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As millions of Americans stare down the barrel of what the CDC director described as “the most difficult time in the public-health history of this nation,” Republicans have mobilized around the most pressing challenge: How to keep lying that the election was stolen from Trump, without jeopardizing their Senate majority?
- With pro-Trump lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell exhorting MAGA-ites not to vote in the Georgia Senate runoffs just over a month away, Republicans have begun frantically trying to force the kraken back into the sea hole. The Trump campaign shared a Breitbart article accusing Wood of being a Democratic operative, while Newt Gingrich tried to disown the monster he created, now that it’s throttling the wrong villagers: “Lin Wood and Sidney Powell are totally destructive. Every Georgia conservative who cares about America MUST vote in the runoff. Their dont [sic] vote strategy will cripple America.” Counterpoint: Let’s hear them out!
- Republicans are probably right to be nervous: A new SurveyUSA poll suggests Trump’s fraud lies aren’t doing Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) any favors. (Time to sit back and relax, unless anyone has any recent evidence that polls can be wrong?) Trump will head to Georgia on Saturday, ostensibly to campaign alongside Loeffler and Purdue, but he could easily do them more harm than good if he uses his rallies to yell about how voting machines have socialist algorithms. Fortunately for Kelly and Dave, the president is a consummate team player best known for swallowing his personal grievances.
- Elsewhere in the country, the Trump post-election legal effort continued to step on an ever-pointier series of rakes. The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the campaign’s lawsuit to throw out more than 200,000 votes in blue counties, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied a request from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) to nullify the state’s certification of results. For those keeping score at home, Trump and his allies are now 1-41 in court. At a Michigan House hearing on Wednesday, Rudy Giuliani was impressively out-crazied by his star witness, a slurring Cecily Strong character whose fraud allegations had already been deemed “not credible” by a judge. Giuliani also farted a bunch, but you knew that already, intuitively.
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Donald Trump’s multi-state fart-a-thon would be hideously selfish in the best of times, but the contrast between his delusional narcissism and the worsening national emergency has never been more surreal.
- Trump released a breathtakingly insane 46-minute video rant on social media, which consisted of nothing but outright lies about fictional voter fraud and the country’s election system being “under coordinated assault and siege,” and called it perhaps the “most important speech” of his presidency. Also on Wednesday, more than 2,800 Americans died of coronavirus, and the U.S. reported more than 200,000 new infections, and 100,000 hospitalizations—all record highs. None of it amounted to even a blip on the president’s radar.
- Instead, Trump is holed up at the White House seething at Attorney General Bill Barr for announcing that the Justice Department hasn’t found any evidence of widespread voter fraud. Asked whether he still had confidence in Barr today, Trump answered, “Ask me that in a number of weeks from now. They should be looking at all of this fraud.” Adding fuel to the fire, the White House liaison at the Justice Department has been banned from the building, after pressuring staffers to share information about election fraud investigations.
Is it ideal that our large sociopathic president is spiraling deeper into his own narcissistic injuries while the rest of the country rolls into the worst stage of an already unthinkable crisis? Nope! Is there a way to channel our fury into taking power away from one of the key people who’s let him get away with it, and hasten our national recovery in the process? We’re so glad you asked.
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What a year! We're so ready for 2021, we even made a brand new What A Day desk calendar for our beloved WAD Squad. It’s got quotes from your favorite hosts Akilah & Gideon to keep you going 365 days a year. (For best results, use in combination with daily podcasts and newsletters.) Check it out in the Crooked Store →
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While some Trumpers are citing nonexistent fraud as a reason to sit out the Georgia Senate election, others plan to commit actual fraud to win it: Florida lawyer Bill Price used his brother’s address to try to register to vote in Georgia, and is now under investigation by state officials. In a Facebook Live video on November 7, Price encouraged a crowd of Florida Republicans to register to vote in Georgia, and offered advice on how to do so. Price now claims the whole thing was a joke, and what could be funnier than this: “We absolutely have to hold the Senate and we have to start fighting back, and we have to do whatever it takes. And if that means changing your address for the next two months, so be it. I’m doing that.” The George Carlin of his generation.
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- Joe Biden has tapped Jeff Zients to serve as his coronavirus czar, Vivek Murthy for surgeon general, and Marcella Nunez-Smith for a role focused on health disparities. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who will stay on at the NIH and serve as Biden’s chief medical advisor, met with Biden’s transition team today for their first substantive conversation about the pandemic response.
- Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton have all offered to take the coronavirus vaccine on TV to boost confidence in its safety, ideally in the form of a game show called Who Wants to Be a Vaccinated Former President?
- In decidedly less cool news, Pfizer has slashed its expected initial coronavirus vaccine rollout from 100 million vaccines to 50 million, after running into supply-chain problems.
- Companies and government organizations that will be distributing vaccines around the world have been hit with a series of cyberattacks, according to IBM. It’s unclear whether the hackers are trying to steal the technology to keep vaccines cold in transit, or set up a ransomware play to essentially hold the vaccines hostage.
- The Trump administration has finally forked over data that might help lawyers reunite migrant families who were separated at the border, after withholding it for months.
- Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) has been the Senate’s most prolific stock trader by far, making 2,596 trades in a single term, and what do you know, a ton of those trades were in companies that stood to benefit from policy matters that came before his own committees.
- The IRS is investigating NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre for possible tax fraud. As they say at the NRA, “there are only two certainties in life: Death.”
- Parler’s weak moderation has made it a hub for both conservatives and porn, like something Ted Cruz imagined in a dream. Here’s Parler’s COO Jeffrey Wernick when asked about the porn problem, evidently by his mom: “I don’t look for that content, so why should I know it exists?”
- Airlines can now ban on-board emotional support animals that aren’t dogs, so it’s back to disguising your ferret in a trenchcoat and Groucho Marx glasses, like before.
- A man named Adolf Hitler Uunona won a local election in Namibia but says he is not “striving for world domination.” Sounds good, no further questions!
Correction: A typo in Wednesday's newsletter misidentified Sen. Mark Kelly as (R-AZ). Kelly is, blessedly, (D-AZ). Our apologies to Arizonans and astronauts everywhere.
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The Supreme Court just overturned state coronavirus restrictions on religious services for the second time in two weeks. The Court sided with a California ministry arguing that the state’s restrictions on indoor services were a violation of its religious liberties, sending the case back to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That order was unsigned, but it’s easy to guess who voted how: Last week the Court ruled 5-4 in favor of houses of worship challenging New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus orders, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberal justices. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s vote was key; before she replaced RBG, the Court had blocked similar challenges in Nevada and California. These rulings are an early sign of how Barrett’s presence will shift the way the Supreme Court approaches religious objectors, and could set the stage for a slew of new religious exemptions to state law.
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Soon you can stream everything you want to watch...when you’re not watching the news.
Introducing Discovery Plus, a new streaming service bringing you the greatest collection of real-life entertainment plus exclusive originals you won’t find anywhere else.
Watch your favorites from brands like HGTV, Food Network, TLC, ID, Animal Planet, Discovery Channel and more – including shows like Shark Week, the 90 Day Fiancé universe, Diners, Drive-ins & Dives, Home Town, and Naked and Afraid.
Plus get the BBC natural history collection, including Life, Planet Earth, and brand new specials to come.
From food to nature, true crime to flipping houses, puppies to classic cars...whatever you’re into, you’ll find it here.
Discovery Plus. Start streaming in the US only. Jan 4.
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Scientists at Harvard Medical School were able to reverse vision loss in mice by reprogramming neurons in the eye, potentially paving the way for therapies that treat age-related diseases in humans through the same mechanism. Fountain of youth, baby.
Nobody make any sudden moves, but this bipartisan coronavirus-relief proposal might actually pass.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) will become the first openly LGBTQ person to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Congressional Democrats have introduced a joint resolution to strip the slavery loophole from the Constitution’s 13th Amendment.
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