Dean Phillips Finally Ends Presidential Campaign That No One Asked For

After winning a sum total of zero delegates in the Democratic Super Tuesday primaries, Dean Phillips has called it quits on his long-shot bid for the White House.

“I ran for Congress in 2018 to resist Donald Trump, I was trapped in the Capitol in 2021 because of Donald Trump, and I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again—because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options,” Phillips wrote in a statement Wednesday.

“But it is clear that alternative is not me. And it is clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be,” he said.

The Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden had brought several memorable moments to the 2024 presidential race, such as  when he announced he would run as a “generic Democrat” to no fanfare, when he forgot about population density, or when he launched a very human A.I. chatbot to help voters get to know him. 

Apart from his age, Philip’s only major policy differences with the sitting president included lowering costs for housing, health care, and childcare; changing the tax code to allow parents to deduct the cost of childcare; raising the minimum wage; and a proposal to legalize weed at the federal level.

Still, on his way out, Phillips couldn’t resist one last shot at the 81-year-old president.

“In 2011, I hosted then VP Biden at my home. Most notable was his empathy and kindness to my daughters and the catering staff, with whom he sat and had ice cream (surprise-surprise). His decency and wisdom were rarities in politics then, and even more so today,” Phillips said in his statement.

“Over a decade later, the only thing that has changed is time—which slows all of us down a bit, including presidents.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t disavowing her theory that Jewish space lasers were the cause of the California wildfires, but she definitely wants to stop being pestered about it, going so far as to tell one journalist to “fuck off” with the questions.

At a Super Tuesday event at Mar-a-Lago, Greene was approached by former BBC journalist Emily Maitlis, who after a perfectly civil interview on the topic of Nikki Haley dared to follow up on the Georgia Republican’s bonkers conspiracy.

“Can you tell me why so many people that support Donald Trump love conspiracy theories, including yourself? He seems to attract lots of conspiracy theorists,” prompted Maitlis, who now works for The News Agents.

“Well, let me tell you, you’re a conspiracy theorist,” Greene shot back. “And the left and the media spreads more conspiracy theories. We like the truth, we like supporting our Constitution, our freedoms, and America First.”

As Greene turned around to leave, Maitlis got in one more question.

“What about Jewish space lasers? Tell us about Jewish space lasers,” she asked, referring to a 2018 Facebook post in which Greene linked alleged sightings of “lasers or blue beams of light” to the cause of the California wildfires. She then, apropos of nothing, further tied those sightings to the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family often targeted by antisemitic conspiracies, whom she believed were clearing the land for rail stations.

“Why don’t you go talk about Jewish space lasers?” Greene replied to Maitlis. “And really, why don’t you fuck off? How about that?”

It’s not even the first time in recent memory that Greene has had a sour moment with a British broadcaster over the theory. During an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored in November, Greene refused to acknowledge that she had written the infamous Facebook post, insisted that she was not an antisemite, and claimed that Morgan was twisting her words as he read the post verbatim.

“I talk about Jewish space lasers in my book because that was something I never said,” Greene said at the time, referring to her memoir. “Excuse me, Piers, I never said that phrase. That was a lie about me. If you read my original Facebook post, I never said it. That’s why I had to write this book.”

In a 2021 interview, Greene claimed ignorance, alleging that she “didn’t even know and didn’t find out until recently that the Rothschilds were Jewish.”

He took his time, but ultimately Senator Mitch McConnell has fallen in line and endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2024.

The Senate minority leader and longtime leader of the Senate Republican caucus said in a statement to The Washington Post Wednesday, “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States.”

McConnell announced his decision just minutes after Trump’s lone remaining challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race after only winning one of Super Tuesday’s 16 state contests. McConnell himself announced last week that he will step down as GOP leader in November.

The endorsement was long sought after by Trump, with coordinated efforts from staffers for both politicians seeking to secure a rapprochement. Trump and McConnell have not spoken since December 2020, when the Senate minority leader recognized Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Over the years, McConnell and Trump have had an acrimonious relationship, to say the least. McConnell has privately and publicly criticized Trump for his role in fomenting the January 6 riots, although he didn’t vote to convict Trump afterward in impeachment proceedings. Trump has called McConnell a “dumb son of a b----” and remarked that he would like to replace McConnell as majority leader if he were reelected president.

Trump has also made racist attacks against Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, an Asian American, despite the fact that Chao served as Trump’s secretary of transportation, and accused McConnell of conflicts of interest, alleging that Chao has ties to China that compromise McConnell. But, as Senator Ted Cruz can attest, attacks on one’s spouse can easily be forgiven in Trump’s Republican Party.

Super Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary on the surface went well for Joe Biden, as he was able to pick up the delegates from all 16 states.

But in seven states, voters had the option of selecting an “uncommitted” or “no preference” option instead of voting for Biden, Marianne Williamson, or Dean Phillips—and the results shattered expectations.

In six of the seven states, the “uncommitted” or “no preference” option received 6 percent or more of the vote, which could translate to deciding votes in November’s tightly contested election. In Minnesota, 15.7 percent of Democratic voters chose to vote “uncommitted” rather than back the president. And in North Carolina, a key state in 2024, nearly 12 percent of voters also showed up to the polls and chose to vote “uncommitted” instead.

The “uncommitted” vote is picking up steam in large part thanks to organizers urging the president to reverse his support for Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza and call for an immediate cease-fire. In Michigan, the effort resulted in more than 100,000 votes for “uncommitted,” or about 13 percent of the vote, a significant margin in a state that Biden only won by 154,000 votes in 2020.

Meanwhile, also on Super Tuesday, in the territory of American Samoa, Jason Palmer, who wasn’t even on many state ballots, won with 51 votes out of the 91 votes cast. Palmer called for a cease-fire in Gaza and withholding military aid to Israel in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) in February.

Although Vice President Kamala Harris called for a temporary cease-fire on Sunday, Biden’s policy toward Israel’s attacks on Gaza hasn’t changed on the ground, with Israel’s bombing campaign continuing unabated. And Trump’s most recent comments signal staunch support for Israel, with the former president answering Fox & Friends about whether he approved of Israel’s actions with “You’ve got to finish the problem.”

Eight years later, Donald Trump still can’t admit that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

During a Super Tuesday special on the Right Side Broadcasting Network, Trump got an unexpected reminder of his 2016 loss from host Brian Glenn (who happens to be Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend), which sent him down a rabbit hole that his advisers have urged him to avoid.

“Let’s talk about winning that popular vote. How would that make you feel to win the popular vote?” Glenn asked.

“Well, look, we have a couple of problems in this country. Number one, mail-in voting. Mail-in voting will always be dishonest. OK? And it’s a shame that we have it,” Trump started, slamming a process that he has used several times to cast his own votes, including twice in the 2020 primary elections.

“Jimmy Carter did a report, along with a couple of other senators that were respected Democrats, Republicans. It [was] like a commission. And the end result of the report was, ‘Never go to mail-in voting. It will always be dishonest.’ That was a long time ago,” he continued.

“France fairly recently switched from mail-in voting to one day, paper ballots, voter ID, very simple. One-day voting. I mean, these elections where they take 61 days and then they want an extension and, you know, they use machines to count it fast. But nobody ever had a—I mean, they last weeks longer. And then you wonder what’s happening and how come that material was moved and it was there. And where is it now?” the GOP front-runner rambled, before adding, “We have to have fair elections.”

But Glenn couldn’t leave it alone.

“So you feel like this time you’re making some really good inroads?” the far-right host asked.

“I do, and the big thing is we have to stop the cheating. I don’t need votes. We have all the votes we need. We have to stop the cheating. Because I actually think that. I actually think we would win the popular vote if it was, if God came down and was your vote counter where it would be honest. I think we win the popular vote. But they’ve cheated for years,” Trump concluded.

The rest of the dizzying segment included a bit in which Trump referred to the 2016 border as a “baby border” compared to today’s situation—despite the fact that Trump’s presidency focused on building “the wall” in the interim and Trump managed last month to kill a bipartisan border security bill.

He also returned to measuring himself against his old enemy, President Barack Obama, claiming the forty-fourth president “won a lot less” than he did.

It’s worth noting that Trump lost the popular vote—and the vote in general—in 2020 too. Despite his repeated claims that the election was fraudulent, no one, including people Trump hired, has found any evidence to back up that conspiracy.