Crooked Media - What A Day: Eye for an Iowa

- The serious questions of our day being asked on the Fox News chyron

We’re just days away from the Republican nominating contests in Iowa and…God help us.
 

• Disgraced former president Donald Trump remains the definitive frontrunner going into Monday’s Iowa Caucuses, but that hasn’t stopped him from playing some of his worst hits of the past decade in attacks against his fellow candidates. Specifically, Trump is trotting out a birther conspiracy again, this time about his former United Nations Secretary Nikki Haley. On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump reposted a report by the MAGA-centric conspiracy theory website The Gateway Pundit sowing some doubts about Haley’s U.S. citizenship. Haley, whose parents were immigrants from India, was born in South Carolina in 1972, making her, you guessed it, an American citizen. 
   

• Trump is clearly flailing, despite his lead in the polls, perhaps due to the stress of facing legal challenges to his ballot eligibility in states around the country under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. So far, only Colorado and Maine have succeeded in booting him, pending review by the Supreme Court. Similarly playing to the worst impulses of his frothing base, Trump continues using vile, racist rhetoric against undocumented immigrants, who he accused of “poisoning the blood of our country” at a New Hampshire event last month. Full-on Adolf Hitler shit. 
   

• Of course, Trump is hardly alone in targeting migrants among his fellow Republicans. The three leading GOP candidates and their PACs have spent nearly $5 million on ads in Iowa skewering what they deem excessively-lax immigration policies. The super PAC supporting Nikki Haley declared that she would close the border between the U.S. and Mexico “before it’s too late,” and the group supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) aired an ad featuring their guy promising to “protect” the border using lethal force, saying, “We’re going to leave them stone-cold dead.” As we’ve seen in past GOP primary campaigns, especially in the last fifteen years, there is little appetite for a “moderate position” on immigration in the modern-day Republican Party. There will surely be more where that came from in Wednesday night’s final GOP debate between Haley and DeSantis.

Meanwhile, a last-minute shakeup in the candidate pool could set early nominating contests on a new trajectory. 
 

•  Former Governor of New Jersey and Trump critic-turned-sycophant-turned-critic Chris Christie announced he is ending his long-shot 2024 candidacy during a New Hampshire town hall on Wednesday, officially killing the dream of perhaps dozens of Christie’s hardcore #NeverTrump supporters. Yet Christie’s exit could be a boon for Nikki Haley, whom two-thirds of Christie voters named as their top alternative candidate. 
   

• Haley has been gaining on Trump in New Hampshire, and a recent CNN poll put her behind by only 7 points. There is a chance that Christie’s departure could even push her over the top in the Granite State, the only place where Christie had any meaningful support. There is certainly no love lost between Christie and Haley. (Moments before Christie quit the race, he was caught on a hot mic saying: “She’s going to get smoked. You and I both know it. She’s not up to this.”) Regardless, Christie acknowledged in his speech that he would not let his own “personal ambition” play a role in handing the nomination to Trump. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves, this nomination is still very much Trump’s to lose. But things could get interesting in the meantime.

One thing is for certain: when it comes to the Republican primary, whoever wins, we all lose!

In a Trump-dominated GOP primary, is this year's Iowa caucus just a formality? Or something more pivotal? With some Iowa powerbrokers predicting a possible shake-up in the Republican leaderboard, Pod Save America's Tommy Vietor is heading to the Hawkeye State to talk directly to voters and experts on what this Iowa caucus means for the election year ahead. Tune in to On The Ground in Iowa, a special 2-episode series, in the Pod Save America feed, starting today, January 10th, wherever you get your podcasts.

President of Ecuador Daniel Noboa said Wednesday that his country is “at war” with drug gangs who are holding more than 130 prison guards hostage. The country is experiencing a dramatic surge in violence, as vividly demonstrated when armed militants wearing balaclavas briefly overtook a live TV broadcast. Noboa named 22 gangs as terrorist organizations, a designation that makes them official military targets. He ascended to power in November partly on a platform to address the growing security problems caused by drug-trafficking gangs. The hostage-taking incident in the prison   occurred on Monday, immediately after the apparent escape of Los Choneros gang leader Adolfo Macías over the weekend, which prompted Noboa to declare a state of emergency. 

Over 300 people have been arrested since the state of emergency began, and most are members of prominent gangs like Los Choneros, Los Lobos, and Los Tiguerones. Last year, another presidential candidate named Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on the campaign trail shortly after expressing that he had been under threat from Los Choneros. More than 3,000 police and military were deployed to search for Macías. Some security experts have estimated that as many as a quarter of the country’s 36 prisons are gang-controlled. Ecuador has multiple lucrative drug-trafficking routes that transport narcotics, especially cocaine, to the United States and Europe. An anthropologist who has long studied Ecuador’s prison system, Jorge Núñez, said Noboa’s approach to the country’s penitentiary system is not dramatically different than that of previous administrations. 

A New York City judge ruled that Donald Trump is not allowed to give his own closing arguments at his civil fraud trial, because Trump would not agree to certain basic restrictions required of addressing the court. Once again robbed of seeing the world’s most unhinged man represent himself in court. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a press conference that Israel has “no intention” of permanently displacing the population of Gaza, despite the fact that the country’s military campaign there has rendered most of the enclave almost uninhabitable. The statement reflects increasing pressure from the United States for Israel to prioritize Palestinian welfare in the conflict that has killed over 23,000 civilians, but thus far no meaningful changes have been seen.

House Speaker Mike Johnson asked his fellow House Republicans to stop being mean to him online in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced deep budget cuts across city spending in November to education, libraries, and other public services. Now, he’s reversing some of those cuts, for Police and Fire only.

Social media giant TikTok quietly restricted one of its only data tools to help measure the popularity of trends on its app after it was used by researchers and lawmakers to scrutinize content on the site related to geopolitical issues, particularly the Israel-Hamas war. 

American and British naval forces shot down 21 drones and missiles headed towards the southern Red Sea fired by Houthi militants in Yemen on Tuesday, as the Israel-Hamas war continues to overflow in the region.

Doomed GOP candidate Ron DeSantis will face off in a one-on-one debate with Nikki Haley in Iowa on Wednesday evening as they continue their battle for second place in the Hawkeye State. 

Trump will make a torrent of false claims during an Iowa town hall on Fox News scheduled to take place at the same time.

Hunter Biden made a surprise appearance at his own contempt hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, adding a dramatic twist to the circus-like chaos of the House GOP’s latest effort to drum up a bunch of nonsense against Hunter’s dad, President Biden. Democrats urged Republicans to go ahead and do what they claim they want to do, which is to ask Hunter probing questions. But Republicans refused, using the extremely lame excuse that they only subpoenaed Hunter to testify behind closed doors, not in front of everyone. Hunter has insisted on appearing publicly, over fears Republicans would take his words out of context. The frustration of the moment evidently got under House Republicans’ skin, judging by the unhinged response. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) lost it, yelling at Hunter: “You have no balls!” 

The move was Hunter’s latest attempt to call the GOP’s bluff, as Republicans scramble to turn his foreign business ties and struggles with drug addiction into spurious allegations of corruption against his dad. Despite months of investigation, they’ve turned up nothing but evidence that Joe Biden evidently loves his troubled son. Being a loving father isn’t an impeachable offense, of course. So the GOP just keeps on digging.

Two separate House committees—both Judiciary and Oversight—later voted along party lines to recommend that the full House hold Hunter in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas. If that happens, a referral will be sent to the Department of Justice, which will have to decide whether to bring criminal charges. Some of those howling loudest about Hunter are Republicans who ignored their own Congressional subpoenas over the Jan. 6 insurrection—including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA). And, you know, maybe that tells you something. Maybe…this whole thing actually isn’t about House Republicans searching for the truth, and making sure everyone respects the rule of law, after all.

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The parliament of South Korea passed a bill on Tuesday banning the breeding and slaughter of dogs for consumption after years of an intense nationwide debate. The bill received rare bipartisan support. 

A new Quinnipiac poll shows president Biden leading in Pennsylvania, a key swing state. We’re still hyperventilating into a paper bag, but we’ll take what we can get. 

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) is trailing her Democratic challenger Ruben Gallego according to a new Public Policy Polling report. The bad news? Ultra-MAGA Republican Kari Lake is right behind him.