Monday morning, NPR and Marist released a new poll that looked into some questions beyond just Señor Trumpanzee's cascading disapproval numbers. For example, 61% of voters don't trust the Trumpanzee Regime, 68% don't trust the Republican-led Congress and a full 70% say that since Trumoanzee somehow managed to get into the White House, "the overall tone and level of civility in Washington between Republicans and Democrats has gotten worse." Now you know.A new week begins! Let's look at two responses to the Regime's and Congress' determination-- some believe suicidal determination-- to strip over 20 million Americans of healthcare so they can give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans. First from a "respected" Republican senator, Trump-critic and GOP agenda supporter Ben Sasse of Nebraska and then one of the hack Fox News commentators, Lisa Kennedy Montgomery (or, if you used to listen to Nirvana and Depeche Mode on KROQ back in the day, just... Kennedy). Sunday, Sasse was on CNN's State of the Union. He's the guy who seems to have persuaded Trumpanzee to do an about face on his insistence for "repeal and replace" and go back to the original GOP plan of just "repeal" and see what can be done sometime down the road in never-never land. Sounds like a real right-wing jackass, right? He is-- always has been too. BUT... Sasse is known nationally, thanks to our media geniuses, for serially being offending by Trump's manners and speaking out against his crudeness, even as he pushes Trump's murderous agenda forward on every front.
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said Sunday that he is troubled by President Donald Trump's latest attacks on the news media because he is concerned about the danger of "weaponizing distrust," which can harm the freedoms that define a democracy."There's an important distinction to draw between bad stories or crappy coverage and the right that citizens have to argue about that and complain about that and trying to weaponize distrust," Sasse said in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union. "The First Amendment is the beating heart of the American experiment, and you don't get to separate the freedoms that are in there."The Republican freshman senator's remarks come after Trump spent the past week relentlessly attacking the news media-- including CNN, MSNBC, CBS and the Washington Post-- in a barrage of tweets and at event honoring veterans Saturday night at the Kennedy Center in Washington."The fake media is trying to silence us, but we will not let them," Trump said, without offering any evidence that journalists-- who cover every public remark made by the President-- have attempted to silence him."The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House," Trump said. "But I'm President and they're not."Sasse added that while "(t)here are a whole bunch of particular journalists who should be called out for particular stories that aren't good enough," it is "not helpful to call the press the enemy of the American people"-- a direct reference to language used by the President to describe journalists.Trump has referred to the media as "the enemy of the people" several times since taking office, telling the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last winter, "A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are-- they are the enemy of the people."Trump used the same language in February, tweeting, "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!"Sasse said that while he agrees with Trump "that there's a lot of crappy journalism out there," if Americans are not open to hearing differing views, it's "going to be possible for people to surround themselves only with echo chambers and silos of people that already believe, only believe what they believe.""We differ about really big and important things in this country and then we come together around the First Amendment, which is an affirmation of the fact that people are free before government," he added. "I mean, this is the Fourth of July weekend. The Declaration of Independence is pretty dang clear about this-- that we think government is just our shared tool to secure those rights."
The morally outraged and sagacious Señor Sasse has a ZERO ProgressivePunch crucial vote score for the entire 6 months since Trump got into the White House. He hasn't voted against a single Trump nominee nor has he been at variance with a single Trump initiative. (Like Sasse, most Senate Republicans just serve as rubber stamps for every single thing Trump wants. Only 16 Republicans have voted at least once-- and most of them, only once-- against something-- anything-- Trump-related.)I don't know where Fox News is on my TV-- and I haven't heard Kennedy's voice since she was a KROQ dj but Think Progress reported a couple days ago that she was on-air excusing her party's decision to take healthcare away from over 20 million Americans-- thinning the herd-- as "progressive hysteria" that didn't really matter since "we're all," in her very, very, very GOP words, "going to die" anyway. "We’re all going to die. And they can’t predict-- there’s no way unless they are absolutely psychic and have a party line to heaven, they don’t know who’s going to die or when or how many people." Fox is so amazing. There wouldn't be a Trump-- couldn't be a Trump-- without it. Thanks, Bill Clinton for giving that to America, your most enduring legacy. How'd that deal work out for you?Unless you live in the Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Virginia Beach area, you probably never heard of Scott Taylor, another hapless Paul Ryan rubber stamp and unaccomplished backbencher, basically a waste of a congressional seat in a district Obama won twice but that the DCCC just keeps botching up. Last year Hillary lost to Trump there 48.8-45.4%. Taylor is a freshman, who last year defeated Democrat Shaun Brown, 61.3% to 38.5% in what everyone would agree is a swing district. Why that big disparity? Was it the DCCC's fault? Yeah. Brown raised $27,892 to Taylor's $839,485 for the open seat race. The DCCC spent zero on her race, hating her because she's a strong advocate of progressive policies and, worse in their eyes, a former Bernie delegate. It looks like she'll be running against Taylor again this year. Yesterday Taylor, who has voted in lockstep with Trump 100% of the time, was on CNN. When Alisyn Camerota asked him about Trump, his response was "I did not come on here to defend the president." No he's out on the media circuit to help push the idea that loyal Republicans have to give Trump a blank check... on everything. His vote score is ZERO, rare in a swing district. His ProgressivePunch voting record summary is pretty breathtaking:Who thinks we need a more competent, better-led DCCC?
