Inside Mar-a-Lago, Where Thousands Partied Near Secret Files
A Times investigation shows how Donald J. Trump stored classified documents in high-traffic areas at Mar-a-Lago, where guests may have been within feet of the materials.
A New York Times investigation reveals how easily accessible classified documents may have been to the thousands of guests who visited Mar-a-Lago in the months after Mr. Trump left office. The Times created a 3-D model of Mar-a-Lago and reviewed images from social media and other sources to show how people were, at times, within feet of the materials.
Will Republicans once again nominate Donald Trump for president? Or will they turn to Ron DeSantis instead? I have no idea.
What I do know is that anyone imagining DeSantis as a more sensible, saner figure than Trump — a right-wing populist without the reality-denying paranoia — is delusional. DeSantis hasn’t gone down all the same rabbit holes as Trump, but he has gone down some of his own, and his descent has been just as deep.
Above all, DeSantis is increasingly making himself the face of vaccine conspiracy theories, which have turned a medical miracle into a source of bitter partisan division and have contributed to thousands of unnecessary deaths.
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You’re not just competing against the narrative in your opponent’s ads and statements and public positions and whatever paid and earned media you. You’re also competing with some dumb nutrition influencer who has opinions about vaccines.
Ending the Military COVID Vaccine Requirement is a Mistake
Undermines readiness, politicizes the military, indulges conspiracy theories—and for what?
The fact that over 13 billion COVID shots have been administered worldwide, and antivaxxers’ fear of vaccine-caused mass death hasn’t come close to happening does not dissuade them. (If they were open to large-n scientific evidence, they wouldn’t be antivaxxers). And for many Republican politicians who do acknowledge reality, antivaxxers now make up too much of the party base to challenge.
Coronavirus boosters cut hospitalization risk by at least 50%, CDC data shows
At this time last year, there were twice as many covid-19 cases and about 70,000 people hospitalized,with deaths averaging about 1,300 a day.(Case data is a much less-reliable indicator now because at-home test results go unreported.)
Jeanne Marrazzo, director of infectious diseases at University of Alabama in Birmingham, said thenew CDC dataon booster effectiveness is encouraging.
“Pretty amazing that both studies could show a significant (and in older adults, quite substantial!) effect so quickly, given that the vaccine wasn’t even available till Sept. 1,” she wrote in an email.
Whether or not Biden runs in 2024, his party has several potential contenders for national office.
If Democrats had suffered the expected drubbing, Biden might have found that renomination in 2024 had slipped out of his grasp. As things stand, though, the party’s overperformance in the midterms likely means the nomination is his if he wants it. He hassaidthat it is his “intention” to run again, and that he will make a decision “early” in 2023.
Before breaking down the best potential Biden successors, though, let’s make clear who’s at the bottom of the list.Vice President Kamala Harrishas been held to an impossible standard that goes far beyond the level of scrutiny her predecessors faced; it is plainly necessary to take her race and gender into account when analyzing herremarkable unpopularitywith Americans.
But having said that, it’s also important to note that Harris is a bad politician who doesn’t know how to pitch Democratic policy outside of California. There are reasons her 2020 campaignflamed out, and there’s no evidence to suggest she’d chart a better course in the future. And while her verbal gaffes, which have repeatedly gone viral, may not be much worse than the awkward verbal missteps of Trump or Biden, they do nothing to instill confidence in her as a possible presidential candidate.
Throwing the whole world into a single room together doesn’t work.
Five years ago I was sitting around drinking a beer with my college buddy Dayv. I was scrolling through Twitter and watching people get mad at Donald Trump’s latest outrage, and I said “You know…fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the internet.” “Tweet that!”, Dayv said, so I did. That banal observation became my most popular tweet of all time, and the quote has now beenposted ad infinitum on content millsall over the web.
Too true, which you’d know if you were here for moderated purges at this site a decade ago.
Yet again, an important part of the public square is controlled by a narcissistic toddler.
Musk’s petty outbursts make you wonder how dangerous it would be if a narcissistic, self-interested, vindictive adolescentever gained a major political officesuch as, say, the White House. But I digress.
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But we can at least shelve all of Musk’s blather about free speech. Twitter is an important part of how we disseminate and process news, and it’s now in the hands of an irritable and unpredictable child. This is one more step in the infantilization of American life, in which we must accommodate and work around the behavior of grown men and women who not so long ago would have been pushed out of public life either by our collective political disgust or by responsible shareholders who would insist that their corporate leaders get back to work instead of making a spectacle of themselves.
And the banned reporters are back.
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I want to thank everyone for all the support and kind words over the past day and some change. I was pretty bummed about getting suspended initially but quickly realized it’d be fine because I’m blessed to have an amazing online community. Seriously, I appreciate it a lot. Cheers
