My husband was dying of stage 4 melanoma 5 years ago. He entered a phase 1 drug trial of an mRNA personalized vaccine through Massachusetts General Hospital. He was completely cured. The tumors that riddles his spine and liver stabilized, then shank, and then vanished completely. This is the hope that this horrible administration is stealing from us all. Google Brad Kremer and mRNA---his story was covered.
It's bad enough they see us heathens travelling about the world, using the same devices, and garnering "followers", but it is simply not acceptable that we have access to life extending/saving technologies too.
It’s awful because I feel like one of the best (and one of the only good) things Trump did in his first term was pass the Right to Try Law in 2018 that allowed terminally ill patients to bypass FDA approval and use post Phase 1 drugs.
Democrats need to run on vaccines. The anti-COVID Vax right scared the Dems because they were loud but our country is overwhelmingly pro-vaccine even the Covid & Flu shots. It’s so simple to explain to the public and whereas Republicans have to qualify every statement now on vaccines Democrats can simply run on you will be able to take vaccines easily without any hinder an e. That’s a winning message.
The problem with running on vaccines is that up until COVID hit, but I always assumed that it was mostly the far left liberals that were anti- vaccination. Please correct me if I am wrong, but that was my impression.
That is true but it still was such a small percentage. Vaccines themselves have been a 90+% support even in these modern times. Most RFK Jr followers are the hardest MAGA types.
Most schools had vaccine mandates and typically those that try to get out of it are single digits among thousands. Even those that don’t get the Covid vaccine still get the basic list the doctor says. Measles outbreaks are not typical. It’s easy to say I’m gonna run and stop kids dying from measles.
It will amaze how many won't! While the wizard of OZ says to please take vaccines. RFK Jr does everything in his power against it. Then he masks it in its up to peoples choice or more scientific study is needed.
Actually, most vaccine hesitation is in religious communities, where outbreaks tend to start. Religion is the number one reason people cite as to why they don't vaccinate their kids. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4869767/
That is a great outcome Ginny! My brother in law had stage 3 Kidney cancer and now seems cured because of advances. Three more years of this nonsense from DJT and RFK Jr is too long.
Bill: "Fortunately, the American people are better than our current government. Civic spirit and enlightened patriotism are by no means dead in the United States. As the people of Minnesota have again reminded us."
**Some** of us are better than our current government. But it's necessary to remind ourselves that there's another group of citizens who love the cruelty, the racism, and the brutality our current government is dishing out.
As for Little Marco, if he disdains "abstractions" so much, then why did his family leave Cuba for the land of the free and the home of the brave? He's just a sniveling, thirsty little fuck, adopting any position no matter how indefensible so he can become POTUS one day. Newsflash, jackhole: you'll never be POTUS.
Certainly true, but I do wonder how many Americans still love the cruelty, racism and brutality.
I think when it was abstract, like Trump saying he was going to go after the worst of the worst and secure the border, I think a lot of people could get on board with that. I also think when Trump and Vance said there were 30 million illegal aliens in the country and people questioned whether it was possible (or good) to deport that many people without a huge economic disruption and then Vance posited, "well, how about a million?" That could resonate too. Biden DIDN'T do anything about the border. There WERE people gaming the asylum system. The fraud in Minnesota is nothing new. People have known about it for years. Voters wanted something done about all this. Biden had no interest. Trump said he'd do something, so they went with him.
Now they see what it meant. I don't think there are too many people still on board with this. They might be on board with Trump. (I know a few.) But killing American citizens? Masked, armed, unidentified goons yanking people out of cars? Tear gassing little kids on their way to Trick-or-Treat? Scenes of little kids getting torn from their families? Immigrants, here legally, and American citizens getting "detained" for weeks or months? Not what they voted for.
Trump's job approval numbers are miserable now, as they should be. I don't think he's got the support he used to for this kind of stuff because of how he's done it all.
The issue with the border predates Trump and Biden. How many opportunities did Congress have to do immigration reform prior to 2016? Two things can be true at the same time: the border has been an issue, and the GOP would rather have the border as an issue to run on than actually address the issue. Also, didn't Trump fail to build "The Wall" during his first term? Why didn't the voters hold him accountable for that failure? Hell, didn't Obama deport more people than Trump has?
Don't forget the Langford bill, in which the Dems gave Repubs EVERYTHING they asked for, but which they then refused to vote for merely b/c T told them not to.
You won't be surprised that I ultimately blame the voters for our immigration mess in 2026. When you vote for a fascist to enforce the border, you don't get to act surprised when officials who work for the fascist to behave like fascists themselves.
Rubio was a co-author of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013. Now his State Department has revoked visas of at least 100,000 people. They claim they're all criminals. Right.
And just as he's not called out generating the senate intelligence report that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, he's not called out for this, either. The man has no fixed principles. And in a better world, his career would be destroyed.
As much as I despise Trump, he did get Rubio's nickname right - Little Marco. He's a pathetic little man. I imagine him as a cartoon character chihuahua, jumping around next to a rotund bulldog Trump saying, "Pick me boss, pick me..."
All of his cabinet is pathetic. All of his staff is pathetic. And in a way, I'm grateful for Trump because he knew deep down that guys like Rubio don't have any fixed principles, so Trump was able to humiliate Rubio in 2016 knowing Rubio would crawl back to him in order to be relevant.
As I always point out though, Mark, this is the cabinet that the voters wanted. And yes, the long dormant collective conscience of the voters is stirring a bit, but the damage to the United States has already been done because the voters elected a sundowning malignant narcissist.
Well, the reality is that his career HAS been destroyed. Little Marco REALLY wanted to be President. Trump has pretty much destroyed the Presidential prospects of all of the prior GoP Presidential hopefuls (the people that ran against himn in 2016 and again in 2024).
All of those people proved to be doormats and people of no chracter or courage. It is going to be next to impossible for them to make a comeback from that. That group of candidates is kind of screwed.
They have hung onto their local power or power handed to them by Trump because they slavishy support Trump. Omce he is gone they are done.
W Bush and Obama both advocated for immigration reform. Both strived to tighten the border, which tightening had been laid down by the far Right as a condition for reform. It was bullshit, as the Gang of (Five?) found out in 2013, when Boehner dld not even put their work product to a vote.
Which only goes to show there is no incentive for doing the right thing with respect to policy. Only the right thing with respect to obtaining and keeping power.
No, but Dems have always been afraid of losing the Hispanic vote if they do crack down on immigration.
But like David Frum said, "If the Dems won't fix the border because they don't want to come off as fascist, the people will elect a fascist to fix the border."
Biden did try to get bipartisan immigration reform passed in his last year. And people can say he did it for political reasons, which is obviously true, but that's how politics works, so I don't know why people get hung up on that part, and nobody seems to care that Trump told Republicans to kill their own immigration bill for political reasons.
Nobody cares because the voters aren't serious people, Don. Or, to be more precise since I know someone will call me out for that sweeping generalization, a large percentage of the voters lack the ability to game out the moral and practical consequences of their disengagement from politics and how the country is run.
Actually, Biden proposed a border bill, but Trump spiked it. As someone who lives 50 miles north of the border, I saw BP all the time during Biden’s administration, along the roads. Now, I rarely see them.
He did. You're right. But 1) it was too late and looked desperate and 2) he didn't go out and really fight for it. (Personally, I don't think he had the energy for it and I think his staff -- and his family -- was trying to keep him out of the public eye as much as possible at that time.) The third aspect of this is that, no matter what they put on the table -- and it was everything Republicans wanted -- Trump ordered his minions to vote against it because he wanted the issue for the election.
Unfortunately, I think the cruelty, the racism (sexis, too), and the brutality are big draws for a lot of normal folks. I've had to withdraw from a lot of the social media groups of people I grew up with because they celebrate every awful murder and detention, and still can't mention a Democrat without calling them communist or worst.
Marco was busted by Politifact for lying about it all: They did not flee communism. One might argue that in 1956 they fled economic inequality--what the Revolution opposed.
It’s very hard to talk straight about the USA and Cubas tangled past. I know one British lefty who spent tuns of time in Cuba and generally thought really highly of the Cuban experiment. Even he reluctantly admitted that the one outstanding fault of Cuba was the level of racism. Gotta wonder about Marco.
Does Rubio not realize that Cubans are also deemed Hispanic? Also, his parents weren't citizens when he was born. Doesn't that disqualify him in MAGA eyes? Then again, Vance doesn't seem to realize his wife is in the same position and 4 of President Orange Snake's (POS's) kids.
Rubio and Vance are betting on the MAGAe hating their shared enemies just enough to not mind their hypocrisy with respect to their ethnicity. Given the MAGAe are bunch of retromingent, cognitively challenged knuckle draggers, that's not a bad bet to make.
But MAGA, if unchecked, will eventually be coming after Rubio, Vance (at least his wife and kids), Candice Owens, Barri Weiss, etc for not being cis het white male xtian nationalists.
They remind me of Jewish military men, even heroes, who thought Hitler's goons would ignore them. They were wrong. Even the brother-in-law of Eva Braun was executed in the last days of the war. Hitler like POS didn't care about anyone but loyalty to HIM.
Rubio's family left Cuba in 1956, when it was the land of fascist dictatorship, millionaire playgrounds, Mafia finance, and grinding poverty for the masses. They came to the US as economic immigrants, not out of any abstraction. Ambitious Lil' Marco lied about his family from the get go as he entered politics, presenting them as having emigrated only to flee Castro, in order to ingratiate himself with the larger ex-pat community in Miami, who had indeed booked in response to the revolution. But they weren't so much seeking abstract Jeffersonian ideals either, as much as supporters and clients of the Batista regime who had the rugs of corrupt, racist financial privilege pulled out from under them. It's telling who didn't leave Cuba: black people and poor people.
The Castro regime had any number of flaws, but for both ill and good, it was not a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" at all.
With any luck the interview with James Talerico will be found in Canada, just like that 60 Minutes story CBS tried to bury. Surely someone at the Colbert Show will find a way for the interview to get "accidentally" released.
This is also a great example of The Streisand Effect. If CBS simply let the interview air (without any calls to The Colbert Show), it may have been a news story for a day. Now that Frau Weiss is carrying the water for the Pedophile-In-Chief, and interfered to block the interview, it now has a life of its own and is a bigger news story as a result.
At some point in the future Hollywood will memorialize the Presidency of Trumpty Dumpty. The good news is that thanks to AI technology, we can resurrect Don Knotts from the grave and have him star in the DJT version of "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight".
Thanks! It is a great interview. I hope he wins his primary. Viewing this from afar, Crocket isn't the kind of Democrat that will win in Texas, in a statewide race. (nothing against her) But as Sarah has said; AOC can win in NY but not Texas.
I read that Anderson Cooper is quitting 60 Minutes because of Weis. And the continuation of turning 60 Minutes into Fluff goes on. Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley and crew must spinning in their graves.
My understanding is that it will be aired on YouTube which likely has a bigger audience than CBS. I refuse to watch any channel affiliated with either CBS or its gutless brother ABC.
As a Minnesotan, 'd like to make something abundantly clear! ICE and CBP are NOT leaving the state of Minnesota...it's a lie and a ruse...they are being deployed to other areas within the state! Their tactics HAVE NOT CHANGED! They do have lesser officers in Mpls., but make no mistake - nothing has really changed and the media must and need to report this out.
I've already seen Minnesota drop out of the national conversation and it shouldn't.
It's been amazing to me how insulated all of us are now. My family had no idea what was going on here in Chicago. (They live in Wisconsin and Minnesota.) I didn't clearly see what was going on in Minnesota. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't much different from Chicago.
Homan has the sense to keep his activities quiet. He's not Bovino, but that doesn't make him some kind of hero or a decent person. He's a mush-mouthed, bullet-headed, thoroughly corrupt mediocrity put in charge of a morally indefensible operation. He does it because, if he doesn't, he'll be facing federal bribery charges and a nice long stint in the clink.
As someone from Mn. I have mentioned to other Bulwarkers what local media have been reporting here. Because I know national media doesn't report these stories all that well. I kind of felt that way regarding what happened in LA and Chicago.
Minnesotan here, I go by the thinking: when it comes to anything DJT, never trust what they say, expect the lie and always verify. Case in point, Homan says Ice and sheriffs have come to a new agreement concerning immigrants. Hold on big fella! All local media simply asked sheriffs from all 87 counties if this is true. Not the case in one county!
I believe you are mistaken when you say that the orange narcissist-felon is "withdrawing" from Minneapolis. Now that he and his masked goons have terrorized the populace, all they need for now is a 'holding force' to roam the streets, leaving the populace in continued fear of exactly what is still there, lurking, ready to inflict more mayhem.
Meanwhile, the rest of the private army of brutal thugs can now move to other target cities, to wreak their mindless havoc: savaging innocents without pretext, entering homes without warrants, killing more citizens, masked into cowardly anonymity.
This is just a minor tactical shift, not "withdrawal." Do not be deceived. The orange narcissist-felon has not changed his obscene behavior.
"Trump’s federal law and immigration enforcement have..."
The Bulwark must stop spreading the Big Lie. Trump's goon are not enforcing immigration, and they are breaking laws - including (duh) immigration law - left and right.
To belabor what should be obvious: if the goal is to "enforce immigration" by rounding up and deporting as many undocumented folks as possible, you don't send a paramilitary force to Minnesota, especially South Minneapolis, especially in January.
The people of the Twin Cities will tell you what the so-called ICE is actually doing, and so consistently it is obviously its true mission, regardless of what the label, and the fascist propagandists claim.
Exploiting the power of naming is at the essence of MAGA method. Virtually everything their agencies do is the inverse of their descriptions. Yet commenters are under the spell of the words, and continue not just to repeat them, but to give them credence.
The height of absurdity is 'we can't say Abolish Ice, because people don't want open borders!!' So that's it? You can't call for the SA to be disbanded because the dictator is calling it something else?
This is how the Big Lie works. It's not just the absurd claims like Alex and Renee were intending mass murder. It's also, and maybe more powerfully, the little bits of lingo that infect the discourse broadly, repeated reflexively by observers and opposition. Each little instance seems innocuous enough individually. But each is a concession to deep lies, and these fecal molecules add up the spray of the proverbial fire hose of shit.
No to video "Morning Shots"! Please! I do not have time to watch a video, and reading transcripts that aren't edited or corrected is frustrating. Please leave Morning Shots as it is: a great read on a few important points, 5 days a week.
agreed, I read morning shots while pretending to work. that will be harder if I am clearly watching a video. There ain't nothing wrong about turning the written content into a bulwark takes style video if The Bulwark is just looking for more video content, but I love the Morning Shots as a read.
I am a Virginian by birth and rearing and I love my home state and my country. I think it fitting and proper that the heroes of Minnesota keep that inglorious flag safe in their capable possession. God knows what we would do with it down here nowadays.
Streisand effect - "the phenomenon where attempts to suppress, censor, or hide information backfire, resulting in the unintended consequence of drawing significantly more public attention."
What the Trumpists lack in intelligence, they make up for in ham-fistedness. Good to know lots of people will see the Talerico interview on youtube now:
Thanks for the kind words about Jesse Jackson, Bill. You’re absolutely right that he stood for something larger and aspirational, which is to be admired.
Yes, thank you for that, Bill. I agree that those who speak for the vulnerable when it's more popular to overlook them are very special and worthy of admiration.
Colbert will air his last show on May 21 of later this year. I very much doubt Bari Weiss and company are happy about him airing Brendan Carr’s threats against CBS in public as I am sure they would rather keep that quiet. But it illustrates two things 1) CBS won’t go against the government when requested even if it has a good case to, and 2) once people like Colbert are gone will we even know when the government is pressuring the likes of CBS to not air certain topics, people of positions. I know people talk about legacy stations such as CBS as dying entities, but they still have broad reach and we will lose when they so easily bend the knee to the state. In this case at least we know, but next time we may not.
We know they will suppress what the administration doesn’t want us to hear, but it is still useful to know the how when and where which once people like Colbert are gone won’t happen.
Unleashing Colbert unfettered may not work out so well for the admin if he decides to run for Lindsey's SC senate seat. For the record, I have no knowledge of him planning to do so, but it would be awesome.
I just love Bill Kristol for his appropriate erudition, his “spot-on” quotes from history, literature and poetry, and his sweeping rejection of all forms of Trumpism. I’m one center-left liberal who can respect and appreciate this former neo-con, and recognize him as a principled and courageous center-right conservative.
On my way home Saturday (Valentine's Day) from an activity in a city not too far from my own, cruising down the expressway on a sunny afternoon in the sun, a little truck passed me with a sticker in its cab window behind the driver: "DEMOCRATS SUCK." And here I am reading David M. Kennedy's wonderful "Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945." Because, we all know: Democrats suck. All the modern niceties of Social Security, banking insurance, and global safety (that we are willfully rejecting these days) are just proof positive of how Democrats suck. Right.
“While Russia scoffs and Secretary of State Marco Rubio hedges, the real question is what to do with this finding—besides reporting a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.”
What to do with the findings? Let’s just say Kushner is on the way to rehabilitate Putin’s image. I believe that thanks to Trump and Kushner’s past relationship; Putin’s rehabilitation will cost significantly less than what MbS paid for his: $2 billion and counting! IMHO…:)
"The fact that Trump’s federal law and immigration enforcement have deliberately and consistently worked to shut down investigations into the killing of a U.S. citizen by one of their own is an outrage that cries out for justice."
A common phrase has it that "justice delayed is justice denied". This is often true, if memories fade, evidence is destroyed or miraculously disappears into never-never-land.
However, in the current age of cellphone videos en masse and data banks by the dozens, I suggest that such public displays of overt criminal brutality, culminating in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti may be delayed, but will not be denied.
This presumes that not ALL of the potential defendants right up the chain of command (Nuremburg as an example anyone?) and not just the immediate perpetrators, die in the next three years. Not even the Felon's hero, Vlad the Bad, controls that many high-rise windows.
JD should stop to consider the fate* of his Third Reich counter-part, Deputy Fuhrer Rudolph Hesse: escaped the noose but ultimately took his own life--after spending more time in prison than JD has even been alive.
* Given credit for flying to Scotland before the whole-sale genocide got off the ground; and at least partial credit for his claim to have been on a peace mission.
Just spit balling here, but how about this as a thought experiment?
"Does Donald Trump make you feel good? Does he make you proud? Has he made your life less stressful? Do you find yourself talking about him all the time? Do you want to talk about him all the time?"
It just occurs to me that the biggest change of The Trump Era is that we think about and talk about the President all the time, every day. He's everywhere. And those discussions are unpleasant, I suspect, for everyone, including Trump supporters.
I mean, every day you hear about new horrors from the Epstein Files and you need to adjust in your brain how this is all okay. You see Pam Bondi lose her mind and you have to tell yourself this is all okay or make excuses or find a way to justify her behavior or say the Democrats are worse somehow. You avoid friends and family because you don't want to get into it with them. You see photos of children being traumatized and you have to come up with a way to say that's alright or they deserved it or their parents are to blame for their suffering or some other thing. For those all deep in the weeds, how do you look at Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski and say those two are the best we have?
Could that not be a foundation for some kind of messaging or action? We're all tired. Even the most MAGA have got to be tired. Where's the joy? Where's the hope. Doesn't anyone miss that? I do.
I have serious doubts about that statement as well. I know politicians have to say things like "Americans are not stupid", but all the evidence suggests otherwise.
My husband was dying of stage 4 melanoma 5 years ago. He entered a phase 1 drug trial of an mRNA personalized vaccine through Massachusetts General Hospital. He was completely cured. The tumors that riddles his spine and liver stabilized, then shank, and then vanished completely. This is the hope that this horrible administration is stealing from us all. Google Brad Kremer and mRNA---his story was covered.
They aim to impoverish and enslave us. Nothing less. And thank you for a good reminder that good things can happen in this world, Ginny K.
It's bad enough they see us heathens travelling about the world, using the same devices, and garnering "followers", but it is simply not acceptable that we have access to life extending/saving technologies too.
Especially when they can be selling us snake oil instead. That's a lot of money going to somebody else.
All the revenue with none of the hard work to show it works...
It’s awful because I feel like one of the best (and one of the only good) things Trump did in his first term was pass the Right to Try Law in 2018 that allowed terminally ill patients to bypass FDA approval and use post Phase 1 drugs.
Democrats need to run on vaccines. The anti-COVID Vax right scared the Dems because they were loud but our country is overwhelmingly pro-vaccine even the Covid & Flu shots. It’s so simple to explain to the public and whereas Republicans have to qualify every statement now on vaccines Democrats can simply run on you will be able to take vaccines easily without any hinder an e. That’s a winning message.
The problem with running on vaccines is that up until COVID hit, but I always assumed that it was mostly the far left liberals that were anti- vaccination. Please correct me if I am wrong, but that was my impression.
That is true but it still was such a small percentage. Vaccines themselves have been a 90+% support even in these modern times. Most RFK Jr followers are the hardest MAGA types.
Most schools had vaccine mandates and typically those that try to get out of it are single digits among thousands. Even those that don’t get the Covid vaccine still get the basic list the doctor says. Measles outbreaks are not typical. It’s easy to say I’m gonna run and stop kids dying from measles.
Yup, I thought the same thing. Now that THEIR kids are also getting sick, maybe they'll use their brains.
It will amaze how many won't! While the wizard of OZ says to please take vaccines. RFK Jr does everything in his power against it. Then he masks it in its up to peoples choice or more scientific study is needed.
Yeah disease doesn't much care if you are conservative or liberal.
Actually, most vaccine hesitation is in religious communities, where outbreaks tend to start. Religion is the number one reason people cite as to why they don't vaccinate their kids. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4869767/
You know, there was a commandment on the OTHER tablet, the one Moses dropped, that covered this:
Thou shalt not accept on to you that which may spare you the plague that God intends for you.
Everyone I know that is antivax are either MAGA, extreme conservative Catholic, or "happy church" evangelicals
What a beautiful and glorious story! I am so happy for you and your husband!
That is a great outcome Ginny! My brother in law had stage 3 Kidney cancer and now seems cured because of advances. Three more years of this nonsense from DJT and RFK Jr is too long.
Bill: "Fortunately, the American people are better than our current government. Civic spirit and enlightened patriotism are by no means dead in the United States. As the people of Minnesota have again reminded us."
**Some** of us are better than our current government. But it's necessary to remind ourselves that there's another group of citizens who love the cruelty, the racism, and the brutality our current government is dishing out.
As for Little Marco, if he disdains "abstractions" so much, then why did his family leave Cuba for the land of the free and the home of the brave? He's just a sniveling, thirsty little fuck, adopting any position no matter how indefensible so he can become POTUS one day. Newsflash, jackhole: you'll never be POTUS.
Certainly true, but I do wonder how many Americans still love the cruelty, racism and brutality.
I think when it was abstract, like Trump saying he was going to go after the worst of the worst and secure the border, I think a lot of people could get on board with that. I also think when Trump and Vance said there were 30 million illegal aliens in the country and people questioned whether it was possible (or good) to deport that many people without a huge economic disruption and then Vance posited, "well, how about a million?" That could resonate too. Biden DIDN'T do anything about the border. There WERE people gaming the asylum system. The fraud in Minnesota is nothing new. People have known about it for years. Voters wanted something done about all this. Biden had no interest. Trump said he'd do something, so they went with him.
Now they see what it meant. I don't think there are too many people still on board with this. They might be on board with Trump. (I know a few.) But killing American citizens? Masked, armed, unidentified goons yanking people out of cars? Tear gassing little kids on their way to Trick-or-Treat? Scenes of little kids getting torn from their families? Immigrants, here legally, and American citizens getting "detained" for weeks or months? Not what they voted for.
Trump's job approval numbers are miserable now, as they should be. I don't think he's got the support he used to for this kind of stuff because of how he's done it all.
The issue with the border predates Trump and Biden. How many opportunities did Congress have to do immigration reform prior to 2016? Two things can be true at the same time: the border has been an issue, and the GOP would rather have the border as an issue to run on than actually address the issue. Also, didn't Trump fail to build "The Wall" during his first term? Why didn't the voters hold him accountable for that failure? Hell, didn't Obama deport more people than Trump has?
Don't forget the Langford bill, in which the Dems gave Repubs EVERYTHING they asked for, but which they then refused to vote for merely b/c T told them not to.
You won't be surprised that I ultimately blame the voters for our immigration mess in 2026. When you vote for a fascist to enforce the border, you don't get to act surprised when officials who work for the fascist to behave like fascists themselves.
Nuremberg Defense 2.0:
"I was told I had complete, total, and utter immunity from prosecution."
We'll see how that works out for them, won't we.
It's part of the GOP/MAGA self-loathing death cult mentality...
Rubio was a co-author of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013. Now his State Department has revoked visas of at least 100,000 people. They claim they're all criminals. Right.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-administration-has-revoked-over-100000-visas-state-department-says-2026-01-12/
And just as he's not called out generating the senate intelligence report that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, he's not called out for this, either. The man has no fixed principles. And in a better world, his career would be destroyed.
As much as I despise Trump, he did get Rubio's nickname right - Little Marco. He's a pathetic little man. I imagine him as a cartoon character chihuahua, jumping around next to a rotund bulldog Trump saying, "Pick me boss, pick me..."
All of his cabinet is pathetic. All of his staff is pathetic. And in a way, I'm grateful for Trump because he knew deep down that guys like Rubio don't have any fixed principles, so Trump was able to humiliate Rubio in 2016 knowing Rubio would crawl back to him in order to be relevant.
As I always point out though, Mark, this is the cabinet that the voters wanted. And yes, the long dormant collective conscience of the voters is stirring a bit, but the damage to the United States has already been done because the voters elected a sundowning malignant narcissist.
Well, the reality is that his career HAS been destroyed. Little Marco REALLY wanted to be President. Trump has pretty much destroyed the Presidential prospects of all of the prior GoP Presidential hopefuls (the people that ran against himn in 2016 and again in 2024).
All of those people proved to be doormats and people of no chracter or courage. It is going to be next to impossible for them to make a comeback from that. That group of candidates is kind of screwed.
They have hung onto their local power or power handed to them by Trump because they slavishy support Trump. Omce he is gone they are done.
W Bush and Obama both advocated for immigration reform. Both strived to tighten the border, which tightening had been laid down by the far Right as a condition for reform. It was bullshit, as the Gang of (Five?) found out in 2013, when Boehner dld not even put their work product to a vote.
Which only goes to show there is no incentive for doing the right thing with respect to policy. Only the right thing with respect to obtaining and keeping power.
Jeepers ! Your attitude is almost as bad as mine . 😁🌊
As the saying goes, Rs won't fix the border because they want the cheap labor, Dems won't because they want the votes.
Non-citizens don't vote, as numerous audits have shown.
That's the Republican narrative though and a lot of people buy it.
No, but Dems have always been afraid of losing the Hispanic vote if they do crack down on immigration.
But like David Frum said, "If the Dems won't fix the border because they don't want to come off as fascist, the people will elect a fascist to fix the border."
And here we are.
Biden did try to get bipartisan immigration reform passed in his last year. And people can say he did it for political reasons, which is obviously true, but that's how politics works, so I don't know why people get hung up on that part, and nobody seems to care that Trump told Republicans to kill their own immigration bill for political reasons.
Nobody cares because the voters aren't serious people, Don. Or, to be more precise since I know someone will call me out for that sweeping generalization, a large percentage of the voters lack the ability to game out the moral and practical consequences of their disengagement from politics and how the country is run.
So did Biden.
Actually, Biden proposed a border bill, but Trump spiked it. As someone who lives 50 miles north of the border, I saw BP all the time during Biden’s administration, along the roads. Now, I rarely see them.
He did. You're right. But 1) it was too late and looked desperate and 2) he didn't go out and really fight for it. (Personally, I don't think he had the energy for it and I think his staff -- and his family -- was trying to keep him out of the public eye as much as possible at that time.) The third aspect of this is that, no matter what they put on the table -- and it was everything Republicans wanted -- Trump ordered his minions to vote against it because he wanted the issue for the election.
Unfortunately, I think the cruelty, the racism (sexis, too), and the brutality are big draws for a lot of normal folks. I've had to withdraw from a lot of the social media groups of people I grew up with because they celebrate every awful murder and detention, and still can't mention a Democrat without calling them communist or worst.
little Marco’s family left Cuba because they were unpatriotic and wouldn’t make sacrifices for their, not European, country.
Marco was busted by Politifact for lying about it all: They did not flee communism. One might argue that in 1956 they fled economic inequality--what the Revolution opposed.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2011/oct/21/marco-rubio/sen-marco-rubio-said-his-parents-came-america-foll/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
I hope Marco's brother-in-law is brought out into the sunlight.
It’s very hard to talk straight about the USA and Cubas tangled past. I know one British lefty who spent tuns of time in Cuba and generally thought really highly of the Cuban experiment. Even he reluctantly admitted that the one outstanding fault of Cuba was the level of racism. Gotta wonder about Marco.
Does Rubio not realize that Cubans are also deemed Hispanic? Also, his parents weren't citizens when he was born. Doesn't that disqualify him in MAGA eyes? Then again, Vance doesn't seem to realize his wife is in the same position and 4 of President Orange Snake's (POS's) kids.
Rubio and Vance are betting on the MAGAe hating their shared enemies just enough to not mind their hypocrisy with respect to their ethnicity. Given the MAGAe are bunch of retromingent, cognitively challenged knuckle draggers, that's not a bad bet to make.
But MAGA, if unchecked, will eventually be coming after Rubio, Vance (at least his wife and kids), Candice Owens, Barri Weiss, etc for not being cis het white male xtian nationalists.
They don't mean me ! ! 🙄🌊
I thought retromingent was peeing backwards not peeing orally.
They remind me of Jewish military men, even heroes, who thought Hitler's goons would ignore them. They were wrong. Even the brother-in-law of Eva Braun was executed in the last days of the war. Hitler like POS didn't care about anyone but loyalty to HIM.
"Oh, Marco. You thought you were one of **us**?"
If MAGA flames out entirely, today, Rubio will start re-positioning himself as an extremely conservative independent tonight.
At which point the knifes will come out for Marco.
Deport him to Cuba. Send him home.
He's not a heritage American, and if the social cohesion project is to be successful, undesirable elements like him need to be removed.
Nicely put. I was just gonna propose a general “Fuckhead Clause”.
Oh yeah !
As I recall, Rubio was being mentored by Jeb Bush. Rubio somehow stabbed Jeb in the back.
There's a shocker.
Rubio is one of the most dangerous of the lot, because he knows better and changed his politics to hang on to power.
Rubio's family left Cuba in 1956, when it was the land of fascist dictatorship, millionaire playgrounds, Mafia finance, and grinding poverty for the masses. They came to the US as economic immigrants, not out of any abstraction. Ambitious Lil' Marco lied about his family from the get go as he entered politics, presenting them as having emigrated only to flee Castro, in order to ingratiate himself with the larger ex-pat community in Miami, who had indeed booked in response to the revolution. But they weren't so much seeking abstract Jeffersonian ideals either, as much as supporters and clients of the Batista regime who had the rugs of corrupt, racist financial privilege pulled out from under them. It's telling who didn't leave Cuba: black people and poor people.
The Castro regime had any number of flaws, but for both ill and good, it was not a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" at all.
Dunno maybe a plane has an oopsie and little marco will be next in line.
With any luck the interview with James Talerico will be found in Canada, just like that 60 Minutes story CBS tried to bury. Surely someone at the Colbert Show will find a way for the interview to get "accidentally" released.
This is also a great example of The Streisand Effect. If CBS simply let the interview air (without any calls to The Colbert Show), it may have been a news story for a day. Now that Frau Weiss is carrying the water for the Pedophile-In-Chief, and interfered to block the interview, it now has a life of its own and is a bigger news story as a result.
At some point in the future Hollywood will memorialize the Presidency of Trumpty Dumpty. The good news is that thanks to AI technology, we can resurrect Don Knotts from the grave and have him star in the DJT version of "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight".
I believe Colbert put it on YouTube.
Here's the interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
Thanks! It is a great interview. I hope he wins his primary. Viewing this from afar, Crocket isn't the kind of Democrat that will win in Texas, in a statewide race. (nothing against her) But as Sarah has said; AOC can win in NY but not Texas.
Just passed 1 million view.
Looks like the censorship ploy didn't work out so well.
Is this all because they are THAT scared of a liberal (i.e., true) Christian? That tells us right there who should win the primary.
I read that Anderson Cooper is quitting 60 Minutes because of Weis. And the continuation of turning 60 Minutes into Fluff goes on. Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley and crew must spinning in their graves.
I’m pretty sure Colbert is dark during the Olympics. He’s got some pretty great writers though. Hopefully this will break through.
I am hoping for the Streisand effect here. And that this elevates Talarico a lot more.
He appears to be doing his show as normal. Well, apart from the FCC censoring the interviews he doesn't like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
I can't help but notice they are 20 times more afraid of progressive Christians than anyone else.
I love it that Colbert is figuratively flipping Trump and his once-great network the bird!
My understanding is that it will be aired on YouTube which likely has a bigger audience than CBS. I refuse to watch any channel affiliated with either CBS or its gutless brother ABC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
Post it everywhere.
As a Minnesotan, 'd like to make something abundantly clear! ICE and CBP are NOT leaving the state of Minnesota...it's a lie and a ruse...they are being deployed to other areas within the state! Their tactics HAVE NOT CHANGED! They do have lesser officers in Mpls., but make no mistake - nothing has really changed and the media must and need to report this out.
I've already seen Minnesota drop out of the national conversation and it shouldn't.
It's been amazing to me how insulated all of us are now. My family had no idea what was going on here in Chicago. (They live in Wisconsin and Minnesota.) I didn't clearly see what was going on in Minnesota. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't much different from Chicago.
Homan has the sense to keep his activities quiet. He's not Bovino, but that doesn't make him some kind of hero or a decent person. He's a mush-mouthed, bullet-headed, thoroughly corrupt mediocrity put in charge of a morally indefensible operation. He does it because, if he doesn't, he'll be facing federal bribery charges and a nice long stint in the clink.
As someone from Mn. I have mentioned to other Bulwarkers what local media have been reporting here. Because I know national media doesn't report these stories all that well. I kind of felt that way regarding what happened in LA and Chicago.
Thank you for letting folks know. JVL has been very skeptical that they were truly leaving, and I've wondered.
Same here. Never trust what they say, expect the lie and always verify. It is the only way to process the DJT years!
https://www.standwithminnesota.com/
https://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/general-interest/ice-minnesota-support-immigrant-communities-fundraisers-food-drives-trainings/
Minnesotan here, I go by the thinking: when it comes to anything DJT, never trust what they say, expect the lie and always verify. Case in point, Homan says Ice and sheriffs have come to a new agreement concerning immigrants. Hold on big fella! All local media simply asked sheriffs from all 87 counties if this is true. Not the case in one county!
I have absolutely no idea why people are claiming otherwise. It's like a mass delusion. I was shocked the Bulwark printed it here.
I believe you are mistaken when you say that the orange narcissist-felon is "withdrawing" from Minneapolis. Now that he and his masked goons have terrorized the populace, all they need for now is a 'holding force' to roam the streets, leaving the populace in continued fear of exactly what is still there, lurking, ready to inflict more mayhem.
Meanwhile, the rest of the private army of brutal thugs can now move to other target cities, to wreak their mindless havoc: savaging innocents without pretext, entering homes without warrants, killing more citizens, masked into cowardly anonymity.
This is just a minor tactical shift, not "withdrawal." Do not be deceived. The orange narcissist-felon has not changed his obscene behavior.
They are terrorizing a small town in southern NJ:
https://www.nj.com/cumberland/2026/02/immigrants-brought-this-nj-city-back-to-life-ice-is-now-turning-it-into-a-ghost-town.html
https://www.nj.com/cumberland/2026/01/ice-detained-people-waiting-at-a-food-pantry-salvation-army-says.html
I'm not hearing about any layoff notices, so I assume they are being transferred to another "theater," perhaps one near you.
"Trump’s federal law and immigration enforcement have..."
The Bulwark must stop spreading the Big Lie. Trump's goon are not enforcing immigration, and they are breaking laws - including (duh) immigration law - left and right.
To belabor what should be obvious: if the goal is to "enforce immigration" by rounding up and deporting as many undocumented folks as possible, you don't send a paramilitary force to Minnesota, especially South Minneapolis, especially in January.
The people of the Twin Cities will tell you what the so-called ICE is actually doing, and so consistently it is obviously its true mission, regardless of what the label, and the fascist propagandists claim.
Exploiting the power of naming is at the essence of MAGA method. Virtually everything their agencies do is the inverse of their descriptions. Yet commenters are under the spell of the words, and continue not just to repeat them, but to give them credence.
The height of absurdity is 'we can't say Abolish Ice, because people don't want open borders!!' So that's it? You can't call for the SA to be disbanded because the dictator is calling it something else?
This is how the Big Lie works. It's not just the absurd claims like Alex and Renee were intending mass murder. It's also, and maybe more powerfully, the little bits of lingo that infect the discourse broadly, repeated reflexively by observers and opposition. Each little instance seems innocuous enough individually. But each is a concession to deep lies, and these fecal molecules add up the spray of the proverbial fire hose of shit.
The Bulwark, of all media, should do better.
The utter surprise at Bari Weiss doing to administration’s bidding*. Again.
*there is no surprise
No to video "Morning Shots"! Please! I do not have time to watch a video, and reading transcripts that aren't edited or corrected is frustrating. Please leave Morning Shots as it is: a great read on a few important points, 5 days a week.
agreed, I read morning shots while pretending to work. that will be harder if I am clearly watching a video. There ain't nothing wrong about turning the written content into a bulwark takes style video if The Bulwark is just looking for more video content, but I love the Morning Shots as a read.
I totally agree. I prefer to read most of the time. A little video content here and there is fine but not instead of the written form.
I don't think Morning Shots is going anywhere, they're just test toasting a weekly video follow up. "Morning Chaser" appears to be the working title.
I am a Virginian by birth and rearing and I love my home state and my country. I think it fitting and proper that the heroes of Minnesota keep that inglorious flag safe in their capable possession. God knows what we would do with it down here nowadays.
Streisand effect - "the phenomenon where attempts to suppress, censor, or hide information backfire, resulting in the unintended consequence of drawing significantly more public attention."
What the Trumpists lack in intelligence, they make up for in ham-fistedness. Good to know lots of people will see the Talerico interview on youtube now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
I wonder how that got out there?
Thanks for the kind words about Jesse Jackson, Bill. You’re absolutely right that he stood for something larger and aspirational, which is to be admired.
Yes, thank you for that, Bill. I agree that those who speak for the vulnerable when it's more popular to overlook them are very special and worthy of admiration.
Colbert will air his last show on May 21 of later this year. I very much doubt Bari Weiss and company are happy about him airing Brendan Carr’s threats against CBS in public as I am sure they would rather keep that quiet. But it illustrates two things 1) CBS won’t go against the government when requested even if it has a good case to, and 2) once people like Colbert are gone will we even know when the government is pressuring the likes of CBS to not air certain topics, people of positions. I know people talk about legacy stations such as CBS as dying entities, but they still have broad reach and we will lose when they so easily bend the knee to the state. In this case at least we know, but next time we may not.
We won't need the Colbert in a coal mine. We will KNOW that they are suppressing the truth whenever possible.
We know they will suppress what the administration doesn’t want us to hear, but it is still useful to know the how when and where which once people like Colbert are gone won’t happen.
Unleashing Colbert unfettered may not work out so well for the admin if he decides to run for Lindsey's SC senate seat. For the record, I have no knowledge of him planning to do so, but it would be awesome.
I would love for him to run for Lyndsey Graham’s seat.
Colbert would totally kick her ass.
I just love Bill Kristol for his appropriate erudition, his “spot-on” quotes from history, literature and poetry, and his sweeping rejection of all forms of Trumpism. I’m one center-left liberal who can respect and appreciate this former neo-con, and recognize him as a principled and courageous center-right conservative.
YES!
On my way home Saturday (Valentine's Day) from an activity in a city not too far from my own, cruising down the expressway on a sunny afternoon in the sun, a little truck passed me with a sticker in its cab window behind the driver: "DEMOCRATS SUCK." And here I am reading David M. Kennedy's wonderful "Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945." Because, we all know: Democrats suck. All the modern niceties of Social Security, banking insurance, and global safety (that we are willfully rejecting these days) are just proof positive of how Democrats suck. Right.
40 hr. week, the "weekend"... .
Restriction of child labor ...
“While Russia scoffs and Secretary of State Marco Rubio hedges, the real question is what to do with this finding—besides reporting a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.”
What to do with the findings? Let’s just say Kushner is on the way to rehabilitate Putin’s image. I believe that thanks to Trump and Kushner’s past relationship; Putin’s rehabilitation will cost significantly less than what MbS paid for his: $2 billion and counting! IMHO…:)
"The fact that Trump’s federal law and immigration enforcement have deliberately and consistently worked to shut down investigations into the killing of a U.S. citizen by one of their own is an outrage that cries out for justice."
A common phrase has it that "justice delayed is justice denied". This is often true, if memories fade, evidence is destroyed or miraculously disappears into never-never-land.
However, in the current age of cellphone videos en masse and data banks by the dozens, I suggest that such public displays of overt criminal brutality, culminating in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti may be delayed, but will not be denied.
This presumes that not ALL of the potential defendants right up the chain of command (Nuremburg as an example anyone?) and not just the immediate perpetrators, die in the next three years. Not even the Felon's hero, Vlad the Bad, controls that many high-rise windows.
JD should stop to consider the fate* of his Third Reich counter-part, Deputy Fuhrer Rudolph Hesse: escaped the noose but ultimately took his own life--after spending more time in prison than JD has even been alive.
* Given credit for flying to Scotland before the whole-sale genocide got off the ground; and at least partial credit for his claim to have been on a peace mission.
So Geneva was JD Vain's "peace mission"?
Re: "Fortunately, the American people are better than our current government."
Hear! Hear!
Are they? Some are. But are the rest blind or apathetic?
Being better than the Trump Admin is the lowest bar ever created or imagined.
Just spit balling here, but how about this as a thought experiment?
"Does Donald Trump make you feel good? Does he make you proud? Has he made your life less stressful? Do you find yourself talking about him all the time? Do you want to talk about him all the time?"
It just occurs to me that the biggest change of The Trump Era is that we think about and talk about the President all the time, every day. He's everywhere. And those discussions are unpleasant, I suspect, for everyone, including Trump supporters.
I mean, every day you hear about new horrors from the Epstein Files and you need to adjust in your brain how this is all okay. You see Pam Bondi lose her mind and you have to tell yourself this is all okay or make excuses or find a way to justify her behavior or say the Democrats are worse somehow. You avoid friends and family because you don't want to get into it with them. You see photos of children being traumatized and you have to come up with a way to say that's alright or they deserved it or their parents are to blame for their suffering or some other thing. For those all deep in the weeds, how do you look at Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski and say those two are the best we have?
Could that not be a foundation for some kind of messaging or action? We're all tired. Even the most MAGA have got to be tired. Where's the joy? Where's the hope. Doesn't anyone miss that? I do.
I have serious doubts about that statement as well. I know politicians have to say things like "Americans are not stupid", but all the evidence suggests otherwise.
….and bigoted.