…meanwhile…

WCK relief lead Lalzawmi (Zomi) Frankcom, 43, from Australia, was one of seven humanitarian aid workers killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Monday. (PHOTO CREDIT: World Central Kitchen/wck.org)

NATO 75^TH 4/4/24

Biden to Netanyahu: Cease Fire -- Following the deadly Israeli Defense Force air strike on a World Central Kitchen caravan in Gaza Monday, President Biden in a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for an immediate ceasefire in its war on Hamas. Biden "made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers," according to the White House readout of the call. "He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel's immediate action on these steps."

•••

WCK and Israel – President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will speak by phone Thursday the first time since Israeli Defense Force air strikes killed seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers in Gaza, The Guardian reports. Biden is said to be "furious" over the strike.

WCK chief and founder, chef José Andres accused the IDF of targeting the organization’s caravan, NPR Reports. “Israel has a right to defend its people, but defending your people is not killing everybody else,” he said. Andres wrote this op-ed on his colleagues' deaths for The New York Times.

Biden calls the Israel-Hamas war “one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.” (The Washington Post)

•••

NATO Celebrates 75 – The 32-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrates its 75^th anniversary Thursday at its Brussels headquarters. It holds a summit in Washington, D.C., July 9-11.

Here are the top-12 contributors to NATO by percentage of GDP, according to worldpopulationreview.com:

1.) Poland – 3.9%.

2.) U.S. – 3.49%.

3.) Greece – 3.1%.

4.) Estonia – 2.73%.

5.) Lithuania – 2.54%.

6.) Finland – 2.45%.

7.) Romania – 2.44%.

8.) Hungary – 2.43%.

9.) Latvia – 2.27%.

10.) U.K. – 2.07%.

11.) Slovakia – 2.03%.

12.) France – 1.9%.

NATO’s minimum contribution requirement is 2.0%.

•••

Biden Leads, Very Slightly, in Penn – President Biden leads ex-President Trump 42% to 40% in the Franklin & Marshall College poll of registered voters in the swing-state of Pennsylvania, when third-party candidates are considered, though the president leads Trump 48% to 38% in a one-on-one race. Though statistically a tie for the November election, other findings from this April poll reflect a slight preference – or, let’s call it less dissatisfaction – for Biden.

The April poll found 17% said they are “better off” financially than a year ago, up from 15% in February and 11% in October. Biden’s approval ratings in the commonwealth are at just 35%, though more voters believe Biden has better judgment and is more “trustworthy” than Trump, while 40% said Trump would better-handle the nation’s economy. Both are “too old” to be president, 40% of voters said.

On the other hand: Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Guy Reschenthaler has sponsored HR 7845, a bill to rename Dulles International Airport in suburban Washington (Virginia), “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” Reschenthaler has six Republican co-sponsors in the House.

“Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges,” responds Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), (per Slate). “If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison.”

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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[WEDNESDAY 4/3/24]

The Russia House? – It’s easy to think of last month’s merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and shell company Digital World Acquisition Corporation as a hail-Mary to raise the cash the ex-president needed to pay a $454 million civil judgment to New York State last month. Of course, Donald J. Trump’s share of the new corporation’s market cap wouldn’t be available to him on time, and anyway, an appellate court threw him a lifeline, allowing Trump to pay the reduced fine of $175 million as his attorneys appeal the judgment.

But the deal to merge Trump Media with the shell company had been lingering since 2021, when the media company’s Truth Social went live and promptly began to lose millions of dollars -- 58 of them just last year.

According to an exclusive story published by The Guardian Wednesday, something called the ES Family Trust has been providing Trump Media with emergency loans. Existence of ES Family Trust was first reported by both The Guardian and The Washington Post, but only the former says it has “learned from leaked documents” that Russian-American businessman Anton Postolnikov has been using the trust like a shell company.

Person of Interest

Postolnikov has been a “person of interest,” according to the report, in a years-long FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigation.

The trust has an account with Paxum bank, based on the island of Dominica, which counts Postolnikov as a part-owner, according to The Guardian’s report. But Paxum does not have a license to do business in the U.S. – thus the need for the ES Family Trust connection to Trump Media.

The news report says Postolnikov is nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, ally of Vladimir Putin.

An attorney for Paxum Bank warned The Guardian of legal action “for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.” After the story was initially published a statement from a Trump Media attorney called it a “false narrative that (Trump Media) has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax.”

There’s much more to the story, which you can read here.

--TL

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WEDNESDAY 4/3/24

Biden, Trump in Statistical Tie – President Biden and ex-President Trump are in a statistical tie for the November election, with Biden narrowly ahead, according to an NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll outlined on Morning Edition Wednesday. Biden’s approval rating of 43% is his highest in three years, though his disapproval rating is at 53%.

Significantly, the poll also finds that most Americans, including Republicans, Democrats and independents, find criminalizing abortion "wrong."

Biden’s statistical tie and slight lead over Trump is slightly better news than numbers from the Gallup poll that Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay analyzes in “Build Back [Biden] Better” in The Gray Area. You can read that here.

However: Trump leads Biden in six of the seven most competitive states according to a Wall Street Journal poll, citing “dissatisfaction with the national economy and deep doubts about Biden’s capabilities and job performance.” The poll of main battleground states show the ex-president leading the president by anywhere from two percentage points to eight percentage points.

•••

Israeli Strike on WCD Convoy – President Biden is “outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday,” reads a White House statement released on X-Twitter.

“They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war. They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy.”

Israel “deeply regrets” the hit on the World Central Kitchen, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, and the Israeli Defense Force called its attack a “grave mistake” that was the result of a “misidentification,” The Washington Post reports.

The tide has been turning against the Israeli government – not the Israeli or Jewish people – since Hamas terrorists – not the majority of Palestinians -- killed 1,200 and kidnapped 240 on October 7 (per The Times of Israel). The Israeli government under its hard-right leader, Netanyahu, is capable of war crimes.

Your thoughts … as always, are welcome. Go to the left or right column, depending on your political leanings, and leave a comment, or email editors@thehustings.news.

--TL

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TUESDAY 4/2/24

Seven Food Relief Workers Killed in Gaza – The Israeli military has taken responsibility for a strike that killed seven workers for celebrity chef Jose Andres’ aid group, World Central Kitchen, Monday as their convoy was leaving a warehouse (per The Washington Post).

“Unfortunately, there was a tragic incident in which our forces unintentionally hit innocent people in Gaza Strip,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.

WCK CEO Erin Gore described the incident as a “targeted attack,” and the organization says it is suspending its food relief efforts in Gaza. The seven killed in the Israeli attack include a U.S.-Canadian dual citizen, at least one Palestinian, as well as workers from Australia, Poland and the United Kingdom, per WaPo.

•••

April 2 Primaries – Presidential primaries are Tuesday for Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In addition, there is a non-presidential primary in Wisconsin and runoff elections in Arkansas and Mississippi (per the AP).

--TL

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MONDAY 4/1/24

Is Military Aid to Ukraine on the Way? – Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA, above) said Sunday night touted a package that could forward military aid to Ukraine, after the House returns to Capitol Hill Tuesday, April 9. The three-plank bill would use the Repo Act, a “loan concept” and release of U.S. natural gas exports, Johnson told the eponymous host of Fox News’ Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy Easter evening. There has been much uncertainty over the legality of the Repo Act, which could forward more than $300 billion to Ukraine from seized Russian assets.

“If we could us the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that’s pure poetry,” Johnson said.

Even GOP presidential candidate Donald J. Trump supports providing aid to Ukraine as a loan, he said, and releasing natural gas exports that he said the Biden White House has prohibited would “help unfund” Vladimir Putin’s war effort.

Democratic support: Johnson will have to count on pretty much all House Democrats to pass aid for Ukraine and then again if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) carries through her threat to file a motion to vacate. The House currently consists of 218 Republicans and 213 Democrats, with four seats vacant. That leaves Johnson with a one-vote Republican margin.

•••

Tide Turns for Netanyahu – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) rocked international politics last month when, as the highest-ranking Jewish leader ever in the U.S., he called for immediate elections in Israel to replace its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu over his hardline response to the October 7 Hamas attacks. Now Israeli citizens are calling for the same, as hundreds of protesters have taken to Tel Aviv’s streets over the weekend, according to The Washington Post. They demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’ attack took an estimated 1,139 Israeli and foreign nationals’ lives last October.

Protesters also demand negotiations for Hamas’ release of more than 100 hostages the terrorist group continues to hold.

“In order to win, we need new leadership,” one Israeli protester told NPR. Netanyahu’s response is that elections now “could paralyze Israel for months.”

In Gaza, meanwhile, residents describe “total destruction” around al-Shifa hospital after Israeli troops “destroyed all sense of life there,” according to the AP, quoting a local resident. Israel’s military continues to restrict emergency food supplies from entering Gaza as Palestinians there suffer ever growing cases of starvation.

•••

Putin Loses One – A group of anti-Kremlin Russians posted a photo of opposition leader Alexei Navalny on a hacked prison contractor’s website, CNN reports, citing interviews with hackers and its own data. The hacked-in picture appeared with the caption, “Long Live Alexei Navalny!” The opposition leader was killed in a Russian prison February 16. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin “won” re-election, again, in March.

•••

Egg Roll – After the White House issued a declaration last Friday that March 31, Easter Sunday, was “Transgender Day of Visibility,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called it “outrageous and abhorrent” on social media and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said, “There is no length Biden and the Democrats won’t go to mock your faith, according to a timeline by Forbesmagazine.

Then Trump campaign spokewoman Karoline Leavitt issued a statement saying it was “appalling and insulting” that Biden “formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Day of Visibility.’”

The GOP reaction led the White House to reply that President Biden has made the same proclamation every year of his administration, on March 31, the annual date of the international celebration, which does not change from year-to-year. The date of Easter Sunday does change, year-to-year.

The annual White House Easter egg roll was scheduled for Monday.

•••

Up on The Hill – The spring/Easter/Passover break for Congress continues through the week of April 1. The Senate returns on Monday, April 8, and the House returns Tuesday, April 9.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Tuckered Out

UPDATE: Carlson broke his silence Thursday for the first time since being fired by Fox News with a tweet saying “See you soon,” The Hill reports. In a two-minute-plus message, he said that after “stepping outside the noise for a few days” he is gratified by how many “genuinely nice people there are in this country.”

Tucker Carlson Tonight's eponymous host has left the building. Fox News Monday in a statement said that Carlson and the network have mutually agreed to part ways. Carlson's ultimate Tonight broadcast was last Friday night, though the host leaves behind a sort of director's cut of the January 6 Capitol insurrection video recordings after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) handed him previously unseen footage, as well as fawning interviews with Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orbån.

The network will air an interim program creatively titled, Fox News Tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern Time weekdays, with interim personalities until a replacement host is named.

Carlson’s departure comes less than a week after Fox News’ $787.5-million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. Evidence for Dominion’s lawsuit included emails by Carlson saying he was “fed up” with Donald J. Trump after losing re-election in 2020.

“I hate him passionately,” one of Carlson’s emails said.

•••

Russian, Chinese and Iranian Tweets (Oh My) --

Twitter has lifted “shadow bans” on the government accounts of Russia, China and Iran, NPR reported last week. All Things Considered confirmed Twitter’s “stance of allowing the Russian government posts to pop up freely” on users’ feeds “and has now become company procedure.”

NPR reported the policy change days after the public radio outlet, along with the BBC and others left Twitter after owner/CEO Elon Musk falsely accused these media outlets of being “government funded.”

Musk defended anti-Ukrainian rhetoric posted by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Twitter, responding; “All news is to some degree propaganda. Let people decide for themselves.”

Irony alert: Twitter is not allowed in Russia, China and Iran, according to the NPR report.

•••

The Hustings is here to offer fact-based news aggregate with no echo-chambers. We are not social media – we are civil media. Post your civil comments in the left or right columns of this page, or email editors@thehustings.news.

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…meanwhile…

TUESDAY 2/28/23

(Rupert Murdoch said some Fox News commentators endorsed false allegations of the Big Lie pushed by Donald J. Trump and allies that the 2020 election was stolen, and did not stop the personalities from promoting these claims, according to excerpts of a deposition in the Dominion Systems’ $1.6-billion lawsuit against the network, AP reports.)

House Committee Challenges China – The newly formed House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party holds its first hearing in prime time, 7 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday night, with four witnesses expected. They are former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, both from the Trump administration, and human rights activist Tong Yi and Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul.

Chairman is Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) vice-chair of the refreshingly bi-partisan committee. Ahead of the hearing, Gallagher told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition; “A Chinese spy balloon drifting over the country and circling our nuclear ICBM facilities has a way of sort of bringing the threat close to home.”

•••

SCOTUS Takes Up Student Loan Forgiveness – Can six Republican-led states put the kibosh on President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program? The Supreme Court hears arguments for two hours Tuesday over whether the Education Department under Biden has authority to eliminate college student debt. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the White House program will cost $300 billion, NPR’s Nina Totenburg reports on Morning Edition.

Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, South Carolina and Iowa have challenged the loan forgiveness program, which would offer up to $10,000 relief for students with family income of up to $125,000 annually, and up to $20,000 for low-income students.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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...meanwhile...

DOE Says COVID Likely from a Chinese Lab – The U.S. Energy Department now agrees with an FBI assessment that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely the result of a leak from a Chinese laboratory, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. The classified report was provided to the White House and key members of Congress (the latter of which explains how the WSJ got it).

•••

NATO Deal to Offer Kyiv Arms for Peace Talks? – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has outlined a plan to give Ukraine “much broader access” to advanced military equipment, weapons and ammunition as an incentive for Kyiv reaching out to Moscow to begin peace talks, The Wall Street Journal reports. Germany and France have joined Britain in supporting the deal, which falls short of full-on NATO membership for Ukraine.

Sunak last Friday said such arms would give Ukraine a “decisive advantage,” including war planes, on the battlefield. But according to the WSJ, the developing deal masks growing private doubts among political leaders in the United Kingdom, France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to push Russian aggressors out of its eastern regions and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014.

Upshot: This is a decidedly sober attitude from Europe’s lead NATO members, coming after a year in which Ukraine has fought a Russian army many thought would have captured Kyiv by March 2022, and deposed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who last week said his country will prevail and push out Russia by the end of this year.

This Week – Both the House and Senate are in session Monday through Wednesday. The Senate only is in session Thursday and Friday.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Different Kind of Slob?

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) (above) called out President Biden for having stored classified documents in his Wilmington, Delaware home from his time as vice president and senator, on Fox News Tuesday (per Twitter). Graham apparently was not referring to discovery of classified documents uncovered at ex-Vice President Mike Pence’s Carmel, Indiana, home when he said; “If you come to my home, you’ll find Chick-fil-A bags all over the floor, but you’re not going to find any classified information.

•••

What do you want to discuss? What are your thoughts on these and other recent political stories and issues? Go to the Commentssection in this column, or the one in the left column if that’s how you lean, or email editors@thehustings.news and write “for the right column” or “for the left column” in the subject line.

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Rove: Penn Biden Docs No Mar-a-Lagogate

Karl Rove, the Republican political consultant and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, pushed back against Fox News butwhataboutism in an interview Tuesday about classified documents returned to the National Archives by the Biden administration.

“Well, there are differences,” Rove said in comparing the Biden documents with ex-President Trump’s apparent hoarding of classified and top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, (per Mediaite) “but you can’t make this stuff up.

“For example, how many documents in Biden’s case, there appear to be about 10. In the case of President Trump, hundreds.

“How did they get there? We didn’t yet know how the documents got to the Biden office connected with his activities on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania. We know that President Trump ordered the removal of documents to Mar-a-Lago.”

__________________________________________________

House GOP Votes to Rescind IRS Funds

Tuesday 1/10/23

In the 118^th Congress’ first bill, the House with its new Republican majority voted along party lines, 221-210, to rescind about $71 billion of $80 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service included in the Inflation Reduction Act signed late last year by President Biden. If not for the Senate’s Democratic majority that will assure the bill will go nowhere, it would reduce an estimated $186 billion in federal tax revenues, and add $114 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade, according to The Hill.

New Rules – The House also passed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) rules package, Roll Call reports, which includes concessions made to far-right members of his caucus in order to secure the speaker’s gavel in an historic 15^th ballot early last Saturday. The rules package vote was 220-213, with Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas the only Republican voting with Democrats, and includes:

•Return of a controversial rule to allow a single House member to introduce a motion to vacate the speaker.

•Limitation of bills to a single subject, preventing the attachment of amendments that are not germane to the bill.

•A rule to prevent McCarthy from waiving an existing rule to release bill language at least 72 hours before a floor vote.

•A rule setting up a separate vote on a resolution that would create a select Judiciary Committee to centralize investigations into the executive branch (let’s call this the “Hunter Biden” rule).

•Term limits for the Office of Congressional Ethics board members and requiring the office to make hiring decisions within 30 days. These provisions would effectively gut the office, Roll Call says.

--TL

Enter your Comments below or in the right column, as appropriate for your leanings, or email editors@thehustings.news.

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…meanwhile…

Hobbs Declared Next Arizona Governor – Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) has beat 2020 election-denier Kari Lake (R) to become the next governor of Arizona to succeed term-limited Gov. Doug Ducey, AP reports. That makes Hobbs the first Democrat to win the state’s governorship since 2006.

The last-standing election denier among gubernatorial candidates according to the Arizona Republic, Lake last month refused to say she would concede if she lost the election.

“I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” she told Dana Bash, host of CNN’s State of the Union.

Trump’s ‘Big Announcement’: Speaking of election deniers, Donald J. Trump is still expected to announce his run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination Tuesday, though some Republicans have publicly urged him to wait until after the December 6 runoff for the Georgia Senate seat between incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and MAGA challenger Herschel Walker. Some pundits suggest Trump may pull back given the bad timing. Trump has teased a “big announcement” at Mar-a-Lago, where he will gather loyal members of the Republican Party and media.

Kemp to Testify: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was to testify Tuesday morning before the Fulton County special grand jury investigating whether Trump and his allies criminally meddled in Georgia’s 2020 elections, The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreports, citing two sources. Remember, Trump was only asking for 11,780 additional Georgia votes.

Plus-One House Seat for Republicans: The AP also called two House races for Republican candidates and one for Democrats, with Rep. David Schweikert (R) winning re-election for Arizona’s 1^st congressional district and Juan Ciscomani (R) winning Arizona’s 6^th, while Democrat Andrea Salinas took Oregon’s 6^th district.

With these final results, the count stands at 214 Republicans and 204 Democrats, with 218 needed to control the House.

•••

Roster of GOP Presidential Candidates – Most prominent challenger to ex-President Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, of course; a onetime ally whom The Donald now considers an annoying threat. But wait, there’s more. The Washington Post says the following are considering runs for the nomination in ’24 …

Usual Suspects: Former New Jersey governor and early Trump ally turned critic Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, whose book So Help Me God releases Tuesday, and first-term governor and political newbie Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.

Never-Trumper: Outgoing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has said he is interested in exploring a run.

Playing Both Sides: Former Trump acolytes who have ‘moved on’ include Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador for Trump, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and Trump administration secretary of state.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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Dems Hold the Senate

(MON 11/14/22)

Pollsters and pundits have been agonizing over how predictions of a big red wave in last week’s midterm elections turned out to be a big mistake, even though reports for weeks of high early voter turnouts should have provided a clue. What we got was a raft of polls showing key races within the margin of error.

And so even before the December 6 runoff between incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Donald J. Trump-backed challenger Herschel Walker, the Democratic Party again has wafer-thin control of the Senate. The party reached the magic 50-senator count over the weekend when Nevada finally declared incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto winner against Adam Laxalt’s challenge. Never mind that members of Laxalt’s political family (his father was preternaturally moderate Sen. Pete Dominici (R-NM) and his grandfather was Paul Laxalt, a Nevada governor then U.S. senator) urged voters to cast their ballots for Cortez Masto.

But for months there have been few predictions of a Republican takeover of the Senate. You’d have to go to Fox News or outlets to its right for that. The House is another story, where Republicans were expected to flip up to 24 seats, but now there is a slim chance Democrats could maintain control.

As of Sunday, 19 of 435 seats were awaiting declared winners. Republicans have won 212 so far to the Democratic Party’s 204 seats, according to The New York Times, with 218 seats necessary for a majority.

--Todd Lassa

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misstated the date for the Georgia Senate race runoff, which will be held December 6.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Murdoch to Trump: We Mean It This Time

Conservative cacophony blaming ex-President Trump for the GOP’s marginal Midterm Madness results reached yet another Murdoch crescendo Thursday with the kick in The Donald’s cajones coming from the New York Post (above) to Fox News to the prestige paper. …

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board editorialized; “Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”

This made us feel nostalgic for the time it last appeared the Republican Party and conservatism’s most prominent media conglomerate attempted to take back the Republican Party from “populist” Donald J. Trump. Our center-column headline from July 23 of this year, more than two weeks before the FBI’s August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago for sensitive and even top-secret papers re-cemented right-wing fealty to the ex-prez, and had his most fervid supporters blaming the FBI: “Murdoch to Trump: Drop Dead.”

--TL

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Lettuce Wins

(THU 10/20/22)

British PM Resigns – Prime Minister Liz Truss has announced her resignation just 44 days into her term, the BBC reports. Her conservative party is to choose a successor by Friday, October 28. London’s Daily Star claimed victory for its 60-pence head of lettuce for outlasting the PM with the shortest term in British history.

--TL

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Biden Ups Midterm Ante on Abortion Issue (WED 10/19/22)

Codifying Roe v. Wade – President Biden announces Tuesday the first and foremost issue on his agenda for the second half of his term, if Democrats manage to hold majorities in both the House and Senate, will be a bill codifying Roe v. Wade, The Hill reports. Yes, that is a big “if”. With three weeks to go to the November 8 midterm elections, most polls show that intended voters rank inflation and the economy as their top issue, ahead of abortion rights.

The Hill helpfully notes that if Democrats do hold off the GOP in the House and Senate, such legislation could appear on or near the 50^th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe decision, January 23, 1973 which was overturned last summer by SCOTUS’ ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Upshot: The White House’s gambit will only work for Democrats if it boosts turnout by pro-abortion rights voters in the midterms, rather than counts on changing minds among those who will vote by November 8 anyway.

•••

Record Early Voting in Georgia – The state’s first day of in-person early voting broke the midterm election record by Tuesday morning, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, with nearly 123,000 voters turning out. If Georgia is any indication of the turnout nationally, its likely polls on individual races across the states will prove to be way off the mark.

Meanwhile: Numerous news reports indicate independent and moderate Republican and Democratic voters in Georgia are willing to split their tickets. That would be good news for both incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whose Democratic challenger is Stacey Abrams, and incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is in a statistical tie in recent polls with Trumpian Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

--Edited by Todd Lassa

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Upshot: The White House’s gambit will only work for Democrats if it boosts turnout by pro-abortion rights voters in the midterms, rather than counting on changing minds among those who will vote by November 8 anyway.

•••

--Edited by Todd Lassa

Latest on the Midterms (MON 10/17/22)

Hill v. Point: A news alert Monday evening, October 17, from The Hill says Republicans are “growing more optimistic” that they will grab majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate after the November 8 midterms. Pollsters say the GOP is gaining momentum from the “stubborn” inflation rate being blamed on President Biden and the Democrats.

That alert was followed by The Point! by CNN’s Chris Cilizza who writes of a surprising poll by J. Ann Selzer for the Des Moines Register, placing Democrat Mike Franken in a statistical tie with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who seeks his eighth term at age 89. Grassley, who hasn’t been seriously challenged in several terms, has 46% in Selzer’s poll to Franken’s 43%.

Upshot: Selzer’s polls have been the most reliable since polls in general went south with the 2016 presidential race, Cilizza notes, and FiveThirtyEight rates her with a grade of A+.

•••

Early and mail-in voting are underway in many states as the November 8 midterm elections loom. While there is much new attention this year being paid on down-ballot races where elected state and county officials could potentially determine how future elections are conducted and counted, U.S. Senate races are in the national media spotlight.

Specifically, three key Senate races are considered most likely to determine whether Democrats maintain power in the upper chamber or whether the GOP regains its control in January.

Ohio: While Republican challenger, venture capitalist and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance holds the double-edge sword of Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, Democratic candidate Rep. Tim Ryan says he disagrees with his party’s leader, President Biden, on such issues as immigration policy. Vance and Ryan were scheduled to face off in their second of two debates Tuesday, October 18. The two candidates are in a statistical tie according to FiveThirtyEight, with Ryan polling an average of 45.1% to Vance’s 44.8% as of October 14.

Georgia: Republican challenger, football hero and Trump endorsee Herschel Walker has lost some support in the week or so since the Daily Beast reported a woman claims he paid for her abortion. Incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock leads Walker 48% to 44.2% according to FiveThirtyEight averaging. Warnock would need at least 50% of the vote to win outright, however, to avoid a runoff likely against Walker. A third-party candidate, Libertarian Chase Oliver, is currently polling about 4% according to Fox News. Much of his November 8 votes would likely go to Walker in a runoff.

Nevada: Republican challenger Adam Laxalt leads incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto 45.1% to 44.5%, another statistical tie, according to FiveThirtyEight averaging. This despite 14 members of the Laxalt family, long politically prominent Republicans in Nevada, endorsed Cortez Masto over Laxalt’s embrace of his Trump-MAGA endorsement. Cortez Masto is losing Hispanic support over inflation and the economy, Newsweek reports, citing a USA Today/Suffolk University poll.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), endorsed by The Philadelphia Inquirer October 17, leads erstwhile Jersey guy and MAGA Republican Mehmet Oz by 48% to 42.4%, according to FiveThirtyEight, which means the GOP would have to win at least one challenge against a Democratic incumbent just to retain the 50-50 Senate split, a tie broken by Vice President Kamala Harris. This race is for a replacement to retiring Sen. Pat Toomey, a not-at-all-Trumper Republican.

--Compiled by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Barr Blasts Special Master Ruling

William Barr, attorney general for ex-President Trump until he resigned just before Christmas 2020, has joined a plethora of legal experts in criticizing Federal District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ordering of a special master in the case of the FBI’s seizure of confidential government documents from Mar-a-Lago.

“The opinion, I think was wrong,” Barr, whom critics will note is also promoting his book, One Damn Thing After Another told Fox News Tuesday, “and I think the government should appeal it. …

“I don’t think the appointment of a special master is going to hold up,” he continued, saying it will only delay the investigation. “But even if it does, I don’t see it fundamentally changing the trajectory.”

Enter your thoughts in the Comment box in this column, or email us at editors@thehustings.news and identify yourself as leaning left or right in the subject line.

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Murdoch to Trump: Drop Dead

By Todd Lassa

Last Thursday’s prime time House Select committee hearing on the January 6 Capitol insurrection finally was too much for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. In case you missed it, Friday evening The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board ran an opinion piece entitled “The President Who Stood Still on Jan. 6.”

“Shortly after Mr. Trump urged protesters to march on the Capitol, he was told violence was breaking out," the WSJ noted. "At about 1:30 p.m. he went to the dining room, where he stayed until 4 p.m. There is no official record of what he did, and the photographer was told no pictures. …

“All of MAGA world was texting Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Mr. Trump needed to call off his supporters. …” (Including Murdoch's own Fox News pundits Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.)

On NPR’s Weekend Edition media correspondent David Folkenflik suggested the editorial would give the WSJ’s traditional readership cover to move back to more traditional anti-regulatory conservatism. Murdoch’s flip on Trump will affect coverage on Fox News as well, where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will get more positive coverage, though its prime-time pundit “personalities,” including Ingraham, Hannity and Tucker Carlson, may stick with Trump.

There is no sign extreme-right media outlets as One America News will back off support of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election results. But Murdoch’s flip includes his working-class daily newspaper, the New York Post, which last Friday ran an “opinion/editorial” entitled, “Trump’s silence on Jan. 6 is damning.”

The upshot is Murdoch’s media outlets give the majority of Republicans – who have consistently polled that a majority of them believe Trump beat Joe Biden in 2020 – cover to finally move on. Traditional Republicans have been trying to do this since at least Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s February 13, 2021 speech blaming the former president for the Capitol attack, after voting against convicting him for it. The 1/6 committee replayed part of McConnell’s speech last Thursday night.

Since then, pundits have kept their licked fingers poked into the political winds to measure Trump’s ups and downs, and each time he looked to be out, he bounced back on the strength of his minority, hardcore base. If the extreme-MAGA outlets like OAN refuse to budge it would be reasonable to expect somewhere less than 30% of voters (his lowest approval rating was 29% when he left office, according to Breitbart, quoting a Pew Research poll at the time) will continue to back the Big Lie. But the 1/6 hearings may have proved too provocative and too water-tight since they began in June, even if most Republicans claim to be ignoring them. Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) co-leadership of the committee, and her sober warnings of the Big Lie’s threat to our democracy appears to have sunk in.

Perhaps if the 1/6 panel holds more hearings beginning in September, they finally will be covered live on Fox News?

(MON 7/25/22)

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Reactions to the 1/6 Hearings Season Finale (SUN-MON 7/24-25/22)

By Todd Lassa

We are headed for a civil war, said 50.1% of respondents to a poll released before Thursday’s eighth hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol. To be precise, this slight majority of 8,620 respondents “at least somewhat agree” a civil war will happen soon, The Hill reported Saturday, after that season finale.

UC-Davis researchers took the poll May 13 to June 2, ending a full week before the premier of the 1/6 hearings, and found that 47.8% “strongly disagree” a civil war is in our near-future. As with most such surveys, the poll breaks “agree” and “disagree” down, with 14% “strongly” or “very strongly” agreeing such a war is imminent, and 36% somewhat disagreeing. The good news, if it can be called such, is that two-thirds said a civil war would be a serious threat to democracy, and 90% say it’s “very” or “extremely” important for the U.S. to remain a democracy.

Perhaps the most startling warning about the future of our democracy comes from this: 40% said having a “strong leader” is more important for the United States than democracy. Two-fifths of respondents are OK with authoritarianism. Cue the old warnings that the January 6 insurrection was a “dress rehearsal” for the 2024 presidential election.

On Friday, The Hustings launched a Twitter poll [@NewsHustings] asking whether you agree, or disagree with Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) statement from Thursday’s hearing that Donald J. Trump “should never be trusted with any position of authority ever again.” No “strongly agree” or “somewhat disagree” gray areas here – just “yes” or “no.”

To be clear, this is not a scientific poll like the one conducted by UC-Davis, but a simple reader poll asking anyone with enough interest in the subject to reply.

At the conclusion of the poll Saturday, of 810 respondents 76.4% agree with Cheney that Trump should never be allowed near a position of authority, which means that 23.6% said he should.

Currently in the left column you’ll find an opinion piece by another of our contributing pundits, Jim McCraw, on 1/6 Hearing VIII, followed by tweeted comments on our Twitter poll. Comments in opposition to Cheney’s statement are in the right column.

Scroll down one file to find our original coverage and analysis of last Thursday’s prime time hearing in the center column with Ken Zino’s commentary in the left column and Stephen Macaulay’s (our never-Trumper conservative-leaning pundit-at-large) in the right column.

Submit your opinions in any of the comment boxes on this page, or email editors@thehustings.news.

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Like Beating a Dead Election Results Challenge

By Todd Lassa

If you think you’ve heard everything from the eighth hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^thAttack on the United States Capitol before, it’s because you watched it in horror that day, and maybe watched most, or all seven, previous hearings.

Thursday night, the panel filled in Donald J. Trump’s 187 minutes of public “absence” that day with loyal Republican White House aides testifying he ignored their pleas to call off the mob as he tried to disrupt the ceremonial Electoral College count.

D.C. Metro Police Sgt. Mark Robinson testified on video that Trump wanted to return to the Capitol after Secret Service drove him back to the White House and put the motorcade on standby for 45 minutes. Trump knew within 15 minutes of returning to the White House that the Capitol had been breached, he said.

Trump then spent the next two-and-a-half hours watching Fox News from the White House dining room. From 11:06 a.m. to 6:45 p.m., the committee said, no calls to the president were entered into the White House logs.

But the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called Trump for about four minutes beginning at 1:39 p.m., Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), of the panel said, and at 1:49 p.m. the D.C. police called the attack a riot. Trump responded by tweeting a video of his speech at the Ellipse from that morning.

In his video testimony, Trump administration counsel Pat Cipollone testified that he and everyone else in the White House except the president wanted the president to call off the riot from the moment its intensity was apparent on TV.

Former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, who testified live with former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger (both pictured above) said Thursday she supported a move to get Trump to record a video from the press briefing room, less than a 60-second walk from the dining room, telling his followers to leave the Capitol.

Trump did not budge, and instead took an eight-minute call from Giuliani at 2:03 p.m. At 2:13 p.m., the Capitol building was breached and rioters entered. An anonymous White House security official testified on an audio recording that members from the vice president’s security detail, holed up with Mike Pence in his Capitol office, were beginning to fear for their own lives. The security detail were “close to pressing to use lethal weapons, or worse,” and were calling family with goodbyes.

Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet said that Mike Pence “did not have the courage to do what should have been done to defend our country and the Constitution,” and that prompted the mob to turn on the vice president and call for his hanging.

Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who, in his opening remarks, praised Trump’s foreign policy on China trade and the Middle East Abraham Accord “decided to resign after that tweet. … I simply did not want to be associated with the events that were unfolding at the Capitol.”

Matthews, the former deputy press secretary, called it a “bad tweet” that “essentially gave the green light to these people.” Supporters “truly latch on to every word and every tweet” from Trump. The president called one of his minions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who had to end the call so he could evacuate himself from the Capitol. The 1/6 committee showed the infamous photo of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) raising his fist in support of the insurrectionists, then moments later running away from the rioters inside the Capitol.

Trump tweeted at 2:38 p.m. and 3:13 p.m., calling on his supporters to “stay peaceful,” but Trump “already knew the mob was attacking the police,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said. One rioter’s two-way radio broadcast said that Trump had told them to support the police, but said nothing about the safety of members of Congress.

Fox News personalities joined the White House staff in urging Trump to call off his supporters and to condemn their actions. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) tweeted a video asking Trump to call it off and President-elect Biden told him to “demand an end to this siege.”

Finally, at 4:17 p.m., Trump tweeted a video from the Rose Garden telling rioters to go home, that they were “special” and he “loved” them. By now, the National Guard and FBI began to deploy on the Capitol.

Trump had rejected a Rose Garden script that asked his supporters to “leave the Capitol in a peaceful way. He instead began the message by repeating “fraudulent election” claims.

“I was shocked by the fact that he chose to begin the video by repeating the lie that the election was stolen,” Matthews said. She found it heinous that she may have to defend Trump’s words. “I knew I was leaving (the White House job) that evening.”

Kinzinger showed Trump’s last tweet of the day, from 6:01 p.m., in which he begins, “These are the things that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away … remember the day forever.”

“He showed absolutely no remorse,” Kinzinger said.

Testimony bled into January 7, when both Pottinger and Cipollone officially resigned. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows described to him that Trump was “very emotional and in a very bad place.”

January 6 panel vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), standing in for COVID-stricken chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who briefly appeared via video, concluded the hearings saying Trump should not “be even trusted with another position of authority again.”

The committee continues its investigative work in August, when its first report is due, and its next set of hearings are scheduled to begin in September.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

CPAC is Bargain Basement Wholesale Politics

By Andrew Boyd

The only thing more stomach-churning, to me, than retail politics is wholesale politics, and CPAC is bargain basement in every respect, with a double dose of bombast and the gross absence of humility or measured speech that infects every corner of the body politic today. Giving it as much ink as I’m about to do here is a thoroughly detestable exercise, but that’s the assignment.

First off, CPAC polls are not terribly predictive of real outcomes, so proceed with caution. Yes, Trump pulled 55% of voters in the straw polling, twice that of second-place finisher Ron DeSantis and 13 times that of third-place Kristi Noem. Trump made it clear that a third-party candidacy is not the offing, for him at least. Blessed be he who refuses to commit political suicide. Trump, being transactional by nature, knows better.

It’s still Trump’s party, as I’ve previously argued, though one might wonder in what kind of shape Trump will be, physically and psychologically, four years hence, when his likely opponent would be Kamala Harris, who never saw a lie she didn’t consider first in terms of its political utility, which makes her just another D.C. bed bug.

More likely, to my mind, is a Ron DeSantis-Kristi Neom ticket. Other front runners might include Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Challenges from the anti-Trump pseudo-conservative wing of the party would include Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney. As of today, however, I’d say, there is no path to nomination that doesn’t run through Trump. Even swampy swamperton, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has tacitly acknowledged as much.

More interesting to my mind is the ranking of issues in said polling, with election integrity (62%) running well ahead of more traditional kitchen-table conservative pain points like border security (35%), the economy (32%), gun rights (26%), taxes (22%), national security (20%) and abortion policy (16%).

For my left-leaning friends, this probably reads as the triumph of misinformation and QAnon-style conspiracy theories. I’m not of the belief that Trump was necessarily denied a landslide victory, but I am not afraid to assert that our election process is a shit show, systemically not up to the standards set forth by the likes of post-war Iraq. Maybe that purple dot thing isn’t a bad way to go, kind of the club stamp of democracy.

Four years may seem a long way off, but it’s really not, and I fear that we’re marching toward a political abyss; that the failure of our politicians to address well-founded concerns surrounding mass mail-in voting, error-riddled voter rolls, the death of voter ID, and the plainly extra-legal actions of state election officials and absence of legal remedy for same (thanks for nothing, SCOTUS) represents an existential threat to democracy and our peaceful co-existence; for if a plurality of the voting population does not believe in the essential propriety of national electoral outcomes, in a country so politically and cultural polarized, the cancer of political violence and mass social unrest will metastasize.

It’s high time that the adults in the room, if they exist, take a step back from the uber-cynical, morally bereft trench warfare of institutional party politics and mainstream media shout fests (yes, I’m including Newsmax and Fox News) and consider how we work together to keep this thing from going altogether off the rails. And don’t look to CPAC or its leftist equivalent for answers. You won’t find any.

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Read the full list of CPAC’s presidential candidate straw poll — click on Forum.

It’s Trump’s GOP, but is it Still the Conservative Party?

By Todd Lassa

The Lincoln Project and its followers have been agonizing over the future of the heart and mind of the GOP since the Democrats first had comparative moderates running for the nomination such as Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and of course, Joe Biden.

What if Republican stalwarts, they wondered, helped propel one of those people to victory?

After such a victory, what happens to the Republican Party? Does it revert to its Mitt Romney-esque roots, thus rejecting such erstwhile party leaders as Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, who quickly turned from profoundly anti-Trump to enthusiastic supporter-enablers by November 2016? Or does it continue to be the Trump Party?

Anti-Trump Republicans now find themselves at a fork in the road with especially sharp tines. When (or if) President Trump vacates the White House, the Grand Old Party could revert to its pre-populist ways and welcome back the “never-Trumpers.” Or the party, such as it is, could shun those who have been associated with people from John McCain to George W. Bush.

The struggle has been playing itself out among Republicans inside its Washington power structure, where potential candidates for its 2024 presidential nomination have been lining up.

That struggle hinges at first on whether Donald J. Trump himself chooses to run again in ’24 (the 22^nd Amendment limits presidencies to two terms, but they do not need to be consecutive), or whether his son, Donald Jr. or daughter Ivanka gains more traction within the party. If not, the first Trump loyalists already on the short-list include former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas), Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and even Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Alternatively, never-Trumpers who espouse traditional conservative values, have been getting behind Govs. Larry Hogan (Md.), Charlie Baker (Mass.) and Phil Scott (Vt.), all from Democratic-leaning states, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who gained notoriety before the Nov. 3 election for the leaked (wink, wink) recording of a call to his supporters in which he said Trump “kisses dictators’ butts” and spends like a “drunken sailor.”

Sasse had warned of a “Republican bloodbath” in that recording, predicting a Nov. 3 “Blue Wave” would give Democrats a big Senate majority. That didn’t happen, but questions of Trump’s authenticity as a conservative and whether he and his family can maintain control of the GOP remain.

Please address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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We’re Watching the Returns

By Todd Lassa

What will you watch, and what will you watch for Election Day Tuesday night?

Flipping between CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC is pretty easy, with the three news networks typically grouped together on most cable TV systems. However, if you try to switch at the commercials, you'll learn that the Big Three run them about the same time. Make such an effort to get a balance of viewpoints, and you'll quickly exceed your doctor's daily suggested intake of Progressive insurance, MyPillow, and Biktarvy commercials. You might be better off going for the free broadcast option and enjoy a cocktail of CBS, NBC, and ABC News with a dose of PBS and NPR thrown in.

No matter what you choose, the likelihood of going to bed at a reasonable hour Wednesday morning will very probably leave you unsatisfied and almost certainly without any idea of whether President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden will take the oath of office on the west front of the U.S. Capitol next Jan. 20.

Nevertheless, Trump reportedly told confidants he “plans to declare premature victory” Tuesday night, Axios reported over the weekend, citing three anonymous sources. Trump denied the report Sunday night, adding, "I think it's a terrible thing when ballots can be counted after an election. I think it's a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long time after the election is over."

On Monday, Biden asked the country and the media to ignore any victory declaration before all ballots are counted. "Under no scenario" can Trump legitimately declare victory on election night, he said.

The last polls to close are 1 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday in parts of Alaska, considered solid Trump country. But several swing states are expected to take until the end of the week before all their mail-in and early voting ballots are counted.

Of the potential swing states, Pennsylvania's polls close at 8 p.m. EST, but the state can count postmarked ballots as late as Friday. Florida's polls also close at 8 p.m., with many in the state closing at 7 Eastern; still, postmarked ballots cannot be counted beyond Tuesday. Georgia polls close at 7 p.m. and allow no late ballots, while North Carolina's close at 7:30 p.m., with late ballots counted by Nov. 12. Michigan's polls close at 9 p.m., with no postmarked ballots counted after election day. Ohio, the other remaining key state in the Eastern time zone, closes polls at 7:30 p.m. but allows postmarked ballots to come in as late as Friday, Nov. 13, with all such late ballots reported by Nov. 28.

Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, no Wisconsin ballots may be counted after Election Day, where polls close at 9 p.m. Eastern. Iowa, which closes its polls by 10 EST, counts postmarked ballots as late as Nov. 9. Texas polls close at 9 p.m. Eastern, with most closing an hour earlier, and postmarked ballots are to be counted by Wednesday. Arizona closes its polls at 9 p.m. Eastern and does not count postmarked ballots after Election Day.

Please address comments to editors@thehustings.news

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Incumbent Trump is Set to Pull Out a Second Upset

By Bryan Williams

Predictions can be a wily business. Some tout that they have never been wrong since Dewey vs. Truman (and go on to be right), and some make grandiose claims and flame out. Others stick to a version of, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and base their prediction off what Wall Street investors think/say/invest in. Here is my first ever presidential prediction: Donald Trump will eke out a slim win (again) and get four more years. Here’s why:

Since 1952, political “outsiders” or candidates who are younger than their opponent have had advantage in key races. World War II general and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower had far less political experience than Democrat Adlai Stevenson, yet beat him by a landslide, twice. Reagan had less political experience than Mondale, Clinton had less experience and was younger than Bush 41 while Bush 43 had less experience than either Gore or Kerry, and Obama had way less experience than McCain and is younger than Romney. Trump had no formal political experience and beat Clinton, and often compares his 45 or so months in the Oval Office to Biden’s 47 years Inside the Beltway.

Advantage, Trump.

Enthusiasm level: Who’s excited about Joe Biden? His supporters’ excitement appears to be, he’s “not Trump.” Will this equate to black and Latino voters turning out in big numbers for Biden? I am dubious. Trump voter’s enthusiasm level is also higher than Biden’s, according to David Sirota in the left-leaning online magazine Jacobin, citing a September Fox News poll that gives the president an 11-point margin in this category. Advantage: Trump.

Vote shaming: This is the common occurrence of people feeling their support of a candidate is shamed by popular opinion, as fueled by news and social media platforms. It’s safe to say that there are a lot of people afraid to admit they plan to vote for Trump. Many of those who like Trump will let their voices be heard at the ballot box. These are the voters Richard Nixon called “the silent majority.” Advantage: Trump.

While Trump had an obvious and clear electoral college victory by midnight Eastern time – 9 p.m. my time four years ago – pundits this year are predicting there will be no clear winner before Nov. 4, and perhaps not until much later. This is where the “Two Vs,” Valencia County, New Mexico, and Vigo County, Indiana, will come in handy. As small-population rural counties, their numbers should be counted not long after the polls close on Nov. 3. Vigo County has chosen the president all but twice since 1888, and Valencia County has been perfect since 1952. Keep your eye on Valencia and Vigo. I predict they will lead the nation to four more years for Trump.

But it’s gonna be close, folks.

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