“Give Me a Break”: Tuberville Sneers at Military, Fellow GOP Senators (Again)

Senator Tommy Tuberville doesn’t think it’s a big deal that military leaders are having to work minimum 18 hours a day because of his blockade on military promotions.

The Department of Defense has repeatedly warned that Tuberville’s stunt is hurting military readiness. As if more proof were needed, the commandant of the Marine Corps has been hospitalized after suffering a heart attack over the weekend.

General Eric Smith has been working as both commandant and his own assistant commandant since mid-September because the Senate has been unable to confirm an official deputy for him. He had previously warned that his schedule—getting up at 5 a.m. and working until 11:30 p.m. every day—was “not a sustainable thing.” There is no indication that Smith’s workload contributed to his heart attack, but working two jobs likely didn’t help.

When asked about the strain that his blockade is causing Smith and other military leaders, Tuberville said Thursday, “[He’s] probably got 2,000 people who work for him, OK?”

“Somebody said he’s working 18 hours a day. Jack Reed blamed me for his heart attack. Come on, give me a break,” Tuberville told CNN’s Manu Raju.

The Alabama Republican was referring to Democratic Senator Jack Reed, who said earlier this week that Smith’s intense workload “contributed to his condition.”

“This guy’s gonna work 18–20 hours a day no matter what,” Tuberville continued. “That’s what we do. I did that for years because you gotta get the job done.”

Tuberville was referring to his previous job as a college football coach. While he may well have put in 18 hours a day for the various teams he led, the demands of his job are likely a little different from what Smith is handling.

Tuberville has blocked almost 400 military promotions since March in protest over the Defense Department’s policy of reimbursing travel costs for service members who have to go out of state for an abortion.

The Pentagon has warned repeatedly that Tuberville’s blockade harms military readiness, with the secretary of the Navy accusing Tuberville of “aiding and abetting” Communist regimes by holding up promotions.

Even Tuberville’s fellow Republicans are getting sick of his shenanigans, with several calling him out by name on the Senate floor Thursday night. Dan Sullivan delivered the most scathing rebuke, saying it was “ridiculous” that Tuberville continues to insist he isn’t harming military readiness.

“Xi Jinping is loving this. So is Putin,” Sullivan said, referring to the presidents of China and Russia. “How dumb can we be, man?”

Welcome to the stand, Ivanka Trump.

A New York appeals court ruled on Thursday that the Trump sister must testify in the family’s $250 million bank fraud trial, rejecting Ivanka’s pathetic attempt to waylay her testimony via an appeal.

She is scheduled to take the stand on November 8.

Ivanka Trump was originally cast as a defendant in the case alongside Donald Trump and sons Eric and Donald Jr, but narrowly avoided inclusion earlier this year when an appeals court ruled her actions were outside the statute of limitations. The trio stands accused of deceiving banks and insurers by massively overvaluing the elder Trump’s net worth.

Ivanka was ordered to testify in the trial last week—but then appealed the decision on the grounds that she would face “undue hardship” if she had to find childcare in order to testify during the school week. It looks like the judge thinks finding a babysitter isn’t all that hard.

So far, Don Jr. has wrapped his testimony, while Eric’s will continue through Friday.

Mary Trump, the former president’s estranged niece, doesn’t see the children’s testimony helping their father.

“They’re going to have to walk a very thin line between obfuscating in a way that’s not perjury and appeasing their father’s ego so that he doesn’t throw them under the bus when he testifies, which of course he’s going to do no matter what they do,” Mary Trump said in a newsletter exclusive, referring to the two sons.

That might change when Ivanka hits the stand.

Ivanka is likely to be less coy about her father’s business dealings, according to Mary, who believes that the heiress will “tell the truth and throw him under the bus,” since she’s “legitimately wealthy” without her father and doesn’t need to rely on him.

So far, Judge Arthur Engoron has ruled that Trump and his sons committed fraud and has stripped the Trump Organization of its business certificates. Trump is fighting hard to appeal that decision.

Mary Trump delivered an epic burn to her cousin Eric after he was caught lying in court about his knowledge of the Trump Organization’s finances.

Eric Trump claimed Thursday during the company’s business fraud trial that he had “never worked” on the Trump Organization’s statement of financial condition and that he wasn’t even aware of it until the trial began. Moments later, he was shown an email in which he told employees he was working on the statement, forcing him to admit he actually knew about it as far back as 2013.

“They lie so much, they can’t even keep track of their own bullshit,” Mary Trump tweeted gleefully on Thursday evening.

“Sounds like perjury is on today’s menu.” She also predicted that Eric “basically just lost the entire case.”

Mary Trump, who has contributed to The New Republic and participated in TNR’s “Stop Trump Summit,” regularly and brilliantly drags her family on social media. In September, she marked her uncle Donald Trump being found liable for fraud by listing all of his historic accomplishments—including being the first former president to be impeached twice, accused of inciting an insurrection, indicted, found liable for sexual assault, and found liable for fraud.

New York state Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in September that Donald Trump had committed business fraud and ordered all his New York business certificates be canceled. This makes it nearly impossible to do business in New York and could effectively kill the Trump Organization as it exists today.

Both of Trump’s older sons, Eric and Don Jr., testified in court this week. Donald Trump freaked out about their pending testimony ahead of time. And now it’s clear why. His sons’ words have hurt his case more than helped him.

A conservative activist has unveiled a fellowship that aims to help “conservative journalists, activists, and opinion leaders” foment a culture war.

Christopher Rufo, an ally of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has become a leading figure in conservative education policy. He first gained national attention by instigating the explosive debate of “critical race theory,” which has now become a right-wing buzzword for diversity of thought.

Rufo unveiled the “Manhattan Institute Logos Fellowship” on Monday. “Fellows will bring a specific ‘culture war’ project to the program, which our team will help nurture over the course of the year,” he wrote in the announcement.

“The goal is to help move these independent projects from conception to execution, so that they begin to shape the discourse and change public policy. Some topics that we hope to address are critical race theory, gender ideology, higher education reform, crime and policing, and civil rights law.”

One benefit of the program is that fellows will be able to network with “cable news bookers, policy makers, and aligned organizations to promote the dissemination of ideas and policy proposals.”

Rufo already has considerable sway over school campuses throughout the United States. He was placed on the board of the New College of Florida after DeSantis helped oust the liberally minded school’s former president. Rufo has also helped push to ban books and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the country. Now the man who lied about his Harvard degree is trying to extend his influence further by nurturing the next generation of the far right.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is chugging along with jury selection in Donald Trump’s federal election subversion case, despite attempts to delay the proceedings by the former president’s legal team.

On Thursday, Chutkan endorsed a set of jury procedures that note prospective jurors will fill out a preliminary questionnaire on February 9, just over three months away. (As a reminder, Trump’s trial is scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024, one day before Super Tuesday.)

Certain language in the court order also hints that Chutkan is getting wise to Trump’s antics.

After slapping Trump with a gag order in the D.C. trial for leveraging his platform on social media and at speaking arrangements to lambaste prosecutors and office clerks associated with the case, Chutkan’s legal outline reads more like a warning to his defense to keep the former president from trash-talking his own jury.

“The parties must ensure that anyone permitted access to sensitive juror information understands that he cannot publicly disclose the information, and no party may provide jurors’ identifying information to any other entity (e.g., the defendant’s campaign) that is not part of the defense team or Government team assisting with jury selection,” Chutkan wrote.

The date, just three months from now, breezes past concerns over other possible Trump-induced delays in the trial. In October, Trump’s legal team claimed presidential immunity in the D.C. case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, in an attempt to argue that Trump’s actions fell within his White House responsibilities.

Trump also ran into issues with his social media addiction in his $250 million bank fraud trial. Up in New York, Trump has already violated his gag order twice so far, first earning a $5,000 fine and then a $10,000 fine, along with the threat of jail time.

Eric Trump got a little testy on the stand Thursday—moments before he was caught lying about his knowledge regarding his father’s financial statements.

After claiming that he had “never worked” on the Trump Organization’s statement of financial condition and wasn’t aware of it until the bank fraud trial “came to fruition,” the taller Trump brother admitted he was in fact aware of it dating as far back as 2013.

The “gotcha” moment has big implications for how the rest of this case will unfold.

Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. spent the majority of Wednesday and Thursday on the stand, where they conveniently seemed to have forgotten many details about serving as the Trump Organization’s top executives.

The brothers have largely skirted specifics, blaming their faulty memories for the total lapses. Don Jr. claimed he could not remember the period in 2021 in which he was removed and then reinstated as a trustee of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, couldn’t remember if his father was a trustee, had no idea why his father added himself back as a trustee during his presidency, and claimed he could not recall if he had worked on his father’s statement of financial condition.

Instead, the brothers’ testimony has attempted to divert most of the responsibility regarding the faulty financial statements onto the companies’ accounting team, including former CFO Allen Weisselberg, as well as their accounting firm, Mazars USA.

Yet Eric’s contradiction to his own deposition also shines a light on the prosecution’s strategy, which has been to question his credibility without outright calling him a liar. Essentially, Eric has already revealed that his claims of having no knowledge were “at best, based on a very faulty memory and at worst, constituted deliberate falsehoods,” reported NBC News.

Both Donald Trump and his two sons are defendants in the $250 million New York bank fraud trial in which the trio stands accused of deceiving banks and insurers by massively overvaluing the elder Trump’s net worth.

That figure was sometimes off by as much as billions of dollars, the president’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, revealed last week.

So far, Judge Arthur Engoron has ruled that Trump and his sons committed fraud and has stripped the Trump Organization of its business certificates. Trump is also fighting hard to appeal that decision.

Trump and Ivanka are set to testify next week, though the heiress is working to appeal Engoron’s ruling that she must participate.

Nancy Mace may say she fights for the people, but it seems that all she really cares about is being famous, the internal handbook for her congressional staff shows.

In a report published Thursday, The Daily Beast examined the South Carolina representative’s staff handbook and interviewed several of her former staffers. The main message was clear: All eyes should be on Mace at all times.

“Are we in a P.R. firm, or working for a member of Congress?” a former senior aide said they repeatedly asked themselves while working for Mace.

The handbook, which Mace reportedly wrote herself, includes clear instructions for making sure the congresswoman gets the most attention possible.

Staffers are also expected to book Mace at least 15 television appearances per week: a minimum of nine spots on national channels (between one and three times a day) and six or more times on local outlets. And to get on television, she’ll pull stunts—like strip the House speaker of his gavel.

Former staffers criticized Mace’s decision to vote to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mace later used her vote to cast herself as a maverick, fundraising aggressively off the move.

But according to a former senior aide, she didn’t actually care all that much. “She saw the votes on the board and said, ‘Fuck it, I’m just gonna vote for it just so I can go on TV and talk about it.’”

Mace also has other staff metrics with the hope of getting her on television. Staff are required to send out at least one press release per day, an unusually high rate.

Mace also set the highly unrealistic goal of filing 25 new bills per year. She expected 10 of those bills to pass the House per year and one to be signed into law annually. It’s incredibly rare for almost any member to see a major bill that they wrote become law. Mace has introduced 62 bills since she took office in 2021, and only one—renaming a local post office in her South Carolina district—has actually become law.

The Daily Beast reviewed other internal documents from Mace’s office, including her office budget. She has dedicated more than a third of her office’s annual $500,000 budget for “marketing,” a word almost unseen on Capitol Hill.

“It is not normal for a member to prioritize media and comms over actual legislation like that,” a second former Mace staffer told The Daily Beast. “In my experience with and in other offices, comms serves to promote what the member is doing legislatively. In Mace’s office, legislation served to get her more media opportunities.”

Mace has already shown how willing she is to grab the spotlight. She calls herself a moderate and advocates for more “centrist” approaches to issues such as abortion, but she appears on far-right outlets and votes against abortion protections.

It was a battle of the extremes on Thursday as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene went full meltdown mode on Twitter, hours after losing her bid to censure Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib.

In a frantic string of tweets, Greene threw daggers at several of her former far-right allies, including “vaping groping Lauren Boebert” and “CNN wannabe Ken Buck.” One representative took most of the heat in the MAGA feud, however: Representative Chip Roy, who voted against the censure effort.

“Tell her to go chase so-called Jewish space lasers if she wants to spend time on that sort of thing,” Roy told The Hill’s Mychael Schnell, early Thursday.

But Greene wasn’t having any of that, wasting no time before returning the dig, via her official congressional account on X (formerly known as Twitter).

“Oh shut up Colonel Sanders, you’re not even from Texas, more like the DMV,” Greene posted, referring to the D.C. metropolitan area. “Chip Roy’s career exist of working for politicians, working for campaigns for politicians, and being a politician himself. Unity Party all the way! Which is why you will never hold anyone accountable.”

Hours after the vote, Roy’s office issued a press release condemning Tlaib’s remarks toward Israel but described Greene’s effort to silence the Michigan Democrat as a “feckless resolution.”

It made “legally and factually unverified claims, including the claim of leading an ‘insurrection,’” Roy wrote.

That set Greene off, who accused the Texas representative of hating Trump over his vote to certify the 2020 presidential election.

“You hate Trump, certified Biden’s election, and could care less about J6 defendants being persecuted,” Greene said.

In total, 23 House Republicans voted alongside Democrats to table the resolution to censure Tlaib, who participated in an October 18 Jewish-led protest demanding a cease-fire in Gaza.

Nikki Haley had some decent advice for her fellow presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis: If you’re going to wear high heels, then just walk tall.

DeSantis has for weeks sparked theories that he’s wearing lifts inside his cowboy boots to make himself appear taller. Internet sleuths point to the weird way his boots fit and his apparent struggle to walk in them. But the Florida governor’s campaign team has denied the accusations.

During a Wednesday night interview on The Daily Show, guest host Charlamagne tha God asked Haley if she planned on wearing heels to the upcoming Republican primary debate so she can appear taller than DeSantis.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to figure that out,” Haley quipped back. “I can tell you I’ve always talked about my high heels. I’ve never hid that from anybody. I’ve always said, ‘Don’t wear ’em if you can’t run in ’em,’ so we’ll see if he can run in ’em.”

The former U.N. ambassador has never shied away from making jokes about her high heels, even if they are a little cringe. In 2012, she said the news media is “a little frightened of women” because she wears heels “for ammunition.”

In her campaign announcement, she said, “I don’t put up with bullies, and when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”

But her advice for DeSantis is pretty good: If the shoe fits, wear it—and wear it proudly. And then focus on actual issues.

Senator Dick Durbin is officially the first U.S. senator to call for a cease-fire in Gaza—26 days into a brutal airstrike campaign by the Israeli military which, as of Thursday, has killed over 9,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials.

During an interview with CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Thursday morning, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate was asked if he believed there should be a cease-fire.

“Is a cease-fire needed now?” Harlow asked.

“I think it is,” Durbin said. “At least, under the context of both sides agreeing.”

The Illinois senator described what would need to be a “good faith” effort by both Hamas and Israel, leading to the immediate release of Israeli hostages by Hamas and “conversation between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

“Let’s face it, this has gone on for decades. Whatever the rationale for the beginning, it has now reached an intolerable level,” Durbin said.

Durbin said he has not yet communicated his beliefs to President Biden, whose administration is actively avoiding calls for a cease-fire. Durbin joins the ranks of 23 members of Congress who have expressed the need for a cease-fire.