Did Jerry Falwell Jr. Support Trump Because Of The Pictures Of Himself And Mrs. Falwell In Bed With The Pool Boy? What About Joe Walsh? What's His Excuse?

If you've been following Hate Talk radio host and former far right congressman Joe Walsh's twitter feed since Trumpanzee was installed in the White House, you know he wasn't going to endorse Trump's reelection bid. But this week the NY Times published an OpEd by him calling for a conservative to primary Trump from the right.

A little background on Walsh: he was elected in the Tea Party sweep (2010), narrowly beating crooked New Dem wretch Melissa Bean, one of Congress' worst Wall Street shills in the pretty red suburbs west of Chicago (Schaumburg, Arlington Heights, Elgin, Bloomingdale). The district was gerrymandered by the Dems in 2012 to get rid of Walsh and he planned to run in the redder part of the district that was combined with IL-14, although it meant he would be in a primary with Randy Hultgren. Boehner persuaded him to run against Tammy Duckworth instead. She beat him 55-45%. This is how crazy he was back then (9:04 on this tape, but the whole segment is worth watching. Only Walsh is advocating teaching pre-schoolers how to shoot mortars.):



Presumably a little less nuts today, he wrote that "There’s a strong case for President Trump to face a Republican primary challenger. I know a thing or two about insurgencies. I entered Congress in 2011 as an insurgent Tea Party Republican. My goals were conservative and clear: restrain executive power and reduce the debt. Barack Obama was president then, and it was easy for us to rail against runaway spending and executive overreach."

Eight years later, Mr. Trump has increased the deficit more than $100 billion year over year-- it’s now nearing $1 trillion-- and we hear not a word of protest from my former Republican colleagues. He abuses the Constitution for his narcissistic trade war. In private, most congressional Republicans oppose the trade war, but they don’t say anything publicly. But think about this: Mr. Trump’s tariffs are a tax increase on middle-class Americans and are devastating to our farmers. That’s not a smart electoral strategy.

It’s one of the many reasons Mr. Trump is ripe for a primary challenger. In fact, it would buck the historical trend if he didn’t have one. More often than not, unpopular presidents face primary challengers.

Since leaving Congress in 2013, I’ve been the host of my own conservative talk radio show several hours a day, five days a week. The only time a majority of my conservative audience has noticeably broken with the president is when he signed the omnibus spending bill in 2017 that ballooned the deficit. Fiscal responsibility is an issue the American electorate cares about but that our elected officials disregard from the top down-- including the Tea Party in the Trump era.

Fiscal matters are only part of it. At the most basic level, Mr. Trump is unfit for office. His lies are so numerous-- from his absurd claim that tariffs are “paid for mostly by China, by the way, not by us,” to his prevarication about his crowd sizes, he can’t be trusted.

In Mr. Trump, I see the worst and ugliest iteration of views I expressed for the better part of a decade. To be sure, I’ve had my share of controversy. On more than one occasion, I questioned Mr. Obama’s truthfulness about his religion. At times, I expressed hate for my political opponents. We now see where this can lead. There’s no place in our politics for personal attacks like that, and I regret making them.

I didn’t vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 because I liked him. I voted for him because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. Once he was elected, I gave him a fair hearing, and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I soon realized that I couldn’t support him because of the danger he poses to the country, especially the division he sows at every chance, culminating a few weeks ago in his ugly, racist attack on four minority congresswomen.

The fact is, Mr. Trump is a racial arsonist who encourages bigotry and xenophobia to rouse his base and advance his electoral prospects. In this, he inspires imitators.

Republicans should view Mr. Trump as the liability that he is: No matter his flag-hugging, or his military parades, he’s no patriot. In front of the world, he sides with Vladimir Putin over our own intelligence community. That’s dangerous. He encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he refuses to take foreign threats seriously as we enter the 2020 election. That’s reckless. For three years, he has been at war with our federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as he embraces tyrants abroad and embarrasses our allies. That’s un-American.

And despite what his enablers claim, Mr. Trump isn’t a conservative. He’s reckless on fiscal issues; he’s incompetent on the border; he’s clueless on trade; he misunderstands executive power; and he subverts the rule of law. It’s his poor record that makes him most worthy of a primary challenge.

Mr. Trump has taken the legitimate differences that Americans have on policy and turned them into personal division. He’s caused me to change my tone and to reflect upon where I went over the line and to focus on policy differences moving forward.

We now have a president who retweets conspiracy theories implicating his political opponents in Jeffrey Epstein’s death. We now have a president who does his level best to avoid condemning white supremacy and white nationalism.

Yes, William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, is challenging Mr. Trump from the center. But the president is more vulnerable to a challenge from the right. I’m on the right, and I’m hugely disappointed that challenge hasn’t yet materialized.

Mr. Trump’s most vulnerable against a challenger who’d make the case for strong borders-- instead of warning of “invaders,” dragging us down, turning neighbor against neighbor. A majority of Americans want fixes to our most basic problems.

We need someone who could stand up, look the president in the eye and say: “Enough, sir. We’ve had enough of your indecency. We’ve had enough of your lies, your bullying, your cruelty, enough of your insults, your daily drama, your incitement, enough of the danger you place this country in every single day. We don’t want any of this anymore, and the country certainly can’t stand four more years of it.”

Problem: everyone on the extreme right fringe between the Republican and the Nazi parties-- think Mark Meadows (NC), Liz Cheney (WY), Gym Jordan (OH), Chris Collins (NY) Steve King (IA), Barry Loudermilk (GA), John Ratcliffe (TX), Steve Scalise (LA), Louie Gohmert (TX), Mo Brooks (AL), Virginia Foxx (NC), Jody Hice (GA), Duncan Hunter (CA)-- are all avid, all-in Trump supporters. So who do they hope to get? Maybe one of the kids who learned how to use a mortar. Are they old enough yet?

President For All Americans

Trump and the evangelicals who think God-- rather than Putin-- put him in the White House, don't always see eye to eye. Evangelicals claim the earth was created around 7,000 years ago (and men were created 6 days later). Earth was actually created 4.5 billion years ago and some kind of human-like creatures appeared around two and a half million years ago. In the video above Trump told Sacha Baron Cohen (video above) that "hundreds of millions of years ago people were doing business and they were trading in rocks and stones and other things."

See the lunatic in the Oval Office-- the one on the right in the picture below? That's Lionel Lebron. I guess if Trump can't get LeBron James to visit the White House, he has to make do with the grifter who promotes the QAnon conspiracy theories. Señor Trumpanzee invited him and posed for this picture with him and his wife on Thursday.

You know how Trumpanzee is always ranting and raving about the baseless nonsense about "Mueller and 17 angry Democrats?" TheQAnon grifters claim that's a friendly shout out to them because "Q" is the 17th letter of the alphabet. Other theories are way crazier-- like the child sex colony on the moon run by Hillary and the Deep State, etc.

Lebron is one of the internet’s leading promoters of QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory based on a series of anonymous clues posted to internet forums. QAnon believers have interpreted the clues, which they claim without evidence are coming from a highly placed source in the Trump administration, to mean that Trump and the military are engaged in a high-stakes shadow war against a supposed globalist pedophile cult. The conspiracy theory has caught on with Trump supporters, who have held up QAnon-related signs and wear QAnon shirts to the president’s rallies.

...All four White House officials the Beast did speak with about how Trump, the leader of the free world, ended up in a smiling photo op at the Resolute Desk with a prominent QAnon conspiracy theorist, pleaded ignorance about when this occurred, and why. Two of these West Wing officials audibly could not contain their laughter.

“This president is a president for all Americans,” one joked, including conspiracy theorists.

Nice that Trump was able to take a moment off from all the scandals swirling around him to spend some time with QAnon, which has, for example, claimed that Debbie Wasserman Schultz hired MS-13 to murder DNC staffer Seth Rich. My favorite QAnon scam is that Obama, Hillary and George Soros are planning a coup and that the Mueller investigation is actually a countercoup led by Señor T himself, who pretended to collude with Putin in order to hire Mueller to secretly investigate the Deep State Democrats. I wonder what the conversation was like between Trump and Lebron.

On Friday, writing for the NY Times, Eileen Sullivan reported that Trump pulled himself away from QAnon long enough to demand that Jeff Sessions get the heat off him by charging "the other side"-- presumably the Democrats, not the other side of the moon-- with some crimes.

Sessions on Thursday issued a rare public statement defending his record as attorney general and pledging his commitment to justice after the president accused him of never taking control of the department.

“Jeff Sessions never took control of the Justice Department and it’s a sort of an incredible thing,” Trump said during a recent interview with Fox News.

On Thursday afternoon, Sessions hit back. “I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in,” he said in a written statement.

The sparring match between the president and the attorney general extended the public war that Trump has waged for more than a year on the Justice Department, training most of his fire on the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Sessions’ response Thursday, his most forceful public pushback yet on Trump, showed the treacherous political terrain he is navigating: appointed by a president who has made apparent that he views law enforcement as loyal protectors, but overseeing a Justice Department that views independence from political pressure as essential to the rule of law.

The president privately vented to associates that he was furious with Sessions for failing to protect him in the way he believes Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had protected President Barack Obama.

“Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the ‘other side,’” Trump wrote in a pair of Twitter posts early Friday morning. “Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!”

Trump listed people and political enemies who he believes deserve the attention of the Justice Department, including the targets of conservative conspiracy theories that claim the Russia investigation was motivated by politics.

Reality TV-- Not The Silly Trump Kind-- Is Having A Real Impact In The Real World

In theory, we expect Rachel Maddow, the most popular news anchor in America, to report and comment on the news, not necessarily make the news. But last night she sure did (make the news). Look at that video up top. Stupendous reporting. She contrasts the fake news cobbled together by the Trumpist Regime and the Kremlin to hide what happened-- in plain view-- in Helsinki when a reporter, Reuters' Jeff Mason, asked-- and Putin answered-- if he wanted Trump to win and if he ordered Russian officials to give Trump a hand. He admitted that he did. "Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal."

Maddow played the actual video and then showed how the White House and Kremlin have tried to make that go away. Maddow: "What the White House has disappeared from the official U.S. government record of that meeting ... is President Putin answering in the affirmative when asked if he wanted Trump to win the election." It's beyond belief-- unless you already believe that Trump has already ushered in an Orwellian America.

Do you think this information is ever going to be shown on Fox/Air Force One?

It may be worth mentioning at this point that a new NPR poll by Marist shows that most Americans don't believe Trump's constant boasts that's been the toughest president on Russia ever. The poll was conducted after Trump fellated Putin in Helsinki. Even 47% of Republicans agree with normal people that Trump hasn't been tough enough on Russia.

A majority (57 percent) also believes that Russia is likely to try to interfere in November's midterm elections-- something that intelligence chiefs have warned about but that Trump has downplayed. Most Republicans, however, side with Trump here, with 58 percent saying it's not very likely or not likely at all.

But a whopping 72 percent of Americans said they have faith in the CIA's and FBI's conclusions about the assessment of the Russian election interference, compared with just 15 percent who believe Putin's denials. Trump has said Putin strongly denies any involvement. Eighty-six percent of Democrats say they believe the intelligence community over Putin, and 63 percent of GOP voters say the same thing. However, 21 percent of Republicans do say they believe Putin's dismissals.

What is more, a majority of Americans believe that Russian interference in 2016 impacted the election, though just 37 percent said they believe it changed the outcome. Another 26 percent said it impacted the election but not enough to change the result, and 30 percent said it had no impact at all.

Almost half of the country (46 percent) thinks that Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in 2016 has been fair, with roughly a third disagreeing. Those opinions are, unsurprisingly, deeply split along partisan lines-- 62 percent of Democrats say it has been fair, while half of Republicans say it has been unfair.

More than two-thirds believe Mueller should be allowed to finish his investigation though, including 60 percent of Republicans. Less than a quarter of GOP voters say Mueller should be fired.

But Republicans view the FBI, which Trump has repeatedly demonized, differently than the public at large does. Almost 6 in 10 people say that the FBI is just trying to do its job, while one-third of Americans say it is biased against the Trump administration. Fifty-five percent of Republicans think the FBI is biased against the president, compared with 85 percent of Democrats who say the law enforcement agency is just doing its job.

Sacha Baron Cohen's second episode came out on Sunday. Full of laugh out loud moments-- and one has already yielded the resignation of a right-wing kook, Jason Spencer (R), from the Georgia legislature. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported today that "Spencer faced increasing pressure to step down shortly after the episode of Who is America? aired Sunday night, and some politicians were urging a special session to oust him if he refused. He will step down at the end of the month." Watch the segment below, unless you are easily offended watching 43 year old state legislators screaming "nigger" and running around with his pants around his knees and his butt hanging out.

Spencer's decision to resign doesn't mean much since he had already been defeated in the Republican primary by Steven Sainz, 2,458 (58%) to 1,784 (42%). His district, in the southeast corner of the state (180), stretch from Piney Bluff through Woodbine and Hopewell as far west as the Okafenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Astoria, Waycross and the Duncan Donuts in Sunnyside.

It Looks Very Much Like Harley Rouda Will Finally Rid Congress-- And Orange County-- Of Putin's Favorite Congressman

Harley Rouda is one lucky guy-- and not just because his Orange County opponent happens to be Putin's favorite congressman-- just ask Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy-- but because of a brand new campaign hire. The new hire is Jack D'Annibale, formerly communications director for Ted Lieu, who's district is just a few miles up the coast-- on the other side of Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes. D'Annibale just started but he's is up and running in a big way-- best campaign outreach of the week:

Harley Rouda’s Top 5 Moments This Week (A.K.A. Dana Rohrabacher’s NOT Top 5)

Hi, there! Jack D'Annibale, Harley Rouda's Director of Communications here.

It’s been a momentous week for Harley’s campaign to replace Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in California’s 48th Congressional District-- and that’s an understatement.

In case you missed it, below are Harley's Top 5 Moments this week.

1. A+ rated Monmouth poll declares Harley’s campaign for Congress is "neck and neck" with incumbent Dana Rohrabacher

Harley registered 46% support to Rohrabacher’s 43%-- and that’s despite Republicans’ natural registration advantage in the district.

The poll also signaled higher Democratic enthusiasm in the district, which isn’t hard to believe given the other candidate spent his week endorsing the notion of arming children (See Number 2).

Why is Harley leading the race? Rep. Ted Lieu had some ideas:

2. Rohrabacher Endorses Arming Children on Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America?

That’s not a typo.

This week, in footage from Sacha Baron Cohen’s new SHOWTIME show Who Is America?, Rohrabacher advocated for arming kindergarteners with weapons.



Not only was Rohrabacher duped into taking a fake interview with an extremist pro-gun group, Rohrabacher’s shameful testimonial in support of the fictional “Kinderguardians” program horrified just about everyone, including the hosts of The View. They vocalized the nation’s thoughts about Rohrabacher with choice quotes such as…

“This scares the HECK out of me!”-- Sunny Hostin

“I full-heartedly reject [Rohrabacher] on EVERY level.”-- Meghan McCain

And, a personal favorite… “WHY do they keep on electing him?”-- Sunny Hostin

In response to Rohrabacher's troubling comments, Harley said, "Instead of radical, deeply disturbing proposals that make our children less safe, families across the U.S. and in California’s 48th district deserve a Congressmember who will fight tirelessly to see that Capitol Hill finally does something to protect our communities by passing common sense gun safety reforms."


“Dana can try to walk back his comments or call them fake news, but that’s just a sad, cynical move straight out of the tired, politics-as-usual playbook. I am fighting to protect children from gun violence, not put them in the cross-hairs. That’s why I’m running for Congress.”

3. Rohrabacher confirmed as part of Russian Spy Investigation

Surprise, surprise…

On Wednesday, news broke that Dana Rohrabacher met with ally of Vladimir Putin in Russia in August of 2015, matching the account of accused spy Maria Butina’s FBI affidavit.

"The news that Dana Rohrabacher is now entwined in an FBI investigation of an accused 'Russian NRA spy' is deeply disturbing,” said Harley Rouda in a statement.

“The full truth about the connection between Dana's pro-Russian politics, his 2015 trip to Russia, and Moscow's relationship with the National Rifle Association must be known-- that's what every CA-48 family, what every American family, deserves."

What was Rohrabacher’s response to all of this? Panic.

4. “Putin’s Favorite Congressman” one-ups Trump in denying Russian hacking indictments and defending Putin’s right to look out for his interests

What prompted this Harley tweet? Let’s start from the beginning...

10 days before the US Department of Justice indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers for the infamous hacks that roiled the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign, Dana Rohrabacher gave an interview to Fox 11’s Elex Michaelson saying the hacks were an “inside job.”

1 disastrous press conference, 2 weeks, and 12 indictments later, Rohrabacher is still denying Russia’s role, while simultaneously defending Putin’s right to “[look] out for the interests of Russia.”

We agree, Dan. Folks in the 48th District should get to know Harley.

5. Last but not least-- Harley out-raises Rohrabacher 5-1 in second quarter fundraising haul

The cherry on top of a great week for Harley?

The fact that Harley outraised Rohrabacher 5 to 1 in the second quarter, raising $1.4 million to Rohrabacher’s $294,000.

And this is just the beginning.

With weeks like these, the momentum behind Harley’s is sure to continue growing at break-neck speed.

I had hardly finished reading D'Annibale's e-mail when the L.A.Times piled on with a Rohrabacher story of their own, this one about the on edge Republican "lashing out" at the press again. Reporters asked him about his involvement with arrested Russian spy Mariia Butina. When a reporter asked him about the meeting he had with the spy he spanned and accused the reporter of trying to divert attention away from something or other. Rohrabacher's office confirmed that he did meet with the spy in his office 3 years ago. The Times reported that "Rohrabacher ended the press conference without answering any questions on the Russia matter or immigration."

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Who's The Trumpiest Of Them All?

Do we need more like this in Congress?

Georgia is lousy with white Trumpists-- especially outside the Atlanta Metro, where Hillary did even better than Obama had. Trump won the state's 16 electoral votes 2,089,104 (51.05%) to 1,877,963 (45.89%). Even during the Republican primary, Trump won every single one of Georgia's 159 counties except 4 in the Atlanta Metro plus Clarke County (Athens), all of which were won by Rubio. In the general, 6 rural counties Obama won in 2012-- Baker, Dooly, Early, Peach, Quitman and Twiggs, swung over to Trump. White rural Georgia is still Trump Country, even if his favorability has sunk significantly in the suburbs and among minorities.

Jenna Johnson,writing for the Washington Post, used the Georgia GOP gubernatorial runoff primary to demonstrate how 2018 candidates are mimicking Trump's worst characteristics on the campaign trail. She started her report by pointed out that "In last week’s debate between Georgia’s Republican candidates for governor, policy was quickly abandoned as Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Secretary of State Brian Kemp lit into one another with a familiar slate of accusations. Kemp called Cagle a liar at least a dozen times. Cagle accused Kemp of conspiring with another Republican to release a recording of an 'out of context' private conversation. Kemp accused Cagle of spreading 'fake news' to Georgians, and Cagle repeatedly refused to apologize for saying what he says."

The two very right-wing candidates argue of who's Trumpier, bicker "over which of them has supported the president for the longest or who would most warmly embrace the Trump agenda" and have both started acting like the repulsive jackass themselves, "using some of his nastiest campaign tactics." But, unfortunately, Georgia isn't the only place this is happening.

In races across the country, other Republican candidates-- and some Democrats-- also are branding their opponents with unflattering nicknames, tweeting in all caps, refusing to apologize for things that politicians once apologized for, being proudly politically incorrect, circulating false information, calling their hometown newspapers “fake news,” releasing damaging information about their opponents and generating controversy to get headlines, even unflattering ones. A Republican candidate for California’s state legislature, copying Trump’s foray against President Barack Obama, has even launched a birther movement, demanding proof that his Democratic opponent is a legal citizen of the United States.

“Trump’s style was such a departure from anything we were used to seeing in a presidential campaign-- his willingness to just go all-out and criticize heavily someone, call them names and engage in schoolyard talk,” said Kerwin Swint, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. “Candidates this year are more willing to go there out of a sense that a precedent has been set or that it works or why not do it in my race.”

But it’s unclear if the tactics will work for many candidates other than Trump, who had a cache with his voters unmatched by most seeking office.

“I don’t like when candidates overly emulate the president. There’s only one Donald Trump,” said Harlan Z. Hill, a conservative consultant working on several midterm races who is also involved with Trump’s 2020 campaign. Hill said he gets frustrated with candidates who use gimmicky nicknames like the president does.

“My biggest problem with this is that it sort of reflects a wider problem in the Republican Party right now, where people are paying lip service to the Trump movement, the America First movement,” he said. “They really don’t understand it, so they’re just emulating the superficial aspects of it. I think voters see right through that.”

But it can be difficult for voters to know whether candidates are emulating Trump out of belief or ambition.

Former soap-opera actor [and gay porn star] Antonio Sabato Jr.-- who spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention and is now running for Congress in Southern California-- has called for Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a Trump nemesis, to be locked up because he believes she is a “hustler of hate” who “wants to tar and feather anyone different from her.” In Indiana, Trump-endorsed Senate candidate Mike Braun cast his primary opponents as “Todd the Fraud” and “Luke the Liberal.” Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann has nicknamed a Democratic congressional candidate “Absent Abby,” in hopes of drawing attention to her statehouse attendance record. Meanwhile, the Maryland Democratic Party has nicknamed Republican Gov. Larry Hogan “Hidin’ Hogan” while accusing him of hiding his conservative positions.

Some of the Trumpiest candidates-- the sort who were early supporters of the president’s campaign and decided to run for office themselves-- aren’t making it past the Republican primaries.

In northern Ohio’s 16th Congressional District, state lawmaker Christina Hagan was inspired by Trump’s 2016 victory to run for Congress, but she lost the primary to the Republican establishment’s favorite, former football star Anthony Gonzalez. One of Hagan’s commercials featured the same out-of-context footage of people rushing a Moroccan border that Trump used in one of his anti-illegal immigration campaign commercials. She also tweeted a news article about a suspect with a name similar to her opponent’s who had been charged in connection with what she called an “illegal immigrant drug ring”-- ignoring calls from fellow Republicans who asked her to delete the tweet.

In New York’s 11th Congressional District, which includes Staten Island, former congressman Michael Grimm challenged Republican Rep. Dan Donovan but lost the primary. Grimm labeled his opponent “Desperate Dan” and “Dishonest Dan,” and compared his own felony conviction for federal tax fraud to the ongoing investigation into whether the Trump campaign worked with Russia in 2016, a probe Grimm considers unfair and politically motivated.

The Trumpiest candidate in the Georgia governor’s race was Michael Williams, a state senator who was one of the few elected officials in the country to endorse Trump in 2015. In the final days of the primary campaign, a struggling Williams received a burst of local and national attention for driving a “deportation bus” around the state, sparking a string of protests. It was a stunt that surprised some of Williams’ supporters, who compared it to Trump purposely generating controversy so that he could dominate the news.

Williams finished last in the primary, even losing the county where he lives. Cagle earned the most votes but not enough to become the party’s nominee, so he and Kemp face a runoff on July 24. A poll released by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News on Friday shows Kemp with a slight lead.

Voter turnout for primaries is often low-- and it’s often even lower for runoff elections, especially those held in the dead of summer. Local strategists and political scientists say that voters who do show up will likely be the party’s most loyal and most conservative members. That explains why Kemp has done so many ads featuring his guns and pickup truck, which he claims in a southern drawl could be used to “round up criminal illegals.” And it explains why Cagle is now catering to the far-right edge of the party.

They're probably the only Republicans in the country who are pissed off that Sacha Baron-Cohen didn't interview them for the upcoming show he did about insane bloodthirsty Republicans advocating arming toddlers in kindergarten. It's worth watching-- released just a couple of days ago, three-and-a-half million people have already watched the YouTube version.

“It’s literally been hilarious to watch” said Seth Weathers, a former state director for Trump who worked on Williams’ campaign, describing what he said was Cagle’s transformation from moderate to Trump mimic.

“Just be who you are,” he said, adding: “No one is Trump.”

Soon after the May primary, Cagle met with one of the Republicans he beat, Clay Tippins, for a frank conversation that he hoped would lead to an endorsement. Tippins recorded the conversation and has been releasing parts of it. First came audio of Cagle saying that a bill providing public funding for private schools was “bad public policy” but he supported it to prevent a rival from gaining financial support from charter school supporters.

Last week, Kemp’s campaign released a snippet it had received from Tippins in which Cagle says that the GOP primary came down to “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck and who could be the craziest.”

Kemp says that Cagle was trashing conservative voters with the comment, comparing it to Hillary Clinton describing Trump’s supporters as “deplorable.” Cagle’s aides said he was pointing out how crazy Kemp has made this race.

By way of timing, the audio controversy echoed the release in the presidential contest of a 2005 Trump interview with Access Hollywood in which he bragged about grabbing and kissing women without their consent.

Although Trump weathered that crisis, the polls here have tightened. Cagle recorded a new commercial last week that was staged to look like a Trump rally. He stood in front of an American flag, surrounded by supporters, and yelled out his beliefs to a cheering crowd.

“I’ll never apologize for outlawing sanctuary cities or stopping liberals from taking the values that make our country great,” he said, lines familiar to any Trump rally veteran. “The time for conservatives getting kicked around is over.”

Cagle tweeted out the ad with a claim that his opponent was “in cahoots” with the media to push “fake news.”

In the Thursday night debate, many of the buzzwords reflected 2016: “Colluding.” “Lies.” “Never going to apologize.” “Hypocrite.” “Despicable.” “Fake news.” After the debate, it continued as the candidates answered questions from reporters.

“Casey Cagle’s getting to be like Hillary Clinton now,” Kemp said. “He’s gone after my ‘crazy’ supporters that have guns, trucks and chain saws. He’s saying I’m colluding, and he’s saying I’m sexist. That’s the same thing that Hillary Clinton said about Donald Trump. I think Georgians know better.”

Minutes later, Cagle complained with a line that could have come straight from Trump. No one could hear about his record as Georgia’s lieutenant governor, he said, because “the only thing that my opponent can talk about is a tape-- a tape!”

Of course, after Trump's horrifying display of treasonous behavior in Helsinki yesterday-- and with even allies like Fox, seeming to turn on him (albeit not ass-licks like Hannity or Carlson)-- how soon will it be before GOP careerist candidatess start to realize that being the Trumpiest candidate is a hinderance not an attraction? This is how Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen put it at Axios early this morning:

Trump sucking up to Vladamir Putin after the summit in Helsinki yesterday was such an unbelievable, indelible moment that many deflated White House officials didn’t even bother to defend or explain it.

...A former senior White House official, who worked closely with Trump, immediately texted us: “Need a shower.”

One of Trump's own former National Security Council officials texted: “Dude. This is a total [effing] disgrace. The President has lost his mind."

CBS Face the Nation anchor Margaret Brennan, who was in the audience, told AP she was messaging some U.S. officials during the speech who said they were turning off the television.

...Jeremy Bash, former chief of staff at the Pentagon and CIA, told Brian Williams on MSNBC: "Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Today's Donald Trump lost the post-Cold War for the United States of America."

...Newt Gingrich, one of the most vocal Trump backers among establishment Republicans, tweeted: "President Trump must clarify his statements in Helsinki on our intelligence system and Putin. It is the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected-- immediately."

Republican congressional leaders said they believe the intelligence community.

Drudge, usually a Trump champion, bannered: "PUTIN DOMINATES IN HEL."

Smart Democratic congressional campaigners jumped on this immediately, contrasting themselves with Republicans foolish enough to stand with Trump's treasonous lunacy. Harley Rouda is running for an Orange County seat against Putin's favorite congressman. Rouda's statement to the media last night: "Dana Rohrabacher has once again proven that he's unfit to lead. In interviews today, he has apologized for Vladimir Putin's attack on our democracy during the 2016 Presidential election. He has insulted the patriotic, diligent men and women of the U.S. intelligence community by impugning their work. And finally, he has gone to the radical extreme to suggest that the U.S. has committed crimes far worse than Russia's despicable attack on our election. Dana's actions today may play well in Moscow, but they aren't befitting a member of Congress who swears to serve the Constitution and to defend our nation against all adversaries."

Progressive Democrat JD Scholten makes the point that his opponent, Steve King (R-IA) was Trumpy when Trump was just some "reality" show TV host. "King," he said, "is one person who actually make Trump look tame. He's tweeted at Trump for not going far enough or fast enough on things like immigration and abortion. Steve King was the Donald Trump of the political world even before Trump was elected."

Thomas Guild is the progressive organizer and Berniecrat in Oklahoma City who I thought about immediately when I saw Jenna's Johnson's piece in The Post, since his opponent is such a pure Trumpist. He agrees. "Steve Russell," he told me this morning, "carries water for Trump on virtually every issue. Russell voted for the Trump tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and big corporations while blowing a huge $2.2 trillion hole in the national debt. He ran as a deficit/debt hawk and now has voted to add many trillions to the national debt and exponentially expand deficit spending for as far as the eye can see. I guess we will have to demote Russell to the rank of fiscal tweety bird (apologies to you-- tweety-- I’ve always liked your cartoons). Trump is a nemesis to the LGBTQ community and Russell has offered legislation to explicitly discriminate against individuals and companies doing business identified as LGBTQ. Trump has pursued questionable and racist policies and Russell has dragged his feet on important issues of equity like strengthening voting rights under federal law. Both Russell and Trump would likely break out the champagne and spontaneously jump for joy if Trump’s next SCOTUS appointment casts the deciding vote to overturn the longstanding precedent Roe v Wade, that protects women’s health and privacy and their right to make their own intimate personal decisions free from governmental interference. As they say in the Sooner State if it acts like a duck, and walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it must be a duck! What do you have to say about that Mr. Russell-- Quack! Quack!!"

Last word on the efficacy of trying to be the Trumpiest candidate in town-- Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman addressed Trumpanzee directly: "Mr President, you should be ashamed. To deny your own country and government in favor of a foreign leader whose country has, for decades, tried to undermine the United States is irrational and dangerous. Please step down, you are not fit to lead this great nation." Still no comments from Casey Cagle or Brian Kemp yet.

Very Bad Idea: Rightists With Weapons

The Best People by Chip Proser

I'm old-- and for all my life I've heard the corporate media (and the Republican Party) pushing this equivalence between the extreme right and some mythical "extreme left." With a couple of short-lived exceptions, there's never been any "extreme left,"-- and certainly not in Congress. Which Democrats are as far left as, for example, the Freedom Caucus? I would call Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, Judy Chu, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Keith Ellison, Yvette Clarke, Jim McGovern, Ted Lieu, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Raul Grijalva, Alan Lowenthal and Jerry Nadler, a baker's dozen of the most progressive members of Congress, left-of-center moderates. The corporate media would rather refer to far right Democrats who vote most of the time with the GOP, like Kyrsten Sinema, Collin Peterson, Tom O'Halleran, Jim Costa, Josh Gottheimer and Henry Cuellar moderates, even though they are significantly to the right on the issues American care about. As for the Republican Party, find me some congressional Democrats as far left as Jim Jordan, Steve King, Ted Yoho, Glenn Grothman, Louie Gohmert, Marsha Blackburn, Karen Handel, Dana Rohrabacher, Rod Blum, Mo Brooks, Jody Hice, Dan Webster, Ron DeSantis, Ron Estes, Scott DesJarlais, Virginia Foxx, Jeb Hensarling, Joe Wilson, Diane Black...

The last radicals I can recall getting into Congress were Vito Marcantonio, from East Harlem, who first in 1934 (as a Republican), Leo Isacson, who represented NY-24 (the same part of the Bronx that just nominated Alexandria Ocasio for Congress) and William Meyer, elected from Vermont in 1958. Marcantonio entered congress as a Republican, switched to the Socialist Party ands defeated by a Democrat in 1950 for opposing the Korean War. Isacson was also defeated by a Democrat (1948) and Meyer lost his seat to a Republican in 1960.

Many people are hoping that Alexandria won't be the only Democratic Socialist in the House come January. The best bet is Kaniela Ing in Hawaii, although there are a number of superb candidates with primaries coming up running on basically Bernie platforms, and who have good chances to win in November, like James Thompson (KS), Tom Guild (OK), Rashida (MI), Randy Bryce (WI).

So I got a little off the track. And the track leads to American neo-fascist and Trumpite, Steve Bannon. On Sunday, another neo-fascist, Britain's Nigel Farage, interviewed Bannon for his right-wing website, LBC. Farage was joined by some other fascists for the interview. Bannon starts the monkey-business: "If I was in middle England, and said this wasn't what i voted for, I would rise up and make sure the guys in parliament knew it. You're going to have to fight to take your country back, every day. Whether it's Italy, France, England, or the United States. If we quit, they're going to be in control."

Theo Usherwood, LBC's political editor: "That sounds like a call to arms."

Bannon: "Absolutely. This is war."

Nigel Farage asked the former strategist whether he saw everything "in terms of this great sort of military style battle."

Mr Bannon's response: "It is.

"It's war.

"This is this.

"War is politics by other means, well politics is war by other means.

"This is a war.

"This is a war for control, this a war for the little guy."

Speaking about the President, Mr Bannon said: Trump is in your grill from the beginning, he's not going to back off and that's what you... if you're going to back off, they're going to win.

"The problem is, the conservatives and people in the United States and England have been too nice."

Several of the folks who Sacha Baron Cohen interviewed are serving in Congress right now and will, in all likelihood, be voting to impeach Rod Rosenstein very soon. Of course Trent Lott no long does serve in the Senate, but he was the Republican Senate Majority Leader in the recent past. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) should both be eschewed by the GOP and sent for some serious psychiatric help. And Joe Walsh... a rudimentary knowledge of mortars? In kindergarten. "In less than a month, less than a month, a first grader can become a first grenader." And this NRA guy, Larry Pratt? You tell me there are crazier people locked up in insane asylums that Larry Pratt. You want to trust this guy walking around with assault rifles?