<And that message confirmed what 'opponents ' of revocation of ban of <George wallace>/<big pawn> have been saying all along - everyone saw the confrontational/aggressive/defiant tone of that message. This guy wants to fight all the time - and in a dishonest , vile manner. That is what we have seen over the years and his latest message saying loud and clear that leopard not going to change his spots. He not going to change . Always trying his best to antagonize/offend/fight those 'infidels ' who do not follow his religious beliefs.>

Verily, <fagasaurus, otiose offal> should be banned for good and all--he is naught but a menace to the community.

<At the height of the Watergate scandal, as Richard Nixon prepared to resign, the then-president still had a handful of unyielding Republican allies. One of them, Rep. Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, was asked about his perspective the day before Nixon left the White House in disgrace.

“Don’t confuse me with the facts,” the then-congressman told reporters. “I’ve got a closed mind.”

The comments came to mind again yesterday watching House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on “Meet the Press.” NBC News reported:

The Ohio congressman, who’s more frequently seen on media outlets aligned with Republican politics, will lead his party’s new panel on the “weaponization” of federal powers, and he was eager to make the case that his initiative has merit. Jordan noted, for example, the FBI “raided the home of a former president 91 days before an election.”

First, it wasn’t a “raid.” Second, the search was executed at a glorified country club, not a house. Third, it was ahead of an election in which Trump wasn’t on the ballot.

But as the “Meet the Press” host was quick to remind his guest, the contextual details matter, too.

“There was nine months between the initial action. ... the [National] Archives requested documents before they even turned it over to the Justice Department,” Todd explained. “The subpoena was issued 60 days before they actually executed a subpoena.

“And more importantly, the only time the public found out about it is because Donald Trump told the public about it. This was not some sort of new painted as a picture of the FBI did this, this and this within hours of each other, when it was actually a year and a half of Donald Trump not complying with any of the requests from National Archives. This is not some sort of proof that somehow they’ve been weaponized and playing politics.”

Jordan seemingly heard the host, but following Landgrebe’s example from a half-century ago, the powerful far-right lawmaker didn’t want to be confused by facts. “They raided Trump’s home,” the Ohioan responded. “They haven’t raided Biden’s home.”

This, naturally, led the host to again remind Jordan about reality. “Because Biden didn’t defy a subpoena, congressman,” Todd said. “[Trump] defied a subpoena. By the way, he had 60 days to comply.”

Reminded of these important details, which utterly discredited the point he was foolishly trying to make, Jordan — who grinned as the “Meet the Press” host presented him with accurate information — proceeded as if he hadn’t heard a word Todd said.

“They raided Trump,” the committee chairman added in response, returning to the arguments that had been shredded moments earlier.

Earlier in the same interview, Todd noted that if the “weaponization” committee were looking for actual evidence of an administration that tried to use federal agencies against its perceived political foes, it would seemingly have a responsibility to examine the Trump administration’s efforts to abuse the power of the Justice Department. After the host referenced a series of controversies involving abuses of Trump-era law enforcement, Todd asked, “If you are concerned about the weaponization of the Justice Department in the Biden years, why not investigate the Trump years?”

Jordan — who appeared on the “Meet the Press” set, seated just a few feet away from the host — acted as if he literally hadn’t heard the question, and proceeded to talk about Twitter-related conspiracy theories.

At times, watching the Judiciary Committee chairman push ridiculous talking points, it’s only natural to wonder how he’d respond to factual details that debunk his partisan crusades. Yesterday, however, we didn’t have to wonder: Todd tried to make Jordan aware of the truth, and the congressman simply filtered it in such a way as to disregard accurate information he apparently didn’t want to know.

By all appearances, the far-right lawmaker didn’t want to be confused by facts.>

<The Republican Party was once a traditionalist institution that stood for small government, low taxes and conservative social policies. But today’s GOP is a shell of its former self.

The GOP of 2023 is embroiled in chaos and beset by internal strife. Many members who have been elevated to senior positions within the party are not concerned with governing, only with advancing their political agenda and causing disruption for disruption’s sake.

This is not conjecture, rather, it is the view of a sizable share of the American electorate, including many voters who self-identify as Republicans, according to new polling conducted by Schoen Cooperman Research.

Registered voters nationwide believe that the Republican majority in the U.S. House is more focused on pursuing investigations of President Biden and the Democratic Party (49 percent) rather than on passing legislation to address major issues (35 percent). Notably, 4 in 10 Republican voters think that their own party is more focused on investigating Biden and Democrats (41 percent) than on advancing real reforms (47 percent).

There is also a sense among both national voters and Republican voters that the highest-ranking GOP official, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), is ineffective and beholden to the far-right.

Earlier this month, McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House in a pyrrhic victory after an embarrassing four-day-long fiasco and 15 rounds of voting. McCarthy struck a corrupt bargain with the far-right House Freedom Caucus that essentially gives these extremists veto authority over his speakership along with key leadership positions, rendering him essentially powerless.

As a result, only 1 in 5 (21 percent) Republican voters — and a slightly smaller share of the national electorate (16 percent) — believe McCarthy will be a “very effective” Speaker of the House.

Further, a majority of voters nationwide (53 percent) and a plurality of Republican voters (46 percent) agree that “Kevin McCarthy conceded too much ground to the conservative House Freedom Caucus in order to be elected as Speaker, leaving him with little actual authority and beholden to the far-right.” Remarkably, just one-quarter (27 percent) of Republican respondents in our poll disagreed with this statement....>

<....When pressed further on their views of intraparty politics, GOP voters are relatively split on the question of whether McCarthy should’ve been elected speaker (40 percent) or if it should have been someone else (37 percent). Further, less than one-half (46 percent) of this group believes that the fight McCarthy underwent won’t impact his authority, while more than one-third (35 percent) say it indicates McCarthy doesn’t have the full support of his party and thus won’t be able to get things done.

Just weeks into his tenure, a clearly weakened McCarthy is already struggling to articulate — let alone advance — a Republican plan for raising the debt ceiling. This is one of the most pressing matters facing Congress, as the United States is months away from defaulting on its debt, which would trigger catastrophic consequences for the world economy.

The current House Republican caucus is adamant about using spending cuts as a bargaining chip for raising the county’s borrowing limit but has no unified plan for which programs it wants to be cut and no strategy for actual debt reduction.

Last year, McCarthy signaled that House Republicans could take an extreme route and demand cuts to programs, potentially including Social Security and Medicare, in order to raise the debt limit — a scenario that nearly two-thirds of voters (63 percent), including 54 percent of Republican voters, would disapprove of, according to our poll. In an interview with CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday, McCarthy reversed this position and said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table.”

Occurring alongside the intraparty debt ceiling debacle, the Republican National Committee just concluded a bitter contest to elect the organization’s next chair.

Incumbent Ronna McDaniel, who was hand-picked by former president Donald Trump, faced a formidable challenge from Harmeet Dhillon, a California lawyer who positioned herself as being able to offer new leadership for the GOP, which has suffered a string of defeats in recent elections.

Unlike the fight McCarthy endured to become Speaker, the race for RNC chair wasn’t necessarily a battle between the far-right and the establishment, per se. And even though McDaniel was ultimately reelected, the final vote total and Dhillon’s ability to make this race competitive by promoting herself as a ‘change’ candidate reflects the polarization and division that exists inside the GOP.

While The Democratic Party has at times appeared hopelessly divided and bogged down by intraparty feuds, The Republican Party is facing a once-in-a-generation reckoning, as cracks in its coalition are turning into gaping holes, posing real risks to the party’s future electability.>

This from someone who, before it was taken down, dedicated his page to personal attacks on certain 'enemies'. By all means be more hypocritical if at all possible.

<Former President Trump claims he owns the audio rights to interviews conducted by Bob Woodward.

But legal experts say it's unlikely a court will agree with Trump, who claims he's owed $50 million.

It's "a huge reach," one lawyer told Insider.

Donald Trump wants to get paid or, at the very least, he wants to let everyone know that he's mad.

In a lawsuit filed last month, lawyers for the former president argued that he's due a hair under $50 million from journalist Bob Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, over the release of an audiobook containing more than 8 hours of interviews conducted while he was still in the White House.

"The case centers on Mr. Woodward's systematic usurpation, manipulation, and exploitation of audio of [former] President Trump," states the complaint, filed with a federal court in Florida. Woodward, the suit alleges, was entitled to use that audio for a written book — emphasis on "a," and "written" — but when that book did not sell as well as he'd hoped, the suit claims ("'Rage' was a complete and total failure"), he broke his word and packaged the recordings as a separate work.

The lawsuit hinges on an alleged promise that does not appear to have been made in writing. To support the case that The Washington Post journalist violated a contract with the former president, the lawsuit quotes a December 2019 exchange at Mar-a-Lago in which Trump, asked to speak on the record, responds: "For the book only, right? Only for the book." Woodward responds in the affirmative.

But the next line, from Trump and quoted in his own lawsuit, points to the ambiguity of that verbal agreement, indicating that the underlying issue was not whether The Washington Post journalist intended to publish one book (or two, or three), but whether he intended to use the material for articles in a newspaper: "So there's no stories coming out, okay."

Experts consulted by Insider suggest that the suit, while not nearly as flimsy as the former president's election-related litigation, is unlikely to succeed — and might just be a way to lend weight to a grievance, legitimate or not, that has no legal remedy.

"It's a press release designed as a complaint," Lloyd J. Jassin, a lawyer who specializes in copyright disputes, said in an interview. Trump styles himself as a savvy businessman — his lawsuit lists all his best-selling books on how to get rich — and yet he got burned by a reporter.

"There's no detriment to him other than injury, in my opinion, to his ego and image," Jassin said.

A Trump win could make reporting harder

Woodward's book "Rage," based on his 20 interviews with Trump, was published by Simon & Schuster in October 2020, selling more than 600,000 copies in its first week — a blockbuster for any other author, but somewhat below expectations for the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. The audiobook didn't go on sale for another two years — after, Woodward says, he decided its release served the public interest.

"You see who this man is, what he cares about, the self-focus, the absence of being concerned about the people out there," Woodward explained in an interview on MSNBC. "This is while he was president in 2020. All this, it is an amazing portrait of a man."

"If Woodward intended to create an oral history in which he could claim rights," the complaint states, "then according to best industry practices, he would have had [former] President Trump as the participant sign over his rights as part of the standard procedures of conducting the interview, after each recording or at the end of the last interview. Woodward did not adhere to this standard and, as such, relinquished any such rights."....>

<....Journalists, however, do not typically ask sources to sign anything before an interview, much less documents outlining potential revenue sharing.

Art Neill, clinical professor and director of the New Media Rights Program at California Western School of Law, said it's unlikely that a judge will want to, among other things, establish a precedent imposing a laborious new requirement on newsgathering.

"A decision in his favor would create more friction, day to day, for journalists who would have to go even further in terms of thinking about what kind of contracts and releases they're going to get signed by sources," Neill said.

To even get to that point, Trump would need to show not only that he had ownership over the interview, but that the two parties explicitly agreed to not release the audio.

Even if Woodward had lied by omission that would likely not be enough for a court to step in and assert that an ambiguous contract had been violated, with the remedy being that a politician — who is once again running for the highest office — is entitled to a share in the revenue generated by a reporter's interview. A judge would also have to rule that, copyright and contract law aside, there is no "fair use" justification for a reporter publishing a president's remarks.

"That's a huge reach," Neill said.

A free press and the public interest

Trump, famously, did not distinguish between himself, the oft-licensed brand, and the office of the presidency. That much is evident in his lawsuit, which asserts personal ownership over statements he made in the White House while being paid a taxpayer-funded salary, complaining that Woodward and his publisher released their audiobook "solely for their own financial gain and without any accounting or recompense to him."

But the argument for monetary damages is undermined, in part, by something else the lawsuit appears to acknowledge. The complaint argues that what is billed by Woodward and his publisher as "raw" audio was in fact lightly edited, implying malice and providing a transcript noting the words that were omitted from the final product — something that could only be done if one had access to the original recording.

Trump could have published and sold this audio himself, then, at least in part. But why would he? The release was generally considered embarrassing for the former president, showing that he publicly downplayed the severity of COVID-19 in order, as he put it, not to "panic the people," and intervened to protect a Saudi crown prince — "I saved his ass" — from being sanctioned over the murder of a US citizen.

Trump, of course, is also not a normal person. He is, rather, a former head of state and, at the time he was speaking with a famous journalist, he was an American president opining on both domestic and foreign policy, often speaking from the Oval Office, in the middle of a pandemic.

A publisher's chief interest may be making money (it could even be an author's), but experts say that would not alter the fact that there is, inherently, a public interest served by releasing what a powerful politician has to say about matters of life and death. Some have even argued that the former president's remarks should have been released sooner, not saved for a book at all.

In a joint statement, Woodard and Simon & Schuster said they are confident Trump's lawsuit is "without merit."

"All these interviews were on the record and recorded with President Trump's knowledge and agreement," the parties told Insider. "Moreover, it is in the public interest to have this historical record in Trump's own words. We are confident that the facts and the law are in our favor."

Free speech advocates are not universally concerned with the case. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression both declined to comment. But some do fear that any ruling in the former president's favor, however unlikely, would set a troubling precedent, enabling a politician to dictate how and when their own words, while in office, can be made public.

"A sitting president knowingly sat down for recorded interviews with one of the most accomplished journalists of our age and talked about matters of great public interest," Seth D. Berlin, an attorney with the firm Ballard Spahr who has represented media clients in copyright and other disputes, told Insider. "Filing a lawsuit over publishing those interviews turns the First Amendment on its head.">

<Is the GOP losing because of... obnoxiousness?: Why have Republicans had so many bad election performances lately? Because many of them are jerks, and they assume voters are jerks too, David Frum argues.

The GOP's Problem

Why did the Republican Party perform worse than expected in the 2022 midterm elections?

Was it because the issues they concentrated on didn’t have the salience that they thought?

Was it because they were too tied to Donald Trump?

One longtime Republican has another theory: That the GOP is being hurt by “obnoxiousness.”

The Jerk Problem

David Frum, a longtime conservative intellectual who served in George W. Bush’s White House and has since largely broken with his longtime party over Donald Trump, wrote a piece for The Atlantic this week with a blunt headline” “The GOP is Just Obnoxious.”

One example he gave was the Pennsylvania Senate race last year. The Democratic candidate, John Fetterman, suffered a stroke just before the Democratic primary. Ahead of their only debate, staffers for Fetterman’s Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, released a tongue-in-cheek list of “concessions” for the debate, which included that Fetterman would “have all of his notes in front of him along with an earpiece so he can have the answers given to him by his staff, in real time.”

Frum noted that this attitude appears to have backfired on Oz, as Fetterman won the race by 250,000 votes in the only 2022 Senate race in which a seat changed hands from one party to the other. The result helped cement the Democrats’ Senate majority.

It’s not clear how big a part the debate memo played — I live in Pennsylvania, followed that race closely, and I barely remember that – but clearly, voters sympathized with Fetterman after the stroke, rather than considering it disqualifying, even after Fetterman gave a subpar debate performance in which he appeared confused.

“Oz’s decision to campaign as a jerk hurt him,” Frum wrote. "When his opponent got sick, Oz could have drawn on his own medical background for compassion and understanding. Before he succumbed to the allure of TV, Oz was an acclaimed doctor whose innovations transformed the treatment of heart disease. He could have reminded voters of his best human qualities rather than displaying his worst.”

Frum’s point is that, as demonstrated by the 2022 election results, there is mounting evidence that large parts of the electorate are rejecting the modern-day Republican worldview as cruel, bullying, and, yes, obnoxious.

And that went far beyond Dr. Oz, to many other candidates in 2022 who lost in swing states.

“Many of the unsuccessful Republican candidates in 2022 offered voters weird, extreme, or obnoxious personas. Among the worst was Blake Masters, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. He released photos and campaign videos of himself playing with guns, looking like a sociopath. He lost by nearly five points.”

And that will be an issue in the 2024 contest, presuming that it comes down to former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The two candidates bring different things to the table, but both are associated with a certain obnoxiousness.

And it’s clear that this style of politics appeals to the GOP base. Whether it flies with the general electorate is another question entirely.

“A generation ago, politicians invested great effort in appearing agreeable: Ronald Reagan’s warm chuckle, Bill Clinton’s down-home charm, George W. Bush’s smiling affability,” Frum writes. “By contrast, Donald Trump delighted in name-calling, rudeness, and open disdain. Not even his supporters would have described Trump as an agreeable person. Yet he made it to the White House all the same—in part because of this trollish style of politics, which has encouraged others to emulate him.”

Frum noted that the “Citizens for Sanity” ads from a Stephen Miller-affiliated group, which ran heavily in the closing weeks of the race, may have turned off lots of voters.

And Republicans continue to push the Hunter Biden laptop story, despite a complete lack of evidence that it’s a winning political issue.

“It’s all pushing conservatives and Republicans back onto the same doomed path they followed in the Trump years: stunts and memes and insults and fabricated controversies in place of practical solutions to the real problems everyday people face. The party has lost contact with the sensibility of mainstream America, a huge country full of decent people who are offended by bullying and cruelty,” Frum writes.>

I'll be getting back to the chess games now before going to bed. Again, thanks for the response.>

<antichrist> posts little, if anything other than repetitious slagging of his least favourite player--small wonder he gets 'vacations', same as you.

One. More. Time:

You do <not> get to dictate what I post here.

Time to dismantle this, one piece at a time:

<fredthenonentity: I touched a nerve, eh? You were in the same boat last summer. You posted some filthy trash, all kinds of homo stuff....>

Funny how things work; when your pal <bumptious paederast, putin's biyatch> does the deed, you tacitly support him.

<....Those suspensions you received were thanks to my efforts....>

Which 'suspensions'?

Do tell.

<....A full-blown jerk like you should be long gone from here....>

Yew first, <boy>.

<....You gonna give us another one liner of weak game analysis today?>

That would be one more line than you have to offer.

<....At your age, maybe you should back off like Joey B, spend more time in the basement....>

Wot, your favourite spot?

<....Maybe cut-back the stressful analysis to twice a week. You'll make fewer mistakes and fewer enemies that way.>

To me, the best way to deal with the poor guy, is putting him on ignore. He is clearly filled with hard earned inferiority complexes and something in you, seems to tricker them.

Wow, that sounds cold ): Hope you will get the warmth, inner and outer as well.

Today I am 70 years. Man, it is a high number !

As I have understood it, Vermont (were my sister and brother in law lived for several years with their two kids) is being hit by very low temperatures , I have just read.

<Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, showed "flaming hypocrisy" after he handed down a wave of subpoenas targeting several Biden officials despite previously dodging subpoenas himself, according to some legal experts.

"Jim Jordan ignored subpoenas & refused to answer questions from the 1/6 Comm. Now, as head of the Judiciary Comm., he's expecting others to respect the same congressional procedures he ignored. Talk about hypocrisy," tweeted lawyer Norm Eisen, who co-authored a Slate article published on Thursday about Jordan's performance as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

On Friday, Jordan issued a number of subpoenas targeting Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in an ongoing effort to investigate the alleged "weaponization" of federal agencies under the Biden administration.

Jordan, among other Republicans, expects a response to the subpoenas he issued. However, the GOP lawmaker never complied when he received one after being investigated for his alleged role in undermining Joe Biden's 2020 presidential victory.

The now-defunct House select committee that was in charge of investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot released a report last December, highlighting Jordan's alleged role in overturning the 2020 election results, describing him as a "significant player" in those efforts.

"He participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior White House officials, Rudolph Giuliani, and others, discussed strategies for challenging the election, chief among them claims that the election had been tainted by fraud," the report read.

The House committee also noted in its report that it issued Jordan with a subpoena, but he failed to appear last year for his scheduled deposition on May 27 and June 11.

"Flaming hypocrisy from Jim Jordan, who was a major player in Jan 6 and refused to comply with a subpoena, but now wants to serve a flurry of (meritless) ones. Jim Jordan shows he's unfit to lead the Judiciary Committee," Harry Litman, a former U.S. Attorney, said on Friday.

Jordan's allegations on Friday were aimed at a memo from Garland issued in October 2021, which ordered the FBI to partner with local law enforcement in identifying potential threats to local school board meetings.

Some whistleblowers said shortly after Garland's memo that "the FBI's Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created a specific threat tag for school board-related threats and even opened investigations into parents simply for speaking out on behalf of their children," according to a press release from the Judiciary Committee.

The White House criticized Jordan over his subpoenas, saying that the Republican was "rushing to fire off subpoenas only two days after the Judiciary Committee organized."

"These subpoenas make crystal clear that extreme House Republicans have no interest in working together with the Biden Administration on behalf of the American people—and every interest in staging political stunts," read the statement from Ian Sams, the spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee, which was posted to Twitter by Spectrum News correspondent Taylor Popielarz.

The Biden officials have until March 1 to turn over the requested documents, according to the Judiciary Committee's release.

Newsweek reached out to the House Judiciary Committee for comment.>

<<saffuna: <fredthebore....There have been multiple times in multiple years that only eight justices were present.>>

<saffuna....Not because the Senate refused to vote on the President's nominee.>

<fredthenonentity....Best to learn one's history before telling others what it is. The information is not difficult to find.>

Better yet to have an open mind, quite unlike your closed one; as you well know, your hero McConnell the Obstructive stonewalled the nomination of Garland in 2016, a fact the senator was quite at a loss to explain to his interlocutor Amy McGrath. So you have inside knowledge of what went back then? Do tell, all while making yourself look a still greater fool than you already have.

The above is yet another case of 'lazy and rather effortless' posting by <fredthebore>.

<“I’m more angry now,” Donald Trump said in South Carolina. So, what else is new? Trump’s second attempt at igniting his candidacy was another flop, making him look small and — worst of all — boring.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gains ground yet again by sitting back and allowing Trump to do what he now does best: sink his own chances.

Trump had been having a good couple of weeks, before he once again exposed his shortcomings. After bleeding support all through the fall and slipping again in the aftermath of Republican senatorial candidate Herschel Walker’s embarrassing defeat in Georgia, Trump’s polling numbers against probable primary opponent DeSantis had stabilized. Trump was even beating President Biden in a few media polls.

In GOP primary polls the week leading up to his tour, Trump was leading by double-digits in most polls. To be sure, his numbers and the sample sizes ranged widely, making a determination of where he really stood hard to pin down. But a best guess is that he was sitting in the mid-40s, anywhere from 10 to 15 points ahead of DeSantis.

Against Biden, Trump led in several January general election polls, including Emerson, Marquette, Redfield & Wilton, and Harvard-Harris. The Harvard-Harris poll had Trump leading Biden 46 percent to 41 percent — his biggest margin.

Trump was smart to make South Carolina the focal point. His win there in 2016 cemented his status as frontrunner; the state is winner-take-all for delegates. In 2024, Trump could lose Iowa and New Hampshire and still snag the nomination, but he cannot lose South Carolina. So, leading up to Jan. 28, Trump had a lot going his way.

But once Trump got off his plane, he started moving backwards.

The events themselves showed that Trump and his campaign know there is an enthusiasm gap. These were desultory events in relatively small spaces. In New Hampshire, Trump had to crash the state GOP meeting. In South Carolina, Trump addressed a crowd estimated at anywhere from 200 people (not many more than are trapped on a stranded Southwest flight) to a very generous 500, many decidedly uncommitted. The by-invitation audience of local politicos, as opposed to the large, raucous rallies of the past, made Trump seem small and pedestrian.

And that’s a big problem for Trump.

This 2024 campaign looks like any generic stab at the presidency: Schmoozing a bunch of party workers, holding events in too-small spaces so they look crowded, standing on stage with a wallpaper of the local congressman, state officials, etc.

Trump adviser Jason Miller told the Washington Examiner that Team Trump wanted to make the South Carolina event “put the focus on [Gov.] McMaster and the leadership team.”

Is Miller joking? When has Trump been about anything but Trump?

Miller also claimed that Trump could have a rally with thousands of cheering fans anytime he wanted. Well, if Trump was confident he could do that, he would have done it. And he would have been on stage by himself. No governors or senators, just Trump, the star.

His remarks were the standard stuff, with him mixing in rants about electric cars and against banning gas stoves. In short, it was old news plus Trump trying to catch a ride on the latest outrage. For a man who once set the agenda and excited crowds, this kind of issue me-too-ism is another sign of Trump’s fading relevance.

Trump also is taking on the trappings of an establishment politician. He headlined in South Carolina with the governor and a four-term U.S. senator. Earlier in the year, he forcefully backed Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for House speaker. There is little doubt Trump was in the corner of re-elected Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the choice of a mere 15 percent of rank-and-file GOP voters, according to a Rassmussen poll....>

<....Bottom line: Trump is looking rather swampy these days.

“Boring,” “small” and “establishment” aren’t Trump’s only trouble. He has done nothing to address his biggest and most fatal character flaw: a complete lack of discipline. Trump continues to rant randomly on his Truth Social account. Most recently, he began firing a series of indiscriminate attacks on DeSantis, blaming him for everything but the Lindbergh kidnapping. He remains obsessed with “loyalty” — ignoring the fact he himself is the most disloyal turncoat in politics.

Republican officials have started to push back.

Trump’s rage at the impending candidacy of Nikki Haley, once South Carolina’s Republican governor and his United Nations ambassador, also made no sense. Trump benefited enormously in 2016 from the fractured Republican field. The fact that he is stuck well below 50 percent of the Republican vote means he needs more than just DeSantis in the field. Three or four opponents need to soak up the “non-Trump” vote. Yet Trump apparently cannot handle any opposition or disloyalty. And this is a major problem: Even when something is in his best interest, he still won’t do it.

Trump has no discipline and that will never change.

Trump still has a strong base of voters and the ability to generate attention at will — two huge assets — but he is wasting those assets and creating opportunities for DeSantis. Of all the many factors in this race, the toughest one to overcome is DeSantis’s retort to Trump’s attacks: I won, you lost.

No longer being a winner is something from which Trump cannot recover.>

<United States Congresswoman Majorire [sic] Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) lamented her life as a lawmaker in a recent episode of her podcast.

"The nature of this job – it keeps members of congress and senators in Washington so much of the time, too much of the time to be honest with you, that we don't get to go home and spend more time with our families, our friends, you know, all in our district, or maybe just be regular people because this job is so demanding, and it's turned into practically year-round," Greene said. "And for those of us in the House of Representatives, we have to run for Congress every two years. So you're practically campaigning nearly the entire time that you're here serving as a representative. So that's just a couple of examples that I can give you that I believe is a recipe for disaster, and that's how people just fall into this social club. I would call it a social club here in Washington, DC."

Greene successfully ran for a second term in November 2022 and is reportedly yearning for the vice presidency in 2024.

"Now, for me, I have no interest in that. I really don't. And I'll tell you why," she continued. "Becoming a member of Congress has made my life miserable. I made a lot more money before I got here. I've lost money since I've gotten here. I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me out of the blue in public places that they believe because they read it on the Internet or saw it on some news show about me. So it's not a life that I think is, like, something that I enjoy because I don't enjoy it. But I'm committed to this job because I believe in it.">