Tuberville Tried to Defend That SOTU Response. It Did Not Go to Plan.

While pretty much everybody unanimously hated the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday, at least one conservative loved it … albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Republicans tapped one of their youngest lawmakers, Alabama Senator Katie Britt, to helm the response. Over the course of 17 choked-up minutes, Britt, holed up in a kitchen somewhere, staccato-skipped her way through heavy topics, including immigration, sex trafficking, the curtailing of human rights (but not women’s), national security, and foreign affairs. Between the awkward pain behind her voice that most viewers read as disingenuous, and the Steven King–esque smile glitched between forced sorrows, Bette Midler rated Britt’s performance a D-, and her policies an F.

But amid the frenzy of criticism, Alabama’s other senator, Tommy Tuberville, attempted to pass along a compliment to the 42-year-old. Still, even he couldn’t see past the image of a little woman tucked away behind her big kitchen table.

“She was picked as a housewife, not just a senator, somebody who sees it from a different perspective,” Tuberville told HuffPost, apparently seeing the diminished image as a good thing. “I mean, she did what she was asked to do. I thought she did a good job. And it’s hard when you’ve never done anything like that.”

Tuberville said much the same during a Newsmax appearance on Friday, claiming Britt was the right choice (to be used by the party hell-bent on stripping abortion access) because “she’s a mom” and a “housewife.”

People were, unsurprisingly, aghast at the patronizing message.

“Journalists should just ask Tommy Tuberville about everything; he’s always going to say the dumbest fucking thing possible,” posted Hysteria podcast host Erin Gloria Ryan.

“‘Picked as a housewife.’ Britt is a United States senator. Just like Tuberville is,” wrote Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman.

It’s just another of a dozen such blunders that Tuberville has made in recent memory, highlighting his complete disregard for how the other half of the human race lives. Last month, Tuberville let slip that he couldn’t be bothered to read up on a court decision that stripped in vitro fertilization access within his state, even in the days that followed the ruling.

The centrist group No Labels has decided that it will plow ahead with its so-called “unity ticket” in the presidential election, promising to open Pandora’s box ahead of the November vote.

Nearly 800 No Labels delegates convened virtually on Friday and “voted nearly unanimously” to move forward with their presidential ticket, according to No Labels National Convention Chair Mike Rawlings.

The third-party movement has not named who its presidential and vice presidential nominees are. It will announce its candidate selection process on Wednesday.

The group, which has repeatedly been accused of running a pro-Donald Trump spoiler campaign, wants to offer a bipartisan ticket, with the presidential nominee from one major party and the vice presidential pick from the other.

No Labels has repeatedly positioned itself as a viable alternative to both Trump and Joe Biden, and promised only to run a ticket if the group believed it had a candidate that could actually win. Until now, No Labels’ reportedly preferred candidates have either been generally unpopular or have said no—and in some cases, both.

The group reportedly courted Nikki Haley, Joe Manchin, and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. Haley dropped out of the Republican presidential primary earlier this week after a terrible performance. Manchin is one of the most unpopular senators nationwide. Both turned down No Labels before a formal offer could be made.

Hogan, who left office with record-high approval ratings, had weighed a presidential run on a No Labels ticket. But he ultimately decided to run for Maryland senator instead.

The only person who has actually offered to be on a unity ticket is Dean Phillips, who ran a painfully cringey Democratic campaign and who does not appear to have even made it onto No Labels’ radar.

It’s unclear just who No Labels will pick now, but Friday’s decision has definitely revealed one thing: No Labels just wants attention.

Political strategists and even former allies have warned that No Labels is “dangerous.” Jim Messina, who ran Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, suggested to The New Republic in May that No Labels CEO Nancy Jacobson and her husband, Mark Penn, “are sort of no longer relevant within the [Democratic] Party.”

“So now they’re going outside the party looking for relevancy,” Messina said.

Historically, third-party candidates perform poorly in presidential elections, typically receiving (at best) a sliver of the electorate. The exceptions (Theodore Roosevelt in 1912; Ross Perot in 1992) prove the rule. But a third-party candidate could peel critical votes away from Biden while Trump cruises to victory.

Another outcome could be that a third candidate prevents anyone from getting 270 electoral votes, meaning that state delegations in the House of Representatives pick the winner. If Republicans maintain their state-delegation majority in the next Congress, it would almost certainly swing for Trump.

So while No Labels says it doesn’t want either Biden or Trump in power, it could be the thing that ensures Trump gets back to the White House.

For a group that bills itself as nonpartisan, No Labels seems to court connections exclusively with right-leaning figures. The organization has accepted donations from a man with close financial ties to Jared Kushner, as well as Nazi memorabilia collector Harlan Crow.

And one of the group’s members is former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who oversaw a contentious, highly partisan, and decidedly far-right four years. He defended voter ID laws, rejected the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid, and backed a bill that banned people from using the bathroom that matched their gender identity.

Joe Biden may have handed Republicans a massive win when he went off script and referred to an undocumented migrant as an “illegal” during his State of the Union address.

At one point during the speech, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene began heckling Biden about Laken Riley, a college student who was murdered. A Venezuelan national named José Ibarra has been charged for her death.

In a back and forth with Greene, during which Biden repeated into his microphone what the Georgia MAGA Republican was shouting, the president said, “Laken Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right.”

To Biden’s credit, he immediately then said, “But how many thousands of people being killed by legals? To her parents I say, my heart goes out to you having lost children myself.”

But the damage was already done—and Republicans are reportedly planning to capitalize on it.

Punchbowl News reporter Mica Soellner reported Friday that a Republican aide, speaking anonymously, had told her Biden’s comments would be used in upcoming Republican ads.

Republican lawmakers were particularly delighted that he had used the term “illegal” and said “thousands have been killed,” the aide said. It was “good of him” to acknowledge that, the aide also told Soellner.

For what it’s worth, Biden did not actually say that thousands of Americans have been killed by migrants. But the damage may have already been done.

Republicans have continually accused Biden of allowing an unchecked flow of undocumented migrants into the country. They falsely claim that immigration is the cause of rising crime levels and the deadly fentanyl epidemic.

Biden has responded by trying to get tougher, even cruel, on immigration, including supporting a draconian bill that would have increased security regulations on the border—a measure that the GOP promptly killed, at the behest of Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump.

While Biden’s campaign co-chair tried Friday to brush off using the word “illegal” as a “small mistake,” many progressive Democrats are concerned about the damage Biden has wrought with just one word. Soon after he said it, Representatives Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez both tweeted that “no human being is illegal.”

Many lawmakers reportedly grew visibly upset while sitting in the chamber. Representative Joaquin Castro said the comment was “ugly and uncalled for.”

Castro’s guest to the speech was Priscilla Martinez, the widow of North Texas rancher Aaron Martinez. Martinez was killed by a neighbor who had repeatedly harassed the family over their Latino ethnicity.

“Across Texas, many families can tell similar stories of hate and harassment inspired by the rhetoric of Donald Trump,” Castro tweeted after the State of the Union.

“The rhetoric President Biden used tonight was dangerously close to language from Donald Trump that puts a target on the backs of Latinos everywhere. Democrats shouldn’t be taking our cues from MAGA extremism.”

The Republican National Committee elected a pair of new leaders on Friday and, surprise surprise, they were both hand-selected by Donald Trump. Their introduction to the higher echelons of conservative fundraising stands as a marking point: Trump’s takeover of the party is now complete.

North Carolina GOP Chairman Michael Whatley was elected to replace outgoing RNC Chair (and expired Trump favorite) Ronna McDaniel, while the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was selected as co-chair.

Their introduction comes at a critical juncture for Trump, who is struggling to pay for a legal comeuppance that so far includes more than half a billion dollars in judgments and mountains of cash for his four upcoming criminal trials.

Both of the new RNC leaders are 2020 election deniers, and both also echoed Trump’s agenda in their acceptance speeches. Whatley claimed he would hire “real-time monitors” to oversee the upcoming presidential election to thwart interference (a plan that didn’t work out so well for conservatives last time), while the younger Trump “bigly” quoted some of his catchphrases.

Both also pledged that raising money would be a top priority for the caucus, which in January reported a measly $8.7 million in its coffers—nearly a third of what the DNC has on hand. Still, it’s a bit transparent why that might be so important to them. Even though the RNC typically functions to back campaigning officials all the way down the ballot, the co-chair has already sworn the RNC’s cash will help cover the presumed GOP presidential nominee’s legal woes.

“We have no time to waste,” the 41-year-old Trump said on Real America’s Voice earlier this week. “We have to ensure that every single penny of every dollar donated goes to causes that people care about. That’s part of the reason that I think I’m such a great fit for this: There’s no one more loyal to Donald Trump.”

Some members of the party are fearful of the consequences of that decision, including Nikki Haley, who warned upon bowing out of the presidential race that Trump could make the RNC his “personal piggy bank.”

“There will be zero money available for any candidates down ballot. Zero,” Liz Mair, a Republican strategist, told USA Today. “All of it will be funneled into the presidential, and despite what (Trump aide) Chris LaCivita says, I’m pretty sure as much of it as can be will actually be funneled into covering Trump lawsuit costs.”

Donald Trump raised a lot of eyebrows on Friday when he finally posted bond for E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, amid reports that the former president is broke.

Trump posted a $91.6 million bond, which covers the $83.3 million he was ordered to pay in damages for defaming Carroll and interest for putting off payment for so long. He had repeatedly tried to get the deadline to pay delayed or get the total ruling amount reduced, but the presiding judge struck him down every time.

But the question on everyone’s mind is, how did Trump get that money together? He appears to be struggling to post bond in his multiple lawsuits and reportedly only has about $413 million in liquid assets. That’s not nearly enough to cover everything he owes in legal fines.

It turns out that Trump may have called in a major favor: Court records filed Friday show that the bond was guaranteed by the Chubb Corporation, an insurance group. In 2018, Trump appointed Chubb’s CEO Evan Greenberg to a White House advisory committee for trade policy and negotiations.

Trump only just managed to make his deadline to post bond. He had to post and then appeal by March 11, or Carroll’s lawyers could start collecting on damages. But his financial woes are far from over.

The former president still owes Carroll $5 million for her first lawsuit, when he was found liable for sexually abusing her and defaming her when denying the attack. Trump also owes more than $466 million for committing real estate–related fraud in New York. He was initially fined $354 million, but interest adds an additional $112,000 per day.

He owes $400,000 to The New York Times and has racked up thousands more in fines and gag-order violations during his myriad lawsuits. And just Thursday, Trump was ordered to pay $382,000 in legal fees for Orbis Business Intelligence, the consulting firm owned by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.* Trump had sued Orbis over a dossier Steele compiled in 2016 that alleged Trump and members of his inner circle had been “compromised” by Russia’s security service.

* This article originally misstated the name of Christopher Steele.

Donald Trump’s legal woes continue to grow, as three more lawsuits against him were greenlit on Friday to proceed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has approved three lawsuits related to Trump’s role in the January 6 attack. One of the suits, Moore v. Trump, was brought by Capitol Police Officer Marcus Moore. Moore, who has been on the force for more than 10 years, accused Trump of inflicting “physical and emotional injuries” on him via his actions surrounding the insurrection.

The appellate court order listed Moore’s case and the case numbers for two other lawsuits. “These appeals raise the same question that this court recently decided in Blassingame,” the three-judge panel wrote, referring to the ruling that Trump does not have presidential immunity from prosecution.

“As a result, the merits of the parties’ positions are so clear as to warrant summary action,” the judges said, meaning they can make a decision without releasing a legal opinion.

Trump has already lost two major cases via summary order. The first was E. Jean Carroll’s second lawsuit against him for defamation. The presiding judge determined that since Trump had already been found liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her while denying it, his other comments about her were by default defamatory.

The second was when a judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to prove Trump had committed real estate–related fraud in New York. A trial was only necessary to set damages, not to prove whether the allegations against him were true.

The D.C. appeals court ruled in early February that Trump does not have “presidential immunity.”

“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution,” the judges said in the ruling.

That ruling, however, could soon be overturned. The Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal on immunity. The justices will hear arguments on April 25.

The former host of The Apprentice just lost a boat load of “money, money, money, money.”

On Friday, Donald Trump posted a $91.6 million bond in the second defamation case brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump is still working to appeal the ruling, which hit him with $83.3 million in damages in January for continuing to defame Carroll, claiming he hadn’t raped her and she had made up allegations for her book, despite a prior ruling in which a jury found Trump liable for having sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.

But, of course, it isn’t Trump’s money on the line. Instead, it appears that Trump had to cash in one of his favors to cover the multi-million expense, which was guaranteed by Federal Insurance Company, a subsidiary of the Chubb Group—whose CEO, Evan Greenberg, Trump appointed to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations in 2018.

The “grab ‘em by the pussy” former president narrowly skirted his deadline for posting bond, which was set for Monday. In a written order released Thursday, Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Trump’s efforts to delay the posting date, deciding that the appeals process should not get in the way of Trump setting aside what he rightfully owes Carroll.

And appeal he did, with his legal team filing to do so moments after posting the bond.

Trump spent his time in and out of the courtroom attacking every character involved in the defamation trial, including Kaplan, whom he decried as “abusive” and Trump-hating, while claiming the entire case was a “hoax” akin to “election interference at a level never seen before.”

But for all his complaining, Trump can only thank himself for the magnitude of the fine, which came after the court considered what an appropriate penalty would be for a self-purported billionaire who has bragged about his wealth in every format, from deposition videos to TV appearances.

That same strategy earned him another shocking fine—nearly half a billion dollars—after he was found to have committed bank fraud in New York State. Trump has until March 25 to implement a stay on that order, by which he would need to cough up the money, assets, or an appeal bond to cover the $466 million disgorgement.*

But all this, of course, has not stopped Trump from continuing to flaunt his wealth, insisting to anyone that will listen that he’s not worried about the fines that cut so deep they threaten his real estate empire. “I have a lot of money,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. Let’s see how that works out for him.

This article has been updated, including a correction of the amount Trump owes for committing bank fraud.

Nobody seemed to enjoy Alabama Senator Katie Britt’s melodramatic response to the State of the Union address on Thursday, least of all Republicans, who had no qualms about mocking their colleague’s breathy, overenunciated speech.

Locked in a kitchen, Britt appeared on the verge of tears for more than 17 minutes as she complained about the curtailing of rights (but didn’t refer to the reversal of Roe v. Wade), used a sexual assault anecdote from a migrant sex-trafficked by a Mexican cartel (while arguing that we should restrict asylum into the United States), and accused Biden of making the country look bad while international threats loom, like Vladimir Putin’s escalations in Ukraine (while failing to mention former President Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with the Russian dictator).

Republicans flatly panned the performance, calling the address “creepy” and “scary.”

“Well, that Katie Britt experience was … experiential,” posted Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Convention, on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The prerecorded speech quickly became a gossip item overnight with operatives connected to Trump, according to Republicans who spoke to The Daily Beast.

“Everyone’s fucking losing it,” one GOP strategist told the outlet, likening the moment to Marco Rubio’s water-break faux pas. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever.”

One Trump adviser was so frustrated by Britt that they reached out to Rolling Stone, facetiously asking “What the hell am I watching right now?”

That’s a stark reversal and a major loss for the freshman lawmaker, who had been set on the rising-star fast track and was even being floated as a potential vice president pick for Trump, whose draft for the “most insignificant office” seems to be growing longer by the day.

Even those that liked her couldn’t bear to endure the performance.

“Katie Britt is exactly the right pick for the response, but this is hard to watch. She’s acting instead of just speaking,” conservative podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey wrote on X.

“Senator Katie Britt is a very impressive person. She ran a hell of race in [Alabama],” Alyssa Farah Griffin, The View co-host and Trump’s 2020 White House communications adviser, posted on X. “I do not understand the decision to put her in a KITCHEN for one of the most important speeches she’s ever given.”

Media commentators, meanwhile, had a field day coming up with snark worthy of throwing at Britt’s response, taking particular aim at her shoddy acting chops.

“The acting chops on display here are somewhere between porn and high school play,” wrote Puck News’s Julia Ioffe.

“There is no way that this Katie Britt address does not end up as part of the SNL cold open,” posted The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, looking ahead to Saturday Night Live.

“Gee, #KatieBritt looks like she’s doing all right. Nice kitchen! Shame she’s such a bad actress. Big smile, the cross (always), all the accouterments, even a fake catch in her voice. But she’s fake fake fake as Kari Lake,” posted actress Bette Midler, later adding her surprise upon discovering that Britt is, in fact, a senator.

“She’s been in Community Theater too long. Delivery? D-, Kitchen B, Text -2, Policies F,” Midler wrote.

Republicans are annoyed that Joe Biden successfully delivered the State of the Union address, disproving their many potshots about his mental and physical infirmity.

Biden was animated during his Thursday night speech, successfully going back and forth with GOP hecklers. Apparently, his energy did not sit well with a Republican Party that has long mocked him as “Sleepy Joe.”

Immediately after the address, Fox News host Sean Hannity described Biden’s speech as “so hyped-up it was bizarre” and even “frightening.” Later in his segment, during an interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson, Hannity said Biden was “very jacked up” and “overcaffeinated.”

Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump, at whom Biden took aim several times throughout the speech, made several all-caps comments about the State of the Union on Truth Social.

“THIS IS LIKE A SHOUTING MATCH, EVERY LINE IS BEING SHOUTED,” Trump complained on Truth Social.

He also suggested that “THE DRUGS ARE WEARING OFF!”

Trump’s favorite doctor, Texas Representative Ronny Jackson, also posited Biden was overmedicated. We should probably trust Jackson on this one, as he allegedly knows a thing or two about overmedicating people in order to get results.

Ari Fleischer, who served as George W. Bush’s White House press secretary, insisted that Biden’s energy was still a sign of the president’s age. “Biden sounds like an elderly man arguing with his family because they’re trying to convince him he shouldn’t drive,” Fleisher wrote on social media.

Republican political consultant Frank Luntz warned that Biden’s volume levels could be off-putting to undecided voters.

The GOP has insisted throughout all of Biden’s presidency, as well as his two campaigns, that he is too old to hold office. Republicans insist he is suffering from cognitive decline (while ignoring Trump’s own many gaffes and fumbles).

Many people were quick to point out that Republicans cannot have it both ways.

“You people are actually pathetic,” reporter Elie Mystal replied to Fleischer. “‘Biden’s too old’ to ‘Biden’s too loud’ in sixty seconds.”

Mike Johnson continues to get tongue-tied when trying to talk about IVF, with his latest bonkers comments coming during an interview on Thursday.

Republican lawmakers have rushed to portray themselves as defenders of in vitro fertilization after the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that classified embryos as children. But Johnson appears to be struggling to reconcile his party’s newfound talking points with his avowed far-right Christian and anti–reproductive rights beliefs.

In an interview on Thursday, CBS host Tony Dokoupil asked Johnson whether destroying embryos constituted murder for someone who believes life begins at conception, as the House speaker does.

“It’s something that we’ve got to grapple with,” Johnson said. “It’s a brave new world. IVF’s only been invented, I think, in the early ’70s.”

The 1970s were half a century ago, so the technology on this one isn’t exactly up for debate—as many of Johnson’s own colleagues who have relied on IVF to start a family know quite well.

Johnson has refused to explicitly say whether he believes that the destruction of an embryo constitutes murder. But his past actions speak plenty loud. Johnson has long argued that life begins “from the moment of fertilization,” the same logic applied in the Alabama ruling.

He has repeatedly voted against increasing reproductive rights, ranging from abortion access to contraception. He also co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, alongside most of the rest of his caucus, which would federally enshrine fetal personhood. But when asked in November about his history on legislating against fertility treatments, Johnson claimed he couldn’t remember “any of those measures.”

Since the Alabama ruling, Johnson and his Republican colleagues have talked plenty about supporting IVF, but they have done very little to actually protect access to the treatment. A group of seven GOP representatives introduced a resolution last week expressing support for IVF and calling on elected officials to protect the treatment, but the measure is nonbinding and doesn’t actually achieve anything. Five of the co-sponsors represent swing districts and are likely just trying to appeal to their constituents.

Johnson’s comment Thursday also echoes the logic in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the landmark Supreme Court case that rolled back the nationwide right to abortion. The court’s conservative justices determined that abortion was not a fundamental right because “abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.” Essentially, because modern medicine has progressed, people do not have the right to bodily autonomy.

But it’s unclear how far back something has to go to be considered “history.” Again, IVF has now been around for half a century. The first record of abortion in the world is from 1550 BCE, and the procedure was definitely being performed in the American colonies.

For what it’s worth, Johnson himself was also only invented in the 1970s. He was born in 1972, and now, 50 years later, we’re all having to grapple with his policy choices.