Republicans Are Getting Triggered by “Woke” Olympics

The Summer Olympics are underway in Paris, and the right is getting triggered.

In an interview on the Fox Business Channel Monday morning, Representative Ryan Zinke was asked about new FBI confirmation that Donald Trump was actually struck by a bullet after a gunman in Pennsylvania tried to assassinate him earlier this month. Zinke, for some reason, decided to connect it to conservatives’ grievances over the Olympics.

“Trump is as much of a movement as it is a candidate, because America is not comfortable where we are. We’re not comfortable watching the Olympics. Disgusting display, dishonorable. We’re not comfortable with the woke. We’re not comfortable about getting beat up on foreign shores,” Zinke said.

Zinke was likely referring to Paris’s colorful display during the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday, which was decried by conservatives for its flamboyance and unabashed celebration of the LGBTQ+ community. In particular, right-wing religious figures and politicians claimed that one scene in the ceremony that featured drag queens, a transgender model, and a nearly naked blue man at a table of food was a disrespectful representation of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper, which depicts Jesus Christ’s last meal with his apostles.

Several conservatives criticized the ceremony and scene, including Speaker Mike Johnson, who posted on X (formerly Twitter) that it was “shocking and insulting to Christian people around the world.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called it an “anti-Christian” and “satanic, trans, and occult” opening ceremony.

Despite the right-wing meltdown, art experts pointed out that the scene was an homage to a different painting, The Feast of the Gods, based on Greek mythology. The blue man represented Dionysius, the Greek god of feasting and wine, said the ceremony’s creative director, Thomas Jolly, who flat-out denied any connection to The Last Supper.

“I think it was pretty clear. There’s Dionysus who arrives at the table.… Why is he there? Because he’s the god of feasting, of wine, and the father of Sequana, the goddess of the River Seine,” Jolly told a French TV station. 

It’s one thing to make a religious argument against the Olympic opening ceremony, but it was created and staged by the French and does not reflect U.S. politics, except in how conservatives have reacted to it. Most people have turned their attention to the Olympics’ actual sports now, but conservatives, in all of their weirdness today, still can’t stop obsessing over anything they think is an affront to them.

Former President Donald Trump has a serious problem with white men: They don’t want to vote for him. At least, not the way they did in 2016.

To plug the hole in Trump’s boat, the former president brought in Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, intending to “leave him in Pennsylvania” and secure blue-collar workers across the Rust Belt—namely, white men. Trump’s advisers believe that Vance could help keep white male voters on board, according to The Washington Post.

Trump’s problem with white guys is nothing new. In April, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey found that the demographics that historically supported Trump have begun to shift and the groundswell of support from white male voters that Trump had experienced in 2016 was dissipating.

In 2016, Trump was able to fire up his white men without college degrees by focusing his campaign rhetoric on immigration and white grievance, or the idea that white people are the victims of discrimination, ideas that remain key among Republican voters, according to NPR.

But by 2020, it seemed that argument had already started to lose ground among white voters across the educational spectrum, who began to defect to Joe Biden’s camp. While Trump still came out on top in securing white male voters, the difference between their turnout in 2016 and 2020 was the nail in the coffin of his reelection bid.

Things only got worse from there. According to NPR, between 2020 and 2024, Biden saw a 24-point bump among white men with college degrees, a group that has historically backed Republicans.

Trump has begun to experience a slip in swing states, as well. Polling from late 2023 and early 2024 in Wisconsin, a key battleground state, showed that Trump’s net favorability rating among white men had dropped 22 points, from plus eight points to minus 14 points. Trump saw major slips with self-identified Republicans, rural men, and white men who did not attend college, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. These groups have a sizable overlap and make up a crucial part of Trump’s base.

In an effort to reclaim these voters, Trump tapped Vance to be his running mate, as someone who could theoretically appeal to both college-educated and non–college educated white men, touting his widely popularized white working-class roots alongside his degree from Yale Law School.

“You need a white guy to get the white guys we lost. The Hillbilly Elegy guy is the one to do it,” MAGA political operative Vish Burra told The Bulwark. “Trump needs Vance because he’s good on camera and he sounds right. He’s not one of these people you can dismiss as a MAGAloid or a barbarian.”

So far, it’s not totally clear that Vance is up for the task of white guy retrieval.

While there was plenty of initial excitement over Vance’s selection, a YouGov poll taken the week his nomination was announced found that Vance was viewed “very” favorably by only 18 percent of male respondents and “very” unfavorably by 28 percent. The results were identical among white respondents.

The same poll found that male respondents and white respondents were about evenly split in supporting versus disapproving of Trump picking Vance.

CNN analyst Harry Enten reported last week that Vance averaged a net favorability of negative six points across all polls, a number that was far lower than any other vice presidential nominee in history, including former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

At a Minnesota rally Saturday, Trump confused Representative Ilhan Omar for another Muslim woman of Congress, Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib.

“Ilhan Omar,” Trump began in a rambling speech. “She went to a speech when I was … first running.… This lunatic was in the audience, she started screaming. I said, ‘Who the hell is that?’ And it’s the same crazy person that I watch every night. She’s nuts.”

Omar responded to Trump’s remarks on X, writing, “Trump telling dangerous anti-Muslim lies is nothing new. But I have never attended one of his speeches. He is lying again or losing his memory.” Omar continued, “Trump should step aside as his criminal convictions and continued legal troubles have clearly taken a toll on the 78 year old conman.”

Shedding some light on the matter, The Independent reported that it was not Omar but Tlaib who interrupted Trump’s 2016 speech to the Detroit Economic Club prior to her election to the House.

Then a public interest attorney, Tlaib penned an op-ed explaining her decision at the time. “I told Trump that ‘our children deserve better’ and I asked him to provide a better example to our kids. I implored him to read the U.S. Constitution. And then I was grabbed by several security personnel who physically moved me to the exit while I continued to express my concerns,” Tlaib wrote.

When a video of the disruption resurfaced in 2019, Trump made similar comments about Tlaib, then getting her name right. But the former president has proven increasingly prone to mix-ups in recent months. Last week, he mistook Vice President Kamala Harris for Representative Nancy Pelosi. Earlier this year, he repeatedly confused Nikki Haley with Pelosi.

In the past, Trump has insisted he intentionally muddles his opponents’ names for rhetorical effect. This time, campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung admitted to Trump’s error, telling The Independent, with the poise and directness one might expect from Trump’s team, “It’s common to mistake the two deranged and radical individuals who both want open borders just like failed Border Czar Kamala Harris, are mentally unstable, and promote an anti-America agenda that seeks to shred the Constitution to pieces so they can burn it just like they do the American flag.”

Since Biden withdrew from the race, Trump is now the oldest candidate to run for president.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has a response for all the critics who have been calling him weird for the past week.

On X (formerly Twitter) Sunday night, Vance posted a video with the caption “JD Vance is weird.” The innocuous video shows Vice President Kamala Harris telling CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “My pronouns are she, her, and hers” before a presidential town hall in 2019.

Last week, Harris directly called Vance “weird and creepy,” following the many terrible reports that have come out about him in recent days. The Ohio senator is now trying to paint Harris as weird for mentioning pronouns, but it’s not even a scandal and pales in comparison to all of the negative attention Vance has received since Trump chose him as his running mate. Much of the internet seemed to agree.

Last week, Vance started out with a campaign speech that fell flat after he failed to land a joke about Diet Mountain Dew. Old remarks from 2021 where he called Democrats “childless cat ladies” drew a backlash from celebrities and lawmakers alike, and a false rumor about a sexual act with a sofa continues to circulate online. He’s losing support from Trump’s allies, and even Anthony Scaramucci called him out.

Posting a five-year-old clip where Harris doesn’t even come off as weird (but Cuomo does), with transphobic undertones, isn’t going to do Vance any favors, particularly with younger voters. It’s another example of Vance failing to land a punch line, and at this point, Vance is quickly being seen as the worst vice presidential candidate ever.

Former President Donald Trump shared a slew of videos online attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, after a favorability poll aired on Fox News found she was leading him in a few key swing states. 

The new poll, conducted July 22–24 and released Sunday, found that Harris’s approval rating had surpassed Trump’s in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.* 

Many online predicted that Trump would be incensed over the results. “The ketchup is going to hit the wall in Mar-a-Lago after this new Fox News poll,” remarked former Clinton White House aide Keith Boykin on X (formerly Twitter).

Within hours, Trump posted five separate videos on Truth Social of one of his longtime favorite Fox News hosts, Mark Levin, whom Rolling Stone once called a “bomb-throwing Trump sycophant,” attacking Harris.  

In one of the videos from Life, Liberty & Levin, Levin labeled Harris as a “rabid Marxist scholar,” specifically decrying her past statements about the need for equity—the idea that every person should be given access to the resources needed to be successful—so that, as Harris put it, every citizen could “end up in the same place.”

“‘So we all end up in the same place’? Doesn’t this sound like we’re all going to end up in a gulag?” Levin said. He called equity a “prescription for tyranny and totalitarianism,” ranting that it was “not the government’s job” to improve the quality of life of American citizens. 

In another video posted to Trump’s account, Levin criticized Harris for comparing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Ku Klux Klan for causing fear and intimidation in immigrant communities. “The combination of stupidity and arrogance is on full display, right here,” said Levin. 

Levin continued to incorrectly call her the “border czar,” although she was never responsible for border security. 

Unfortunately for Trump, arguments like Levin’s don’t seem to be nearly as convincing to the rest of America. In just one week, Harris’s overall favorability jumped from 35 percent to 43 percent and her unfavorability fell from 46 percent to 42 percent, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted on Friday and Saturday.

*This article misstated Harris’s approval rating in the Fox News poll in Michigan. It was 47 percent, the same as Trump’s.

After the Supreme Court’s decision to grant the presidency near-total immunity on July 1, President Joe Biden now believes that the nation’s highest court is in dire need of reform.

In an op-ed for The Washington Post published Monday morning, Biden proposed a plan that would enforce term limits for the court’s justices, as well as a binding code of conduct. The term limits would have justices spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court, and the president could only appoint a justice every two years.

“The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court,” Biden wrote. “Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary.”

“It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come,” Biden added.

Biden’s proposed code of conduct would require justices to “disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”

“Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt,” wrote Biden.

In the op-ed, Biden also called for a constitutional amendment called the “No One Is Above the Law Amendment,” which would clearly state that there is “no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office.”

“I share our Founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws—not of kings or dictators,” Biden wrote.

Biden’s plans for the Supreme Court follow a series of scandals involving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. In April 2023, a ProPublica investigation revealed Thomas received luxury vacations from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, which had not been disclosed by Thomas in accordance with mandatory financial disclosure rules. More revelations of undisclosed gifts followed in August of that year, including at least 38 vacations and 26 private jet flights given to Thomas from an array of right-wing billionaires. Thomas in 2003 also accepted a free trip to visit Vladimir Putin’s hometown in Russia.

Alito has had his own scandals involving political advocacy in the form of political flags flying outside of his home, and he was also implicated for receiving gifts from Crow and other right-wing billionaires. Monday’s op-ed may not be received well from the right, but it follows months of calls for reform from judicial observers as well as Democrats. While it may not be to the level of expanding the court, as some have called for, it is a strong proposal and likely to be factored in November’s elections. 

After taking flak all week for calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” three years ago, J.D. Vance doubled down on those comments Friday in an interview with Megyn Kelly Show.

“Obviously it was a sarcastic comment,” he said on on Kelly’s SiriusXM show. “I’ve got nothing against cats... People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. And the substance of what I said, Megan, I’m sorry, it’s true. It is true that we’ve become anti-family. It is true that the left has become anti-child.” (This is not true, at all.)

Vance insisted earlier in the interview that he was not trying to be critical of people who don’t have children: “It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact that the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids, this is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”

Well, let’s roll the tape. Here’s what he said to Tucker Carlson in 2021: 

We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?

He sure seemed to be disparaging people for being childless!

Vance’s attempted course-correction this week also doesn’t jibe with some of the Ohio senator’s weird policy ideas. For instance, he has said wants childless people to pay more in taxes and have their votes count for less. So it seems that the initial criticism he received from celebrities as well as lawmakers was warranted.

Vance has been going viral all week—in a bad way. He was found to have defended the infamous QAnon shaman from the January 6 riots, a campaign rally speech in his hometown fell flat, and he lost support from some of Trump’s allies. Even a false rumor about a sexual act with a sofa picked up steam, forcing news organizations like the AP to conduct fact checks.

The new Republican vice presidential nominee may hope that his Kelly interview will help tamp down the criticism he’s receiving, but it’s only a matter of time before something else embarrassing surfaces. The likes of Anthony Scaramucci are already saying Vance’s days are numbered, and he may end up being the worst vice presidential candidate in history.  

Right-wing conspiracy theorist and failed politician Laura Loomer launched a despicable attack on Democratic Senator Mark Kelly and his wife, gun violence survivor and former Representative Gabby Giffords, on X earlier this week.

Loomer, without evidence, cruelly accused Kelly of writing a post on his wife’s behalf from her account endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president, claiming that Giffords—who was shot in the head in an assassination attempt 13 years ago—is “brain dead” and “certainly isn’t tweeting on her own.”

This wouldn’t matter much, as Loomer has engaged in white nationalism and Islamophobia before, but she is also a favorite of Donald Trump Jr., who has touted Loomer as a possible White House press secretary if his father gets elected in November. Trump Jr.’s opinion seems to carry some weight in his father’s political decisions. He reportedly pushed his dad to choose J.D. Vance, who’s friends with Don Jr., for a running mate.

Giffords was shot while holding a campaign event in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011. The bullet passed through her brain, and yet today, though she has some difficulty speaking and walking, she is able to conduct interviews. She even campaigned for Harris in Pennsylvania on Thursday. Needless to say, she is not “brain dead.”

Loomer has been banned from various social media sites in the past, only to be reinstated on X when Elon Musk took over the site. She’s not likely to face any consequences for this post, although it probably won’t help her standing in the Republican Party, where even some of the MAGA faithful aren’t big fans.

J.D. Vance thinks the “QAnon Shaman” would be “a fun guy to have a beer with.”

In a recently resurfaced speech from 2023, Vance said that Jacob Chansley, more popularly known as the “QAnon Shaman,” should have gotten a lighter prison sentence since he was only “walking around the Capitol.”

“It was a crazy guy with, like, the bullhorns … he looked like he’d be a fun guy to have a beer with, right? The Q shaman,” said Vance.

Chansley received a 41-month prison sentence in November 2021 and was charged with obstruction of an official proceeding. He was released early from federal prison and sent to a reentry center in March 2023.

Following his prison sentence, Chansley indicated he was interested in running for Arizona’s 8th congressional district seat, but he missed the deadline to get enough signatures.

One Republican actually has met up with Chansley. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she was “honored” to meet the QAnon Shaman back in December 2023 at a Turning Point USA event.

“When I spoke with Jake, he is remarkably positive, happy, forgiving, and determined. Most people would be crushed and forever destroyed after being treated so horrendously by the media and their own government, but not Jake,” Greene wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Maybe the three can grab a beer together?

The far right is zeroing in on its new attack on Vice President Kamala Harris: She is somehow solely responsible for the U.S.-Mexico border. 

On Thursday, House Republicans approved a resolution slamming Harris as the “border czar” and condemning her handling of immigration. The resolution, authored by Representative Elise Stefanik, passed in a 220–196 vote. 

“By every metric, Kamala Harris has failed to secure our borders, instead advancing far-left Democrats’ failed open border policies and the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of America,” Stefanik argued on the House floor. 

Six Democrats also voted for the resolution: Representatives Yadira Caraveo, Henry Cuellar, Don Davis, Jared Golden, Mary Peltola, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—all of whom have also been critical of President Joe Biden’s border policies. Davis has since endorsed Harris. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the measure “fake and fraudulent,” since Harris was never appointed as a so-called “border czar.”  

But that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and their allies, who are eager to find a way to successfully attack Harris, from pushing the term. 

During a rally Thursday in North Carolina, Trump insisted Harris “was the border czar, but she never went to the border.”

“As border czar, Kamala threw open our borders and allowed 20 million illegal aliens to stampede into our country from all over the world,” he said.

This is false. CNN pointed out in a fact-check that Harris did go to the border as vice president. Further, the total number of border “encounters” since February 2021 adds up to about 10 million, and an “encounter” does not mean someone was let into the country. 

That night, Trump’s former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed on Fox News that Biden had personally dubbed Harris the border czar. But the clip she showed to prove her point didn’t actually include Biden using the term.

Vance has said the vice president failed as “America’s border czar” and claims she “supported abolishing ICE,” something Harris has never floated. 

Let’s dispel this myth that Harris had been put squarely in charge of the U.S.-Mexico border. While it is true that in 2021, the vice president was assigned to lead a limited effort to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, Harris was not by any means in charge of the border.