ENTEN: “Neither there.” BOLDUAN: “And we have a long road to it still.” ENTEN: “Yes, we do.”

BERMAN: “All right. With me now CNN Senior Political Commentator Van Jones and Republican Strategist Matt Gorman making his debut on the morning edition of ‘CNN NEWS CENTRAL.’ Matt, it’s taking you so long to come on, I’m going to make you wait. So this first question is for you, Van. That poll from ‘The New York Times,’ let me read you, Van, a section of their write up there. It says, ‘Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are essentially tied among 18-to-29-year-olds and Hispanic voters, even though each group gave Mr. Biden more than 60 percent0 of their vote in 2020. Mr. Trump also wins more than 20 percent of black voters — a tally that would be the highest level of black support for any Republican presidential candidate since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.’ That’s some paragraph about swing state polls a few months before the election, Van.” Jones: “Yeah. I mean, it’s — it should be a wake up call. Young people are upset. And it’s not just the situation in Gaza. The economic prospects for young people are miserable. It’s not — and that’s been building under Obama, it’s been building under Trump, it’s building under Biden, we just do not have a pathway for young people to be able to pay off their student debt, get a house. People are looking at this AI wave and are worried about what job, what career path. And so that pain has to be spoken to directly and specifically, and I think that we’re not — we’re not yet feeling — hearing a full throated approach to the young people. There’s a symbolic piece around student loans, that’s not going to be enough for Joe Biden.” BERMAN: “Very quickly, Van because I want — do want to get to Matt here who’s been waiting patiently. What has Biden done right and done wrong so far in your mind to address this group?” Jones: “Well, I mean, look, this is what Harry said, the way I translate what Harry says, is, Detroit’s going to matter a lot, and Michigan, Pennsylvania is going to matter a lot, and Wisconsin — I mean, Milwaukee is going to matter a lot. In other words, those core black cities in the those swing states in the Great Lakes area, they’re going to matter a bunch. And you’re going to have to — it’s not just about the messaging, people have so much stock on. Well, what’s Biden going to say? What’s his ad going to be? You’ve got to get at the grassroots level in those core black cities and make sure that people are heard from by surrogates, heard from by — by the campaign and responded to. It’s going to be a pitch on the ground battle in those Great Lakes states, in those black cities. And that’s where you’ve got to go.”

WELKER: “But, senator, I mean, is there a non-military way to get rid of Hamas given the threat that they pose, given that they say their very goal is to destroy Israel’s existence?” Sanders: “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Look, Hamas is a — that is exactly right. That is their goal. It is difficult. I don’t want to minimize this. So, the goal is to defeat Hamas, but not to destroy or cause the enormous amount of destruction that we’re now seeing in Gaza. And I hope that the future for the Palestinian people is a new generation of Palestinian leaders who focus on allowing the people to have a state of their own. We’ve got to support a two-state solution, improving the economy, rebuilding the economy. That’s the long-term goal.”

Jones: “Concha, you were there last night. Burgum came and spoke, I think about 15 minutes. Is he a perceived as, like, a vice presidential candidate?” CONCHA: “Absolutely. Because he is seen a successful businessman, just like Donald Trump, and there’s no baggage there and he has a great approval rating in North Dakota. Overall, it was amazing to see 100,000 people, according to the city of Wildwood, at this rally, and all of them congregated and no one rioted and no one looted, and there wasn’t any anti-Semitism in the air. It was a happy environment whether we’re talking about the crowd, whether we’re talking about Donald Trump who relished the moment. That’s certainly for sure.” Jones: “Lisa, when you look at Doug Burgum, I was really impressed with him in the debates. I don’t know that he won the debates, but he probably won the most ground in the debates, maybe because most of us didn’t know who he was. But Trump talked about how he was an energy guy.”

[Clip starts] Trump: “So, this was a very big day, a very revealing day. As you’ve seen, their case is totally falling apart. They have nothing on books and records, and even something that should bear very little relationship to the case. It’s just a disaster.” [Clip ends] RADDATZ: “That was former President Donald Trump reacting to the sometimes salacious and often heated testimony of Stormy Daniels this week in his New York hush money trial. Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen is expected on the stand tomorrow. ABC’s Aaron Katersky has preview of what Cohen’s testimony could mean for the case.” [Clip starts] KATERSKY (voice-over): “Over the last three weeks, the jury has heard a story of sex and scheming. Stormy Daniels described a 2006 sexual encounter with Donald Trump in a hotel suite that he said never happened. She told the jury Trump wore silk or satin pajamas, kept Old Spice, Pert Plus and a manicure set which was gold in his toiletry bag. And she said, while she never felt threatened, there was an imbalance of power for sure. There are the details the prosecutor said Trump paid to bury in 2016, and they are now counting on Michael Cohen to complete the narrative and pin the crime on Trump.” COHEN: “I’m kind of looking forward to it because, again, can’t be finished with something unless you start it, right? KATERSKY (voice-over): “Cohen has already been a trial fixture. The jury saw his $130,000 wire to Daniels 12 days before the 2016 election. The invoices Cohen prepared, and the checks Trump signed to reimburse him in monthly installments, and the jury heard a recording of Cohen on the phone saying Trump complained about paying.” COHEN: “I can’t even tell how many times he said to me, ‘You know, I hate the fact that we did it,’ and my comment to him was, ‘But every person that you’ve spoken to told you it was the right move.’” KATERSKY (voice-over): “The defense has tried to distance Trump from criminal conduct, but prosecutors have said Cohen will testify that he paid off Daniels at Trump’s direction and did it to make sure voters did not learn of her sexual encounter with Trump that he denies happened. Cohen will have to overcome unflattering testimony from other trial witnesses. Stormy Daniels’ one-time lawyer Keith Davidson called Cohen ‘a jerk and highly excitable, sort of a pants on fire kind of guy who no one wanted to talk to.’ Hope Hicks said Cohen was Trump’s fixer only because he first broke things. Trump’s defense attorney has said Cohen cannot be trusted as a convicted liar and is obsessed with Trump. There he is on TikTok, first reported by ABC News, wearing a shirt with Trump behind bars in an orange jumpsuit, taunting his former boss.” COHEN: “Trump 2024? More like Trump 20 to 24 years.” KATERSKY: “Ahead of his testimony, the judge instructed prosecutors to communicate to Mr. Cohen that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements about the case. He will have plenty to say from the witness stand.” [Clip ends] KATERSKY: “Martha, when Michael Cohen takes the witness stand here on Monday, it will be the second time in recent months he has come face-to-face with Donald Trump. Cohen testified against Trump in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case. That time, Trump volunteered to come to court to stare down Michael Cohen. This time, as the defendant, Trump will have no choice but to sit there and listen. Martha?” RADDATZ: “Our thanks to Aaron Katersky.”

KAY: “... Senator King when he had just come back from Israel quite recently saying, look, there are parallels here between Ukraine and Israel. The Russians are basically waiting for the West to lose interest and Hamas is basically waiting for America’s own political divisions to play out in public in such a way that it no longer becomes tenable for the White House to carry on supporting Israel. And it’s interesting to — just to see those divisions in — I mean, Chris Van Hollen who is a supporter of Joe Biden’s, who has been very firmly on the side of the administration on very many issues, still critical of the idea that we should be giving, America should be giving arms to Israel without any kind of restrictions. I mean, Ed, you’ve been writing about this — this idea of the kind of the the links here between Russia and Israel and the United States and how what is happening in Hamas and the impact that is — in Gaza — the impact that’s having on American domestic politics, and how this is just — you know, anytime there are divisions in American politics, it’s a win for who? It’s a win for Moscow.” LUCE: “It’s a win for Moscow quite right. I mean, the — the big geopolitical beneficiary of what’s going on in the Middle East is Putin, is Russia, it’s diverted attention from what’s going on in Ukraine. It made it easier for him to say that the United States has double standards, that when it comes to Gaza, it turns a blind eye to the mass civilian casualties going on there, keep supplying arms to Israel, but when it comes to Ukraine, it wants the whole global south, the whole world to condemn it. Now, this is a false narrative. But it’s easier for him to make that narrative. And therefore if he, if Putin is the big geopolitical winner from chaos, in the Middle East, Biden is the big geopolitical loser. So the more this goes on on the ground, in Israel, and in Gaza, rather and the more this Rafah operation limbers up to happen, the more Putin is going to be rubbing his hands in glee, and as you know, he’s preparing a big offensive, spring offensive, in Ukraine. And our attention is going to be at least partly elsewhere in Rafah.”

PSAKI: “So, in the usual flood of news this week, you may have missed the latest chapter in the MAGA effort to spread doubt about the integrity of our elections. I mean, we love talking about stories that are undercovered here. So this week, Speaker Mike Johnson and a merry gang of election-denying Republicans held a press conference on the Capitol steps and they were introducing a bill at that press conference that criminalizes something that is already very illegal_ non-citizens voting in federal elections. But more notable than some completely unnecessary legislation and the press conference accompanying it is the narrative they are trying to push.” [Clip starts] Johnson: “There is currently an unprecedented and a clear and present danger to the integrity of our election system, and that is the threat of non-citizens and illegal aliens voting in our election. (...) It is true that Democrats have expressed a desire to turn non-citizens into voters. That is what this open border has been all about.” (...) MILLER: “It’s a combination of a wide open border and obstruction of any effort to verify the citizenship of who votes in our elections. These things are, all combined, an effort to end our Republican form of government.” [Clip ends] PSAKI: “Every time Stephen Miller shows up at a press conference, you know it is going to be crazy. But there’s a whole lot of conspiracy brain to unpack here. First, the speaker of the House and his fellow Republicans are falsely claiming that millions of non-citizens illegally vote. Look, Republican election conspiracies are nothing new, but what makes those remarks from Johnson even more outrageous is the brazen attempt to actually tie two right-wing conspiracies together, all of them with a bow: their false claim of mass election fraud, and their racist and frankly dumb replacement theory. We’ve talked about this on our show before, it’s the once fringe but now apparently mainstream Republican dogma that Democrats and elites are purposefully bringing in migrants from third-world countries in order to dilute the influence of political power of real Americans. ‘Real Americans.’ According to Johnson and his colleagues, Joe Biden has opened the border to as many migrants as possible in order to activate them as fraudulent Democratic votes come November. That is crazy. That theory is not only false and racist and dangerous and insane, but it also crumbles under the slightest weight of the most basic questions.” [Clip starts] Reporter: “Are you saying that there are currently non-residents voting in federal elections? And if that’s what you’re saying, do you have an estimate of how many?” Johnson: “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable. We don’t have that number.” [Clip ends] PSAKI: “‘We know intuitively, but it’s not easily provable.’ I mean, that’s like saying, ‘I don’t know it for a fact, but I think it’s true.’ So, Mike Johnson desperately wants you to trust his vibes, basically. But what he’s talking about just isn’t a thing. Don’t take it from me, that is according to the Brennan Center which found that non-citizen voting is vanishingly rare. That’s according to conservative Cato Institute, which said that ‘non-citizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers.’ And this is pretty rich, maybe my favorite: It’s even according to the hard-right Heritage Foundation, which, according to their own database, reports less than 100 cases of non-citizens illegally voting between 2002 and 2023. The Heritage Foundation, I will remind you, was also the home of the nearly 1000-page Project 2025 plan on their website. Less than 100 cases in a period where literally hundreds of millions of votes were cast. It is just not a thing that happens on any significant level. And why would it? As I said at the top, non-citizens can’t vote, that’s already a crime. At best, this Republican legislation pushes a solution looking for a problem. But far more alarming, it is intended to sow the seeds of doubt about our country’s elections should Donald Trump lose. We are not going to take our eye off of it, we’ll keep talking about it, and neither should you.”

ZAKARIA: “But first, here’s my take. When President Biden made clear he was going to run for reelection I had a sense of what his election strategy was and thought it was an intelligent path to victory. After the chaos of Covid and Trump, Joe Biden would stand for normalcy and a rising tide of good economic news. Donald Trump would divide Republicans with significant chunks of the party wishing that someone like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis would be their nominee. Meanwhile, Trump would unite and motivate Democrats, allowing President Biden to focus on the votes of independents and swing states who threw the Electoral College to Trump in 2016 and to Biden in 2020. I have to admit None of this is playing out as I thought it would. Trump is now leading in almost all the swing states. But behind those numbers lie even more troubling details. As someone worried about the prospects of a second Trump term, I think it’s best to be honest about reality. I understand that polls are not always accurate, but in general, they have tended to underestimate Donald Trump’s support, not overestimate it. I doubt that there are many shy Biden voters in the country. The economy has been in a robust recovery for more than two years now, with unemployment hitting a 54-year low in 2023 and increasing only slightly since then. But Biden is getting little credit for it. The shift here is stark. On the question of whom voters trust more to deal with the economy, Trump has a 22-point lead over Biden, according to an NBC poll from January. This marks a 15-point bump for Trump compared to the same poll in 2020.Perhaps this is because inflation is a far more pervasive problem than unemployment, affecting all Americans every day. Perhaps it’s because people’s views on the economy now are largely derived from their broader attitudes towards the candidates. But whatever the reasons, it’s a stunning reversal in the midst of a relentless stream of good economic news. On cultural issues, Biden and Democrats benefit from the opposition to the Republican Party’s position on abortion. But on the other great cultural issue, immigration, Biden is 35 points behind Trump as to who would handle it better. And I do wonder whether abortion will be as large an issue in a presidential race, given that reversing Roe v. Wade threw the issue to state governments and legislatures, and not the federal government. Perhaps the most worrying new trend for the Democrats is that far from being the more unified party, they are now bitterly divided over the war in Gaza. Bernie Sanders has said the eruption of pro-Palestinian protests could be Biden’s Vietnam and even invoked the specter of Lyndon Johnson choosing not to run for reelection in 1968 because of the opposition to that war. The analogy is far-fetched. America then was itself sending hundreds of thousands of troops to Vietnam, with more being recruited from college campuses every week. But there’s no denying that the party seems more openly divided than it has been in decades. Only 33 percent of Americans said they approved of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, which is now opposed both by people who think he is too soft and people who think he is too hard on Israel. Meanwhile, Republicans seem to be uniting behind Trump. Whatever opposition he faced in the primaries has largely melted away, and the trials against him keep him in the spotlight, infuriate his base who sees him as a martyr, and even may serve to make him the object of some sympathy among people in general who believed that his prosecutors are politically motivated. This happens to be true in my opinion. I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump. A majority of Americans are skeptical that Trump will be able to get a fair trial, according to a CNN poll. And I haven’t even mentioned Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And Cornel West and Jill Stein, all of whom would probably take votes away from Biden. Things could change. Polls do suggest that were Trump to be convicted of a felony, it could shift votes in Biden’s favor. The administration may be able to pull off a ceasefire in Gaza and then a broader political settlement that gives Palestinians political rights and Israel diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. Trump could always embroil himself in some kind of scandal. But trendlines are not working in Biden’s favor. He needs to do something bold and dramatic to seize the initiative — on asylum policy, for example — and reverse these numbers. The one that troubles me the most is on the question of who was the more competent. Joe Biden led Donald Trump by 9 points in 2020, but Trump now leads by 16 points in January 2024. That 25-point shift could be a reflection of people’s sense that the president’s age is affecting his capacity to govern. And there’s very little that Joe Biden can do now to change that perception.”

BASH: “But this week he put conditions on U.S. aid to Israel for the first time. Is he isolating himself from both sides of the Middle East debate? Here with me now to discuss that is Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a critic of the way Israel has been carrying out its war in Gaza. Thank you so much for being here. Do you support what President Biden told Erin Burnett, that he is blocking some military aid to Israel and won’t support them, will block more if in fact Israel goes into Rafah more aggressively?” MURPHY: “I do support President Biden’s decision, and let me tell you why. President Biden is learning the mistakes of U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. What we learned in both of those efforts was that you cannot defeat a terrorist ideology, you cannot defeat a terrorist movement with military force alone. In Afghanistan, we spent 20 years there. And, ultimately, we were so cavalier about civilian casualties that we made the Taliban stronger and we ultimately lost that engagement to the Taliban. And so, in Israel, what Joe Biden is telling the Israelis is, ‘We will be partners with you, but you have to understand that the pace of civilian casualties, the amount of humanitarian disaster there is in the long run going to make Hamas stronger, is going to make it more likely that Israel will be attacked again, and is going to make other terrorist organizations that have designs to attack the United States stronger. So we will be partners in this fight, but in the situation of Rafah, we cannot have a military invasion of Rafah that ends up in tens of thousands of additional civilians dying. That would be bad for Israel from a moral and a strategic standpoint.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: RADDATZ: “So what does it mean for what happens next in this conflict? I’m joined now by democratic senator Chris Coons of Delaware. Good to see you this morning, senator. These huge bombs that the president is now pausing have already been used by the Israelis in Gaza causing massive destruction, civilian casualties, and yet the State Department report says there is not enough information to conclude they violated any international law. Are you satisfied with that conclusion?” COONS: “Well, Martha, thanks for a chance to be on with you again. Let’s be clear about what that report also concludes, which is that because of how Hamas has conducted itself in this horrifying conflict that began with their tragic barbarous attack on 1,200 civilians in which they also killed 45 Americans on October 7th, because Hamas embeds its fighters and its war piles and its stockpiles underneath civilian targets, beneath hospitals and mosques and schools, the report by the State Department says it’s difficult to conclude whether the unacceptably high civilian death toll is because of Hamas and its strategies and tactics or because of Israel and how they’ve conducted this conflict. I do think it bears repeating every time we talk about this, that Hamas started this conflict and Hamas and their conduct has largely driven the humanitarian crisis.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: MOHYELDIN: “Fun to watch them destroy themselves, and also, probably willing to put their lives on the line, given what happened to Mike Pence. They were, literally, chanting, hang Mike Pence. I don’t know if I want a job where I know that the eventuality is, I could be hung at the gallows.” OBEIDALLAH: “It’s remarkable what Molly said, to Rick Scott, the senator from Florida flies to New York to be Donald Trump’s service animal, essentially, his emotional support animal. A service senator sitting in the courtroom. Meanwhile, Tim Scott, J.D. Vance, the puppy killer. I think there should be a physical competition. I don’t think this is enough. I think there should be a steel cage match, three go in, and one comes out. Whoever wins, whoever beats the others enough gets in there, that’s the one who is going to win because they can all say the right thing. I want to see who is really going to fight for Trump, physically fight for Trump.” JONG FAST: “They are doing real damage.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: CAPEHART: “You know, David, if Mike Johnson had to rely on Democrats to keep his job and also has to rely on them to successfully govern, doesn’t that make the speakership Republican in name only?” JOLLY: “Sure, Jonathan. Hakeem Jeffries is the speaker of the House right now, he really has been for the past 18 months or so. If you look at the legislation that had to pass from the debt ceiling increase to keeping the government open last year, aid to Ukraine, and now saving the actual office of the speakership, it’s been a Hakeem Jeffries-led democratic coalition that has allowed the house to govern, and to function. You use the term epic fail by Marjorie Taylor Greene. There is such a glorious incompetence from the lady from Georgia in this. And I mean it, incompetence. If you consider what Matt Gaetz did, he succeded, he was a tactician. You can like or hate the guy, but he knows what he’s doing. Marjorie Taylor Greene really doesn’t know what she’s doing. But I’d suggest the writing is on the wall for Mike Johnson, he will not be Speaker in January. Hakeem Jeffries could become speaker, or, if Republicans hold the house, we have seen he does not have enough votes within his caucus to remain speaker, and Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats will not bail him out in January. House Republicans will have a new leader in January if the return to the majority.”

CARVILLE: “And Trump’s more ahead that he’s ever been. More — fewer people think January 6 was any kind of what it was, as an assault on the temple of democracy, our Constitution, I don’t know, whatever the f**k you want to say. It’s going the wrong way. It’s not working. Everything that we’re throwing is spaghetti at a wall and None of it is sticking, me included. And it’s hard when you’re starting your 80th year and you — you know, like anybody else, I have an opinion of myself, and the opinion I’ve come to is, I don’t matter. It doesn’t matter. You can prepare, you can be on TV, you can write pieces, you can have a YouTube channel, you can have a podcast, and nothing. Nothing. And, you know, we’ve got to, like, try to think of something different, because what we’re doing is really, really not working.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: Trump: “Thank you. You know, you cannot even see the back there are so many people here. There are so many people here. Over 100,000 people. You know they thought it would hit 48. They’ve more than double that you cannot even see the end. I wish we didn’t have the press here I wish they could move them back because they can’t see in the back. I always tell the press, turn your cameras around to show the audience. They never do it. Fake news they never do it. They never do it. Turn around. It turnedturn around. Turn around. Turn around. >> They are saying turn around, it is true. I don’t know why. Even the ones who are sort of friendly to me maybe seven or 8% are good. They are believers. They never turn around and I love to show the crowd as far as the eye can see.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: SAPHIER: “He covered a lot.” HURT: “He sure did and pointed out most women are probably not going to want to play against somebody like Lawrence Taylor, probably accurate. That was an amazing speech, spoke for an hour and a half. City officials and town officials told the Associated Press, 100,000 people there. People camped out overnight. This is why Democrats are terrified of Donald Trump. This is why they will stop at nothing to stop him because there’s no Democrat, no politician today who can draw a crowd like Donald Trump draws and a speech like that is entertaining, he’s at the beach in the fairgrounds, some training on his face, he can do it in a way that keeps people’s attention for an hour and a half and that’s serious political power and Democrats literally don’t know what to do what about it so the best shot they have is to fight him in court.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: Wallace: “And that is the continuing debate about how we in the media should be covering both of these candidates. And it really became kind of a debate this week. Former Obama advisers they‘re Dan Pfeiffer went after The New York Times and he said that they do not see their job as saving democracy or stopping and authoritarian from taking power. The times executive editor Joe khan responded, that‘s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate. Right-hand, should the media report more on an I say this some quotes that Trump threat.” SALAM: “Look, the media is very pluralistic in our society, yhat‘s a good and healthy thing. And there‘s an awful lot of prestige media that is fixated on this idea of Donald Trump as a threat. And in doing so so in many cases, they‘ve torched and undermine their credibility as independent, neutral arbiters of the truth. I think that‘s what Joe kahn was reacting to this sense that actually there are an awful lot of Americans who are tuning out prestige mainstream establishment media that has been basically why New York Times let me, let me say that.” SWISHER: “First of all, Dan didn‘t say quite what he was Joe was asked Joe calm was as secondly, this quote was, I get that, but chilcott, nobody thinks they‘re the state news agency. He said that they would state news agency. He was basically saying pfeiffer and a lot of people look, yeah. I now say negative things about Biden and do all of that. But there is an existential threat. He claims to the democracy and that needs to be emphasized, right?” Garcia-NAVARRO: “But I think Joe kahn went too far what I have to be the Chinese news? I was like, what more covering of the threat to democracy I think I think The New York Times justifiably gets joked about in New York Times, pitch bought for saying whatever happens, there‘s three people in a diner in I do work for The New York Times, so it feels odd that we‘re discussing The New York Times and I‘m not going to say this. Let me, let me just say one thing which we‘re not talking about. The but but but I want to I want to use this as an example and I think it works for The New York Times as it does for any other mainstream media, which is this, if you look over the past two days, you‘ve had an article on the an investigation into a worm in the brain of Kennedy. You‘ve had huge investigation into Donald Trump‘s use of anti-Semitic tropes and language and how unbelievably hypocritical it is for people on the right to be going after what‘s your take on the left and no an investigation into Biden. And so what I‘m saying is, what are we trying to do here in the media? Are we trying to say two people you need to understand this in this particular way. We need to lecture you, or we are going to respect people to be able to look at all these facts and make their own decisions. And I would argue, we are trying we are trying to respect our audience and what The New York Times is doing is a very robust interrogation of everyone.” SWISHER: “Well, I think there are justifiable criticism about The New York Times coverage. I won‘t go into it.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: Steele: “Look, it’s campaigning 101. This is why I emphasize a lot to folks when we get into the political cycles. Please stop watching and fondling national polling.” Sanders: “I thought you were going to tell them not to watch us.” Steele: “I would never say that. It distorts the lens. It is not where the meat is on the ground being round up. It’s that sort of local flavor because that will bubble up international polling in September and October. Not so much now because folks are getting ready for graduations and makeup parties and they got going on. They are getting ready to go to the beach. September, labor day, everyone settles down, everybody gets into their groove and they been fed a steady diet of the local news. And they are reading and watching the local news channel. That comes back in play. It’s a smart strategy and to put that in place. We were talking in the last — this whole effort to do the counterprogramming. Talk a little bit from your experience, both if you can, inside the White House of making that political move when you have the forces inside the White House going, we still must be presidential.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: BAIER: “Trey, to Charlie’s point, Hamas has now bombed this one crossing, Karam Shalom four times. That is the place where aid was supposed to be coming into Gaza and Rafah.” GOWDY: “Yeah, I mean good luck if your general election message is we were tougher on Israel than we were on Iran or Hamas. I think if he were smart about it, he would realize that these young progressives or anarchists on their own college campuses are not going to vote for Donald Trump. But people who don’t like lawlessness, who are watching these images, who are listening to the squad beat up on the police and side with criminality, he is going to lose their vote. He has got a political calculus, I just delight in the fact that it is not the Republican Party being drugged by their base, it is now the Democrats.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: Steele: “So, Jen, how is the family?” PSAKI: “Well, while you were watching Susanne about this story —“ Sanders: “I am concerned. He wants to be president.” PSAKI: “This is 2024, everyone so here we are. But also there was a poll this week and they were talking about Wisconsin or if he is in the race and on a ballot in Wisconsin, he gets 12% of the vote. Polls are imperfect and are testing a moment in time, but dad worms, conspiracy theories, all the things aside — but also, my larger point is this man is a real threat.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: BAIER: “Charlie, it is not getting a ton of coverage other places. What about this in this moment, what happened this week?” HURT: “Well, it is pretty extraordinary especially when you look at those clips of Joe Biden talking 15 years ago versus today. The time for debating about whether or not American taxpayers should be paying for aid to Israel is over and done. Congress voted on this. The idea, that the president is trying to hold up weapons and hold up what Congress allocated for Israel because he claims his concern is that Israel is obstructing aid from getting to civilians in Gaza is pretty extraordinary, especially when you consider the one thing that no one disputes is that Hamas has been from the beginning blocking aid from getting to civilians in Gaza. I think what we are looking at right now is this weird situation where the protesters on college campuses have taken over the White House and basically are dictating foreign policy for Joe Biden in the White House.”

[Applause] Michu IAB jiku Lynn [Applause] Bo Aaliyah [Applause] bamon Alisa Cole [Applause] Bishop Victoria Lee Zub Bross Marina zth camp [Applause] Allison care Camp [Applause] bull Tom mme Thomas Thomas [Applause] me okay can you can you use the book also read this and then

MORROW: “Let’s go to our next guest, Fox News contributor Joe Concha. Joe, thanks so much for coming on the U.S. Report. And Joe Biden, I tell you what, he’s not looking too great. First, we had the stories that all of his aides had to walk around him when he was going to the helicopter so that he didn’t, you know, show off his stumbles too much. And now his handlers are reportedly, quote, looking to shorten his speeches, in what a Biden campaign spokesman claims is about an effort to have quality over quantity. Now, I’m not buying this. What about you, Joe?” CONCHA: “Oh, I think think that if you’re trying to win the presidency again, you can’t do it by pleading the Fifth, right? And the shortened Biden speeches, it only makes sense because we’ve seen him time and again lose battles against teleprompters where he’s literally reading — and you know what these are, James — cues in the teleprompter. So, when he’s told to pause after a sentence, he’s literally reading the word ‘pause’. Or, yesterday he read a speech about a guy that he said was drafted by the Green Bay Packers and his name was ‘Riley Last Name’. Literally like said that. So it’s Ron Burgundy over and over again. And then if Biden goes off script, then it’s cleanups on aisles 5, 16, 24, and 31 as far as either some sort of blatant lie that could be easily fact-checked, exaggeration that could be fact-checked, or some story that makes zero sense. So here we have the sitting president of the United States, the so-called leader of the free world, and his handlers are petrified to put him out there in any way, shape or form because they know that he’s not aging like a fine wine but like cottage cheese at this point.” MORROW: “Well, yeah, indeed. I mean, you know, cottage cheese, does that go well with his Uncle Bosey who apparently got eaten by cannibals the other week, according to him? But you know, as you say, it’s like the teleprompter, if I was to just simply say ‘Google bans Trump ad,’ which is the prompt in front of me, he would just read that, instead of saying last week a pro-Trump ad targeting black voters in Georgia was removed by Google for allegedly violating policy. Joe, let’s have a quick look at this policy violation.” [Clip starts] UNKNOWN: “Hello, I’m with the Biden campaign.” VOTER: “Yeah, yeah, I voted for Biden last time.” UNKNOWN: “That’s fantastic.” VOTER: “Is it? Everything costs more — food, gas, rent.” UNKNOWN: “Okay, but Biden’s helping pay rent for newcomers to America from around the world.” VOTER: “You mean illegal immigrants? I’m struggling to pay my bills, but Biden’s paying rent for illegals? They get handouts and I’m paying for it.” UNKNOWN: “But Biden can still count on your vote, right?” VOTER: “Things were better before Biden. I’m voting for Trump.” [Clip ends] MORROW: “Clearly, that ad was so effective, someone just didn’t want people to see it. Is this a sign of things to come with Big Tech trying to put their thumb on the scale of the coming election?” CONCHA: “Oh James, we’ve seen this movie over and over again as far as Big Tech getting involved in these situations and outright censorship by Google in this situation. You watched that ad, you tell me what the violation was exactly as far as anything that was spoken about. Gas prices and food prices are higher than they were when Joe Biden took office, significantly higher. And many black voters here in this country are not happy at all that illegal immigrants are coming into this country and being given all this free stuff in terms of lodging, in terms of phones, in terms of credit cards and food, and they see their social services collapsing around them because we’re spending all this money taking care of illegals. So, I don’t understand what was wrong with that ad that was remotely controversial. But Google obviously doesn’t think there’s something wrong with the ad too. But you’re right, they are trying to weaponize Big Tech once again. We’ll see it from Facebook, we’ll see it from Google. We won’t see it from X, I don’t think, because Elon Musk is now the owner and things have changed over there. But I think people are on to this and probably now this ad’s going to be seen by more people because it went viral on social media anyway than they would have if Google just allowed it to be played.”