Kevin McCarthy’s Explanation for Trump’s Third Indictment? He’s So Popular!

According to Kevin McCarthy, the only reason Donald Trump faces criminal consequences is because he polls so well.

McCarthy’s suggestion comes while the twice-impeached, twice-indicted, and liable-for-sexual-abuse former president is now facing a possible third indictment for helping incite a riot on the nation’s Capitol.

Trump announced on Tuesday that he has been notified that he is a target in the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a sign that he may be charged soon.

This could prove to be a moment of conservatives turning more forcefully against the man who led the party to defeat in 2020, helped it fizzle away high expectations in 2022 and lose special election after special election. But not for McCarthy.

The House speaker wasted no time falling on the sword for the loser and serial criminal.

“Well, I guess under a Biden administration, Biden America, you’d expect this. If you noticed recently, President Trump went up in the polls and was actually surpassing President Biden for reelection,” McCarthy said. “So what do they do now? Weaponize government to go after their number one opponent. It’s time and time again. I think the American public is tired of this. They want to have, see equal justice and the idea that they utilize this to go after those who politically disagree with him is wrong.”

The American public is tired of something, but it might have more to do with Trump’s crimes—and Republicans’ mealy-mouthed defenses of them—and less about Trump actually being held accountable.

It’s not as if McCarthy has no idea what stance he could take instead. In January 2021, for instance, McCarthy sang a different tune, saying the attack on the Capitol “was undemocratic, un-American, and criminal” and that “the president bears responsibility.”

Someone held up a Pride flag at a DeSantis campaign event—and promptly triggered the Republican presidential candidate into an unhinged rant about indoctrination.

One of the main planks in Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign platform is his battle against “wokeness,” particularly anything that has to do with the LGBTQ community. DeSantis regularly spouts the popular right-wing smear that LGBTQ people are pedophiles, and he often points to the extreme laws he signed in Florida curbing human rights.

During an event in Tega Cay, South Carolina, on Monday night, DeSantis drilled down on this point. He accused President Joe Biden of ignoring his seventh grandchild but taking too much interest in Republicans’ children.

While DeSantis was speaking, a protester stood up and held up a rainbow Pride flag. Event security quickly descended on the protester and began escorting them out.

“They shouldn’t be worrying about our children, either,” DeSantis shouted after the protester. “We don’t want you indoctrinating our children! Leave our kids alone!”

DeSantis has been struggling since he launched his campaign. Current support for him sits at about 20 percent, far behind front-runner Donald Trump. The Florida governor seems to think that doubling down on anti-wokeness is the key to winning.

But instead of helping his case, it just serves to make him look even more glitchy and out of touch.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathrooms and ballrooms were not just filled with top secret government documents. He apparently has also been hoarding temporarily loaned Israeli antiquities there for four years.

Haaretz reports that Israel lent the Trump White House antiquities, including ancient ceramic lamps from its national treasures collection, for a Hanukkah candle-lighting event in 2019. Israel Hasson, the then-director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, approved the loan of the antiquities so long as they were returned within weeks.

Hasson told Haaretz that “we wanted our man to go and bring it back, but then Covid broke out, and everything got stuck.” So Hasson’s agency had asked Saul Fox, a major Jewish-American donor to the Antiquities Authority, to keep the items in tow until they could be brought back to Israel. But, Haaretz reports, Israeli authorities discovered several months ago that the antiquites instead ended up at Mar-a-Lago, “where they still remain.”

Eli Eskozido, the new Antiquities Authority head, has asked the Israeli government and Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to Israel to coordinate a return of the antiquities, but to no avail. One source told Haaretz that he wouldn’t be surprised if “the items Israel seeks are also eventually found in some bathroom.”

Republicans have bent over backward to show their inextinguishable support for Israel, but it’s unclear whether they will question why Trump has been harboring Israeli antiquities. After all, they had barely any criticism for his stealing of U.S. national security documents.

Fox News host Jesse Watters made his 8 p.m. debut, and his first show featured a very special guest: his mom.

Mrs. Watters is a Democrat, and she called in to the show Monday night to give her son some advice on how to avoid a lawsuit. She had some pretty good advice, but it’s unlikely Watters—who has a long history of racism, sexism, conspiracy theory peddling, and general grossness—will listen.

“Do not tumble into any conspiracy rabbit holes. We do not want to lose you, and we want no lawsuits,” Watters’s mom said. “In keeping with the Hippocratic oath, do no harm.”

“Use your voice responsibly to promote conversation that maintains a narrative thread. There really has been enough Biden-bashing, and the laptop is old,” she added, referring to Republicans’ fruitless investigation into the Biden family.

“Perhaps you could suggest that your people take less interest, for example, in other people’s bodies, and talk about that,” she continued.

“We’re trying to keep other people’s interest away from children’s bodies!” Watters protested, bringing up a favorite right-wing smear that all LGBTQ people are pedophiles.

His mom didn’t push back, but went on with her list of advice. “I want you to seek solutions, versus fanning the flames,” she said. “You could encourage that Bedminster friend of yours to return to his earlier career on television. Everyone in his audience could wear a red hat. And I’m sure the ratings would soar.”

Let’s hope that not just Watters, but all of Fox News, starts listening to his mom.

A Democrat criticizes Israel for its human rights abuses against Palestinians, and the political establishment in both parties jumps on them like sharks.

Sound familiar?

Representative Pramila Jayapal was the latest victim of the pattern after she called Israel—a state that has committed decades of human rights abuses, engaged in land dispossession and home demolition, upheld separate systems of law, and maintained a militarized police state against Palestinians—a “racist state.”

Jayapal made the comments over the weekend, at the progressive Netroots Nation conference in Chicago, ahead of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s expected address to Congress on Wednesday. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush had already said they would boycott Herzog’s address, while Jamaal Bowman had said he would “probably not” attend, either.

“The Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy,” Jayapal said to a group of activists at the conference, which set off the outrage machine in Washington.

Republicans have gone on an unsurprising full-throated offensive against Jayapal and her progressive colleagues (while ignoring vile antisemitism among their ranks). But Democrats too have cynically jumped in on attacking one of their own for echoing what an array of human rights organizations have already said.

Jayapal felt forced to walk back her statement on Sunday, while still calling out Israel’s “extreme right-wing government,” which “has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies.” Even then, top Democrats were hungry to show how sensitive they are to bad-faith right-wing attacks and how completely insensitive they are to Palestinian rights.

“Israel is not a racist state,” House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, Pete Aguilar, and Ted Lieu insisted in a joint statement Sunday. “Certainly, there are individual members of the current Israeli governing coalition with whom we strongly disagree. That is also the case with respect to some on the other side of the aisle who we serve with in the United States Congress.”

Jeffries has called twice-impeached and twice-indicted former President Donald Trump a “racial arsonist” and the “grand wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” With statements like these, Democrats have posed far-right conservatism as a fundamental threat to America’s status as a democracy. But when it comes to the same issues in Israel, tone-policing seems to be their main concern.

And it was not just leadership. Representative Ritchie Torres—who like Jeffries has collected troves of donations from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC, which has deliberately worked to tank Democratic candidates and support election denialists—insisted that Israel is a “multiracial democracy” that affords people “equal protection under the laws.”

Torres made the insistence in an 865-character tweet, which can only be tweeted by paying $8 to billionaire Elon Musk, who has helped contribute to the rise of antisemitism online.

The Israeli government itself has said its main guiding policy is that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right to all areas of the Land of Israel”—something one may call state-sponsored discrimination or, indeed, racism.

Organizations from Human Rights Watch to Amnesty International have condemned Israel for its racism, human rights abuses, and systems of apartheid. The kinds of organizations the mainstream press and political establishment routinely extol. And yet, when it comes to Israel, any politician who frankly echoes such concerns is immediately attacked.

The saga mirrors Representative Rashia Tlaib being viciously attacked earlier this year for supporting an event raising awareness about the Nakba, the series of events beginning in 1948 that led to the mass displacement of Palestinians, and the occupation of Palestine that continues today. Or the party’s constant attacks on Ilhan Omar for her criticism of Israel, which paved the way for Republicans to boot her from the Foreign Affairs Committee when they retook the House.

With Jayapal, Democrats are once again attacking one of their own for calling out human rights abuses and racism, something the party typically prides itself on.

“We look forward to welcoming Israeli President Isaac Herzog,” the Democratic leadership assured.