Derek Robertson / Politico Magazine:
How the Republicans became the “Barstool” party
The GOP’s bar stool verification could reconfigure its cultural policy for a generation.
One of Trump’s early adopters perfectly expressed the mindset in August 2015 when Jeb! was still his greatest threat: “I am voting for Donald Trump. I don’t care if he’s kidding. I don’t care if he’s racist. I don’t care if he’s sexist. I don’t care I hope he stays in the race and I hope he wins. Why? Because I love the fact that he makes other politicians fidget. I love the fact that he says shit that no one else will say, no matter how ridiculous it is. “
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Is it surprising that Republican politicians would always prefer to talk about the party’s race record in the 19th century? https://t.co/6FAItTC78m
– Michael Freeman (@michaelpfreeman) June 20, 2021
Brian Karem / The Bulwark:
The GOP’s alternative reality industry
Plus, Eric Swalwell’s toilet race with Ted Cruz.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, told me about a terrifying revelation he had when he met Ted Cruz in the Senate men’s room during Trump’s second impeachment trial. Swalwell calls his revelation “my pro-wrestling theory”.
According to Swalwell, many members of the GOP consider themselves something of a pro-wrestling performer. They know it’s fake – Kayfabe, as it’s called in wrestling – and voters know it too. “Most of these people don’t see their constituents as the people they represent,” Swalwell told me in an interview for my podcast “Just ask the question”. “They consider them their fans.”
Which brings us to this toilet break-in during impeachment. Swalwell, remember, was one of the House managers who advocated holding Trump accountable for the January 6th events. When Swalwell met Cruz, the Texas Senator said to him, “Hey, I just want you to know you’re doing some great job out there.”
Swalwell was stunned. Cruz scorched him on Twitter and Fox News within 24 hours of meeting him in the bathroom – but, according to Swalwell, the Senator was acting like “We’re two professional wrestlers. We are brothers.”
It’s Kayfabe, baby. But do you even lift, brother?
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Britain has warned the US three times. So far we are 1 for 2.
1. Covid is coming. Answer: “That won’t happen here” X
2. Alpha variant. Response: Solid vaccination campaign, a bump instead of a wave ✓
3. Delta variant. The reaction is not urgent so far pic.twitter.com/uUjRm4QVMQ
– Eric Topol (@EricTopol) June 19, 2021
iNews (UK):
The G7 summit was a “super-spreading” event for Cornwall as cases rose 2,450% after Johnson and Biden’s visit
In areas of Cornwall where G7 events were the focus, infections rose more than 2,000 percent in the seven days leading up to the end of the meeting between world leaders.
David Rothkopf / USA today:
Joe Biden is better on the world stage than any president since George HW Bush
It is probably unfair to compare Biden’s early performance to the first few months of Donald Trump, the only president in US history zero experience in public service of any kind before taking office. In fact, it is probably unfair to compare it to its predecessors since senior Bush. Former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, former Texas Governor George W. Bush, and freshman Senator Barack Obama all came into office with little or no experience in international affairs. And it showed.
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Good sir. This @ DouthatNYT column is incoherent. The reason the Liberals aren’t so pushy about Russia these days is because they aren’t worried about Biden selling us to Putin. https://t.co/qEHj5TT13h
– Dan Kennedy (@dankennedy_nu) June 20, 2021
Axios:
Juneteenth is forcing the US to face the ongoing effects of the slavery economy
Why it matters: This lack of generational wealth still denies black families the economic security that many white families take for granted.
According to the numbers: About $ 50 trillion in economic resources and labor has not been paid to black people since slavery, Rochester told Axios. Proponents say this legacy of slavery must be addressed in order to combat systemic racism.
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EXCLUSIVE: Last year, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said he would convert 75% of his factories to making masks. He has. It was a multimillion dollar bust. Now he sits on millions of masks that he despises & wants to burn. He told me all about it @thedailybeast https://t.co/ehjXsruIZP
– Roger Sollenberger found true love, sucker (@SollenbergerRC) June 19, 2021
Nicole Bibbins Sedaca / The Bulwark:
How observing Juniteenth can revive our democracy
Our mistakes remind us of the importance of our democratic values.
But our memory cannot be just a passive observation of past events. Like Independence Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day – as the holiday becomes now officially known – must be a celebration, a reminder and a challenge at the same time. We celebrate the universal and enduring importance of democratic values and institutions. We are reminded that even democratic nations often fail to achieve these values. And hopefully we will rise to the challenge of our inadequacies by seizing the opportunity of democracy to create an ever more perfect Union. Democracy and democratic values do not lose their meaning through human error. Human error reminds us of the need for democracy and democratic values.
It’s Juneteenth, the rest is fancy nobody’s going to use it. It’s like trying to rename the Bronx Zoo (they tried and failed).
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GOP lawmakers have also stripped secretaries of state of their power, exercised more control over state electoral boards, facilitated the overturning of election results, and conducted several partisan reviews and inspections of 2020 results. https://t.co/ziMUb9M1FI
– Nicolle Wallace (@NicolleDWallace) June 19, 2021
Troy Patterson / New Yorker:
The celebration of Juneteenth in Ralph Ellison’s “Juneteenth”
In a pinch, any passage from Ellison is enough. The novelist was a great writer of passages who spanned four decades between the ardent achievement of “Invisible man“And his death in 1994, which spawned many countless breathtaking that never became a real novel. He had the problem of a house fire that devoured at least part of a manuscript; he was faced with the challenge of putting down an extensive parable about the race in America in bright, hard language, like the radiant slang of a jazz head Joyce. He had been dead for seventeen years when most of this latter work was an eleven hundred and thirty-six page monster entitled “Three days before the shoot. . .“- a huge slab of beautiful marble, which is tantamount to an incomplete monument. “Juneteenth”, published in 1999, with three hundred and sixty-eight pages, is the fine effort of his executor John F. Callahan to shape the manuscript into an understandable sculpture.
Harry Siegel / Daily Beast:
Eric Adams carries a gun, wields dead rats, and may live in Jersey. He could be the next NYC Mayor.
There has only been one or maybe two New York City Mayors in my life who weren’t crazy: the gentleman and reserved David Dinkins for sure; and arguably the clash-loving, joking father, native of Massachusetts Bill de Blasio, a Dinkins administration veteran who left this year due to tenure restrictions. Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani and even Mike Bloomberg were all unhinged in their inimitable way.
If the polls hold and ex-cop, Republican and Louis Farrakhan suitor and current vegan Eric Adams wins Tuesday’s Democratic primary, which will almost certainly determine the city’s next mayor, we’ll have another character coming. Adams’ often recited Political history of origin involves being beaten up by the police as a teenager along with his older brother Conrad after they broke into the home of a prostitute who he says owed them money for errands and then decided to become a police officer himself in order to reform the NYPD from within.
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