Daily Archives: July 3, 2022

With help from Eli Okun and Garrett Ross

The Jan. 6 committees work is sowing doubts about Donald Trump on the right. | Chet Strange/Getty Images

SOME GOOD FOURTH OF JULY NEWS N.Y. Mag: Someone Finally Turned Nathans Hot Dogs Into Ice Cream

SOME BAD FOURTH OF JULY NEWS WSJ: The average cost of a summer cookout rose 17% from last year.

MORE DOUBTS ABOUT THE FRONTRUNNERS Its going to take a long time to process the events of June 2022. Two monumental storylines unfurled last month that will shape politics for the foreseeable future: the Supreme Courts transformational decisions on guns, climate regulation and abortion and the Jan. 6 committees evidence of potential criminality by DONALD TRUMP.

On Friday, we looked at how the Supreme Courts flurry of decisions pushing the country rightward is sowing doubts about Biden on the left.

For more on that, check out these two numbers in the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll:

64% of registered voters think Joe Biden is showing he is too old to be President.

71% of registered voters say Bidenshould not run for a second term.

But today we want to look closer at how the Jan. 6 committees work is sowing doubts about Trump on the right. The same poll reports:

61% of registered voters say Trumpshould not run for president.

The reasons?

He's erratic: 36%

He will divide America: 33%

He's responsible for Jan. 6: 30%

Two must-read pieces are chock-full of on-the-record quotes from Republicans who want to move on from the former president:

Via APs Steve Peoples and Thomas Beaumont:

Youd be hard-pressed to find people in this area who support the idea that people arent looking for someone else, said DAVE VAN WYK, a transportation company owner. To presume that conservative America is 100% behind Donald Trump is simply not the case.

People are concerned that we could lose the election in 24 and want to make sure that we dont nominate someone who would be seriously flawed, CHRIS CHRISTIE said.

His approval among Republican primary voters has already been somewhat diminished, Maryland Gov. LARRY HOGAN said in an interview. Trump was the least popular president in American history until Joe Biden.

Republican activists believed Donald Trump was the only candidate who could beat Hillary, MARC SHORT said. Now, the dynamic is reversed. He is the only one who has lost to Joe Biden.

If it looks like theres a place for me next year, Ive never lost a race, Im not going to start now, NIKKI HALEY told reporters. Ill put 1,000% in and Ill finish it. And if theres not a place for me, I will fight for this country until my last breath.

I just dont know if [Trumps] electable anymore, [KATHY DE KONING of Iowa] said.

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Via NYTs Michael Bender, Reid Epstein and Maggie Haberman:

Republicans want to win badly in 2022, and it is dawning on many of them that relitigating the 2020 election with Trumps daily conspiracy diatribes are sure losers, said DICK WADHAMS, a Republican strategist and former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

Theres some evidence that some Republican voters are trying to slow-walk from Donald Trump, said SCOTT JENNINGS, a Republican strategist. Jennings said he was not surprised by Mr. Trumps eagerness to jump into the presidential race. If youre in his shoes, you have to try to put that fire out. Because the more it burns, the more it burns.

Ms. Hutchinson would be the star member of a womens Republican club a committed conservative, no reason to say anything but the truth, said Senator BILL CASSIDY of Louisiana, who voted to convict in Mr. Trumps second impeachment and has been a target of Mr. Trumps since. He was one of the few lawmakers who spoke on the record. It gives power to a testimony that allows Americans to judge for themselves.

There will be a number of Republicans who many Republicans feel cannot only unite the party but would govern with strong, conservative policies, said JASON SHEPHERD, a former NEWT GINGRICH aide who is a Georgia Republican Party state committeeman.

Theres just too many people who dont really like him, [NICOLE] WOLTER said. We want everyone to kind of rally around him and be able to get the independents, and I just think that if he ran, he wouldnt be able to pull that off.

Wishful thinking by the usual GOP suspects? Or evidence that something has really changed?

More: NBCs Marc Caputo on how Trumps fear factor shows signs of waning as 2024 Republican hopefuls jockey.

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WEEKEND LISTEN: TIM MILLER and ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN sat down with Ryan this week to discuss their respective journeys navigating Trumpism and what CASSIDY HUTCHINSONs testimony could mean for the future of Trumps grip on the Republican Party.

Why is MIKE PENCE letting Cassidy testify? Mike Pence knows about all this stuff better than anybody, Miller said. And he's not going to be the president. If anybody knows how derelict Donald Trump was on that day, it's Pence. Listen to Playbook Deep Dive

BIDENS SATURDAY: The president has nothing on his public schedule.

VP KAMALA HARRIS SATURDAY (all times Eastern):

12:10 p.m.: The vice president will depart Los Angeles en route to New Orleans.

5:15 p.m.: Harris will attend the 28th ESSENCE Festival of Culture, where she will participate in a fireside conversation with KEKE PALMER.

8 p.m.: Harris will depart New Orleans to return to Los Angeles.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

WNBA star Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing in Khimki, just outside of Moscow, Russia, on Friday, July 1. | Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo

ALL POLITICS

TRUMP VS. HOGAN Dems meddle in Trump-Hogan proxy war in Maryland, by Zach Montellaro: DAN COXs campaign for governor of Maryland got an early endorsement from Donald Trump last fall. And now, Democrats want Republican primary voters to know all about it.

The Democratic Governors Association launched a new ad Friday blasting Cox, a state lawmaker, for his ties to Trump, for being 100 percent pro-life and for refusing to support any federal restrictions on guns. But the end goal of the ad is not to sink Cox. Instead, Democrats are hoping to boost him in the July 19 Republican primary for governor, which has turned into a tight battle for the nomination with former state Commerce Secretary KELLY SCHULZ term-limited GOP Gov. LARRY HOGANs preferred successor.

KNOWING MARKWAYNE MULLIN He was prepared to kill Jan. 6 rioters. Now MAGA voters may give him a Senate seat, by WaPos Paul Kane in an analysis piece on the Oklahoma GOP representative.

JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

THE NOT-SO SECRET SERVICE Jan. 6 inquiry thrusts Secret Service back into center of controversy, by WaPos Carol Leonnig: The new depiction of the Secret Service which has endured a decade of controversy from a prostitution scandal and White House security missteps during the Obama years to allegations of politicization under Trump has cast new doubt on the independence and credibility of the legendary presidential protective agency.

Accounts of Trump angrily demanding to go to Capitol on January 6 circulated in Secret Service over past year, by CNNs Noah Gray and Zachary Cohen

ABORTION FALLOUT

HEADS UP Texas Supreme Court blocks order that resumed abortions, by APs Paul Weber, Anthony Izaguirre and Stephen Groves: It was not immediately clear whether Texas clinics that had resumed seeing patients this week would halt services again. A hearing is scheduled for later this month.

SOMETHING TO WATCH House GOP women are a crucial piece to partys next move on abortion, by WaPos Marianna Sotomayor: There are 32 women in the House GOP conference, the largest number in history. And their ranks are expected to grow in a midterm year.

THE DEM DONOR REACTION Democrats swiftly raised $80M after court overturned Roe, by APs Brian Slodysko

IN THE STATES As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure, by the Indianapolis Stars Shari Rudavsky and Rachel Fradette

TRUMP CARDS

FOR YOUR RADAR Trump hires former 9th Circuit judge Kozinski for Twitter court fight, by Reuters Jacqueline Thomsen and Mike Scarcella

WHERE ARE THEY NOW She helped get Trump elected. Now shes raising crypto for Ukraine, by WaPos Steven Zeitchik: BRITTANY KAISER, the provocative Cambridge Analytica veteran, has become critical to the government of Volodymyr Zelensky. Not everyone is enthusiastic.

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CLICKER The nations cartoonists on the week in politics, edited by Matt Wuerker 15 funnies

GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Ryan Lizza:

How Do You Prepare for a School Shooting? by NYTs C.J. Chivers, with photos and captions by Lindsay Morris and Jake Nevins: In a gruesome new American ritual, mass casualty simulations confront first responders with agonizing choices they would face in a real attack.

The Other Cancel Culture: How a Public University Is Bowing to a Conservative Crusade, by ProPublicas Daniel Golden and Kirsten Berg: With a rising national profile and donor base and relatively little state funding, Boise State University should be able to resist pressure by the Idaho Legislature. Instead the university, led by a liberal transplant, has repeatedly capitulated.

Did This Trump-Loving, Leopard-Hunting Dentist Kill His Wife? by Rolling Stones Matt Sullivan: Larry Rudolph built an empire in strip-mall suburbia, and a reputation as a gun-culture hero. Then came the love triangle, the allegations of fraud, and a mysterious death in Africa. Was it a tragic accident? Or murder?

Unsettled, by The Verges Makena Kelly: The Afghan refugee crisis collides with the American housing disaster.

He was acting strangely. Then he vanished into the Virginia wilderness, by WaPos Lizzie Johnson: The disappearance of 18-year-old Ty Sauer set off a frantic search in a densely wooded area of Shenandoah National Park.

Leonard Cohens Hallelujah Belongs to Everyone, by The Atlantics Kevin Dettmar: What is it about the once virtually unknown song that inspires so many musicians to make it their own?

Jason Brassard Spent His Lifetime Collecting the Rarest Video Games. Until the Heist, by Vanity Fairs Justin Heckert: The porn trilogy for Nintendos. Atari games from the 1980s. Pristine nostalgia, potentially worth millions, gone in a night.

Pete Buttigieg educated his Twitter followers about flight cancellations.

Elon Musk broke his Twitter silence on Friday, posting a photo with Pope Francis.

Jerry Hall has filed for divorce from Rupert Murdoch.

Enda ODowd, an Irish Times video journalist, documented the lowlights from the Arizona GOP gubernatorial debate.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD Kristen Soltis Anderson, founding partner of Echelon Insights and a CNN contributor, and Chris Anderson, software engineering manager at Sweetgreen, on Tuesday welcomed Eliana Christine Anderson. Pic

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Playbooks own Setota Hailemariam Jonathan Capehart Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) and Randy Weber (R-Texas) Eric Fanning of the Aerospace Industries Association Brad Todd of On Message POLITICOs Cristina Rivero The Verges Brooke Minters Scott McGee of Kelley Drye Derek Gianino of Wells Fargo Matthew Dybwad of Xandr Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots Courtney Geduldig of Micron Technology Matthew L. Schwartz Snaps Gina Woodworth Arkadi Gerney ... Sam Nitz ... Emily Stanitz Reed Howard former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu former Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) Luci Baines Johnson Jeremy Garlington (53) NBCs Tom Llamas and Keith Morrison Abbey Rogers of Rokk Solutions Billy Constangy of Rep. Richard Hudsons (R-N.C.) office Collin Davenport of Rep. Gerry Connollys (D-Va.) office TikTok's Brooke Oberwetter

THE SHOWS (Full Sunday show listings here):

ABC This Week, anchored by Martha Raddatz: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). Panel: Alex Burns, Molly Ball, Mary Bruce and Brittany Shepherd.

FOX Fox News Sunday: Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves John Kirby. Panel: Marc Thiessen, Mollie Hemingway, Howard Kurtz and Juan Williams.

CBS Face the Nation: DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) Henning Tiemeier German Chancellor Olaf Scholz Jan Crawford Debora Patta.

CNN State of the Union: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). Panel: Bakari Sellers, Linda Chavez, Jess McIntosh and Scott Brown.

CNN Inside Politics: Jill Dougherty. Panel: Jonathan Swan, Jackie Kucinich, Laura Barrn-Lpez, Christopher Cadelago, Camila DeChalus and Ariane de Vogue.

NBC Meet the Press: Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra Danny Cevallos. Panel: Matthew Continetti, Jeh Johnson, Marianna Sotomayor and Ali Vitali.

MSNBC The Sunday Show: Linda Villarosa Deborah Watts Kurt Bardella Judith Browne Dianis.

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Send Playbookers tips to [emailprotected] or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldnt happen without our editor Mike Zapler, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Setota Hailemariam and Bethany Irvine.

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POLITICO Playbook: Growing doubts about Trump and Biden in '24- POLITICO - POLITICO

You dont say.

The committee members felt that taking on this oh-so-altruistic act on behalf of America meant that they didnt have to publicly reckon with the moral compromise of working for someone like Trump. Somehow this justification persisted even after they no longer worked for him and were using their access to make it rain in the private sector. Convenient!

Not a single one of the brave warriors on the Committee to Save America endorsed the only person who could actually save America from Trump his opponent in the 2020 election.

Despite this logical incongruence, it was the self-flattering messiahs who won the argument among Republicans in D.C. Their demand that good people do everything in their power to protect the country from the horrific realities of the president eventually extended not just to those in the national security apparatus but to mid-level political offices throughout town.

From their wake emerged their messianic junior partners who worked as Trump aides and Hill staffers and campaign flacks. They may not have convinced themselves they were saving the world exactly but were justified in the knowledge that if they did not take a glamorous White House job or continue working for a white-bread rational senator, the country would be saddled with someone far worse. Maybe even a white nationalist! Whos to say? (The fact that a white nationalist might be their replacement did not seem to strike many of the juniors as something that required reflection on the nature of their employment.)

These Junior Messiahs told themselves they were patriots, sacrificing on behalf of the American people, who deserved dedicated public servants like them. This belief was buttressed by the fact that they often had a point: The staffer who would replace them or the politician who would upend their boss in a primary was almost assuredly more terrible. In Trumps GOP, entropy was taking hold. From the cabinet to the Senate to the school board, the stodgy erudite men of yesteryear were being replaced by ambitious MAGA-fakers who were in turn being replaced by psychotic true believers, giving credence to the conceit that they used to comfort themselves anytime doubt crept in.

The Demonizers were the quickest to drink the Trumpian orangeade as a chaser to liberal tears. For some this was a dogmatic response to any signs of Democratic hostility to people of faith or the free market (or both, for those with the in-home Milton Friedman shrine).

For others, it was cultural, a rejection of the liberal pieties that ground their gears, a discomfort with how fast the script around gender and race was changing. For still others it seemed more personal, emanating from a bitterness over the snooty know-it-allism of the liberals in their life. They clung to anger over the way the left and the media had treated decent Republicans over the years, concluding that, if Mitt Romney and John McCain were going to be tarred as sexist, racist warmongers, then they had no choice but to throw in with the real sexists and racists.

This notion of anger driving support for Trump echoes what a lot of elite conservatives have admitted on the record. Rich Lowry, the nebbish National Review editor (and frequent POLITICO contributor), wrote on the eve of Trumps losing reelection bid that supporting Trump was a middle finger to the cultural left. This seemed to me to be an unbelievably asinine, if understandable, mindset coming from a fussy, middle-aged, Manhattan-dwelling white conservative who resents his more culturally ascendant neighbors. But what caught me off guard was how many of my peers felt the same. Over drinks in Santa Monica, a friend who I had gradually lost touch with over her rabid Trump fandom, stopped me cold when explaining her rationalizations. Despite being a socially liberal, urban-dwelling Millennial, she still had absorbed a deep well of hatred for woke culture.

I just dont feel the need to drive around my Prius drinking a coffee coolata with a coexist bumper sticker and checking the box like Ive solved climate change, she said. Me moving from plastic to paper straws is not actually moving this needle. The liberal culture of judgment, of do as I say, not as I do. John Kerry flying places in private jets. Thats why I was so drawn to Trump. I was at a breaking point.

I was genuinely dumbstruck by this. As someone who loves a chocolate shake, I also find forcible paper straw usage to be an utterly moronic inconvenience of modern urban life. But connecting that to support for Donald Trump? Being upset with Joe Biden about private companies switching to deteriorating straws? This anger didnt click with me at all.

Whatever the underlying reason, these Demonizers have decided that the left, the media, the Lincoln Project, the big-tech oligarchs, the social justice warriors, the people who put they/them pronouns in their email signature, the parents who take their kids to drag queen story hour, the Black Lives Matter protesters and the wokes who want to make stolen land acknowledgments at the start of meetings are all so evil that there is no need to even grapple with the log in their own eye. Trump was a human eff you to the bastards they thought were out to get them. Once youve decided that the other side are the baddies, everything else falls into place rather quickly.

Then you had the LOL Nothing Matters Republicans. This cadre gained steam over the years, especially among my former peers in the campaign set. It is a comforting ethos if you are professionally obligated to defend the indefensible day in and day out. Their arguments no longer needed to have merit or be consistent because, LOL, nothing matters. Right? The founder of the Trumpy right-wing website The Federalist, Ben Domenech is, I believe, the one who coined it. He said the LOLNMRs were inherently fatalist, believing that the most apocalyptic predictions about right and left are happening no matter what and that the lights will go down in the West. Now, from my vantage point, thats a rather ostentatious way of describing the standard-issue prep school man-child of privilege contrarian cynicism that has been memorialized in teen cinema for ages . . . but you get the point. The LOLNMRs had decided that if someone like Trump could win, then everything that everyone does in politics is meaningless. So they became nihilists. Some eventually took jobs working for Trump; others flipped from center-right normie game players to MAGAfied populist warriors in a flash; still others gave themselves a cocoon of protection working for the Mitch McConnells of the world, staying Trump adjacent so as to not have to challenge their newly developing worldview. But all of them avoided any of the hard questions of the era, wrapping themselves in the comfortably smug sense of self-satisfaction that comes with a lack of concern for consequences.

The professional Tribalist Trolls overlap in their tactics with the Nothing Matters crowd but are different in that they at least have an ethos. Whatever is good for their side is good. And whatever is bad for the other side is good. Simple as that. In the early social media era, I was attracted to this mindset, and for a time when the stakes seemed lower, I was even a member of their ranks. But during the Trump years, I became aghast as it spread like a virus to peoples parents and friends and well . . . some days it feels like pretty much everyone? Or at least everyone who is part of the online political discourse.

If you want to know if you are a Tribalist Troll, ask yourself this when something horrible happens in the news, does your mind impulsively hope someone from the other tribe is responsible? Nobody wants to admit that they do this. But social media has laid bare our darker angels, and we can now see in real time that a large swath of the participants in our civic dialogue have reduced themselves to the most base type of Tribalist. Veterans of the very online Washington wars have warped themselves to such a degree that every news item, every action, is not something that requires a real-world solution that mitigates the suffering, but is just the latest data point in our online forever war. Many people believe the bullshit they are being sold about their opponents to such a degree that there is an internet culture adage Poes law, which indicates that no matter how over-the-top your parody may be of your political opponent, some of your followers will believe it to be real because theyve been so conditioned to hear the other sides awfulness. This insidious Weltanschauung has infected everything from sports message boards to recipe websites to online gaming, which are all now consumed by politicized power users who want to turn every corner of our society into their battlefield. This has created a reinforcing feedback loop up to the politicians and media personalities who are rewarded for constantly embiggening their troll game and expanding the remit outside the bounds of campaign politics. Ive seen decent people become so warped by this imaginary battle that they began to appreciate Trumps skill at trolling it even if they were personally repulsed by him. Of all the categories of enablement, this might be the most pernicious and inexpiable.

Naturally, in Washington there are those who dont need complex ideological justifications for their actions because they are pure old-fashioned Strivers. Some, especially the politicians, are motivated by a blind ambition that is just frankly not that interesting. The fact that pols want to attain higher office so they contort themselves to the whims of the crowd is not a new or unique phenomenon, nor does it merit much deep examination. Its the first subcategory to the worlds oldest profession. But theres a uniquely Washington class of Striver that was drawn to Trump like moths to an orange flame. This species doesnt necessarily want to move up the career ladder for ambitions sake, but instead, they crave merely the possibility of being in the mix.

Every Striver city has a drug that best suits its residents. In New York its money . . . and coke. In Los Angeles its fame . . . and coke. In Silicon Valley its the chance to be a revered disruptor, changer of worlds . . . and microdosing. In D.C. the drug of choice is a little more down-market. All political staffers really want is to be in the mix. Its not even the power itself that they crave. That would be less pathetic, frankly. Its the proximity to power. For these Little Mixes, its the ability to tell your friends back home that you were in the room where it happened. (If its possible for an entire body to cringe while typing, thats what mine did when I wrote in the room where it happened.)

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There Are 11 Types of Donald Trump Enablers. Which One Are You? - POLITICO

He was the most powerful man in the world, the possessor of the nuclear codes. Yet he behaved like a deranged manchild who threw temper tantrums and food against the wall.

That was the tragicomic story told to America last Tuesday at a congressional hearing that had even seasoned Donald Trump watchers lifting their jaws off the floor and speculating that his political career might finally be over.

In two seismic hours in Washington, Cassidy Hutchinson, a 25-year-old former White House aide, told the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol that the former president had effectively gone haywire.

She described how Trump knew a mob of his supporters had armed itself with rifles, yet he asked for metal detectors to be removed. She also recounted how his desire to lead them to the Capitol caused a physical altercation with the Secret Service, and how in a fit of rage he threw his lunch against a White House wall, staining it with tomato ketchup.

Trump, who once called himself a very stable genius, vehemently denied the allegations but the political damage was done. Infighting and plotting engulfed a Republican party that had hoped the House of Representatives committee hearings would pass as a non-event.

Instead they have exceeded all expectations and could prove terminal to Trumps ambition of regaining the presidency in 2024 if Republican leaders, donors and voters run out of patience and decide to move on.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinsons Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trumps political career, said an editorial in the Washington Examiner, a conservative news website. Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again.

The column concluded: Trump is a disgrace. Republicans have far better options to lead the party in 2024. No one should think otherwise, much less support him, ever again.

Seemingly aware of his growing political vulnerability, Trump is reportedly considering announcing another run for the White House sooner than expected. He has teased the prospect at recent rallies and, according to the New York Times, told advisers that he might declare his candidacy on social media without warning even his own team.

Such a move could have the added impetus of heading off a new star rising in the Republican firmament. Ron DeSantis, the pugnacious governor of Florida, is widely seen as his heir apparent and biggest rival for the Republican presidential nomination in two years time. At 43, DeSantis is more than three decades younger and is free of Trumps January 6 toxicity.

Speaking from Tallahassee, longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson of Florida said: Ive picked up the same rumors that everybody else is hearing that Ron DeSantiss people are practically picking out curtains in the White House after Tuesday.

Apparently they feel like this was a phenomenal day for them, that it was a great breakdown of Trumps malfeasance and they didnt have to bring the attack it was brought by one of his former loyalists. If you look at it in terms of the 2024 nomination process, it was a consequential day.

Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies, cautioned that the twice impeached former president has been written off countless times before only to bounce back. But Trump has not faced a challenger like DeSantis.

DeSantis has been very carefully building out a presidential campaign for 2024 to primary Donald Trump, raising money, building relationships, going out there and quietly whispering: Hes crazy, Im not, Im younger, Im smarter, Im thinner, Im better looking. I can deliver more for you than the crazy old orange guy, Wilson said.

DeSantis certainly has political buzz. Ed Rollins, another Republican strategist, also believes Trump could be done, and has launched a group called Ready for Ron to gather details of DeSantis supporters ahead of an expected presidential bid.

An opinion poll released last week in the state of New Hampshire, traditionally the site of the first presidential primary, showed DeSantis in a statistical tie with Trump among likely Republican voters.

The University of New Hampshire poll found 39% supported DeSantis, with 37% backing Trump a big swing from October, when Trump had double the support DeSantis did. Former vice-president Mike Pence, who is exploring a 2024 campaign after breaking with Trump post the Capitol insurrection, was in a distant third at 9%.

There have been other clues that Trumps hold on Republican voters is not what it was. He has seen mixed results for his most high-profile endorsements in key states during this years midterm elections, in which DeSantis is seeking reelection as Florida governor.

DeSantis has proved himself a financial powerhouse, raising more than $120m since winning office in 2018. Recent financial disclosures showed his political accounts had over $110m in cash in mid-June.

Trumps Save America group, meanwhile, had just over $100m in cash at the end of May.

Republican donor Dan Eberhart told the Reuters news agency that three-quarters of roughly 150 fellow donors with whom he regularly interacts backed Trump six months ago, with a quarter going for DeSantis. But now the balance has shifted and about two-thirds want DeSantis as the 2024 standard bearer.

Eberhart was quoted as saying: The donor class is ready for something new. And DeSantis feels more fresh and more calibrated than Trump. Hes easier to defend, hes less likely to embarrass and hes got the momentum.

And the January 6 hearings are far from over. The six sessions so far have pointed the finger firmly at Trump as the unhinged architect of a failed coup who pushed conspiracy theories about voter fraud he knew to be false and was willing to let his supporters hang his own vice-president.

A survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 48% of American adults say Trump should be charged with a crime for his role. The crisply presented hearings would have been enough to bury any other politician for good.

Political scientist Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: If the testimony stands as delivered, many Republicans will begin to ask themselves whether it wouldnt be preferable to find a candidate with Mr Trumps views but not his vices.

And, of course, there is such a candidate waiting in the wings. Tuesdays hearing was a Ron DeSantis for president rally because it underscored the risks of sticking with Mr Trump for a third consecutive presidential election.

Galston, a former senior policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, described DeSantis as the distilled essence of what the post-Reagan Republican party has become. In addition, its clear to the Republican base that, like Trump, hes a fighter. Like Trump, he is not at all deterred by liberal criticism.

Some believe the cumulative effect of the January 6 hearings could be enough to persuade many in the Make America great again base that, even while they remain devoted fans of Trump, he is no longer the pragmatic choice to oust Democrat Joe Biden from the Oval Office.

The big question for Republicans moving forward is: do they want to carry this baggage of Trump into 2024? said the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, Larry Jacobs.

When youre battling to win over independent voters and when youre going to be handed a platform that could very well present a referendum on the insider party, the Democrats, it doesnt make sense even for a lot of Republican Trump supporters. Trump and his influence and his future prospects are fading fast.

But the populist-nationalism that the ex-president branded America first does look set to survive him, Jacobs added.

In the primaries, theres going to be a battle of who can carry Trumpism without Trump and thats going to be ethnic nationalism, attacks on the liberal cultural tilt of this moment, Jacobs said. You go to a Trump rally, a lot of those lines are going to be evident.

For Democrats, it may be a case of being careful about what you wish for. DeSantis was a relatively obscure congressman when Trump endorsed him for Florida governor in 2018 and has proven a worthy disciple, sparring with everyone from journalists to Disney to what he calls the woke left.

After the coronavirus pandemic took hold in 2020, he relaxed restrictions on businesses and schools in defiance of federal guidelines and overruled local officials who sought to preserve mask mandates.

DeSantis has also enacted numerous conservative bills with the help of Floridas Republican-controlled legislature, including an election police force dedicated to investigating alleged voter fraud, new voting limits and banning teachers from discussing gender identity with young children which critics decry as the dont say gay law.

He also effectively commandeered the redistricting process from Floridas state legislature, vetoing their congressional map and substituting his own proposal that eliminated two majority-Black districts while delivering four additional seats to Republicans.

Some fear that, as president, DeSantis would represent Trump 2.0 a refined, purified version without the incompetence, more efficient and ruthless and able to get things done.

Wilson, the longtime Republican consultant and Trump critic from Florida, commented: Ron DeSantis in Florida has accumulated enormous power. He has taken power away from the legislature. He is attempting to take power away from independent colleges and universities and to literally replace governance at every institution in Florida from top to bottom with the governors office.

I grew up in a time where Republicans thought a hyper powerful executive was not a great thing but Ron DeSantis has a very different opinion of executive power and he, as president, would engage in its use at a scale that would be dangerous for the country at a lot of levels.

The first nominating contests for the 2024 election are more than 18 months away, and the long term impact of the January 6 hearings remains uncertain. Lou Marin, executive vice president of the Florida Republican Assembly, does not think they will change minds. People who are paying attention realize that its a kangaroo court, he said. They need to move on and start doing their job instead of wasting taxpayer dollars.

DeSantis will also be wary of peaking too early and keenly aware that Trump, who famously boasted that he could shoot someone and not lose any voters, remains his partys most popular figure. A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll this week found 56% of Republican voters said they would back the former president well ahead of DeSantis on 16%.

Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said: A lot of people want to put a tombstone on the grave but Donald Trump is still above ground. Hes still walking the earth and has a lot of political clout with a lot more people inside the party than folks may want to admit.

Those bridges are in front of us. We havent come to them yet to see exactly what these extra revelations will now present in terms of further chiseling away Donald Trumps hold on the party.

Some Democrats argue that DeSantis would be preferable because, unlike Trump, he would not threaten the foundations of Americas constitutional democracy.

But Steele warned: Whos the better thief, the one who breaks the window to get into your house or the one whos craftily picked the lock? DeSantis knows how not to trip the alarm system.

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As Trumps star wanes, another rises: could Ron DeSantis be the new Maga bearer? - The Guardian US

Testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee has often been cringeworthy, primarily because what Donald Trump was actively trying to do his steadfast intent, in the face of all evidence and most of the advice from the approximately sane people around him is abundantly clear to anyone who has an open mind.

But it gets especially excruciating when we have to hear accounts of Trump getting all hissy and hurt, his tantrums turning to vindictiveness, like an immature, petulant high school student. (Most likely a ninth-grader with emotional problems.)

None of that behavior is surprising, because Donald John Trump has always shown everyone around him and indeed everyone, period precisely who he is, a shameless man-boy who lies andcheats to get ahead and takes pleasure in bullying others, all the while bleating about how others treat him unfairly because they accurately point out that he's a liar, cheat and bully.

RELATED:Did "surprise witness" Cassidy Hutchinson save America from Trump's comeback?

He's a human Mbius strip of misdirection, misinformation and misappropriation of funds from his supporters.

We've always known that Trump was happy to encourage violence among his followers, so while it was shocking to hear about him reportedly throwing White House lunches and dinners against the wall or onto the floor, or about his henchmen's alleged efforts to influence witnesses, mob-style, it wasn't exactly surprising.

Everybody's talking about Cassidy Hutchinson's bombshell testimony but let's go back to the Jan. 5 session when Trump tried to browbeat Mike Pence.

In its sessions so far, the Jan. 6 committee has covered a lot of ground. While everyone and their uncle is talking about former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's bombshell testimony during the surprise hearing on June 28, let's not forget the session that focused on Trump's relationship with his fanboy vice president, whom we now know Trump was willing to see hanged in front of the Capitol by the armed mob he had summoned to Washington and whipped into a fury.

In meeting with Mike Pence and John Eastman the attorney full of imaginative schemes who later on just wondered about that pardon on Jan. 5, 2021, the eve of You Know What, Trump reportedly pressed the veep to do his bidding in his usual mature manner: "You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy." (We don't know whether any of the White House china wound up on the floor during this encounter.)

When Pence correctly responded that he had no constitutional authority to stop or reject the certification of the electoral votes, according to the account in "Peril," by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Trump tried to appeal to some untapped adolescent side within the pious Hoosier, asking him: "But wouldn't it almost be cool to have that power?"

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While it's a bit of a stretch to call Mike Pence a hero, his backbone had apparently been stiffened by conversations with former Vice President Dan Quayle and retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig (man of exceedingly slow answers), and he continued to resist. That was when Trump pulled out his big guns, threatening Pence with the horror of taking away his friendship:

When Pence did not budge, Trump turned on him.

"No, no, no! Trump shouted, according to the authors. "You don't understand, Mike. You can do this. I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this."

One is reminded of the queen bee character played by Rachel McAdams in Tina Fey's spot-on 2004 film "Mean Girls." She wouldn't have been so pathetically direct about it, but manipulating others by leveraging her "friendship" was certainly how she rolled.

But that wasn't the final card pulled by Mean Girl Trump in the climactic Pence meeting. When the vice president refused to play along with Trump's plot to subvert the Constitution and undo the outcome of a legitimate election, Trump called on his public, via social media and speeches and anything else he could think of, to "tell on" Pence and ramp up the pressure for him to "do the right thing." What's more, he kept that up well after he had to know that Pence was in real physical danger at the Capitol.

People inside the White House, including the former president's daughter Ivanka, have testified that Trump phoned Pence on the morning of the insurrection and during a final heated conversation called him a "wimp" and a "pussy."

Trump's deepest fear, through all this, was that he might wind up being thought of as a loser. Asreported by the New York Times, the day before Trump and his many co-conspirators in the West Wing, in the "war room" at the Willard hotel and in the Capitol itself kicked off the insurrection for real, he admitted as much to people around him:

The president has told several people privately that he would rather lose with people thinking it was stolen from him than that he simply lost, according to people familiar with his remarks.

That is so, so high school. And there it is again, the knowledge that what he was doing was based on a lie (in case "Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen" wasn't enough for you). Trump always planned to say the 2020 election was stolen if he didn't win. He started undermining the process in the eyes of his supporters back in the 2016 primaries and then when he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million.

As we have learned from the committee hearings, Trump also understood that his Big Lie about election fraud presented him another opportunity for grift. He reportedly brought in some $250 million from his supporters for a nonexistent election defense fund (which was supposed to investigate nonexistent election fraud), emailing his small-dollar donors dozens of times a day.

People of my generation are always hoping that members of the younger generation will step up and save us from ourselves. Cassidy Hutchinson, a well-spoken 25-year-old, did just that. It was remarkably brave of her to do the right thing, to tell the truth about what she saw and heard in the mob social club of the Trump White House. (It's also reasonable to ask what she thought she was doing there in the first place.)

The ultimate lesson of these hearings so far is clear: The former president of the United States still thinks it might be "cool" to destroy democracy, and if you don't want to go along with that he definitely won't be your friend anymore and might just encourage his followers to string you up.

As Salon columnist and longtime White House correspondent Brian Karem noted recently, if our democracy is to survive, this dangerous mean girl must finally face the consequences of his actions. Seeing Trump and his enablers prosecuted would only be a first step toward our national recovery, but a vitally important one. It might make sure that future presidents don't emulate his example and remind them that "being our friend" isn't actually part of the job.

Read more on our 45th president and the Jan. 6 committee:

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Donald J. Trump, meanest of mean girls: He so doesn't want to be our friend anymore - Salon

Outgoing Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson vowed Friday that he would not support Donald Trump if the former president decides to make another White House run in 2024 with Hutchinson saying Trump constituted a risk to the nation in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

As you can see from the testimony on Jan. 6, then and subsequent to the election where he was challenging the legality of it, the lawful transfer of [power] yes, that was a threat to our democracy. That was a threat to our institutions of government, Hutchinson told CBS Mornings. And thats not the behavior we want to see in a responsible president.

Hutchinson, who is likely to be succeeded as governor by former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, added that he did not believe the House select committee investigating last years Capitol riot had proven criminal wrongdoing by Trump in connection with the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

When asked if he agreed with select committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) that Trump constituted a danger to the US, Hutchinson eventually agreed.

Everybody phrases a different way, the governor said. I would not be supporting him for 2024. He acted irresponsibly. During that time, he was a risk to the nation, absolutely.

Trump has yet to announce whether he intends to run for president again, though he has teased a final decision to follow this Novembers midterm elections.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is widely seen as the most credible challenger to Trump, but the former president has expressed optimism over the outcome of any potential primary contest, telling the New Yorkerrecently I think I would win a showdown with DeSantis.

AR Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) says Jan 6 testimony shows Trump was a "threat to our democracy."

"I would not be supporting him for 2024. He acted irresponsibly, during that time he was a risk to the nation, absolutely," he tells @edokeefe. pic.twitter.com/HbrdFOzy61

Asa Hutchinsons comments came three days after Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide in the Trump White House, testified before the Jan. 6 committee and made several bombshell claims including that Trump knew several of his supporters were armed at the Stop The Steal rally that preceded the Capitol riot and that he made a lunge at a Secret Service agent after he was unable to travel to the Capitol building that same day.

Her testimony has since been called into question by sources close to the Secret Service, who claim the lunge never happened.

Asa Hutchinson, who is not believed to be related to Cassidy Hutchinson, praised her testimony as very compelling Friday.

I think she clearly demonstrated her concern and love for our country, the governor said. She came across with a great deal of credibility, but whats the challenge with the committee is theyre not having cross-examination. Theyre not having other points of view, and so that makes it more difficult Secondly, they got into hearsay and thats where, if they cant back that up, it undermines that testimony.

The committee will hold at least one more hearing this month and hopes to wrap up its work by the beginning of next year, when Republicans are expected to take control of the House of Representatives.

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Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson won't back 'risk to the nation' Donald Trump - New York Post

Swedens Justice Minister, Morgan Johansson, has reportedly claimed that former US President Donald Trump threatened a trade war against the European nation in his bid to have A$AP Rocky released from prison.

The rapper (real name Rakim Mayers) was arrested in Stockholm on June 30, 2019, and spent close to a month imprisoned in the city he was held in police custody from July 3 to August 2 before ultimately being found guilty of assault against a 19-year-old man. After a two-week trial, Mayers was handed a conditional sentence and ordered to pay damages.

Trump became embroiled in the drama midway through July 2019, when a report claimed that Kanye West and his (now ex-)wife Kim Kardashian lobbied the former Presidents administration to secure Mayers release. Trump himself then corroborated the report, Tweeting that he will be calling the very talented Prime Minister of Sweden to see what we can do about helping A$AP Rocky.

Trumps intervention in the matter proved controversial, earning the ire of both Mayers fellow musicians and the Swedish government, a representative of whom declared that everyone is equal before the law and the government cannot interfere in legal proceedings.

In a new interview with Swedish news outlet Dagens Nyheter, Johansson reportedly expounded on the way Trump approached his plea to have Mayers released, saying the country was warned about trade restrictions they would face if the rapper was not freed. As The Independent reports, Trump allegedly sought additional support from the European Commission.

This story demonstrates how important it really is to stand up for our legal principles and not to take our democracy for granted, Johansson is said to have argued. If you can try and do something like this against Sweden, what will you then try and do to slightly weaker countries that dont have the European Union behind them?

Trump was the first to break the news of Mayers eventual release from Swedish prison, though it was reported that he turned against the rapper less than a month later, when Mayers and his manager allegedly didnt thank Trump and his team for their involvement in his release.

Mayers later denied that he didnt express any gratitude towards Trump. Last June, however, he reflected on the situation and admitted that Trumps interference in it made it a little worse.

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Swedish official says Donald Trump threatened trade war to have A$AP Rocky released from prison - NME

To his credit, Donald Trump Jr.'s holiday message was simple and uncontroversial. He tweeted, "Happy 4th of July America," followed by three American flag emojis. However, apart from the lack of punctuation, the tweet had just one teeny flaw: he posted it on July 1, three days early.Twitter rushed to set the former first son straight. "Today's the 1st, Einstein," replied a follower. Another respondent followed up, "His math has never been good. His timing even worse."One commenter had a simple wish: "Just go away. That is what America wants for this birthday."

Many responders noted the irony of celebrating the holiday just days after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, a decision that will have far-reaching effects for the country. Several replied with the meme,"4th of July has been canceled due to a shortage of independence. Sincerely, Women." Then there was the person who took issuewith Trump Jr. calling the holiday "July 4." They posted a meme saying, "Remember, it's INDEPENDENCE DAY, not the 4th of July. We celebrate sweet liberty and the founding fathers, not a calendar date."

Still, Trump Jr. did have a few supporters. One pointed out that the holiday falls on a long weekend in 2022, so he might be busy on the 4th. "Everyone says it logging off for the end of the week. How's this a criticism to celebrate freedom for 3 days? Should be celebrated 365."

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Donald Trump Jr.'s July 4 Message Is Being Roasted On Twitter - The List

During its astonishing Tuesday hearing about Donald Trumps actions on the day of January 6, the House select committee investigating the insurrection made clear that the integrity of its work is under threat. The same people who drove the former presidents pressure campaign to overturn the election are now trying to cover up the truth about January 6, warned committee chair Bennie Thompson. But thanks to the courage of certain individuals, the truth wont be buried. The main individual he seemed to have in mind was Cassidy Hutchinson, once an aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who testified to the former presidents violent and bizarre behaviordemanding that rally-goers with guns and knives be allowed onto the Ellipse to hear his speech and exploding in rage when his security detail refused to drive him to the Capitol, as rioters there began to overwhelm law enforcement.

At the hearings end, the committee displayed messages received by some of those interviewed by investigators, apparently in an effort to push them to toe Trumps party line rather than speak honestly. (Reporting has since revealed that one of those messages was sent to Hutchinson herself.) Speaking again of Hutchinson, Thompson declared to witnesses who had bowed to such threats or participated in making them: Because of this courageous woman and others like her, your attempt to hide the truth from the American people will fail.

David A. Graham: The most damning January 6 testimony yet

As Thompsons comments suggest, the January 6 committee has made the work of uncovering truth the lodestar of its public hearings. In a sense, of course, every congressional hearing is an effort to establish facts: Witnesses commonly swear, as Hutchinson did, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; false statements before Congress can be prosecuted even if theyre not made under oath. And as a committee established to uncover what happened on January 6, naturally the panel would be focused on the truth of the matter. But the January 6 committees hearings have so far been unusually powerful as a paean to the value of facts. The committee seems to take seriously its responsibility to establish an official record of the insurrection, and to communicate that record to the public in as accessible a manner as possible. That clarity is bracing in a political moment fogged with lies.

Almost from the beginning of this series of blockbuster hearings, the committee has been up-front about its intention not just to tell the truth, but to do so bluntly and directly. During the committees first open session in June, Thompson attempted to cut through legal jargon that might be off-putting to viewers, telling them that all discussion of arcane criminal statutes and legal culpability boils down to this: January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup. Trump and his supporters, Thompson argued, had tried to rewrite history by playing down what happened. And so, Thompson said, it was crucial that the committee remind youthe publicof the reality of what happened that day.

The absence of pro-Trump Republicans on the committeethanks to an early decision by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that the GOP leadership reportedly now regretshas allowed investigators an unusual degree of freedom in pinning the blame for January 6 exactly where it belongs: on Trump himself. Each of the six public hearings convened so far has zeroed in on different aspects of Trumps personal involvement with the Big Lie and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This is a notable shift from the very first congressional report on January 6, released last year by the bipartisan Senate Rules and Administration Committee and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. That document cataloged a cascade of failures across the Capitol Police, the Pentagon, and the Justice Department, but pulled its punches when it came to the question of the former presidents involvementreportedly, according to The New York Times, because Republicans have refused to ask questions about the riot that could turn up unflattering information about Mr. Trump or members of their party.

No such soft-pedaling was evident during the select committees Tuesday hearing, when Hutchinson testified again and again about Trumps enthusiasm for the riot. He thinks Mike deserves it, she remembered Meadows saying of Trumps response to insurrectionists chants of Hang Mike Pence. Likewise, previous January 6 hearings were brutally blunt in displaying the disturbing violence of the insurrection and its lasting effects on the Capitol Police officers who were injuredand the ugliness and racism of the threats leveled by Trump supporters against election officials who were trying to do the essential work of counting votes.

This stands in contrast to the sheer volume of election lies produced by Trump and his campaign. The committee emphasized how the Trump campaign sent millions of fundraising emails to Trump supporters between Election Day and January 6, built on false claims of fraud. Likewise, the former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue testified that there were so many of these allegations of voter fraud that even when officials provided Trump with a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldnt fight us on it, but he would move on to another allegation. As a colleague, the former Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz, observed to me, the committee has presented Trump and his campaigns approach to selling the Big Lie as essentially a project of spamming: drowning out the facts of what really happened, and the possibility of understanding that truth, with an endless barrage of falsehoods.

Sorting through this flood of information (and disinformation) to figure out whats really true is a difficult taskwhich is why the committees focus on providing viewers with a clear, easy-to-follow narrative is so valuable, especially after a year and a half of intentional obfuscation by Republicans about what happened. The panel is reestablishing the facts in a fashion that leaves the GOP with little room to confuse people once again. Investigators have been aided by former ABC News President James Goldston, who has helped produce the hearings as something more akin to an engaging television series than a typical congressional panel. With each days hearing, the Jan. 6 committee has committed to a single story with a narrative arc, NPRs media critic, David Folkenflik, wrote. One television producer told The New York Times, For the first time since Trump became president, there is a clarity of message and a clear story that is being told.

The committees use of journalistic tools points to something important. In recent years, many discussions of the falsehoods drowning out American political discourse have framed the battle for attention as a fight between a dwindling number of media organizations committed to the facts, on one side, and shameless liars pursuing their own self-interest, on the other. But as the committee is vividly demonstrating, other institutions can have a commitment to the truth as welleven a political institution such as Congress.

The legislative branch is not usually known as a temple to candor. Yet the committees work shows just how much Congress can be capable of when it tries. As Thompson; the committee vice chair, Liz Cheney; and others on the committee have emphasized, as members of Congress they have all sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution. That oath, Cheney declared during the committees first hearing, must mean somethingarguing for the significance of the committees work and the integrity of the democracy it seeks to protect. The committee is creating a definitive record and insisting on the importance of the values that Trump sought to undermine, truth among them.

Anne Applebaum: The reason Liz Cheney is narrating the January 6 story

Trump himself seems to recognize the effectiveness of the panels approach, reportedly complaining about how the absence of pro-Trump Republicans on the committee makes it difficult to complicate the story with his version of events. But the former president and his allies are still doing their best to muddy the waters. In response to Hutchinsons damning testimony, Trump seized on her memory of being told that the president had lunged for the steering wheel of the SUV carrying him away from the Ellipse, grappling with a Secret Service agent to try to direct the car toward the Capitol. Her Fake story is sick and fraudulent, he wrote on his Twitter look-alike, Truth Social. After anonymous sources close to the Secret Service suggested to reporters that the altercation hadnt taken place, the far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene argued that Congress should focus its energy on taking apart the SUV story.

There seems to be at least some degree of legitimate confusion about what happened in the SUV. But in large part, these criticisms are bad-faith attacks by people uninterested in what the committee has to say. They intentionally ignore the fact that the Secret Service reportedly does not dispute that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol after his speech on the Ellipsewhich is far more relevant in evaluating Trumps intentions to gin up the riot than a tussle over a steering wheel. By focusing on one minor if salacious anecdote, they also draw attention away from the volumes of other incriminating and undisputed material in Hutchinsons testimony about Trumps role in engineering the insurrection. Meanwhile, committee members have expressed confidence in what Hutchinson had to say, noting that she swore an oath to tell the truth in front of millions of viewersunlike many of those challenging her testimony in anonymous comments to reporters.

All the same, this odd sideshow underlines just how difficult creating a definitive factual record isparticularly of an event that involved so many different narrative threads, and in which so many liars were involved. Its easier to confuse than to clarify, and its easier to lose trust than to regain that trust after a mistake is made.

So the committees investigators are engaged in a perilous high-wire act. But so far, they havent fallen.

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The January 6 Committee Is Going to Have the Final Word - The Atlantic

In a tweet that went viral, Randy Rainbow slammed former President Donald Trump after the Houses January 6 committee hearing Tuesday.

Trump is alleged to have lunged at a Secret Service officer and even tried to reach for the steering wheel to drive himself to the Capitol during 2021s insurrection.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide made the shocking statements at the hearing. She told officials that even though Trump knew that the mob that had gathered at the Capitol had weapons, he still had supporters go there.

Online, social media users had a field day with the hearing's revelations.

One such user was singer and comedian Randy Rainbow.

He really thought he could simultaneously hijack a vehicle and choke out a mf with those tiny little hands, Rainbow wrote.

The tweet has gone viral with more than 46,000 likes.

Others also commented and created memes based on Hutchinsons testimony which also included her telling the committee that Trump threw his lunch against a wall, splattering ketchup on it.

Tuesdays tweet is not the first time Rainbow has taken to Twitter to call out a Republican or Trump, for that matter. He recently slammed U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado after she posted about him in a tweet calling Democrats groomers.

A North Carolina preschool is using LGBT flag flashcards with a pregnant man to teach kids colors,wrote the Colorado congresswoman. But she wasnt done she also name-checked Rainbow. We went fromReading Rainbowto Randy Rainbow in a few decades, but dont dare say the left is grooming our kids! she added.

Rainbow saw the post and responded in kind to the unprovoked attack. Sweetie your homophobia is showing and for the record, Ive had my tubes tied, hetweeted back.

In March, he dropped the video Gurl, Youre a Karen in the style of Dentist fromLittle Shop of Horrors. In the video, Rainbow calls out Boebert and fellow Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia for their bigoted views.

The video begins with a mock interview where Rainbow asks, Youve had a busy few weeks speaking at white nationalist conventions, heckling the presidents State of the Union. Tell us, how do you balance your day job as a bigoted, fame-hungry conspiracy theorist with your personal life as a bigoted, hypocritical, traditionalist, and overall threat to civilization and a mom? He then breaks into song, calling out both congresswomen for their support of Nazis, rejection of science, and anti-American beliefs.

Watch the Gurl, Youre a Karen video below.

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Randy Rainbow & the Internet Mock Donald Trump Over Jan. 6 Hearings - Advocate.com

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YARBROUGH: Donald Trump and the ghost of elections past - Gwinnettdailypost.com