Personally, we cats find the VP speculation for Benedict Donald to be pretty silly. There's no guarantee that, cognitively, he's even going to be able to make it to the Republican convention, so how is he going to choose? (Maybe Susie Wiles will make the decision for him.)
But the media still hasn't figured out how to cover Trump, so they treat him like a normal candidate looking for a running mate — instead of as the threat to democracy that he is. Which means that a horror story like Kristi Noem's dog execution immediately becomes one of whether she's torpedoed herself from the GOP ticket. (Unlike the poor dog, that's a story that refuses to die.)
Now, Kari Lake, the woman who we always thought had the inside track, has apparently fallen into disfavor. As The Washington Post reports, multiple strikes have developed against her. Donald considers her a loser since she didn't win the Arizona Governor's race in 2022. She secretly taped a call with the head of the state GOP, embarrassing him into stepping down. (Donald doesn't like to be taped.) She dissed supporters of John McCain, which has caused her numbers to sag. She hangs out at Mar-a-Lago too much.
Perhaps most important, Lake is running a stupid campaign in a state that's suddenly on the verge of becoming radioactive for Republicans, thanks to Dobbs and their now-infamous 1864 anti-abortion law. Sounds like Kari is cooked.
Noem's and Lake's problems invariably led to a mini-boomlet for Elise "Elsie" Stefanik on Twitter. After all, she voted against aid to Ukraine, most certainly as a sop to Trump. But we just don't see what she would bring to the ticket. Republicans are not going to carry the state of New York in November. Not even close. And at this point, too many people see Elsie for what she is: an opportunist.
As we said, the whole conversation is pretty dumb. But if we're going to engage in it, it might be time to speculate that Benedict Donald (or, um, Susie) will not choose a woman at all. Keep an eye on super suck-up JD Vance of Ohio. We cats HISS.
So many questions about last night's White House Correspondents' Dinner. Why did Kristen Welker wear a pink dress that looked like a bathrobe? Why was Dana Bash dressed in a towel? Why in the world was Lara Trump, who is speaking openly about Republicans committing more election shenanigans this fall, even invited?
And here we thought it was bad enough that Reince Preibus and Bruce Jenner were there. (Sorry, everybody — but Jenner has turned out to be such a Trumpy traitor to her trans community that we now insist on using her dead name.)
On the bright side, President Biden did such a great job that Benedict Donald felt that a furious social media post at one o'clock in the morning was warranted. Nice going, Dark Brandon! The event also reminded folks out there in America that Trump never once attended this dinner when he was in the White House. Too terrified to be part of the program, we suppose — plus, he has no sense of humor. (The Washington Post has accurately pointed out that the press doesn't have one, either.)
Final questions: Will journalists take to heart Biden's urging to avoid the horse race and false equivalencies and cover the 2024 election for what it is? Will they take the trouble to explain what's at stake? Sadly, we cats don't have a lot of confidence in that, because US political journalism is awful. We'll keep looking, though. In the meantime, we HISS.
Our feed on Twitter has been consumed with dog content, we're sorry to report. Not because we hate dogs (although we cats are vastly superior to them), but because any story about an animal mistreated or murdered chills us to our feline bones.
Enter this very strange story about South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem bragging about killing one of her dogs, execution style, because it was "untrainable." After the dirty deed, Noem's daughter asked, "Mom, where's Cricket?" "Cricket is dead," Noem allegedly replied. And the interwebs went wild.
It got to the point where we were desperately searching for Trump trial news, but couldn't find anything amid the anti-Noem outrage by dog lovers like ex-Republicans George Conway and Rick Wilson. (Even Trumpsters like Laura Loomer took offense.) People were posting photos of their beloved canines to drive home the point that Noem is a soulless monster. But that's okay. Because she is.
Also, if you're looking for more Nazi parallels for today's Republican Party, Noem just provided one. In 1945, Adolf Hitler killed his German shepherd Blondi, to test the cyanide he had in case the Red Army closed in on him. It worked. Happily, though, Hitler shot himself in the mouth the next day. We cats PURR.
By Hubie and Bertie
It may be Moose & Squirrel's 54th birthday, but we Democrats are the ones who got the best present. One day after a POLITICO story broke about the pooh-bahs at The New York Times printing anti-Biden stories out of spite, the President gave an hourlong interview to radio host and erstwhile shock jock Howard Stern on Sirius XM.
This is Dark Brandon at his finest.
Not only did Biden chat up Howard about a range of topics — his life in politics, his family, SCOTUS, the Violence Against Women Act, and more — he ended up making news by saying he'd be willing to debate Benedict Donald in the general election. This is hilarious, because of course Trump has avoided all Republican debates this season, and most likely will be incapacitated enough mentally and cognitively that he'll have to duck any head-to-heads this fall. But Stern getting the scoop still has to rankle at the Times.
It could not happen to a nicer newspaper. We cats have been torn about keeping our (very expensive) print and digital subscription to the Grey Lady, but have dithered on it because so much of their reporting — arts, books, science, New York-y stuff — is enriching and valuable. But their political coverage is frankly terrible. In the old-media days, they just had to one-up The Washington Post, but now they're up against a proliferation of journalists at online vehicles like The Daily Beast who often put them to shame. Or who at least act more honorably and less thin-skinned than the sniffy people at 620 Eighth Avenue.
Side note: President Biden was in New York because he attended a fundraiser headlined by the actor Michael Douglas last night. Meanwhile, Trump was in criminal court, whining that he couldn't be with his cheated-on wife for her birthday (who could have easily joined him in Manhattan for his court appearance and natal-day celebration), unable to campaign, dial for dollars, or do anything else to promote his alleged candidacy. A really good day for Biden-Harris, we'd say. We cats PURR.
Another week, another Presidential primary. Yesterday, it was in Pennsylvania, and Benedict Donald continued to underperform. At this point, though, perhaps you'd just want to say the Republican results showed the latest example of a full-blown anti-Trump protest vote.
Yes, Trump won the primary and all of the commonwealth's 16 delegates to the convention. But Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race more than a month ago, pulled in 157,388 votes* — nearly 17 percent. This was in a closed primary, with no Democratic voters making mischief, so you have to believe something's going on here.
Voting against Benedict Donald has been pretty consistent in GOP-only primaries and caucuses this year, in fact. It was 15 percent against him in Idaho, 18 percent in Oklahoma, almost 20 percent in Tennessee, and a whopping 44 percent in Utah (before Haley withdrew her candidacy). After that, she still pulled 19 percent in Florida, about 25 percent in Connecticut, 22 percent in New York, and now this.
The numbers from Pennsylvania were especially striking because Republicans voted for Haley not just in the Philadelphia suburbs, but also in Cumberland County outside Harrisburg, and the counties of Lancaster, Erie and Berks, all of which are traditionally swingy.
Which means that even with getting 83 percent of the overall vote, Benedict Donald has a real base problem. Political journalism in the US is pretty awful, so don't expect to see a lot of reporters chasing this story. They need their likes and clicks, so they'll always try to prop up Trump as a powerful, competitive candidate. The reality is that he's got a splintered and angry GOP, very little money, deteriorating cognition, and four criminal trials, one of which is underway and already doing damage. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.
*Fun fact: Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in the 2020 general election by about 80,000 votes. We cats PURR.
The world is still waiting to find out the real reason why Benedict Donald canceled this weekend's North Carolina rally at the last minute. The claim was that they couldn't land in bad weather — but the nearby airport was not shut down, and the storms didn't roll in until hours later. Was he upset that only about 400 MAGAts had turned out for the show?
That seems plausible, because he's reportedly also unhappy that throngs of Trumpy true believers haven't shown up at the Manhattan courthouse to protest his current criminal trial, either. As The New York Times reports in a very fun article today:
"Over the last week, demonstrators visibly identifying as supporting Mr. Trump — with red hats or clothing, or banners and flags — have never totaled more than a dozen. On most days, the number of people total in the portion of the part designated for protesters for or against Trump has never been more than two or three dozen. They have included tourists, locals coming to gawk, more than a few supporters of Mr. Biden, and proponents of conspiracy theories — including Max Azzarello, the man who...self-immolated on Friday."
It sounds to us that in a nearly full-employment economy, everyone must be too busy working to spend days wearing goofy outfits and waving Trump flags outside court. Or maybe the bloom is off the Donald rose? We cats are wondering when the media are going to really start paying attention to how small a slice of the American pie Trumpism represents. In the meantime, we PURR.
Well, of course Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taking more votes from Benedict Donald than from President Biden. We cats always suspected that, because RFK Jr. is a nutcase. Nuts gravitate to nuts.
But sometimes we get stuff wrong. And we're big enough to admit it.
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was first elected to Congress in 2018, we thought to ourselves, oh, God — she's going to be a pain in the ass. We could not have been more off-base. She's shown herself to be a team player, an excellent questioner in committee, and someone who is uninterested in cutting off her nose to spite her face. Her vote right out of the gate for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker was the first sign, and she's delivered consistently ever since.
She's been vocal in her support of Biden-Harris 2024, and in the House, she votes outside the mainstream only when she knows there's a cushion to do it. So she's not only been an "A" student in the School of Pelosi, she's obviously shining in the School of Hakeem Jeffries as well. In short, she's a grownup who understands the institutional and political boundaries in which she works.
The result is a day like today, when Biden met with AOC, Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Ed Markey in the Oval Office after an Earth Day event in Virginia — to discuss Gaza, the disaster known as Benjamin Netanyahu, and the anti-Semitism that's boiling up on college campuses. "I learned a long time ago to listen to that lady," Biden said about AOC. A tremendous compliment.
You won't see members like Rashida Tlaib chatting up POTUS in the Oval, and that's okay. Because AOC is an important ambassador to the lefties. Funny, we cats have always thought of ourselves as left, too. The difference between us and the folks we call liberal losers is that we're willing to get 80 percent of what we want instead of insisting on all or nothing. That's an important talent to have in a pluralistic democracy. We cats PURR.
Of all the House Republican leaders, only Elise "Elsie" Stefanik voted against aid to Ukraine today.
Think about that: Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer, miscreants all, voted to do the right thing by one of America's most important allies — but Elsie couldn't bring herself to do it. She voted for Israel and Taiwan, but is so fixated on being picked as Benedict Donald's running mate, she was a big "no" for Ukraine and a big "yes" for Vladimir Putin. Disgraceful, particularly since we don't believe for a second that Trump will select her (she's not "his type").
So, our only questions tonight are these: Where are the Bush II folks who served in the White House with Elsie? She was on staff for Smirky's Domestic Policy Council, and later served in the office of Josh Bolten, White House Chief of Staff. Do they have nothing to say about Elsie becoming one of Vlad's best buds? And what about former Bush II Secretary of State and so-called Soviet expert Condoleezza Rice? How does she feel about her erstwhile Bushie colleague?
Their silence is as despicable as Stefanik's votes. We cats HISS.
Poor Benedict Donald. Nothing is going right for him these days. He's in criminal court in Manhattan, being forced to listen to potential (and ultimately excused) jurors rightfully disparage him and saying their loathing of him meant they couldn't be fair. Quite a change from the deluge of sycophancy he's used to at Mar-a-Lago and in other, friendlier environs. And he's cold. The courthouse is "freezing," he whines.
How can he be chilly? His antics both inside and outside the courtroom are landing him in hot water. Judge Merchan smacked him down the other day for muttering at a just-excused juror, and chided him today for checking his smartphone in court. Most important, prosecutors have averred that he's broken his gag order no fewer than seven times since the start of trial, and the judge has scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday on that. Trump could be fined or even hauled off to the hoosegow. Surely if he were anyone else, he'd already be there.
All this misbehavior is making life more difficult for his own attorneys — and consequently, his case. In trials with normal (i.e., non-narcissistic, non-sociopathic) defendants, the defense team is routinely apprised of the names of upcoming witnesses. The prosecutors argued that they can't follow that routine courtesy, because Trump would tweet and intimidate them on his failing social media platform. "I can't fault them for that," Judge Merchan said. So now Trump's lawyers will have to be prepped and ready for every witness, every day, just in case.
Does Benedict Donald care? Of course not. Not only is he contemptuous of everything that makes a human being human, he doesn't understand how he's undermining himself. Why else would he refuse to stand for the jurors like the rest of the court, including his legal team?
"I have never observed a
defendant refuse to stand and face the jury," said a former federal prosecutor. "Trump's disrespect for the jury is unwise." We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.
With everything that's going on, you'd probably be forgiven for not remembering — or even knowing in the first place — that the lower house of the Michigan legislature was tied between Republicans and Democrats since November, when two members left to serve as the mayors of Westland and Warren, their hometowns.
Well, the house is tied no more, because in a special election yesterday, the Democratic candidates won the empty seats. That might not be surprising since the districts are quite blue — but the margins of victory over their Republican opponents were huge: 59 percent to 38 percent in one race, and 65 percent to 34 percent in the other.
Sounds like one more example of Democrats outperforming, with voters getting their butts to the polls for a "special" in the middle of April when there are plenty of other things on people's to-do lists. So we were feeling pretty good about that. And then we saw something that made us feel even better.
Democrats running for the US Senate in 2024 are crushing their Republican opponents in fundraising. Incumbents Jacky Rosen in Nevada, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio are all cleaning up. But so are challengers Colin Allred in Texas and Ruben Gallego in Arizona.
This is great news. Each of these states, plus Michigan, is going to be crucial in the fall — and it looks like we Democrats are motivated, giving money, organized, and turning out our vote. Keep it up! We cats PURR.
Since everything with Benedict Donald and his merry band of traitors is projection, it's important to remember that the trial that began today is not just about hush money — it's election interference.
The term "hush money" fits better in a headline, but the Stormy Daniels payments were meant to silence her about a story that could have had a devastating impact on Trump's ability to win fewer than 100,000 votes in three states in November 2016.
And although the media and pundit world have worked very hard to convince people that Alvin Bragg's case is the least-important of the other three trials pending against Trump, it's fitting, chronologically, that it serves as the kickoff. Trump attained the Presidency through nefarious, mobster-like means, and all his subsequent perfidy — trying to overturn the 2020 election, inciting insurrection, stealing classified documents — flows from that.
You have to wonder, though, how he's going to make it through those trials — or even this one. As a well-known New York Times journalist has reported, "Trump appeared to be asleep" in court today. "His head would fall down…He didn’t pay attention to a note his lawyer passed him. His jaw kept falling on his chest and his mouth kept going slack." Goodness gracious, projection indeed.
Why was Donald so beat? Was he up all night trying to get Putin on the phone? When you consider that there's a seven-hour time difference between New York and Moscow, Vlad was probably having his mid-morning snack by the time Trump reached him at 3 a.m. Eastern. Whatever the reason, Trump looks like hell today, and his handlers are going to have to come up with a new drug mix. We cats PURR.
By Baxter
It's been a busy week, and we cats are trying to catch up, because next week looks like it's going to be even more lit. And that's saying a lot after eight days of great jazz, a flawlessly performed Beethoven symphony, and "Randy Rainbow for President" (not to mention a total solar eclipse). Here are a few items we're digesting along with our three breakfasts this morning.
Who runs Stormy Daniels's Twitter account, and why do we think it's actually her? She so sassy and funny. While she'll no doubt be more demure when she takes the stand in Benedict Donald's upcoming hush-money trial (it starts Monday!), she's still making a serious case for national treasurehood online.
Did you hear about the pro-Palestinian activist who threatened the city council of Bakersfield, California (and who's in big, big trouble for it)? During the meeting's public comments section, she told the council, "We'll see you at your house, and we'll murder you." Is she nuts? And isn't that what actually has already happened — to Israelis on October 7?
Following his "deeply weird" meeting with Benedict Donald yesterday, Preacher of the House Mike Johnson is sure to find out that Everything Trump Touches Dies. Meanwhile, the interwebs are having a field day with both Johnson's and Trump's body language: Johnson did a backhand thumb gesture toward Trump when he said the words "hardened criminals," and Trump clearly made Johnson walk in back of him at their exit. (Johnson briefly considered giving Donald a friendly touch on the back, but then quickly changed his mind.) Hilarious!
Finally, we've seen it suggested that President Biden's turnaround in national polling didn't start with his barn-burning State of the Union address, but instead, around the time of the Super Bowl. You see what happens, MAGA, when you start trashing Taylor Swift? We cats PURR.
Do Republicans understand that they're committing suicide? You really have to wonder, because the stars have certainly aligned against them, no eclipse reference intended.
Yesterday, Benedict Donald officially declared (we guess) that the right to abortion should be left up to the states. Today, in one state — Arizona — the Supreme Court said that an 1864 law banning abortion should stand. 1864! Abraham Lincoln was President, and Arizona wouldn't even become a state until almost 50 years later. Could the timing this week get any worse for Trump and the GOP? Do they realize it?
We cats think that the far-right evangelicals and women-haters, with their anti-choice blinders on, are too fanatical to care. But other Republicans must know — the problem for them is, they can't do anything about it. They're like the first-class male passengers on the Titanic, barred from the lifeboats, knowing the fate that awaits them, but powerless to prevent it.
Our only question right now is whether any of the GOP candidates who lose this November — and there will be many of them — will, during their concession speeches, have the balls to blame Dobbs and their party's heedless rush into anti-choice oblivion for their defeats. It'll be interesting to see. Meanwhile, we cats HISS at the Arizona Supreme Court for endangering women's lives, but PURR at the prospect of the Grand Canyon state going into the Biden column in November and Ruben Gallego romping to victory over Kari Lake.
By Hubie and Bertie
The solar eclipse in Montreal was neat! Our only complaint was that we wish it had lasted longer. The city of Sherbrooke in the Eastern Townships got close to four minutes of totality, but we only got one. Still, it was a once-in-nine-lives experience.
Here are some photos of downtown, beginning with about an hour before showtime. People's shadows started to lengthen at 3:25 PM. By 3:27, Montreal looked like a city at night.
In
addition to the cheers that went up from the crowds of people at the
Old Port, the quay, and on rooftops, the 360-degree sunset
was one of our favorite parts. And while our smartphone camera may not have done it justice, we did get one shot of totality. This eclipse gets an A-plus from us! We cats loved every second, and we PURR.
Folks are having a lot of fun with today's solar eclipse, including Ponto, Montreal's orange traffic-cone mascot. (And please excuse the meme with the dog...we couldn't resist.) But the best shade this morning came from Hillary Rodham Clinton. We cats PURR.
You know how people aren't naming their babies "Donald" anymore? Ever wonder why? We cats think we know.
And on that note, the main culprit for the "Donald" disaffection had a super-awful day today. You may not have noticed because 1) you were busy living your life, or 2) the news you consumed was primarily about how terrible Benjamin Netanyahu is for Israel, or 3) maybe you only care about women's basketball right now. All understandable. But take it from us, Trump's Thursday was not great. Here's why.
1). The judge in Trump's RICO case in Georgia refused to dismiss the case on free speech grounds.
2). The judge in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case rejected Trump's silly immunity argument. The trial will go forward on April 15.
3). Judge Aileen Cannon turned away Trump's request to dismiss the stolen documents case, although she also handed down a decision that could complicate life for Jack Smith later. (Which means an appeal to the 11th Circuit to remove Cannon could be nigh. Stay tuned.)
4). "No Labels" called it quits for 2024. No candidate.
5). Nebraska legislators defeated a Trumpy bid to change how the state distributes Electoral College votes. This was a Hail Mary by Benedict Donald's supporters to deny Biden 270 EVs and possibly throw the 2024 election to the House of Representatives. Nope, nope, nopity nope.
6). Trump's $175 million bond in the New York civil fraud case may not pass muster. New York Attorney General Tish James is checking it out.
What continues to be amazing is that all this can happen to one guy and he's still the presumptive Republican Party nominee. How the mighty GOP has fallen. We cats salute all of Donald's tsuris, and we PURR.
—The Shallow State
Remember how the world rallied around the United States after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? The headline in the French newspaper Le Monde probably said it best: "We are all Americans." For the first time in a long time, everyone was in our corner.
Then, in just the next two years, George W. Bush — who we used to call, pre-Trump, The Worst Person Who's Ever Lived — squandered all that goodwill by invading Iraq, a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Benjamin Netanyahu has done nearly the same thing to Israel. Immediately after the attacks by Hamas on October 7, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, we were all leaping to Israel's side. But Netanyahu's scorched-earth campaign in Gaza has been turning sympathizers away for some time. And now, an IDF killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers threatens to alienate whoever is left.
Netanyahu's actions have not only killed countless Gazans but have also helped blind the world to Hamas's innate culpability. This is enraging. Hamas fighters built — and have been hiding in — miles of tunnels under Gaza. They were perfectly willing from the get-go to sacrifice civilians on the surface. But Netanyahu's awfulness obscures that. The World Central Kitchen debacle, a tragedy in and of itself, makes it even worse.
The good news is that Israelis, angry about the deaths, the mismanagement, and the failure to get their hostages back, have been demonstrating against their government by the thousands. Can they force their much-loathed Prime Minister to resign? We cats live for the day that Netanyahu's out of office (and, we hope, hauled off to the hoosegow). That would make us PURR.
Team Biden just landed their campaign team in Florida in the last week or so. "Make no mistake: Florida is not an easy state to win, but it is a winnable one for President Biden," national campaign manager Julie Chávez RodrÃguez said.
Today, the state got even more winnable. The Florida Supreme Court handed down, for Republicans' political fortunes, the worst possible pair of decisions: They allowed Ron DeSantis's draconian six-week ban on abortion to take effect in 30 days — and they allowed the referendum guaranteeing the right to abortion onto the November ballot.
Which means that over the next six months or so, Floridians will be getting so outraged by the ban and its infringement on their lives that they'll storm the polling places in a rage in the fall. People do get annoyed when their rights are taken away.
(P.S. The court also allowed a ballot measure to approve recreational marijuana. It's going to be a stampede, kids! Last one in the voting booth is a rotten egg!)
If we cats were Republicans — not crazed MAGAts, but a relatively sane version of what the Grand Old Party used to be — we would be miserable at how the forces are aligning against us. Since Dobbs, Democrats just keep winning, and now the rabid anti-choicers have effectively put Florida, which has been trending redder and redder, into play. And even worse, Republicans have no money to push back in one of the country's most expensive media markets. Benedict Donald is raiding their coffers for his legal bills — and nobody is stopping him.
Speaking of Trump, will he speak out about the Court's decisions? Maybe not. He's probably too busy watching his wildly overvalued media company's stock price dive by 40 percent. We cats PURR.
