Von is very obviously talking about JD Vance here.

Note that nobody physically intervened here but the ghouls still fled the scene because they couldn’t take the verbal abuse.

“The Most Trusted Name in News. This is CNN.”

Was thinking about this today. In 2016 Trump said a judge couldn’t be trusted to adjudicate a civil case he was involved in because he had Mexican heritage. Establishment Republicans winced. There was actually a lot of pushback at the time from House and Senate leadership. There isn’t today.

This is going to get a lot worse, too. Dems need to gut this agency root and branch.

The huge problem with GOP shutdown messaging is the Congressional Leadership is saying “people are being hurt because Dems won’t fund the government” while the WH is holding a zippo and a can of hairspray saying “hahaha fuck yes fuck yes I am now the governmental grim reaper.”

Hot take here, I like Ezra Klein because he is willing to have interesting conversations that challenge his assumptions and risk highlighting how wrong he is. Everyone saying he got cooked by TNC, as if they were doing Jubilee. No— Klein had TNC on for a good faith convo that worked!

Why would I or anyone know the specific age of celebrities off-hand, that’s psycho shit

At risk of alienating some of my mutuals, I think Murphy is closer to the mark here than the critics. If 2024 taught us anything it’s that material matters (and specifically, voters perceptions thereof) drive their electoral decision-making. This is even more true of voters who are disengaged.

They rapelled down from Blackhawk helicopters in this raid. I promise you this raid was done for a cinematic 4K promo video that will be released shortly. This stuff doesn’t just happen. It’s almost always for digital content.

This is kind of nuts from Weigel. This is not a standard that would have been applied to Hillary, Obama, Biden, or any Dem.

The Hatch Act is basically a dead letter at this point and the appropriate response is for the next Dem admin to treat it that way, not to go nuclear drawing attention to stuff like this that has zero impact on anyone

Not a fan of Jeffries but tbh this isn’t bad

To believe that the President has any leverage over Dems during this shutdown you have to accept, as a basic premise, that the opposition party will suffer when the President inflicts pain and suffering on people by intentionally damaging public services. If you believe that, you’re a simp.

My most anti-bluesky opinion is that you all have lost your minds over something incredibly innocuous because it’s not your cup of tea and the harms are dramatically overstated compared to a zillion other things you think should be legal.

The one fact that should frame the entirety of the media’s coverage of Trump is that he was +15-20 on the economy prior to the election and is now -20. If you’re not centering that fact you can not possibly accurately report on what is actually happening in American politics today.

This is a surefire way to sour upper middle class professional parents on public education, and I don’t think you’re saving money or helping kids in the bargain. First miss from Mamdani IMO.

Republican Senator Dan Sullivan argues that Obamacare full premium tax credits must be fraudulent, because if you’re not paying anything in premiums how do you even know you’re enrolled in the plan?

Bro how can the FBI “cut ties” with someone? It’s the FBI, not the sorority sister from college whose wedding you got drunk at.

“Seeing longer hospital wait times? I mean, that can’t possible be because we are actively closing hospitals to give more money to our billionaire donors. It must be the Latinos that are there, stealing your healthcare from you”

Enough with all this woo woo nonsense ceremony, we’re *Catholic!*

Far-right Catholics freaking out about the Pope doing normal Pope things will always be entertaining. The Pope blessed some water? Can you even imagine?

There’s an assumption floating around that the GOP kind of wants to extend the ACA credits because it would be politically unpopular for them to expire so they obviously would want to extend them. And, not, they wouldn’t. It would cost Johnson his job to even have a vote on it, probably.

This is such an eye popping number, but it’s nothing compared to the volunteer metrics and town hall energy. He’s a good messenger. But it’s not the messenger— it’s the message.

I think "the left is violent" rhetoric fails to resonate politically because the general public correctly perceives the stereotypical left of center person as some combination of too timid or too compromising to follow through on anything

The MAGA answer to scarcity is that we can’t possibly have nice things, so you need to get very angry at your neighbors, question who is getting what and whether they deserve it. Democrats need a counter argument to this. Between Klein’s “abundance” and Mamdani/Platner, I think we are close.

The most ironic thing about MedBeds taking over the fever swamps of MAGA tin foil nation is that the main thrust of it is we should all have universal healthcare guaranteed by the government — not just the wealthy. And, uh, yeah! Let’s start with care that exists and then we can fold in the medbeds

This is probably my true about most household items, but this focus on groceries (two years ago and today) is missing the forest for the trees on major structural costs (housing, childcare, healthcare, higher education) that are making things harder for people under 40 without home equity

Saw this clickbait ad on my phone today, and it dawned on me that male body dysmorphia culture may have caught up with and even surpassed female body dysmorphia culture. Like, this is AI — but it doesn’t look like the AI of a particularly healthy guy!

I know we all have short memories, but no, I do not find it credible that voters will be persuaded by the crocodile tears about government workers and services coming from these guys.

How has he not been pardoned

Stancil (who I like!) is once again driving a massive messaging strategy debate on this website over something that will not ultimately impact voter perceptions at all.

She’s actually making this sound good.

Trump to fire the ADP CEO for Woke revisions

Trump is continuing to fund his most hated policies while choking off the popular stuff and this makes him a political genius because it's the Iron Law of Politico that everything Trump does is a stroke of political genius.

The NYT released a big poll today showing Trump at 43-55 and described opinion of him as “stable and strong with Republicans.” What other president has ever been covered this way?

I genuinely don't understand how Democrats can negotiate to fund the government under these conditions and it is why they should have made addressing recision and unconstitutional withholding of funds the key issue of the shutdown even if not as sexy or popular as subsidies.

I hear the President has decreed that it is possibly a crime to refer to Americans as "fascists," but "fascism" is a word that has a relatively clear meaning that's worth understanding. Here's how an official publication of the US Army defined "fascism" in 1945.

His formulation here is an old one that doomed the GOP in the Romney/McCain era and they pretty much stopped saying this “job creators” thing out loud. We should propose things that prompt them to fall back on this because they lose whenever they say this shit out loud

I’m not sure why this is so hard for every other Democrat. It kind of is this simple, message wise. The tea party harnessed this energy over absolutely *nothing* in 2011. We are speed running Putin’s Russia here. We can stand up to this and survive politically, it’ll be fine.

Male fragility is truly an insanely destructive force. This dude had a wife and a kid and was still so mad at a Mormon girl who dumped him a decade earlier that he destroyed and shot up a church. How can you even comprehend this?

Obviously I’m biased because he’s a friend, but I’m ALSO biased because this is the message I’ve long felt will penetrate through to non-engaged voters under 40. There is a reckoning coming re disillusionment with the American Dream. Trump leveraged it in 24, but has completely squandered it.

I think it’s funny that while Pete Hegseth has given the generals a dressing down for their BMI we are funneling hundreds of billions to an organization that has absolutely zero standards either physically or morally.

It’s cute how many people think the public cares about penny-ante shit like ignoring the Hatch Act. Frank Capra good government bullshit doesn’t resonate — they’ve been bathing in cynicism for so long that their baseline expectation is “everyone is corrupt.” Only material impacts matter.

The thing is, this is great content for their base — which is the 35% of voters they have locked down — but in terms of the intended effect of demoralizing brass into stepping down, it probably backfired. Expect lots of leaks over the next 48 hours

The Hatch Act is meaningless and we should act accordingly when we are back in power.

In order for newsrooms to function at their normal operational tempo; they simply have to ignore the alarms coming from every Trump speech. It is not sustainable operationally for them to go to 11 on every batshit statement or action. So the alternative — sanewashing — has become the default.

The intention here was to humiliate the brass but I don’t believe they’re the ones that got humiliated. And I don’t think Trump will be happy with Hegseth.

Do we not A/B test these things anymore? This can’t possibly bring in more money than unsubscribes.

Journalist reacting to Trump: “this is really bad, this is crazy.” Bluesky Discovery Feed Guy: “no, actually YOURE very bad, you’re very crazy.” This is just so cringe, can we not be this way please?