The Daily Escape:
Stormy night, Portland, OR – March 2024 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography
“Democrats want to do something for you. Republicans want to do something to you.” – Tom Sullivan
Super Tuesday is in the rearview, and Nikki Haley announced her exit Wednesday. Haley was a useful person for the Democrats for as long as she was campaigning against Trump. Think about the picadors in bull fighting: Their primary role is to weaken the bull by piercing its neck muscles and tissues, making it easier for the matador to ultimately kill the bull.
That was Nikki, weakening Trump for the past few months. Wrongo reported that Haley overperformed in the GOP primaries:
“We’re seeing Trump consistently underperform the polls by 7-8 points. Worse for Trump, Fox News’ John Roberts talked about an alarming exit poll finding that 59% of Haley voters in South Carolina last night (equal to 40% of the electorate) would not vote for Trump in the general election.”
Depending on the state, between 25%-40% of Republican and conservative independents voted for her.
But now she’s left the ring, ceding the Republican nomination to Trump. You know, the guy who drove the American economy into a ditch, mismanaged a pandemic resulting in hundreds of thousands of excess American deaths, was found guilty of both sexual assault and fraud in two American courts, and is currently facing charges for mishandling national secrets and fomenting a coup.
Haley earned the votes of millions of Republican voters in her brief time in the spotlight. But she’s made a business decision to try and remain relevant to the MAGA world in case Trump cannot go forward with his campaign. JVL reports Haley said this:
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party who did not support him, and I hope he does. This is now his time for choosing.”
Sounds good, right? But JVL calls Haley out about the above:
“If there’s been a more cowardly statement over the last year, I can’t think of it. Haley refuses to acknowledge that she was supported by a broad coalition of voters—Republicans, independents, and Democrats. She claims that she is rooting for Trump to win over only the Republican voters who supported her. And instead of leading and standing for the Constitution, she fobs off all questions of agency to Trump. It’s not time for Nikki Haley to choose.
She believes that she’s preserving her political viability by seeming to put Trump in a box, making winning her supporters Trump’s job to succeed or fail to do. It won’t be long before Haley endorses Trump, becoming just another useful tool for MAGA world.
Biden on the other hand immediately invited Haley supporters to join his campaign. From The Hill:
“It takes a lot of courage to run for President — that’s especially true in today’s Republican Party, where so few dare to speak the truth about Donald Trump….Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin.”
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign…”
Then there’s the hot steaming pile of Mitch McConnell. From the WaPo:
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States…It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”
From Norm Orenstein:
“…McConnell, once again, demonstrates a level of moral cowardice that is destructive and pathetic. He was responsible for letting Trump off the hook and having him as the Republican nominee when he deep sixed impeachment trial. Now he endorses the vicious autocrat. Shame.”
Why do these Republican hacks support a guy who has attacked their wives? Mitch does it, Cruz did it. Trump attacked Haley’s husband. She’ll most likely endorse him as well.
Finally, there’s Elon Musk who jetted to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. From Judd Legum:
“On Tuesday…Musk told his 175 million followers on X that President Biden had committed “treason” by “secretly” flying “320,000 illegal immigrants” from Latin America to US airports:
Nearly everything said above by Musk is a lie. Then Trump said that Biden “flew in 325,000 immigrants” into the country.
Musk was retweeting Collin Rugg who references a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) about a program expanding humanitarian parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. CIS is a notorious anti-immigrant think tank.
Nothing about the expanded humanitarian parole program is “secret.” Biden announced it in a White House speech on January 5, 2023.
“…Today I’m announcing that my administration is going to expand the parole program for people not only from Venezuela but from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti.”
The program was then detailed in a White House press release. The release specifies that the program allows:
“…up to 30,000 individuals per month from these four countries.” To qualify, individuals must have an “eligible sponsor and pass vetting and background checks.”
Musk was amazed that the Biden administration was able to keep the program secret when it involved chartering thousands of planes, flying to dozens of airports. Wrong again. The reason why no one noticed all the planes chartered by the Biden administration is that they didn’t charter planes. The parole program requires the individuals to purchase their own flights to the US.
Musk says that this program constitutes “treason”. But it is fully within Biden’s legal authority. Every president has used parole authority since it was established in 1952, except Trump. Somebody in Washington ought to look into what the consequences should be when a major defense contractor like Musk says the Commander-In Chief is committing treason.
The silly season is upon us.
