The Rude Pundit: The Simplest Explanation… They Are Evil
“Evil” is a hard concept to get your head around. We can get close to it when we say things like “The cruelty is the point,” but that was truly about the first Donald Trump administration, with its scattershot acts of savagery, many of them mitigated by courts and by stronger Democrats and even a […]
The Rude Pundit: Democrats Need to Stop Being Afraid of Being Democrats
In Kamala Harris’s speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president in Chicago in August, one key word and its variations were conspicuously absent, and it’s a shame because she was speaking to a huge audience that needed to hear the words “Democrat” and “Democrats” and “Democratic Party.” The only reference was a worthless nod to […]
Robin Abcarian: No one polices men’s bodies the way we police women’s bodies
While we’ve been distracted by wildfire tragedies, and the dizzying stream of Project 2025-inspired directives flowing from the Oval Office, we cannot forget that the Republican-led war on women’s reproductive rights shows no signs of waning. In fact, it’s heating up again. Last week, a Democratic Mississippi state senator with a wry sense of humor […]
Charlie Pierce: Senator Brian Schatz Is Actually Doing Something (When Very Little Can Be Done)
This is how you do it when there really isn’t much you can do. From Reuters: U.S. Senator Brian Schatz said on Monday he would block Senate votes on President Donald Trump’s nominees for diplomatic positions in protest over moves to close the U.S. Agency for International Development and fold it into the State Department. […]
Frank Figliuzzi: Trump’s revenge campaign is eroding the FBI’s ability to protect America
A purge of experienced leaders is now underway at the FBI. Thousands of field agents are being threatened with dismissal. Here’s what we know so far, and why America is already less safe. At least eight of the most senior officials in the FBI, and multiple field office chiefs, have been forced out, despite the […]
The Rude Pundit: Note to Democrats… We’re Freaking the Fuck Out and You’re Not Helping Us Enough
I know so many people who are scared to death or freaking the fuck out about all of the ways that the administration of Donald Trump (aka “Elon’s Meat Puppet”) is fucking with their lives like a deranged child pulling the wings off moths. In just the last week: – A dear friend with a […]
Steven Beschloss: The Urgency of Now
I know there are many among us who see today as an endpoint. The demise of democracy. The failure of our electorate to commit to self-governance. The willingness to let the richest among us grab power, with the foolish assumption that they would advance the well-being of working people rather than further enrich themselves. Let’s […]
Malcolm Nance: America is Now Under a Tyranny!
The tyranny of the Trump dictatorship descended upon America today. Worse is that it made me violate my pledge to IGNORE Trump and his spectacle … However, soon after I made this video Elon Musk spoke at a Trump rally and made the NAZI SALUTE … TWICE! He also praised how MAGA has saved the […]
Charlie Pierce: Who’s Laughing at Donald Trump Now?
In 2017, I sat with a few journo pals below the podium on the west front of the Capitol and watched Donald Trump be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. After taking the oath of office, which he took approximately as seriously as he did contracts he’d signed with workmen in […]
Dean Obeidallah: Democratic leaders… Either step up and take the fight to Trump or Step Aside
“Dear Democratic leaders: We need you to take the FIGHT to Donald Trump and the oligarchy he is ushering in to power. Stop being silent–or worse–looking for “common ground” with a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist who attempted a coup and incited the Jan. 6 terrorist attack. If you can’t do that, then step aside because […]
The Rude Pundit: Informing Ourselves to Death… Trump’s Win and American Stupidity (Part 2)
We’ve seen definite signs of the abject stupidity of the American voter in 2024 in so many ways. There are the states where voters put abortion rights in their constitutions but voted for senators who want a national ban. The fact (and it is a fact) that searches for “Did Biden drop out?” spiked on […]
Dr. Irwin Redlener: LA FIRE DISASTER… PROTECTING CHILDREN IN PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HARM’S WAY
The massive fire catastrophe in LA will be remembered as one of the most devastating disasters in modern U.S. history. Having worked on the prevention of, response to, and recovery from megadisasters for many years, I have watched how the devastation of such events impacts communities and people, especially people with important vulnerabilities like chronic […]
Malcolm Nance: JANUARY SIX WARNING… THE LAS VEGAS TERRORIST WANTED CIVIL WAR
The New Year’s Day terrorist attack carried out on the Trump International hotel in Las Vegas, using a rented Tesla cyber truck almost immediately dropped off of the radar of news media in the wake of the deaths of 15 innocent people in New Orleans. In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, former […]
Charlie Pierce: I Didn’t Expect to Find Myself Agreeing with Steve Bannon on Something
Oh, my. MAGAworld may be coming apart at the seams, and I feel like collateral damage, because, somehow, Steve Bannon and I agree on the malevolent influence of Elon Musk, whom we both believe should be sent back to the veldt where he was spawned. “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people […]
The Rude Pundit: Informing Ourselves to Death… Another Explanation of Why Harris Lost (Part 1)
We keep getting “deep dives” into why Kamala Harris lost and Donald Trump won. They can be big reasons, like racism and sexism, or the ability of Trump’s campaign to exploit the anti-incumbent zeitgeist through bro podcasts and transphobia, or Harris and the Democrats courting anti-Trump Republicans while taking other Democratic voters for granted. But […]
Charlie Pierce: Speaker Moses, These Are Not the Words of a Christ-Infused Political Leader…
The universe’s Department of Metaphor never sleeps. This week the Congress certifies the election of someone who, later this week, will be sentenced—albeit gently—on 34 felony counts. While we mark the week of the anniversary of an armed insurrection, the president continues to float pardons for the insurrectionists. The Department of Metaphor marked these surreal […]
The Rude Pundit: To Make It Through the Next Four Years, Stop Hoping Someone Saves Us
Even though I’ve bailed on Uncle Elroy’s Phantasmagorical Hellscape of Incel Nazis and Rapey Transphobes, I keep my ear to the social media wall over on BlueSky and Threads. And one thing that’s bubbled up lately amid the shitting-oneself despair about the incoming Trump administration is a vague sense of hope because of the not […]
Dean Obeidallah: Finally, someone has the courage to stand up to Trump!
Over the past month, we have witnessed a pathetic parade of cowards who have bent a knee to Donald Trump from corporate media figures to CEOs of companies to even some Democratic officeholders who are now looking for “common ground” with the fascist. And the last few days have featured a pitiful level of surrendering […]
Malcolm Nance: FREEDOM! The Syrian Dictator Falls and Takes Iran & Tulsi Gabbard with Him
“Freedom! We are free of the Dictator!” said a released prisoner from Bashar al-Assad’s Saydnya Prison, a house of horrors that was the last stop for tens of thousands including many of the corpses discovered on the site. What happened in Syria is nothing less than the final leg of a revolution that started in […]
Charlie Pierce: The Curious Case of Trump And ABC News
That stirring in the earth that you felt over the weekend was the result of a man named Robert Goodloe Harper spinning at a velocity that may have rendered him invisible. Harper volunteered in a cavalry unit of the Continental Army when he was 15, and he also served in the War of 1812. In […]
The Rude Pundit: Sorry, CNN and MSNBC, But It’s Not Us. It’s You
I haven’t watched CNN or MSNBC for a single second in the month since the 2024 presidential election. I’ve been a loyal viewer of CNN pretty much since it started, through the bullshit times of enforced patriotism, like the first Gulf War or after 9/11, and through the transition from being a news channel to […]
Bob Cesca: No Political Capital For Donald
As I write this, Pete Hegseth’s Mom is calling aroundtrying to convince U.S. senators to let him run the Pentagon. You know, like all alpha males. By the time you read this, it’s quite possible Hegseth will have withdrawn his nomination. Set aside his alleged sexual abuse, serial cheating… Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s […]
Charlie Pierce: RFK Jr.’s Nomination is Growing More Worrisome
I continue to be fascinated by speculation of what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. may do when he’s in charge of the country’s public health systems-if, by “fascinated”, you mean running down the middle of the street, screaming like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And this story, from Forbes, prompted several city blocks […]
The Rude Pundit: Note to Democrats… We Have to See You Fight, Even If It’s a Losing Cause
Since the (re)election of Donald Trump, it’s natural that Democrats would engage in some self-reflection. Of course, it’s not like Republicans did that after Trump lost in 2020 and then tried to overthrow the election. But, you know, if you’re a rational group of humans, you reassess after you lost and think about what you […]
Malcolm Nance: Five Steps To Resist The Coming Tyranny
As you know, I have been a practitioner of intelligence collection and secret activities for over thirty years. But I have also been an ardent student of the World War Two French resistance in Nazi-occupied France. The American people can learn lessons from how French society stood firm in the face of tyranny. Why France […]
Michael Tomasky: Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?
I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on. These conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask incredulously […]
Charlie Pierce: Pete Hegseth’s Mom Ratting Him Out Was Not Yet (!) Rock Bottom for the TV Host
National treasure Jane Mayer has the grotesque skinny on Pete Hegseth, to whom the incoming administration is planning to hand the most powerful military in the history of the world. You might have figured we touched bottom on this guy’s nomination when his mom gave him up. But you would be wrong. From TheNew Yorker: […]
The Rude Pundit: A Thanksgiving Poem from Indigenous America
“after Sacred Water” by Kinsale Drake, a Dine’ and a member of the Navajo nation I. we inherit: every gathering pool a blessing formed by careful hands each monsoon a heartbeat turquoise vein the sound of underwater brimmed with mosses here laps the quiet tide of love Read the rest of the poem at The […]
Charlie Pierce: Now the Extreme Right Is Coming After the New Deal
In case you were wondering, they’re coming after the New Deal next. Last Friday, Robert Taft, leaving a trail of sod from his political grave, walked grimly toward Capitol Hill again. From The Washington Post: “The Supreme Court announced Friday it will hear a pair of cases that will examine how far Congress can go […]
The Rude Pundit: Democrats Must Stand Up for the Rights of Transgender People, Including Trans Youths
It wasn’t that long ago, less than ten years, in fact, where, in a confirmation hearing for Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was a prick even before his mouth became Donald Trump’s penis koozie, wailed and gnashed about the growing passage of laws in the states allowing same-sex couples to marry, […]
Dean Obeidallah: Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz are Pete Hegseth are the worst versions of men
Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth are the worst version of men. But then again so is adjudicated rapist Donald Trump—which explains why he picked these two despicable, unqualified white men to be his Attorney General and Secretary of Defense. The red flags about Gaetz and Hegseth ranging from sexual misconduct to bigotry would deem them […]
Charlie Pierce: The Democrats Need to Stop Giving Such a Damn
It is a very, very bad day when I have to wonder about Sherrod Brown, whose loss two weeks ago is incalculable. But he gave an interview to Tiger Beat on the Potomac and, well, his analysis was acute and —thank you, Jesus—he avoided TBOTP’s Eugene Daniels’s attempts to blame the Democratic party’s commitment to […]
The Rude Pundit: Biden Will Be Remembered More for What He Didn’t Do Than What He Did
Other than the election and everything related to it, one thing stuck in my craw this past week, and it stuck there hard, so much so that I can’t cough it up. At her daily briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if President Joe Biden would pardon his son Hunter, who is […]
Malcolm Nance: Kneel. Pray. Win. We Have Orders from General George Washington.
The morning before I left on a weeklong bus tour of the southern states for National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A), I visited my late wife at Washington Crossing National Cemetery. Even though I go quite regularly, there was something special about this trip. I would share a bus from Florida, Georgia, to North Carolina […]
Charlie Pierce: Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally Was a Pageant of Lowbrow Fascism, and It Wasn’t Even Funny
And at the end of the day, all that was proven was that these people can’t even be fascists with any kind of dignity. In February 1939, with World War II having already begun at the Marco Polo Bridge two years earlier (although nobody knew it at the time) and seven months before the Wehrmacht […]
The Rude Pundit: We Need to Be Done With Donald Trump
One of the most stunning things about the last near-decade now is how much the country has been contorted by one man. We’re in this fucked beyond fucked moment, teetering on the brink of totally and irrevocably fucked, because of Donald Trump. Yes, it’s also everyone who voted for him, everyone who elevated him, everyone […]
Bob Cesca: Yes, Joe Biden Really Did Prevent World War III
Caught in the constant undertow of the Donald Trump tsunami, it’s easy to lose touch with qualities we ought to prioritize in our political leadership. It’s understandable given decades of misguided hack punditry and horserace election coverage that too often misleads us into believing that whoever had the most recent zinger… Read the rest of […]
Charlie Pierce: Trump Looked Like an Adorable Lil’ Cutie Pie at His McDonald’s Campaign Visit
Golf is a game of long shafts and balls, and what say we leave it there, okay? Also, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago looks adorable in a full-body apron. Semi-seriously, I’m not sure why everybody is making a big deal about this McDonald’s stunt. It was fake? Color me not astonished. It’s an example of what […]
The Rude Pundit: It Really Matters That We Don’t Know a Great Deal About Donald Trump
The louche punditocracy of the corporate media made a huge deal about “what we know” when President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and was replaced with Vice President Kamala Harris. Story after story was all about how voters didn’t “know” Harris and how that would impact her election chances. And it […]
Charlie Pierce: Another Nutcase with a Gun Tried to Show Up to a Trump Rally, This Time in Coachella Valley
Apparently, another right-wing gun fondler showed up at the former president*’s Coachella fiasco this weekend. (Oh, to bask in the aroma of the breezes at a manure farm near the Salton Sea, especially when the temperature clears 100 degrees.) This guy never got within shouting distance of the president, who was yelling some out-and-out fascism […]
The Rude Pundit: Unfucking What You Can… A Case for Voting for Harris Even If You’re Pissed About Israel
I’m going to try to be as clear as possible here in where I’m coming from. I’m not going to make this about Israel’s war with Gaza and Lebanon except to say that I stand with the large number of Israelisand Palestinians and the Lebanese people who want a ceasefire and the hostages and prisoners brought […]
Steven Beschloss: Snapshot… The Appeal of Kamala Harris
I thought about holding off for a couple of days and sharing these data points as part of a broader discussion, but they are so interesting and uplifting that I’m spotlighting them now. I’m not talking about the overall polling by New York Times/Sienna College that currently has Kamala Harris edging out Donald Trump 49 […]
Malcolm Nance: A Horrible Anniversary… October 7 One Year Later
On this first anniversary of the 10–7 massacre, I made a special video where I visited the sites of the massacres and heard the voices of the dead. Listen to the story carefully because it is heartbreaking. I find it very hard to watch, but we must witness how old this horrific cycle of violence […]
Charlie Pierce: Trump’s Comments About Undocumented People’s ‘Genes’ Is One Of The Worst Things He’s Ever Said
I don’t want to alarm anyone unduly, but the Republican candidate for president of the United States has said something in public that hits the trifecta of being a lie, insane, and historically vile. It is a parlay beyond the reach of most politicians, and of all decent humans everywhere. He was in conversation with […]
The Rude Pundit: Three Things That Matter from The Vice-Presidential Polite-Off
My quick take on the vice-presidential debate last night between Peter Thiel’s gimp and Governor Care Bear is that it doesn’t matter who “won.” If you give a shit about reality, Walz won. If you prefer your political leaders to be smooth-talking sociopaths spewing bullshit, Vance won. Otherwise, beyond a surprise line or two (like […]
Dean Obeidallah: Long time CNN anchor shares that if hosts slam MAGA guests you could be fired
We all watched in disbelief as the CNN moderators failed to fact check Donald Trump during the June presidential debate as he unleashed a firehose of lies. Beyond that we’ve seen other CNN anchors remain silent when MAGA representatives are on air peddling misinformation. Why? Well as former long time CNN anchor Don Lemon candidly […]
Charlie Pierce: Trump Ranted and Raved About Immigration, ‘The Purge,’ Movie Casting at a Rally In Pennsylvania
The former president* of the United States, who is also the current Republican nominee for president, got up onstage in Pennsylvania on Sunday and said a great deal that was insane. I just thought I’d take note of that. He said of undocumented people: They don’t even think about it….These are rough, vicious, rougher than […]
The Rude Pundit: The Climate Crisis Should Be a Bigger Issue in 2024
I was finally able to reach my friends in Boone, North Carolina and Damascus, Virginia by text today. They said that they are physically fine, but they have no power, no internet, no water, scant cell service, and no way out, really, right now. Both towns are flooded, mud-covered, devastated. One texted that he’s “emotionally […]
The Rude Pundit: Springfield, Ohio Is a Warning About a Second Trump Administration
As odious as the vast majority of her statements and her beliefs are, former Republican presidential candidate and winner of “Most Predictable Hypocrite of the Year” Nikki Haley did get something right about Donald Trump before her defiance crumbled. She spoke frequently about the “chaos” that follows in Trump’s wide wake, like Godzilla without the […]
Charlie Pierce: Election Deniers’ Georgia Scheme Is Going Exactly According to Plan
The ratf*cking of Georgia’s elections got a big boost on Friday when, as expected (from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)… The Georgia Election Board’s Republican majority voted Friday to require a hand count of all ballots after polls close on election night, a new requirement that could delay results of the presidential race. County election directors universally […]
Malcolm Nance: Spy Catchers Win! DOJ Catches Moscow’s Covert American Influencers
David Rubin, Tim Pool, and Benny Johnson were the Commentators being paid millions by Moscow’s Agents. (Photo: Mediaite) US spy catchers made an amazing find that was revealed in an unsealed indictment this week. The Department of Justice unsealed indictments yesterday that allege the sanctioned news organization, Russia Today established a covert scheme to fund […]
Charlie Pierce: Turns Out Chief Justice John Roberts Is Quite a Hack Himself
I confess, I fell for Chief Justice John Roberts’s whole shtick for longer than I should have. That whole “institutionalist” jive got by me far too easily. The presence on the Supreme Court of obvious hacks like Mr. Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Alito obscured the fact that Roberts is one of them. Over the […]
The Rude Pundit: The Joy of Watching Kamala Harris Beat Down an Old Man
It’s not hyperbolic to say that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, beat the shit out of former president (no, really, he was once president. Of the whole United States) and current GOP nominee Donald Trump at last night’s debate. She didn’t just get the best of him, throwing down genuine facts […]
Malcolm Nance: Spy Catchers Win! DOJ Catches Moscow’s Covert American Influencers
David Rubin, Tim Pool, and Benny Johnson were the Commentators being paid millions by Moscow’s Agents. (Photo: Mediaite) US spy catchers made an amazing find that was revealed in an unsealed indictment this week. The Department of Justice unsealed indictments yesterday that allege the sanctioned news organization, Russia Today established a covert scheme to fund […]
The Rude Pundit: Note to Corporate Media… You Don’t Have to Act Like Trump and Vance Are Serious People
Let us say, and why not, that Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz is asked about his GOP counterpart and declares in an interview, “JD Vance’s whole purpose in this world is to blow goats.” When asked what he means, Walz could clarify, “I mean that Senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has one reason […]
Charlie Pierce: What Was Judge Juan Merchan Thinking Delaying Trump’s Hush-Money Sentencing?
Oh, Judge Merchan. You were inches from a clean getaway. From The New York Times: In a ruling on Friday, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, cited the “unique time frame this matter currently finds itself in” and rescheduled the sentencing for Nov. 26. He had previously planned to hand down Mr. Trump’s punishment on Sept. […]
Malcolm Nance: DNC 2024 RECAPEGY
Man was that a party! The Democratic Convention was noteworthy for whoshowed up and what was said as well as who did not get mentioned or a chance to disrupt … I’m looking at you #FreePalestine Protesters. Watch and enjoy. See Malcolm Nance’s video at and subscribe to his Substack
Charlie Pierce: There’s Only One Reason CNN’s Dana Bash Asked VP Harris What She’ll Do On Day One
I suppose discussing The Interview is worth a few pixels. I thought both halves of the Democratic ticket did fairly well, and I don’t think Dana Bash was all that terrible. (She was, of course, terrible, along with Jake Tapper, in their roles as moderators of Trump-Biden, in which they allowed the former president* to […]
Noel Casler: Black Books-Chapter Seven
With the smugness of a hairless cat, the thin white scion luxuriated in the South Florida sun. “Botox don’t burn bitches!” he exclaimed to Vanky as she attempted to pass him the sunblock. They both laughed out loud. His more of a whinny than a guffaw, like a chipmunk on ecstasy. She possessed a heartier […]
Charlie Pierce: National Weirdo RFK Jr. Has, Unsurprisingly, Endorsed Donald Trump
Jefferson Morley—the dogged, relentless gumshoe whose pursuit of what the CIA knew about the assassination of John F. Kennedy has been invaluable in changing what the public knows about that dark watershed in American history—sent out a newsletter on Monday that contained a scene that Oliver Stone deleted from his biopic of Richard Nixon. It […]
Dean Obeidallah: Despite what the NY Times claims: Joy actually is a strategy—a winning one at that!
The NY Times—being the NY Times—on Friday published an op-ed about Vice President Harris with the title, “Joy is not a Strategy.” This article was penned by their Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy who shared how he “cringed a little in the convention hall Tuesday night when Bill Clinton said Kamala Harris would be “the […]
The Rude Pundit: Some Perspective After the DNC Hangover
The 2024 Democratic National Convention was, by most ways you could look at it, a shockingly spectacular success, even if Beyonce’ and Taylor Swift didn’t show (and, really, they’d have been in the way). The absolute exuberance on display made it plain that President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and not seek reelection had […]
Charlie Pierce: Mormons Don’t Want to Vote for Trump
I have pretty much given up on waiting for lots of people to advance The Washington Post’s mega scoop about the possibility that the Republican candidate for president might have been sublet to the government of Egypt. A consensus seems to be building that there is no “smoking gun” to prove that former attorney general […]
The Rude Pundit: Harris/Walz… We Need This Joy
Something occurred to me while watching yesterday’s rally in Philadelphia kicking off the campaign for the full 2024 Democratic ticket of current Vice President Kamala Harris for president and Governor Tim Walz for vice president. It occurred to me while watching Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who had been considered a frontrunner for the VP job, […]
Malcolm Nance: FLASH TRAFFIC – Israel-Iran War 2.0 is Coming … Maybe Within Hours
Sometime within the next 24 to 48 hours, Vice President Kamala Harris will be pulled aside or woken up, and these words will be whispered to her: “Defense intelligence is watching the movement of over 100 Iranian ballistic missile launchers come out of their warehouses. At approximately 2200 hours East Coast time, space sensors detected […]
Charlie Pierce: J.D. Vance Is Stunningly Ignorant About Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? You Don’t Say.
It was moving week, so many of the weekly specials here in the shebeen were not available. Apologies to all you regulars and to Friedman of the Plains. I’m sure Oklahoma will keep being crazy for another week. Regular hours will resume on Monday. However, there was one development that caught my eye as being […]
The Rude Pundit: Hope and Weirdness on the Campaign Trail in 2024
As much as I still viscerally despise former president, shitty artist, and war criminal George W. Bush, the man pretty much nailed it early on when, referring to the inauguration speech of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017, he said, “That was some weird shit.” That speech, where Trump shit all over the three presidents […]
Malcolm Nance: Let Us Fight!
You are watching history. We use this term a lot in the Trump era because of his repeated unprecedented silliness, but you are now in an era where decisions in our lives will be impacted individually. Historic is not just the documentation of the acts but the feeling that you are taking part in something […]
Charlie Pierce: President Biden Is Getting Serious About Supreme Court Reform
Somebody in the White House woke up over the weekend and discovered that they had been transported to the golden sunshine and verdant fields of DGAF Island. After several decades spent in the throes of Institutional Love as regards the Supreme Court, the president who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, couldn’t bring himself […]
The Rude Pundit: Harris, the Democrats, and Biden Take Back the Narrative at Last
Vice President Kamala Harris’s first rally speech yesterday as the presumed Democratic nominee for president was remarkable for several reasons. In Milwaukee, which was a special fuck-you to the savage Republican National Convention that was there last week, you could watch in real time as she grew into the role of nominee, moving from slightly […]
The Rude Pundit: At the RNC, the Rapist Finally Speaks
The delegates at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee finally got to hear from the rapist last night. Of course, the rapist is a former president, elected when it was suspected he was a rapist, and now the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, which happened after he was adjudicated to be a sexual abuser […]
Malcolm Nance: Trump’s Ministry of Revenge and Retribution
Steve Bannon’s War Room Podcast has been the think tank behind the most radical and dangerous of Donald Trump’s fantasies about punishing liberalism and engaging in Civil War. So it’s no surprise that Kevin D. Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, went on to the war room to outline his plans for Project 2025. Even […]
Charlie Pierce: Judge Aileen Cannon Finally Found A Reason To Dismiss The Pool Shed Papers Case
All the assembled awoke on Monday, the first day of the Republican National Convention, and found that the MAGA Fairy had left them a nice little breakfast bonbon as the prolonged farce that was Judge Aileen Cannon’s time in the spotlight came to its utterly predictable—and utterly dismal—end down in Florida. Having spent months trying […]
The Rude Pundit: Joe Biden Is Running and That’s That (Kind Of)
(Stick with me here. You’re gonna agree and disagree with me strongly throughout the next few scribblings, but stick with me.) I’ve been cagey, at best, about all this, so let me lay all my cards on the table here: I don’t think Joe Biden should be running for a second term as president of […]
Charlie Pierce: Get a Load of This Proposal to Replace Biden on the Democratic Ticket
The news site Semafor got hold of a memo containing a proposal for how the Democratic party should select its replacement candidate should the president decide to leave the race. Believe me when I tell you this: You could put the Ringling Brothers, Barnum, and Bailey to work on the problem and they couldn’t come […]
The Rude Pundit: The Supreme Court Launches an Attack on the United States… Democrats Need to Fire Back
I’ve been thinking about all the things that got us to this point, where the conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court felt free to overturn a 40-year precedent that allowed the government to actually function efficiently and then, in the same week, was just fucking fine in giving a president “absolute immunity” to commit crimes […]
Malcolm Nance: Terrified?! Time to Fight the Dictatorship
In Common Sense, Thomas Pain wrote, “These times that try men’s souls …” This statement reflects at least 81 million Americans’ feelings today. We are physically sick, bewildered, and despondent that American Democracy is ending without a fight. Donald Trump being held accountable led to a political backlash by a Supreme Court that decided they […]
Charlie Pierce: We’re Going To Have To Talk About President Joe Biden, Candidate
As reluctant as I am to join the general scrum that resulted from the president’s desultory performance in last Thursday’s debate, the shebeen does have certain public responsibilities. However, let me say that rarely has my profession behaved so badly, and rarely has my low opinion of the Democratic Party’s essential backbone been so thoroughly […]
Glenn Kirschner: The unmistakable evidence that Judge Cannon is unfit for Trump’s classified docs case
Each new development in Donald Trump’s federal criminal case in Florida makes it increasingly clear that the impartiality of presiding Judge Aileen Cannon might, as federal law puts it, “reasonably be questioned.” That’s important because the same statute — 28 U.S. Code Section 455 — provides that when a judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, […]
Charlie Pierce: It’s Unfortunately Time To Get To Know The Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025’
Let us reanimate an old, beloved Monday feature of the shebeen that we used to call, What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days? We do so to memorialize the epochal encounter on Sunday between Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Symone Sanders-Townsend of MSNBC. Roberts quite openly—if not honestly—explained Heritage’s planned demolition of […]
The Rude Pundit: Louisiana Wants to Put a Sign About F***ing in Kindergarten Classrooms
The state of Louisiana, with its overwhelmingly batshit insane Republican legislature and its even more bugfuck insane Republican governor, have passed a law that requires all public-funded schools, including universities, to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. In case you don’t know, the Ten Commandments are from the fictional book known as “The Bible.” […]
Charlie Pierce: The Democrats Are Doing Self-Destructive Oversharing Again, This Time About Hunter Biden
This is the kind of thing that makes me crazy. Why do Democrats insist on doing this? Why can’t they simply figure out that the press is not their friends? They believe in the notion of a “liberal media” more than most Republicans do. From Axios: When Biden declared for president in 2019, his family […]
The Rude Pundit: Conservative Plans for a Next Trump Presidency Are Dumb and Frightening
(Note: I wrote this originally over on my subscriber-only Patreon page, where you can join starting at a buck a month, with more treats for $3 and $5 per month subscribers. You can even pay for a year in advance which gets you a fancy discount. Join the smart rudesters there now.) The nutzoid right-wing […]
Malcolm Nance: SNEAK PREVIEW… “Thinker, Sailor, Blackman, Spy – Memoir of an Intelligence Warrior”
Welcome to Baby Spy School. Get out your notebooks, kids. It’s the micro-history of Espionage. Read the rest of Malcolm Nance’s book preview and subscribe to his Substack
Charlie Pierce: Trump Spent the Weekend Warning a Crowd in the Las Vegas Desert About Shark Attacks
It was a target-rich weekend for those of us who collect the loose and loony aspects of modern conservative rhetoric. Of course, with the former president* holding an outdoor rally in a pasture outside Las Vegas with the temperature clearing 100 degrees, there were bound to be some very large nuggets to be gathered. Put […]
Dean Obeidallah: GOP Judges protecting Trump show us what weaponizing the justice system really looks like!
We’ve never seen such a brazen effort by Republican appointed judges to protect the GOP’s political power as we are seeing play out right in front of our eyes with Donald Trump’s three remaining criminal cases. They are not even trying to hide their efforts to help convicted felon Trump win in 2024 by delaying […]
Charlie Pierce: Welcome to the Marjorie Taylor Greene Show, Rep. Garcia
Moving to further action in the subcommittee. Of course. Nobody deserves this. From the mouth of Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Do the American people deserve to be abused like that, Mr. Fauci, because you’re not Dr. Fauci in my few minutes. You know what this committee should be doing? We should be recommending you to be […]
Charlie Pierce: SCOTUS’s South Carolina Gerrymandering Decision Is More Proof They Don’t Make Justices Like They Used to
In the middle of his senior year at Harvard, a handsome fellow walked off campus and signed up for an infantry unit of the Massachusetts militia. By July 1861, with the help of his illustrious father, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts Infantry. He subsequently served through the Peninsula Campaign, […]
Charlie Pierce: Heads Up… The Supreme Court Loves To Wild Out This Time Of Year
It is that time of the season in which the Supreme Court issues decisions, a time in which, at least recently, it’s wise to keep a good grip on yourself and on a bottle of very good bourbon whiskey. This is the ultimate ring-and-run exercise among our institutions of government, The justices drop bombs that […]
The Rude Pundit: Other Things Martha-Ann Alito Will Do If She’s Mad at the Neighbors
Apparently, if you call Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, a “c-word” that rhymes with “runt,” she’ll fly the American flag upside-down at the Alitos’ house in sympathy with election deniers. And Alito won’t deny that that’s what it was for; he’ll just sigh and say, in essence, “Well, the little woman was made […]
Charlie Pierce: You Might Hate Your Job, But at Least You Don’t Work for Rep. Nancy Mace
This is one of my rare, but firm, bipartisan positions: In no neighborhood in any American city can there be found a greater number of horrible bosses than on Capitol Hill. (There once was a Massachusetts congresscritter whose new staffers were told by the veterans in the office that, on pain of death, the boss […]
The Rude Pundit: Stormy Daniels Is the Hero America Needs
In her testimony and especially in her cross-examination, writer/director/actor Stormy Daniels became the hero that America needs right now. She was on the stand for the prosecution of Donald Trump, a rapist who is also a former president, for falsifying business records to hide the hush money he paid to Daniels for a sexual encounter […]
Malcolm Nance: SWORDS OF IRON Part 3 – End Game or Bloodbath?
Months of organized college protests in America and Europe gave HAMAS’s leader, Yahyah Sinwar, a feeling of confidence that the Israeli-HAMAS war was about to end in his favor. Almost ten weeks of wrangling and begging Hamas to accept cease-fires led protesters around the world to start chanting. “Palestine is almost free.” Having just spent […]
Charlie Pierce: Judge Merchan Says Throwing Trump In The Can For Violating His Gag Order Would Be ‘The Last Thing’ He Wants
He really, really, double-dog—really, no kidding really, means it this time. From The New York Times: In a moment of remarkable courtroom drama, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, addressed Mr. Trump personally from the bench, saying that if there were further violations, he might bypass financial penalties and place the former president behind bars. Justice […]
The Rude Pundit: Protect the Free Speech Rights of the Student Encampments
On Friday, I spoke to author and activist Ashley Dawson. Like me, Dawson is a professor at the City University of New York, which has a bunch of campuses around NYC. Unlike me, he had been to the Gaza war protest encampment at the City College of New York, which is a CUNY school. The […]
Malcolm Nance: Will the Free Palestine College Protests End American Democracy?
When I found myself running around the west side of the Pentagon on the morning of 9/11, almost three hundred people were burning to death a few dozen feet away from me. I knew who had carried out the terrorist attacks. I had worked on the al-Qaeda mission, training special operations soldiers in their mindset […]
Charlie Pierce: We’re Still Doing This Whole White House Correspondents Dinner Thing, Huh?
I guess this must have been what it was like at Versailles while all hell broke loose in Paris. From The Washington Post: After a turn on the step-and-repeat with [owner of the music venue Echostage, Pete] Kalamoutsos, [social media content creator] Tony P was whisked upstairs, champagne in hand, to a roped-off VIP area, […]
The Rude Pundit: The Question that Justice Sonia Sotomayor Should Have Asked About Absolute Immunity for Presidents
Last week’s Supreme Court hearing in Trump v. United States (as accurate a case name as I’ve seen), aka “The One About Immunity from Prosecution,” was, to put it mildly, a shitshow at the monkeyfuck factory. In a case that should never have been taken, at least 5 of the justices, all the men, seemed […]
Glenn Kirschner: How prosecutors will ‘draw the sting’ during opening statements in Trump’s trial
The first criminal trial of a former president of the United States turns toward opening statements this week. Criminal litigators neither win nor lose a trial based on their opening statements. But jurors will begin to form important impressions: not only of the evidence for or against the charges they will be called upon to decide, […]
Malcolm Nance: WARNING… THE ISRAEL-IRAN WAR HAS STARTED
At just past 2 am local time (GMT+2), Israeli Air Raid sirens sounded across the country. Air defenses started engaging more than 300 incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. What those sirens signaled was the start of the Israel-Iran war. As predicted in my previous Substack (Warning: Are Israel and Iran going to […]
The Rude Pundit: GOP Ignores Trump’s Crimes and Makes Up Sh** About a Crime Wave
There’s a charming-ass Facebook group that Zuckerberg’s algorithm regularly feeds to my, well, feed. It’s a little ray of sunshine since the posts are all by people from other countries talking about their trips to New York City. And while some things will make any local cringe, like they really seem to love pedicab rides […]
Charlie Pierce: Ron DeSantis Crawls Out of Obscurity for a Minute to Limit Civilian Police Oversight
Remember Ron DeSantis? The guy who “won” the Covid epidemic? The guy who was going to save the Republican Party from El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago? Man fond of lifts in his shoes and white go-go boots? Exposed as a complete mutt as soon as the presidential campaign opened? He has returned to Florida as its […]
Charlie Pierce: Trump Finally Gave His Big Boy Speech About Abortion
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. On Monday, forced by events to confront yet another issue he doesn’t comprehend and chooses not to learn anything about, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago gave his Big Boy Speech about reproductive freedom. It was truthless and incoherent. It was, after all, a day ending in y. From CNN: […]
The Rude Pundit: We Can’t Rely on People to Just Vote Against Trump; They Have to Vote For Biden
All this Trump shit can get exhausting, can’t it? Watching this hemorrhoid in human form day in and day out as he blusters about perceived attacks by migrants and judges, ranting his brain-fucked comparisons between himself and Nelson Mandela or Jesus or Al Capone? And then we check the news on one of his four […]
Dean Obeidallah: Trump’s Wealthy Donors Will Gladly End Our Democracy To Make More Money
In February 1933, Herman Goering—one of Adolph Hitler’s top leaders– sent telegrams to Germany’s 25 leading industrialists inviting them to a secret meeting in Berlin. The reason for the clandestine gathering was that Hitler–who had been named Chancellor of Germany the month before–had just called for new elections to take place the following month. Hitler, […]
Charlie Pierce: Hats Off to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Which Has Found The Key to Covering Trump
The Cleveland Plain Dealer once was one of those famous local newspapers at which people like me dreamed of working one day. Its history went back past the Civil War to the days of Jacksonian Democrats. It had a romantic name, resonant with echoes of The Front Page. It won a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning […]
The Rude Pundit: It’s Not Just the Pandemic… We’re Traumatized Because of Trump and the MAGA Movement.
Look, I’m not disagreeing with the pair of doctors who wrote in The Atlantic that everyone is grappling with at least residual emotional detritus from the Covid pandemic that fucked us up 4 years ago and that’s why shit just seems so weird. I mean, how can you disagree with “In our lifetime, COVID posed […]
The Rude Pundit: Abortion in Louisiana… The Real Criminals Are the Ones Enforcing the Bans
It must be terrifying to be pregnant in Louisiana right now. The state broadly banned abortion, thanks to a 2006 trigger law that went into effect after the savages on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the 2022 Dobbs decision and handed control of women’s bodies to the states, subject to the whims […]
Malcolm Nance: Are CIA-Ukrainian Terrorists in Moscow Making Our Bridge Collisions Gay?
The scene that unfolded on the night of 22 March at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow was one I had witnessed perhaps one hundred times in my career. A squad of gunmen, carrying only AK-47 automatic assault rifles and backpacks filled with extra ammunition, magazines, and explosives, stormed an unguarded public space and randomly […]
Charlie Pierce: The ‘Mainstream Media’ Isn’t the Bulwark Against Totalitarianism We Wish It Were
On the electric Xwitter machine, Brynn Tannehill brilliantly eviscerated this hopeless Politico piece about the consequences of a Trump presidency that makes Pollyanna read like Mickey Spillane. I recommend reading all of Tannehill’s demolition, but in light of events over the weekend, I’d like to concentrate on one element of the Politico story—the one that […]
Charlie Pierce: The Governor of South Dakota Is Promoting a Texas Dental Practice Now?
There’s an undeniable sideshow aspect to American conservatism these days. This would be comical if it weren’t in charge in places like South Dakota, where Governor Kristi Noem is the current hot attraction on the conservative midway. Noem is a loyal follower of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago; over the weekend, she joined him as he […]
The Rude Pundit: Regarding Bloodbaths… Let’s Remember What Trump Said Would Happen If Biden Was Elected in 2020 That Didn’t Happen
Republican presidential nominee and a shit-filled garbage bag with a bewigged, rotting rump roast on top, Donald Trump, loves to promise that violence and horror is coming unless he is elected. Forget that actual horror and violence happened while he was president. Oh, no. We’re supposed to look back at the riots and disease four […]
Malcolm Nance: Biden’s Joint Task Force Gaza Says Dead US Soldiers and Sailors is a Reality You May Need to Accept
President Biden announced during the State of the Union that he was ordering the US military to conduct “an emergency mission” to establish a pier that would allow sea cargo to return to the Port of Gaza. The purpose of this effort would be to increase the flow of humanitarian traffic and goods directly into […]
Charlie Pierce: I No Longer Believe The Republican Party Will Ever Return To Normalcy
In Wisconsin, the political class has finally emerged, blinking and staggering, out of the long, gerrymandered nightmare that began with the election of Scott Walker a decade or so ago, only to discover that, yes, once again, the experiment has gotten out of the lab. From the AP (via Politico): Supporters of the recall campaign […]
Harry Litman: For the second time in days, the Supreme Court helped make another Trump presidency possible
The Supreme Court held Monday that a single state such as Colorado can’t prohibit Donald Trump from running for president as an insurrectionist under the 14th Amendment. It was the second time in less than a week that the court provided a crucial boost to the former president’s campaign to return to the White House. […]
The Rude Pundit: The State of the Union is, Finally, “Eat Sh**, Republicans”
One of my greatest worries in Joe Biden becoming president was that he “believes that his capacity to forgive and forget with Republicans is an asset” and that he could “work in partnership with Republicans.” I said that back in 2019 as one reason that I didn’t support him in our innocent, pre-pandemic period. And […]
Malcolm Nance: Remember Them… Two People Who Deserve a Trumpless America This November
This story has been an extremely difficult one to write. Because my heart is breaking as I do it. I returned from Israel a couple of weeks ago, and a pair of terrible personal events has placed me in a very dark mood, is illuminating how serious is the situation we face. First, a tragic […]
Charlie Pierce: This Supreme Court Decision On The Colorado Ballot Is A Death Threat To The 14th Amendment
It turns out that there is gambling going on in here. From NBC News: The court in an unsigned ruling with no dissents reversed the Colorado Supreme Court, which determined that Trump could not serve again as president under section 3 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The court said the Colorado Supreme Court had wrongly […]
The Rude Pundit: Democrats Should Go on the Offensive Against the Supreme Court
Look, the Supreme Court is not some super secret cabal of demigods who fly above the filthy, earthbound realm of politics. No, they are nine human being who shit and fart and fuck (one would hope), and you only need to look at the highly political negotiations behind the scenes when decisions are being made […]
Dean Obeidallah: Michiganders voting “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary are sending a message Biden needs to hear
Let’s be clear: The focus of the “Listen to Michigan” campaign where activists are urging Michiganders to vote “uncommitted” in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary is neither about defeating President Biden in the primary nor in November. It’s about sending a message to Biden –per the organizers–that “funding and supporting war and occupation against the Palestinian […]
Charlie Pierce: Republicans Are Scrambling Like, Well, Eggs Over This IVF Decision
Chief Justice Tom Parker of the Alabama Soo-preme Court has placed a lot of important Republican asses on a very hot griddle. For decades, they placated the fanatic fetus-fondlers in their political base with half-measures and platitudes. Then the U.S. Supremes dropped the Dobbs decision into their laps and, suddenly, there was no place for […]
The Rude Pundit: Get Your Filthy Faith Out of Our Secular Legal System
One of the hopes and dreams for Jesus-fellating right-wingers and fascists who know how to manipulate the Jesus fellaters is that the 2024 election will hasten the establishment of a Christian nationalist government for this damned country. That means, among other scary shit, laws come directly from an invisible sky wizard or, you know, “God,” […]
JoJo From Jerz: Joe Biden doesn’t have to be your dream date
Look, I like Joe Biden a lot, confessedly, I like him more than a lot of people who like him like him. And even I don’t think he’s perfect. I don’t drift off to sleep imagining some scene out of Anne of Green Gables, where a fresh-faced Joe dressed in a Seersucker suit meets me […]
Malcolm Nance: Two Weeks of Geopolitical Madness… Is the World About to Explode?
Well, the thing I’ve learned in the new year of 2024 is that one should not travel internationally and one should certainly not get sick. That’s because there’s so much mayhem and chaos in the world today that taking your eye off of one subject for just a split second will allow you to miss […]
Tara Dublin: MSM… “Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist. Here’s why that’s bad for Joe Biden”
OMFG JOE BIDEN IS FOUR YEARS OLDER THAN DONALD TRUMP, which is apparently a bajillion times worse than being arrested FOUR TIMES last year, having a prisoner number, and being an adjudicated rapist fraud with a court calendar longer than one of his dumb fucking red ties. Maureen Dowd, a spry young 72, wrote a […]
Elie Mystal: Merrick Garland Must Go
As we wait to see if the Supreme Court will grant Donald Trump another delay in his criminal trial for obstruction of Congress, it is important to remember that Trump may succeed in pushing off proceedings until he can be reelected because of the slow-moving failure of a prosecutor who is otherwise known as Merrick […]
Charlie Pierce: Greg Abbott Thinks Texas Should Have Its Own Foreign Policy
Over the past month, Greg Abbott, the inexcusable governor of Texas, has adopted his own Articles of Confederation, defying the federal government while pursuing a ruthless campaign against migrants on the southern border. The enabling legislation for said campaign is Texas Senate Bill 4, due to activate on March 4. SB4 is as direct an […]
Charlie Pierce: Despite What You’ve Read In the New York Times, Trump Actually Looks Terrible
By now, I hope all shebeen regulars have taken note of the single worst passage to appear in the New York Times since the days when Walter Duranty was writing about how high-on-the-hog Ukrainians were living under the enlightened rule of Joseph Stalin. If you somehow missed it, or if you never finished it because […]
The Rude Pundit: Completely Batsh** Things from a Trump Speech That Won’t Get as Much Coverage as Biden’s Age
This week, everyone in the media apparently decided that Joe Biden is too old to be president again. One report from a Trump-appointed former US Attorney that has a few lines simping for MAGA cred by dissing Biden’s memory for shit that happened years ago, and it’s like we have to act like Biden’s crumbling […]
Charlie Pierce: I’m Starting to Think Republicans Don’t Actually Want to Fix the Border Issue
Politico ran a story over the weekend about some Europeans who came over here to lobby for more aid to Ukraine and came away severely doubting the wisdom of the Founders. Take Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a conservative former prime minister of Denmark. He talked to them about his devotion to small government and how he’d […]
The Rude Pundit: JD Vance Proves Again What a Vile Motherf***er He Is
You think sometimes that you’re inured to the blithe madness and the constant stream of fuckery from people in the Trump Party (formerly known as the “Republican Party”). You can hear a compliant little bitch like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who always looks like he really wants to tell you about the boy he keeps […]
Malcolm Nance: A Lethal Attack in Jordan… Time to Punish Iran
Since the start of the Israeli counteroffensive operation, Swords of Iron, Iranian-backed guerilla groups in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq have been peppering US forces in the Middle East with Shahid–136 drones and ballistic missiles. US forces have defended themselves from over 160 drone and cruise missile attacks but over 100 soldiers were wounded. Today […]
Charlie Pierce: Could There Be a More Cursed Phrase Than ‘President Joe Manchin’?
As we know, a dream is a wish your heart makes. “President Joe Manchin” is a dream that makes your heart throw up. From CNN: Privately, the West Virginia Democrat has told people that a Joe Biden health scare or a Donald Trump conviction could give him an opening to run as an independent this […]
Dean Obeidallah: Jon Stewart returning to The Daily Show will help us win in 2024—No joke!
Jon Stewart is back! At least every Monday night that is, as Stewart returns to host Comedy Central’s The Daily Show starting Feb 12. However, Stewart will also serve as the executive producer of the show for all episodes, meaning his comedic fingerprints will be everywhere. That is great for us—and bad for Donald Trump. […]
The Rude Pundit: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Border Bullsh** Depends on Federal Funding
Many things gall the fuck out of me about Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who always looks like he’s smiling in satisfaction because a migrant child is drowning in front of him, and his completely dickish border politics to ramp up anger at President Biden and the Democrats. It’s not just his abuse of power in […]
Malcolm Nance: Mission Middle East… What May Be Israel in Your Head, Is Likely Not Israel in Real Life.
Over the last 40 years, I have visited Israel numerous times. My first visit came in the middle of September 1983. The ship I was on had just finished taking part in a massive bombardment of the Lebanese Chouf mountains in support of the fledgling Lebanese army offensive against the the Walid Jumblatt-run PFP, the […]
Charlie Pierce: Ron DeSantis Picked a Fight He Couldn’t Win
A dream is a wish your heart makes, quoth Disney’s Cinderella. Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough, quoth J.M. Barrie’s (and Disney’s) Peter Pan. Ron DeSantis will now return to his regular day job of misruling Florida full in the knowledge that his presidential campaign will be reckoned among history’s worst […]
The Rude Pundit: No One Hates America More Than Trump and the MAGA Cretins
Believe it or not, the election of 2020, up to and through Election Day, was pretty much a triumph of the American electoral system at all levels. At the height of a global pandemic, with hospitals overwhelmed, with corpses being kept in trailers, with supply chains fucked, we held a presidential election and that motherfucker […]
Malcolm Nance: Special Mission… Observing the Israel-HAMAS War from on the Ground
Every once in a while, somebody sends me a message that says Boy-Howdy, it sure looks like Malcolm is dropped off the grid again. Is he on another special mission to get right to the heart of explaining away something insanely complex? Well, in this particular instance, you would be correct. I have traveled back […]
Charlie Pierce: Let’s Look at the Iowa Results With a Cold Eye
Let us be completely honest. There is no silver lining to the results of Monday’s Iowa caucuses. What coverage I watched on TV—truth be told, I watched far more of Baker Mayfield than of Steve Kornacki on Monday night—seemed focused on desperate crawling toward a mirage of hope through a democratic republic turned into some […]
The Rude Pundit: Trump’s Silence on Death Threats Is Evidence Against Him
I remember, as I’m sure you do, in the years after the 9/11 attacks, that every time some violence was committed by someone who was Muslim, the entire Muslim community in the United States was expected, if not forced, by the right and by the media to make a statement condemning the violence. It’s always […]
Dr. Irwin Redlener: Children In War, Lessons From Ukraine
In the history of war, civilians rarely get a pass. Noncombatants, including children, are inevitably in harm’s way. It doesn’t matter whether the conflict is centered around raw conquest and expansionism, religious dominance, fighting evil, insurgencies, or misinformation. Civilian innocence is rarely a consideration in the pursuit of security, power, riches, or hegemony. So it is now with the ongoing […]
Charlie Pierce: Jack Smith’s Latest Filing Is More Proof Trump Did F*ck All to Stop the Goons on January 6
Every president swears to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and every printed copy of said Constitution says that one of its original purposes is to “insure domestic tranquility.” “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re […]
The Rude Pundit: When You Say Trump Should Be Allowed to Run for Office, You Sound Like a F***ing Idiot
Jesus fuck, stop being such pedantic idiots about whether or not Donald Trump should be prohibited from holding public office. The fucking 14th Amendment is absolutely fucking clear that he shouldn’t be allowed near an election. And yet we keep having these pearl-clutching debates about what it means, how it’s the end of democracy, and […]
Malcolm Nance: A Fight to the Death… Can Israel Destroy HAMAS? Part 1
In 2004, the United States Army, Marines and Iraqi Army carried out Operation Phantom Fury, also known as al-Fajr “Dawn”. The Iraqi city of Fallujah had a population of 300,000. For over a year and had become a hotbed and safe haven for the Saddam’s fedayeen, a terrorist force formed by Saddam Hussein to oppose […]
Harry Litman: How Jack Smith’s risky but clever maneuver in the Jan. 6 prosecution puts Trump in a bind
Special counsel Jack Smith’s petition Monday for expedited Supreme Court consideration of Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution was a rare, risky and masterly move. It’s likely to upend Trump’s chief strategy of delaying the federal Jan. 6 trial until next year’s election. Smith won on the immunity question in the trial court, where […]
Charlie Pierce: The Republican Frontrunner Is Copping Lines From Adolf F*cking Hitler
Where are the rest of them? Are there enough beds in Iowa and New Hampshire under which they can hide? Ron? Nikki? Chris Christie is at least trying to confront the peril, but that’s balanced out by Vivek Ramaswamy, who wants to be the legal ward and heir to the peril itself. But some of […]
Dean Obeidallah: It wasn’t just Giuliani, Trump also made the lives of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss a nightmare
Indicted and soon to be disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered Friday by a federal jury to pay former Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby “Lady” Freeman nearly $150 million in damages for his repeated and false accusations against them after the 2020 election. As Lady Freeman said after the verdict, “Today is a […]
Charlie Pierce: We Now Know What Jack Smith’s Case Against Trump Looks Like
Sometimes, within the blizzard of legal papers occasioned by the crimes and sedition of the former president*, you have to step back and filter all the filings and rulings and counter-filings to find the hidden significance of any single item. Over the weekend, special counsel Jack Smith filed what is officially titled a GOVERNMENT’S NOTICE […]
The Rude Pundit: The Republican Strategy… Make Everyone Think Democrats Are as Fucking Awful as They Are
There is one thing tying together a bunch of shit that Republicans are doing right now. They know that the GOP brand is tarnished with insurrection, hatefulness, and the stink of Trump. Rather than try to change or kick Donald Trump to the curb, which would be hard work involving convincing the idiot hordes of […]
Charlie Pierce: Gone Fishin’
For some time, looking out my left eye has been like looking through a damn ice cube. So, on Tuesday, I’m having a cataract removed. (I would like to have a calendar year without surgery. Am I asking for the moon?) Due to this eventuality, I will be hors de blogging for a couple of […]
The Rude Pundit: Stop Normalizing Trump-Inspired Death Threats
Over on the online version of the conservative magazine American Spectator (motto: “We’re batshit right-wingers but also pretentious as all fuck”), Jeffrey Lord, who is what you picture when you think, “Soon-to-be-extinct kind of old white man,” wrote a thing last month titled, “The Trump Gag Order: Corrupt Judge Assaults Free Speech.” It’s an attack on […]
Malcolm Nance: Hostage Warfare – Did HAMAS’s Strategy Work?
At 06:30 AM on October 7, 2023. HAMAS launched Operation al-Aqsa Storm. The attack on 10-7 appeared to have two tactical goals. Number one, cross the Israeli fence border and execute the orders of HAMAS High Command: That was to kill every living man, woman and child in Israel until the last fighter died at […]
Charlie Pierce: Over the Weekend, Nikki Haley Topped What We Previously Considered Her Worst Idea
Nikki Haley is no bargain. First of all, she’s a Republican in 2023, which makes her prima facie a fringe candidate. Second, at least judging by her campaign rhetoric, she’s a bit too dedicated to the proposition that performative belligerence constitutes a foreign policy. And finally, she is a veritable fount of terrible ideas. A […]
The Rude Pundit: A Poem for Thanksgiving from Indigenous America
For Calling The Spirit Back From Wandering The Earth In Its Human Feet by Joy Harjo, who is from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop. Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control. Open the door, then close it behind […]
Charlie Pierce: The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Just Walloped What Was Left of the Voting Rights Act
The poor old Voting Rights Act, one of the few pieces of legislation that people actually died trying to pass, has been limping along on one leg since the Supreme Court took a chainsaw to it in 2013. On Monday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals may have struck the first blow in the coup […]
The Rude Pundit: The Media Won’t Make Republicans Own Trump’s Fascist Rhetoric
You are never gonna put a stake in the heart of Trumpism in this country. That bullshit is here to stay until its followers die of some illness they could have gotten vaccinated for, or from shooting themselves with one of their dozens of guns, or of old age, alone with a red hat faded […]
Malcolm Nance: The Israel-HAMAs war is AWASH in disinformation. This interview is enlightening.
I think Roland Martin, the African-American commentator and host of the Roland Martin Unfiltered Show, is one of the underrated news interviewers out there. When the African-American perspective is needed, his gathers information at the street level, and his usual brace of experts provide an enlightening point of view. This interview I do with him […]
Charlie Pierce: The Reptile House Is An Uproar Again and the Country Is Running Out of Money
The United States government runs out of money this week unless Congress gives the president something to sign. And we can all be grateful that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has things in the proper perspective. From the Washington Post: “People want to give Mike grace to be able to move forward. […]
Dean Obeidallah: Why Democrats shouldn’t despair over concerning new polls about Biden
There’s no other way to put this: New poll results from The New York Times and Siena College that show President Joe Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in most of six battleground states tested are bad. In fact, these polls about a hypothetical matchup between the two are alarming and a bit distressing. But they should not cause panic. […]
The Rude Pundit: Democrats Win Just About Everything Everywhere All at Once
In last night’s absolute ass-reaming of Republicans, Democrats proved that the best strategy is just to be fucking Democrats. That means supporting abortion rights without any of the bullshit equivocating that gives credence to anti-choice arguments. That means calling out the culture war shit for the plain idiocy that it is. And it means that […]
Malcolm Nance: HAMAS Needs Children to Die
Palestinian Children are HAMAS’s secret weapon The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) led by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) is world renown for delivering punishing blows to terrorist enemies. They often use such devastating fire power, in the dense urban forest of the Gaza Strip, that civilians regularly suffer. In the smoke and dust from a […]
Charlie Pierce: I Don’t Believe This Weekend’s Scary Poll Numbers
A week after Halloween and the scary monsters are still abroad in the land. Scary polls! Scary plans! Boogedy, boogedy! It was a great weekend for intellectual doomscrolling, to say nothing of galloping paranoia. First, The New York Times comes out with a poll that shows the president is trailing Fulton County (Ga.) Inmate No. […]
The Rude Pundit: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Hates Nearly All of Us
Liquor laws in Louisiana are a clusterfuck. Because of a state supreme court decision decades ago, they are subject to the whims of a community vote whenever someone can get it on the ballot. So a town can allow alcohol sales in, say, restaurants for a while and then, whenever some opportunistic Christian dickflea gets […]
The Rude Pundit: Jim Jordan’s Combover Can’t Hide the Truth About Who He Is
It’s one of those questions you get when you’re a man and men around you are going bald: Would you ever do a combover? The question is usually phrased with a sarcastic tone, as in, “You’re not so pathetic and insecure that you’d do something so fucking dumb if you started to go bald, would […]
Charlie Pierce: This Weekend’s Additions to Trump’s List of Treasonous Foes: Mark Milley, NBC News
Ordinarily, we don’t jump every time a brushfire breaks out across the desiccated landscape of the former president*’s brain if, for no other reason than the fact that it would be all we did here in the shebeen, and life is too damn short. However, there was a general conflagration breaking out this weekend and […]
The Rude Pundit: MAGAism Was Always Terrorism
In a forthcoming book by McKay Coppins, excerpted in The Atlantic, retiring Senator Mitt Romney, who, one should never forget, is an entirely shitty human being and a blithering dickhead, pointed out something that should have been patently obvious. He said that prior to January 6, 2021, “elected Republicans feared a political backlash from their […]
Charlie Pierce: Elizabeth Warren Has a Few Questions About Elon Musk
Senator Professor Warren has some thoughts she’d like to share with one of her favorite BFFs: Elon Musk. She is Just Wondering about his involvement in the war in Ukraine and about whether or not Musk should be playing a role in the country’s foreign policy beyond ruining the platform on which our ambassadors share photos of […]
Charlie Pierce: The Supreme Court Has Deformed Our Politics at Every Level
Over the weekend, Heidi Przybyla of Politico blew a very loud whistle on the cozy relationship between Federalist Society puppetmaster Leonard Leo, crackpot political activist Ginni Thomas, and the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States in the person of Ginni’s husband, Justice Clarence Thomas. The initial revelation lies right there in the […]
The Rude Pundit: Democrats Are Bitch-Slapping Republicans and It Feels So Good
I know we like to insist that Democrats are generally milquetoast and rational to a fault when they respond to the wrongs that are done to them. When Sen. Dick Durbin can praise the absolutely bullshit blue slip rule, which is not a requirement on what underwear Ted Cruz has to wear but is instead […]
Charlie Pierce: Mitch McConnell Had Another ‘Episode’
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell apparently had another “episode,” this one at a political event in Kentucky on Wednesday afternoon. From NBC News: The Kentucky Republican froze in July at a news conference on Capitol Hill, going silent for 19 seconds before being escorted away from the cameras. McConnell, 81, returned shortly afterward and continued […]
Charlie Pierce: The Jacksonville Dollar General Shooting Is a Reminder That Our Illusions Are Killing Us
Look, I’m just spitballing here but, over the weekend, we had a viciously, nakedly racist mass shooting in Jacksonville, Florida. A guy who decorated his firearms with swastikas, and who spent hours typing out his hatred with one hand in the half-light of his mom’s basement and in the darkness of what was left of his mind, […]
The Rude Pundit: Two Extra Depressing Moments from the Republican Debate of the Damned
1. Honestly, the conservadouche Fox “news” moderators, Bret Baier and Martha MacCullum, could have phrased things differently at the first debate of the future losers of the Republican nomination for president on Wednesday night in Milwaukee. Baier asked for a show of hands in answer to the question, “If former President Trump is convicted in […]
Harry Litman: What makes the Georgia indictment of Donald Trump so different from all the others
The indictment that Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis unveiled Monday night offers a panoramic recapitulation of the misdeeds that former President Trump and his confederates allegedly perpetrated to unlawfully retain power in the months after the 2020 election. Its core charge against Trump and 18 other defendants is a violation of Georgia’s version of […]
Charlie Pierce: The Angry Children’s Caucus Is as Angry and Childish as You Expect
The Angry Children’s Caucus has delivered the ransom note to its primary houseboy-slash-hostage, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and the demands are as angry and childish as one could have expected. From the Washington Post: In a statement, the ultraconservative Republicans said they will oppose a short-term extension of government funding — known as a continuing resolution — if it […]
The Rude Pundit: The Georgia Indictment Is a Defense of the Workers Who Make Democracy Function
One thing that comes across in the indictment of Donald Trump and the cabal of scoundrels, dregs, assholes, and Rudy Giuliani for racketeering and other crimes in Georgia is that Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis treated Trump like a criminal who happens to have been president. It’s a contrast with the indictments from Special Counsel […]
Glenn Kirschner: Trump has a lot of bad habits. But this one could potentially land him in jail
Former President Donald Trump now stands criminally indicted in four separate cases. Presently, he is on pretrial release in three of those cases, but it’s more than likely that the judge in the fourth case also decides to release him pending trial in Fulton County, Georgia. However, given a recent post in which Trump declared that a witness […]
Charlie Pierce: Well, If It Isn’t an Eleventh-Hour Twist in the Georgia Trump Trial
This week’s installment of What’s My Indictment? will be taped before a live studio audience in Atlanta, Georgia. An educated guess would be that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis may have begun to soften up the ground over the weekend prior to what may be a sweeping case for the prosecution. This kind of […]
The Rude Pundit: Why Doesn’t the Right Defend Kai Cenat’s Actions as Free Speech?
This guy, Kai Cenat, has 6.5 million followers on Twitch, including 80,000 paid subscribers, and millions more following him on YouTube. He streams himself gaming, does pranks, and basically fucks around and makes a shit-ton of money doing it. No judgment. Anyone who makes a living doing what they love, as long as it’s legit […]
Dean Obeidallah: How much more violence does Trump need to incite before judges will stop this?!
On Tuesday, I published an article titled, “Trump wants another MAGA terrorist attack—and alarmingly he may get it.” On Wednesday, we saw an alarming example of MAGA violence in Utah when a MAGA extremist died in a shootout with FBI agents who were attempting to arrest him for threats he made to kill President Biden—as well as Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and […]
The Rude Pundit: New Trump Indictment… Trump Didn’t Give a Solitary F*** About Anyone But Himself
One thing that has always bugged the shit out of me with the reaction of Donald Trump, who really was president of the United States for a weird, fucked-up period of time, to the results of the 2020 election. It’s something that has bugged lots of people and it’s something that others have said but […]
Charlie Pierce: Judge Colleen McMahon Deserves Thanks For What She Did on Thursday
There are those of us who have been wary of the FBI ever since the 1960’s, and for good goddamn reasons, too, but who also are deaf to the fulminations of the former president* and his acolytes in the Congress, because he’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and they’re all thooleramawns of the […]
The Rude Pundit: Because of Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, You Couldn’t Teach Much of Florida’s African American Education Standards
It should have been so fucking easy for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is always angry that a non-white person might be happy and wondering how he can ruin that. When he was asked about the social studies standards released by the Florida Department of Education last week, in particular the one that read that […]
Charlie Pierce: It Takes Some Major Cojones to Defy the Supreme Court, But Alabama Is Doing It
You have to be impressed by the big, clanging brass ones demonstrated by a state legislature that won’t take an order from the Supreme Court for an answer. From The Hill (via News5 Mobile): While Alabama’s population is 27 percent Black, just one of the state’s seven districts is majority-Black. In a 5-4 decision in June, the Supreme Court affirmed a […]
The Rude Pundit: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s District Owes a Lot to the New Deal and the Great Society (profanity free for the kids)
Not to educatorsplain things to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the enthusiastic genital displayer from Georgia’s 14th District, but during her speech last weekend at one of those endless streams of conservative conferences that seem to be as frequent as a new Marvel thing, she went off, oddly, on how Joe Biden’s policies were helping people. “Joe […]
Charlie Pierce: Greg Abbott Is Finding New Ways to Make Texas Borderline Unlivable
Not to put too fine a point on it but, at the moment, the state of Texas is bordering on being unlivable. It’s so bad that the National Weather Service is resorting to pep talks. From the Washington Post: “Sadly, temps are going to creep back upward next week, too. Sorry, y’all. We’re gonna get back to our […]
The Rude Pundit: This Pride Month, They’re Trying to Drag Everyone Back Into the Closet
On Friday in NYC, the annual Drag March for Pride Month got under way in Tompkins Square Park. It was the expected array of fabulous, fantastic, and/or delicious people decked out in outrageous finery, crossing and uncrossing gender lines. The march is the cause of the latest right-wing freak out over a perceived LGBTpocalypse because […]
JoJo From Jerz: When you think like a Republican, it all becomes clear who is to blame here
A Titanic-bound submersible tragically imploded nearly 2 miles deep in the ocean of the mid-Atlantic. All five people aboard were killed. “The pattern of the debris suggests that at some point in the Titan’s journey there was a leak. It was so deep in the sea by then that the amount of water above it […]
Charlie Pierce: The Basic Idea of Self-Government Is at Stake
Rest assured, there are already plans in place to turn this country into Argentina under Galtieri, if not Chile under Pinochet. The New York Times has produced a truly scarifying piece of reporting that leaves no doubt what’s at stake in courtrooms right now, and at the polling stations all over the country in 2024. It is no exaggeration […]
The Rude Pundit: Get in the Fu**ing Game on Trump’s Indictment, Democrats
President Joe Biden has been very clear: No, motherfuckers, he will not answer your goddamned questions about the federal indictment of former president Donald Trump on 38 counts of just being a fucking cockknob and possibly, but not provably (yet), a traitor. Not only will Biden not answer your questions, he won’t comment on it. […]
Glenn Kirschner: Walt Nauta’s indictment is a warning to ‘Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mafia’
When news broke Thursday that special counsel Jack Smith decided to indict former President Donald Trump over his classified documents scandal, one of the most intriguing questions was: Would Smith indict only Trump or would he charge a conspiracy that includes the people around Trump who assisted, facilitated or were directly complicit in Trump’s alleged crimes? In other words, would Smith try to […]
Charlie Pierce: Jack Smith Decided to Let the Trump Indictment Speak For Itself
Jack Smith came out to speak today. (JACK SMITH SPEAKS! Special counsel as Garbo.) And he was as Jack Smithian as Jack Smith could be. “Our nation’s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.” Simple as that, […]
Elie Mystal: The Voting Rights Act Has Survived Another Attempt on Its Life
Yesterday, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court affirmed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and ruled that Alabama could be sued over its racially gerrymandered congressional maps. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the court, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as alleged […]
The Rude Pundit: The Trump Indictment Is Just Embarrassing (Sorry, MAGA Cretins, Not for What You’re Thinking)
Look at this shit. No, not just the boxes of government documents that former President Donald Trump, who is probably already working on bragging that his ass is worth more cigarettes than anyone else’s in the federal pen, hoarded like a deranged squirrel anticipating a long winter. No, look at the bathroom and shower in The […]
Charlie Pierce: The Trump Georgia Investigation Could Be Turning Into a RICO Investigation
The legal pursuit of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is starting to look like a televised bass-fishing tournament. There’s Team Smith in Washington, and Team James in New York, and Team Willis down there in Georgia. At the moment, Team Smith seems to be in the lead on total weight but, down in Georgia, Team Willis […]
The Rude Pundit: The Real Mind Virus Is the GOP’s Attack on Reality
There is one question that I don’t see being asked of right-wing politicians when they start talking about all the things they want to ban from the “public” (and I put “public” in quotes because the real public doesn’t actually give a shit about any of this, but a fantasy public that the GOP pretends […]
Charlie Pierce: Texas House Says Attorney General Ken Paxton Should Be Impeached and Removed
The shebeen is going dark until Tuesday, barring any major events, like, say, indictments of former presidents*, out of respect for the spirit of Memorial Day. So a new feature is born: Out On The Weekend In The Laboratories Of Democracy. We begin the latter semi-regular weekly survey in Texas where, as far as Attorney […]
Harry Litman: Why Special Counsel John Durham’s report takes so long to say so little
Rarely has a government report taken so long — in years and pages — to tell the public so little as Special Counsel John Durham’s report to the Department of Justice this week. When then-Atty. Gen. Bill Barr appointed Durham to investigate the department’s probe of connections between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Trump […]
The Rude Pundit: In the UK, They Banned Knives When Knife Crime Rose
As an American, it’s easy to be cynical about knife crime in the United Kingdom. I’m here right now, and already I’ve seen multiple TV news segments about all the stabbings and threats of stabbings with knives and machetes. When I saw a BBC report with the chyron “Knives: can we end the violence?” my […]
Charlie Pierce: Oops, Rep. James Comer Seems to Have Misplaced His Biden ‘Informant’
Did you leave him in the car? Did you look in the pockets of yesterday’s jeans? Have you checked between the cushions of the sofa? These people are unbelievable. “You have spoken with whistleblowers,” [Maria Bartiromo] said. “You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information. Where is that informant today? Where […]
The Rude Pundit: A Brief Observation on the Verdict Declaring Donald Trump Sexually Assaulted E. Jean Carroll
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when it was just fine to sexually harass and assault women. Slapping a woman on the ass was supposed to be taken as a compliment. Discussion about women’s looks and their fuckability was a constant in workplaces. And by “fuckability,” I mean “rapeability” because it didn’t matter […]
Charlie Pierce: At Least Fox Let Tucker Carlson Go With a Respectful Ruthlessness
There was a great disturbance in the Force on Wednesday. Don Lemon gets the gate at CNN, which genuinely seems to be floundering under current leadership. (Gayle King and Charles Barkley? This is a chemistry experiment guaranteed to make the cat disappear.) And, over at Fox, Tucker Carlson gets shuffled out the door without even […]
The Rude Pundit: The Pleasure of Watching Ron DeSantis Implode
There was never a chance in heaven or hell that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who looks like a 1980s shop teacher who gets off on breaking the birdhouses the kids make to prove “you can’t build shit, you little pussy,” was going to win the Republican nomination for president. I mean, put aside that Donald […]
Charlie Pierce: No One on the Right Seems Willing to Control the Violence
I’m getting the feeling that one of these wrap-ups is going to turn into another semi-regular weekly survey around the shebeen. One of our regulars is a place called The Tennessee Holler, a progressive news site in that benighted state. Naturally, the Holler has been following closely the current dust-up in the Tennessee legislature over gun reform laws. Accordingly, […]
The Rude Pundit: A Note to Breathless Conservatives… Bill Clinton Was Almost Indicted in 2001, But He Cut a Deal
Lemme lay some history on you conservative motherfuckers now that you’re losing your shit over Donald Trump’s indictment on a shit-ton of felonies for financial chicanery. I mean, beyond the furious masturbatory screams of “election interference” and “unprecedented” and “partisan politics” and other things that simply aren’t assertions of Trump’s innocence, just about the stupidest […]
Elie Mystal: Trump’s Indictment Is a Slap on the Wrist, but Accountability Has to Start Somewhere
It finally happened: Former president Donald Trump was charged this afternoon with 34 counts of falsifying business records by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. In a spectacle that played out almost entirely behind closed doors, but was still carried on television news like Trump was flying to the moon to be arraigned by Xenomorphs, Trump surrendered voluntarily […]
Charlie Pierce: Alvin Bragg Is the Law
After a full night and morning digesting The Latest News, I have come to one important conclusion: That any and all political noise out of Washington concerning the events in New York should be treated as completely irrelevant to the criminal charges in New York. And the noise is already at decibels only dogs can hear. From […]
The Rude Pundit: Republicans Don’t F***ing Care About Your Children Dying
It’s pretty fucking simple: If you won’t do anything at all about the number one cause of deaths in children and teenagers in this stupid country, you don’t get to say you care about children. It really is that easy. No matter what policies you support, good or shitty, you are a fucking fraud if […]
Charlie Pierce: The Party that Says It’s Protecting Kids Pushes to Bring Back Child Labor
During one of the 2012 presidential debates, when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney engaged in a spirited debate about tariffs, I remember being struck by the fact that they were debating an issue I had previously only read about in books. What was next, I wondered, hammer-and-tongs over the free coinage of silver? It struck […]
Charlie Pierce: Pre-Riot Tour Guide Is Leading the January 6 Committee Committee
A subcommittee to investigate the committee that investigated the January 6th riots is the most goddamn useless exercise in democratic government since the Buchanan Administration. The subcommittee will be led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., a Trump ally who had his own run-in with the Jan. 6 committee. The panel accused Loudermilk of giving tours of the Capitol in […]
The Rude Pundit: A Film in Stormy Daniels’ Career That Makes a Whole Lot of Sense Now (with a Lengthy Side Note About Her Financial Prowess)
In 2007, Stormy Daniels starred with Randy Spear in the porn film Black Widow (sorry, not a porn parody of the Marvel film, although, yeah, those exist. Look up The Assvengers). It was one of the first films she made after she had sex with Donald Trump one time in 2006. And, in context, I gotta […]
Charlie Pierce: The Silicon Valley Bank Debacle Was Built on a Hubris We Have Seen Before
The hills are alive with the sound of illusions falling like dead fish onto a pier. The proud, entitled princes of the tech world have proven to be babes in the financial woods. The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank had them jettisoning libertarian disruption in favor of abject pleading for bailouts, lifeboats, and all manner of […]
The Rude Pundit: What You Think You Know About Colleges and Universities Is Wrong
To listen to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other politicians attack the curricula of colleges and universities in their states and in the country as a whole, one could come away with the clear impression that a college student in the United States is subject to a nonstop barrage of critical race theory; enforced diversity, […]
Dr. Irwin Redlener: The Other Threat to Ukraine’s Future
The now year-long violent slog of war in Ukraine has taken an enormous toll on the country. And there is no end in sight to the fighting. No one questions the fact that stopping the Russian aggression and ending the killing is Ukraine’s – and the world’s- top priority. That said, we are also deeply […]
Charlie Pierce: Jim Jordan Boasted about “Whistleblowers” But All He’s Produced Is a Stream of Hot Air
A flashback: February 9, 2023, the first public hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), presiding. THE CHAIRMAN: This is only a sampling. In my time in Congress, I have never seen anything like this. Dozens and dozens of whistleblowers, FBI agents, coming to us […]
The Rude Pundit: What You Haven’t Heard About… Biden’s Gonna Veto an Anti-ESG Bill
Back in December, I warned that the next round of fuckery the right was going to pull had to do with ESG investing. While it’s a way more complex thing than I have the ability to explain, lemme give it a shot: investing in well-governed companies that give a shit about the environment and social issues. […]
Charlie Pierce: The Effort to Rewrite Our National Memory of January 6 Is in Full Swing
Do not mistake Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s surrender of the January 6 videotapes to Tucker Carlson for a one-off, quid pro quo arrangement aimed at securing the speakership. As Hal Holbrook says in All The President’s Men, if you do, you’ll be missing the over-all. We are in the middle of the beginning of a two-year conservative campaign to convince the public […]
The Rude Pundit: It Pisses Them Off That We Were Right About Regulations and That We Actually Do Give a Shit About East Palestine
Two things can be true at once. We can believe that the people in East Palestine, Ohio, are a bunch of fucking idiots who vote against their own interests repeatedly, electing horrible motherfuckers who don’t give a happy monkey fuck about their health or safety, but, man, they sure hate Black people and migrants, so […]
Charlie Pierce: This Grand Jury Report Offers Us Some Tasty Breadcrumbs in the Trump Georgia Case
Now this is a nice little aperitif. Ever since January 21, 2021, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been conducting a remarkably leak-proof investigation into the why’s and wherefore’s of how the previous president* and his minions tried to monkey-wrench the vote in Georgia the previous November and December. On Thursday, on instructions from a […]
The Rude Pundit: Republicans Are Utterly Devoid of Ideas (Except the Ones They Take from Democrats)
This one ends with a twist, one I’ll admit I didn’t see coming until I did like 15 seconds of research. The Republican response to President Biden’s quite sane and unexpectedly lively State of the Union speech was honestly just fucking odd, and not just because it was delivered by Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders […]
Harry Litman: How Mike Pence’s flawed argument against a subpoena just might get him what he wants
Vice President Mike Pence has reportedly hit on a clever and novel strategy for resisting a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith in the Jan. 6 investigation. He is expected to argue that because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, the subpoena would violate the protections afforded legislative officials under the Constitution’s “speech or […]
Charlie Pierce: Marjorie Taylor Greene Had a Big Classified Tantrum Over the Balloon
Oh, Madge. You need a timeout. You don’t work or play well with others. From The Hill: A classified briefing for House lawmakers on the Chinese spy balloon turned tense on Thursday when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) went after administration officials for waiting days before shooting down the surveillance device. “I had to wait in line […]
The Rude Pundit: Florida Department of Education’s Black History Month Essay Contest Seems to Want Students to Write Things They’re Not Allowed to Learn
It’s kind of odd, really. I mean, I know that Florida Republicans would say that they’re not opposed to students learning African American history and culture, even after their governor, Ron DeSantis, a man who always looks like he’s looking forward to when he’ll get to complain to the manager again, refused to allow an […]
Charlie Pierce: No, We Would *Not* Like You to Spy in Your Beautiful Balloon
The arrival of the now-famous Chinese balloon over Montana has occasioned not only some fine humor on the intertoobz, but also some distilled crazy from our political class. For example, Rep. James Comer, the rodeo clown who now chairs the House Oversight committee, lost no time in losing his mind. From The Hill: Comer told Fox News’s […]
The Rude Pundit: C’mon, Drag Queens, Let’s Go F*** With Some Churches
Tell you what: I wanna gather a whole buncha drag queens from different places around the country, from Tennessee and Oklahoma and Florida and Kansas and every state where knuckle-dragging Nazi and Christian extremist fucknuts are shutting down events and protesting them and getting shit canceled, all because someone in drag is involved. And while the […]
Charlie Pierce: John Durham’s Big Ol’ “Deep State” Hunt Did Find Some Shady Deals—Connected to Trump
Remember the Durham Investigation? It was going to prove to the world that the former president* was more lied against than lying, more abused than abuser. It was the Grail Quest for Trumplings, large and small. It was going to be an icepick to the eye of the Deep State. It was going to make […]
The Rude Pundit: Florida Department of Education’s Black History Month Essay Contest Seems to Want Students to Write Things They’re Not Allowed to Learn
It’s kind of odd, really. I mean, I know that Florida Republicans would say that they’re not opposed to students learning African American history and culture, even after their governor, Ron DeSantis, a man who always looks like he’s looking forward to when he’ll get to complain to the manager again, refused to allow an […]
Charlie Pierce: America’s Obsession with Its Guns Is a Sickness
Sometime today, someone will say that because the Monterey Park shooter used an illegal weapon, that proves that gun laws don’t work because blah-blah-blah. And perhaps the Baton Rouge shooting will be ascribed to some grudge held against the Dion nightclub because it wouldn’t play “Disco Inferno” twice last week. The simple fact is that […]
The Rude Pundit: The End of Roe v Wade Is Part of the End of the United States
I can pretty much guarantee you a few things are going to happen in the near to not-too-distant future regarding abortion rights in the United States. I don’t believe a national ban will happen unless the Supreme Court decides to force it. Instead, the insanity of our abortion policy in this country and the Christian […]
Elie Mystal: An Appeals Court Wants to Bring Back Bump Stocks, Beloved by Mass Shooters
The conservative judges who now occupy large swaths of the federal judiciary are pro-gun extremists. They’re so deep in the thrall of the gun lobby that their anti-regulatory opinions are now incompatible with mainstream American views on gun safety. Conservative judges have even lurched to the right of the Republican presidents who appoint them. The […]
Charlie Pierce: Merrick Garland Has Risked Justice by Betting on Impartiality
Robert H. Jackson was the last Supreme Court justice who never earned a law degree. After one year at Albany Law School, he became a lawyer by the age-old practice of “reading the law” in Jamestown, New York. He attached himself to the star of then-Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, and when the latter became president, […]
Charlie Pierce: Kevin McCarthy Will Take Us Back to the 1920s. Is That Good?
The whole thing got so numbing by the third day. Eight hours of calling names, eight hours of the same numbers, over and over again. The Democrats in the House of Representatives stayed solidly behind their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Twenty-one members stood against Kevin McCarthy within the Republican caucus, who were, through […]
The Rude Pundit: We Still Haven’t Left January 6th
On January 7, 2021, one day after a plague of festering dickscabs swarmed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, I wrote the following: “Every single Republican who ever enabled Donald Trump, and that includes supporting his campaign, voting for his judges and his fucking bullshit wall, […]
Charlie Pierce: Kevin McCarthy’s Ambitions Are Going to Take Him to Some Dark Places
Sometime next week, Kevin McCarthy, an amiable (if largely invertebrate) career politician from Bakersfield, California, will offer himself up as human sacrifice to the barbarian tribes of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. Remember Richard Harris in the egregious 1970 movie, A Man Called Horse, in which Harris is a British nobleman who joins the […]
The Rude Pundit: Haiku Review of 2022… Everything Everywhere All at Once
This fuckin’ year, man. Even as shit’s not really that bad, shit just feels like it’s spiraling down into the toilet of our abyssal politics. You can’t turn around without some jagoff screeching about “wokeism” or “groomers” or whatever nonsense word or phrase they’ve come up with to mean “People who make me mad for […]
Charlie Pierce: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Idea of Sarcasm Is Going to Get Someone Killed
Watching Rep. Kevin McCarthy try to muster up 218 people who want him to be speaker of the House—and he would sell his gray-haired granny to Somali pirates to get the gig—is some pretty boring horse-race stuff, truth be told. McCarthy is a dim, pale fellow whose every move is transparent and predictable. The real […]
The Rude Pundit: In 2022, Republicans Tried to F*** Everyone But Ended Up F***ing Themselves
The end of an election cycle leaves us with myriad questions: Who got fucked? Who did the fucking? Who fucked up? My favorite question is one that can be agonizing if you’re asking it about your own side, but it’s delicious when you’re asking it about your opponents. “Who fucked themselves?” implies that a strategy […]
Charlie Pierce: Trump Throws the Constitution Under the Bus for Election Lies
Physicians who work with Alzheimer’s patients call it an “amyloid cascade”; or they used to, when everyone but a couple of mavericks believed that deposits of beta-amyloid protein the the brain caused the disease, a long-held hypothesis that is now undergoing long-overdue reconsideration. Anyway, an amyloid “cascade” describes when a relatively stable AD patient suddenly suffers a […]
Charlie Pierce: Can Joe Biden Save America’s Soul?
It was a cold and windy February day in South Carolina. Pundits doing live shots in the parking lot of the bar were wearing blankets over the lower third of their bodies, just out of frame. A Democratic presidential primary was going on, and if there was a general consensus, it was that Joe Biden’s […]
The Rude Pundit: Blaming Trump Lets Republicans Off the Hook (and Other Observations on a Pretty Good Election)
(Started writing this early in the week, but because Covid is still a thing, I’ve been back in Louisiana with to see a sick, hospitalized family member. Things are looking good now, but it was dicey. Get vaccinated. Wear masks. Do the shit you need to do.) In the wake of Republicans having their raging […]
Charlie Pierce: This Time the Robber Barons Came for Democracy
When I was living and going to school in Milwaukee back in the early 1970s, Uihlein was one of those names that seemed always to be in the atmosphere, in which, I might add, it shared space with yeast and hops and the sweet, enveloping aroma of the Ambrosia Chocolate Company. On hot summer days, […]
The Rude Pundit: Barack Obama Calls Crazy “Crazy” and We Need More of That
We needed Barack Obama to lay it all out for us: “Imagine if you hire your plumber. You’ve got an overflowing toilet. It’s a problem,” he said during a rally in Michigan. “[The plumber] comes in and, you know, you’re waiting for the toilet to be fixed. He starts, ‘Have you heard about the latest conspiracy of […]
Charlie Pierce: Well, America, You Were a Nice Idea While You Lasted
It was this weekend that I finally gave up. I have watched the steady descent of American conservatism—and its primary public vehicle, the Republican Party—into the terminal depths of the prion disease it acquired when Ronald Reagan and Richard Viguerie and Jerry Falwell first fed it the monkey-brains back in the late 1970s when I […]
The Rude Pundit: They Once Blew Up a Classroom Over Textbooks, So, Yeah, There Will Be Violence
In 1974, in West Virginia, protesters used dynamite and Molotov cocktails against the buildings of their enemies. The protesters were upset that the Board of Education of Kanawha County voted to update the textbooks in the district’s language arts classes to include more modern authors in an effort to be more inclusive and multiracial. Kanawha […]
Charlie Pierce: The GOP Assault on the Vote Is About to Come to a Boil
It’s all coming together in Arizona, and the Supreme Court should be so very proud. Its Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association are fitting so neatly in tandem with its rulings in Shelby County and Brnovich, as the personal right to bear arms dovetails with the increased constitutionality of voter suppression—twin sons from different motherfckers. Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece […]
The Rude Pundit: The Questions Republican Candidates Aren’t Being Asked Enough (or At All)
We know that if Republicans win back even one house of Congress, the whole place will become a nightmare of masturbating clowns, all cackling wildly as they rub and tug their greasepainted genitals to a screaming spurt and then declare they’re ride-or-die Americans just engaged in old-fashioned horseplay to own the libs. Unfortunately, not enough […]
Charlie Pierce: America Has a Long History of Fumbling Its Democracy
I shouldn’t be dreading Election Day the way I am. Or at least not for the reasons for which I’m dreading it. I have dreaded Election Days before, but I dreaded them because I dreaded the outcome—the traditional American reason for dreading Election Days. And for the most part, the Election Days I dreaded for […]
The Rude Pundit: The Patriotic Case for Jailing Donald Trump
Thursday’s hearing by the January 6 Committee was clarifying in the way that a great closing argument at a trial can be, pulling together threads that had previously come up and demonstrating how someone is guilty of the crime or crimes they’ve been accused of. What is so absolutely glisteningly clear is that Donald Trump, […]
Charlie Pierce: Sen. Ed Markey Keeps Pushing the Feds to Show a Little Spine on DeSantis’ Evil Stunt
Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts always has been a workhorse in the Senate. As a congressman, he was out ahead of most of the rest of his colleagues on the climate crisis, even back when it was “the greenhouse effect.” He also saw the revolution coming in computer science and the internet. His prescience on […]
The Rude Pundit: Herschel Walker Proves That All That GOP Abortion Sh** Was a Lie
I’ve never seen a grift given away quite as blatantly as it was by right-wing talk thing Dana Loesch (motto: “I was too fucking crazy for the NRA”). In talking about the revelation that ultra-anti-abortion Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, running against incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock, paid for a girlfriend’s abortion, Loesch started with “What I’m about […]
Charlie Pierce: They’ve Figured Out who Ronald DeSantis’ Pied Piper of the Vineyard Is
When details started to emerge from Martha’s Vineyard about the mechanics of Florida Gov. Ronald DeSantis’ dirty trick, one of the principal villains was the mysterious “Perla,” who (one assumes) has some interesting tales to tell about how she landed the gig, including who hired her and what her instructions were. If only we knew […]
The Rude Pundit: On Mental Health, Like on Everything Else, Republicans Are Always Liars
In June, during the debate over two Democratic-sponsored bills with mild new rules for purchase and ownership of firearms in the wake of the horrific school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, Republicans predictably lost their collective shit over “muh 2nd ‘Mendment.” Putting aside the fact that without the guns, people in all kinds of mental states […]
Kevin McCarthy Tripped Over His Clown Shoes Rolling Out His Pitch to Be Speaker
We had a little sport with Kevin McCarthy’s “Commitment To America” plan of inaction earlier this week. I believe the concept of rake-stepping was discussed at some length. Well, the agenda had its rollout on Friday, complete with an explanatory video. And, well…WHAP! From HuffPost: The GOP’s video, “The Preamble to the Commitment to America,” opens with a narrator highlighting […]
The Gnawing Anxiety That Trump Will Get Away With All of It
I can’t get past something when it comes to the multiple crimes of Donald Trump, who really was president (something I still can’t fucking believe happened – I mean, I know it happened. I’m not denying the existence of facts, like Trump and his braindead legions do. I’m just always gonna be like “Fuck us […]
Tish James Got the Goods on the Trump Family Grift—Now What?
While it’s nice to learn more about the crimes Trump & Co. committed, what many of us really want is to know when he’ll be held accountable. By Elie MystalTwitter September 22, 2022 On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James unveiled a 222-page civil complaint against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, Don Jr., Ivanka, […]
Charlie Pierce: The Republicans Built a Time Machine, Powered by Racism
The good people who manage the vast archives at the John F. Kennedy Library down by the bay in Boston are not people known to miss a trick. There is so much history stored there because, as we oldsters will tell you, the 1960s were a pretty target-rich environment, history-wise. Of course, JFK’s time in […]
The Rude Pundit: Graham and DeSantis Tried to Own But Got Owned
You know what’s darkly hilarious or perhaps hilariously dark or maybe not hilarious at all and just plain dark? I’d bet that Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis thought what they did this week was fucking awesome and that they’d show those no-good liberals what fucking hypocrites they are. Except that reality ended up punching them […]
Charlie Pierce: Herschel Walker Is the Reductio ad Absurdum of Every “Not a Politician” Campaign
Sen. Raphael Warnock is a brilliant, eloquent advocate for the issues that he supports on behalf of his constituents. His opponent in the upcoming senatorial election in Georgia is…incredibly none of those things. Last week, for example, the opponent said this: “Warnock, I remember hearing him say, ‘America need to apologize for it whiteness.’ That’s not […]
The Rude Pundit: Abortion Rights and the Lie of “Reaching Across the Aisle”
Democrats make ads all the time about how they are willing to work across the aisle with the opposing party. (I know some Republicans do, too, but it’s not as prominent a thing on the right.) The notion is worn like a badge of honor, as if Democrats need to show how not Democratic they […]
Charlie Pierce: Empty Folders at Mar-a-Lago Marked ‘Classified’? I’m Sure It’s Fine
We seem to be getting closer faster to the moment where we see classified photos of U.S. nuclear weapons labs framed and on the wall of the royal palace in Riyadh. From the AP (via madison.com): FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida home last month found empty folders marked with classified banners, according to a […]
The Rude Pundit: Dark Brandon Ascending… Random Observations on a Patriotic Speech
1. There are a few criticisms to be made about President Joe Biden’s speech in Philadelphia last night. For instance, when he said, “Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology,” he’s really talking the difference between someone who comes to your house and murders everyone […]
Charlie Pierce: What Happens When an Entire Party Reorients Around a Central Delusion? We’re Gonna Find Out!
It’s going to take decades of excavation to dig out the crazy in our politics. If it weren’t so entrenched in conservative politics already, the previous president* wouldn’t have found it so easy to anchor himself in the past, present and especially the future of the Republican Party. And it’s clear that expressing the (unfactual) […]
Charlie Pierce: The Press’s Fealty to Both-Sidesism Means It Can’t Stop Falling for Trump’s B.S.
On Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart—who has spent a couple weeks in hiding because he signed off on the search warrant on the Tacky Palace that produced the Pool Shed Papers—produced a temporizing decision on whether to release the affidavit on which the warrant was based. From NPR: U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ruled the […]
Rude Pundit: Ron DeSantis Is Not Your New Trump, But He Is a…
Cunt. He’s a cunt. If I put that in the title, someone would report it somewhere, but we’re all presumably adult(ish) here, so I’ll say it clearly: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a total, irredeemable cunt and every word out of his cunty mouth is filled with cuntishness. Sure, sure, you can have a delicate […]
Charlie Pierce: There Is No Darkness Republicans Won’t Follow Trump Into Now
Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children. It is an article of faith around the shebeen that the classification system employed by the United States […]
The Rude Pundit: Note on Democratic Groups Helping Trump Republicans Win Primaries… So?
In one of the great “tut-tut” pieces in a while, the Editorial Board of the New York Times(motto: “We’re partly responsible for the Iraq War and Trump’s election, but you’ll still subscribe”) wrote that it was appalled by the idea that “Democratic Party groups have been elevating Big Lie proponents over their moderate Republican opponents all year.” They […]
Stephanie Mencimer: Trump Merch, Rabid Fans, Disgraced Ex-Officials… Inside the Right-Wing Conference Circuit
In 2018, two years before YouTube de-platformed “Dark Web philosopher” and alt-right star Stefan Molyneux for violating its hate speech policies, he was one of the big names featured at the first American Priority Conference in DC. The event was marketed as a free speech extravaganza of Trump-supporting activists and influencers not welcome at more traditional Republican confabs […]
Charlie Pierce: Hey, That’s Weird… The Texts for Trump’s Top DHS Officials Are Also Gone
As it turns out, Rose Mary Woods, or somebody (cough-Nixon-cough), was something of a piker when it came to burying inconvenient electronic evidence of presidential misdeeds. From the Washington Post: This discovery of missing records for the senior-most homeland security officials [acting Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli], which has not been previously reported, increases the […]
Dr. Irwin Redlener: Dispatch From Ukraine
Last week in Lviv was particularly productive for Karen and me. Although warnings to Americans to stay out of Ukraine were becoming increasingly intense, we were getting mixed signals from our friends in-country. Their message was, in essence, that this decision should be entirely one of risk versus benefit. In other words, were the meetings we had […]
Barbara McQuade: The case for charging Trump with manslaughter
The next Jan. 6 committee hearing — a prime-time finale after seven previous hearings — is expected to focus even more intently on what was happening inside the White House during the insurrection. I will be listening for evidence of a crime that has gone largely undiscussed: manslaughter. Five people died in the Jan. 6 attack. Officer Brian Sicknick sustained a fatal […]
Charlie Pierce: Joe Manchin Has Sold Us All Out Again
Over the decade in which this shebeen has been open, I have gradually come to the sad conclusion that the climate crisis is far beyond the ability of our democratic republic to handle. Our institutions are too creaky, too money-sodden, and too fat with chokepoints to develop a consensus that the climate crisis is even […]
The Rude Pundit: An Observation on the Nature of Extremist F***nuts at the January 6 Committee Hearing
One thing that jumped out at me while watching Tuesday’s televised hearing from the January 6 Committee into the insurrection of fucking idiots, which came closer than we want to believe to actually working, is how the extremists coming to DC on that cold day didn’t emerge from a vacuum. No, in fact, it was […]
Charlie Pierce: The Jan. 6 Committee Can’t Let Steve Bannon Bring the Circus (Back) to Town
Were I running the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, and I wanted testimony from the likes of Steve Bannon or Stewart Rhodes, I would insist it be taken on videotape, preferably recorded in the old jail cells in the basement of the Capitol. The possibility that Bannon—and Oath Keeper Rhodes—would […]
Charlie Pierce: The Declaration of Independence Has Always Been a Tremendous Bluff
The Special Committee seems to be getting serious about witness tampering in its investigation, and that’s a good thing. Witness tampering is easily understood. And it opens up all the avenues of communication employed by the targets of your investigation—emails, texts, answering machines, all of it. Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire […]
The Rude Pundit: The Supreme Court Tells the 21st Century to Go F*** Itself
This session, the newly-ripened conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court of the United States decided it was time to lift up their robes and piss on the 21st century and reality. The half-dozen justices, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, looked out at a nation, no, a […]
Griswold Is Not About ‘Contraception.’ It’s About the Right to Privacy.
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The Supreme Court vs. the United States, Part 1: Alito Loves Fetuses, Hates Women
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Dr. Irwin Redlener: Ukraine’s children desperately need more than shelter and food
There are two things that Ukraine needs right now. First, this deadly war of attrition and destruction must end. Second, the younger generations of Ukrainians must be healthy, educated, resilient and ready to take on the enormous task of rebuilding their country. I can’t comment on what it would take to bring lasting peace to […]
Charlie Pierce: The Texas Republican Party Celebrated Juneteenth By Trying to Drag Us All Back to 1857
Happy Juneteenth, everyone! I know that this has been accepted as a truly American holiday because people are already complaining that it’s been commercialized. They are absolutely right, by the way. From the Washington Post: The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis advertised a “Juneteenth watermelon salad” in its food court, then dropped it and issued an apology after intense […]
The Rude Pundit: Call It What It Was… An Assassination Attempt on Mike Pence
I have despised Mike Pence longer than most of you, even before he was that fuckin’ conservative prick in Congress from 2001-2012, even before he was that motherfucking governor who refused to allow a needle exchange program in a town with a high rate of HIV (until he prayed and partially gave in). Yeah, see, I was […]
Charlie Pierce: The Bipartisan Gun Bill Is a Good Start Like Tying Your Shoes Is a Good Way to Start a Marathon
The Washington Post ran an altogether remarkable paragraph on Monday to kick off its coverage of the bipartisan agreement on gun violence that emerged over the weekend. This was it. A bipartisan group of senators announced Sunday that it had reached a tentative agreement on legislation that would pair modest new gun restrictions with significant new mental […]
The Rude Pundit: Liz Cheney Is Trying to Save the House She and Her Father Built and Other Observations on the 1/6 Hearing
On Thursday night, the Select Committee on the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol finally, after far too long, frankly, made its case to the American people and the world. The committee wasn’t talking to you and me, we who are damned to spend far too much of our time elbow-deep in the […]
Charlie Pierce: It’s Bad to Elect Authoritarian Lunatics as President
Here’s some more interesting stuff it would have been nice to know at the time. From the New York Times: The day before a mob of President Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff called Mr. Pence’s lead Secret Service agent to his West Wing […]
The Rude Pundit: Uvalde, the Southern Baptist Church, and the Murderous, Traumatizing Failure of Conservative Ideology
What do you do when your belief system allows for the murder and rape of children? What do you do when the things that the leaders you trust have said to you, messages their media figures have inundated you with, when the outcome of that is the destruction of kids? A sane person would want […]
Charlie Pierce: There Were Good Guys With Guns and It Didn’t Matter
What the old city editors used to call the “tick-tock” on the massacre at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas is emerging, and it is emerging in such a way that doesn’t cover local law enforcement with glory. From the AP: “Go in there! Go in there!” nearby women shouted at the officers soon after the attack […]
The Rude Pundit: Can We Please Talk About Crazy Motherf***ers Like They’re Crazy Motherf***ers?
I’ve been trying to articulate for the last week this feeling of things spinning off their axis. I’m in the UK right now, a place I now end up spending about a month a year, and I was talking about politics with a young man from Northern Ireland. He had supported Brexit, yes, because he […]
Charlie Pierce: The Flying Monkeys Came Screeching For the Head of the Disinformation Governance Board Immediately
In 2009, a man named Daryl Johnson worked for the Department of Homeland Security. His job was monitoring the potential of white-supremacist violence in the country, chatter that intensified in response to the election of a Black president. Johnson put together a report that was supposed to be sent exclusively to law-enforcement operations around the country. Unfortunately, […]
The Rude Pundit: The “Grooming” Bullsh**… They’re Coming Up With Excuses to Murder Us
I have lived through a whole lot of rhetorical fuckery in my exhausting time dealing with the American right. I’ve seen us called every -ist that they found scary: Marxist, communist, socialist, anarchist (as if those are bad things). I’ve watched us be called demonic and anti-Christian and, heavens forbid, atheists (as if that’s a […]
Charlie Pierce: Our Out-of-Control Political Moment Has Been Joined to Our Insane Attraction to Firearms
Do not be alarmed, but I suspect that the Tree of Liberty is dangerously close to being overly refreshed, and not with the blood of patriots and tyrants, either, but rather with the blood of ordinary folks celebrating a basketball game, or people going to church on Sunday, or some just stopping in to pick up last-minute provisions for Sunday […]
The Rude Pundit: A Case for Letting Trump Back on Twitter: I Know, But Listen…
I know, I know, I fucking know. I remember that tense feeling, somewhere between shit-yourself anxiety and stroke-inducing rage, of wondering what deliberate, fuck-up-your-day provocation Donald Trump had tweeted. Of course, if you’re of a devolved or brain-damaged or cynical mindset, you looked forward to the Trump tweets like they were worms disgorged from Daddy […]
The Rude Pundit: Men Are Mostly Responsible for the End of Roe, So F*** Up Their World, Too
The Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a draft decision on which was leaked this week, centers on a law passed by the Mississippi legislature in 2018 and signed by its governor. That law banned all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It was struck down by lower courts because it patently violated […]
Charlie Pierce: Mike Esper Didn’t Think Voters Deserved to Know That Trump Wanted to Turn D.C. Streets Into My Lai?
I’m beginning to believe that book contracts are a genuine threat to democratic government. Once again, someone who worked at Camp Runamuck is cashing in big time revealing information now that it would have been nice to know at the time. This time around, it’s former Secretary of Defense Mike Esper. Read the rest of […]
Charlie Pierce: Who Was Mike Pence’s Secret Service Detail Working for on January 6?
I first got interested in politics through paranoia. (As the years have gone by, I’ve found that this was the best kind of introduction I could have had.) I devoured political thrillers about dark doings in Washington, D.C. Seven Days in May was my gateway drug. There was Night at Camp David, about a president who went crazy, and Vanished, about […]
Charlie Pierce: No State Official Is Doing More Damage to This Nation Than Greg Abbott
Good ol’ Tate Reeves, governor of Mississippi, is all down for the heritage, y’all. From the AP: The Republican governor signed a proclamation without fanfare Friday. It does not mention slavery — the defense of which was Mississippi’s stated reason for trying to secede from the U.S. In response to a question at a news conference […]
The Rude Pundit: Tucker Carlson Has an Orgasm… A Fantasia
Tucker Carlson is checking the strength of his belts. He’s putting them over the reinforced bar in the closet in his office and pulling with both hands, sometimes even seeing if he can lift himself off the ground. He knows from experience that it’s not the belt’s ability to hold his weight briefly but for […]
Charlie Pierce: Don Junior Was Claiming the ‘Moral High Ground’ in His Overturn-the-Election Texts
They were all crooks and they were crooks for the working day. From CNN: In the text, which has not been previously reported, Donald Trump Jr. lays out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process, according to the message reviewed by CNN. The text is among records obtained by the […]
Aaron Rupar: RIP Eric Boehlert. His voice will be missed.
I had something else written and ready to go for today’s newsletter, but in a strange twist of fate, it drew significantly from what would turn out to be Eric Boehlert’s last piece. So it feels appropriate to instead write a few words about why I think his voice will be sorely missed, especially at […]
The Rude Pundit: Democrats Should Go on the Offensive By Celebrating Accomplishments
A couple of things really stick in my craw from the last couple of years, and those are that we’ve been denied celebrating as a nation some pretty remarkable accomplishments. And while that denial is led by Republicans, quick to stomp any hints of optimism or hope like they’re cockroaches, Democrats should have and still […]
The Rude Pundit: The Only Thing Disney Is Grooming Your Kids for Is to Buy More Disney Shit
Of all the weird shit I’ve seen from the nutzoid Christian right (which, to be fair, is really just “the right”), the attacks on the Walt Disney Company over their criticism of Florida’s “Fuck You for Being Gay or Trans” bill and the state’s slimy, squamous governor, Ron DeSantis, as well as its declarations that […]
Charlie Pierce: The Senatorial Speeches at the Beginning of Supreme Court Nomination Hearings Should Be Sh*tcanned
‘If I were king of the forest, I would pass a rule for the Senate by which every opening statement by any senator in a confirmation hearing would be sent in writing to the committee chairman and entered into the record as written. That way, the first day of the hearings would consist of the […]