Today in Politics, Bulletin 50. 1/17/25

… MAGA supporters in DC for the inaugural are upset about Trump’s announcement today that he is moving his inauguration indoors because it’s too cold in DC.

… NBC interviewed several Trump supporters in DC today who just flew in for the big event: “So we’re not gonna see it in person? I don’t like it. We came all the way here from Oklahoma. We might as well have stayed home and watched it on the TV. It sucks. We have farms, we don’t get to not feed the cows because it’s cold!”

… Trump said it will be too cold in DC on Monday for his inauguration, so he will move things inside. You really can’t expect an old, frail Florida Man in poor health to be able to handle an outdoor inauguration. He was probably also worried about a weak crowd size and lack of enthusiasm humiliating him.

… David Axelrod noted that the windchill was 7 degrees at JFK’s inauguration, the same for Obama’s in 2009, and minus 2 for Reagan in 1985.

… Of course, Trump claimed that he was only doing this because he is concerned about his guests: “There is an arctic blast sweeping the country. I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions.”

… Except he didn’t care about that during the campaign. All summer long we documented rally after rally where he did them outdoors in the middle of the day where people passed out and went to the hospital because he was too cheap to rent an indoor venue. In some cases, he was unable to rent venues because he still owed them money from his 2020 and 2016 campaigns that he never paid.

… Trump did his rally in AZ in 102 degree heat at 2:00 PM and two dozen people needed medical treatment. He did it in the middle of the day because he had a fundraiser in Beverly Hills that night. His rally attendees have to get there many hours before the rally starts to go through the magnetometers. So while Trump flies in, gives his speech and leaves, those people are out there all day in oppressive heat. He couldn’t care less.

… But now he wants us to believe that he is not worried about himself, but is just concerned about attendees to his inauguration? Right.

… Marge Greene isn’t buying Trump’s story: “I have personally attended countless rallies where President Trump spoke in extreme weather conditions. Is there a security threat other than extreme cold temperatures?”

… Tim Walz then trolled Trump by posting a picture of himself giving a speech outside during a heavy snowstorm with the mics covered in snow with the caption: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.”

… NBC is reporting that Barack and Michelle Obama, George W. and Laura Bush, and Bill and Hillary Clinton all will not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration. But Kid Rock was complaining on Fox last night specifically about Michelle Obama not going, because they have MODS - Michelle Obama Derangement Syndrome. The Obamas have been out of the WH for 8 years now, and they still talk about Michelle every single day on Fox. Rent free.

… The Supreme Court of Brazil has denied disgraced former President Jair Bolsonaro’s request to leave the country to attend Trump’s inauguration at his invitation.

… Fox is reporting that President Musk will have an office at the White House in the Executive Office Building next door. Trump gets to play the role as president, while Musk is in the building with the policymakers running the country.

… Nancy Mace is now fuming at SC Republicans after ads were run in her state by a dark money group claiming her voting record on abortion is too liberal. Mace is pointing her finger at her potential rivals in the 2026 SC Governor’s race. She told the conservative SC outlet FITSews: “I haven’t announced a run for governor yet, but it’s good to see people like Alan and Pam are concerned about my next move. That’s the worst kept secret in SC politics.”

… Mace is referring to SC AG Alan Wilson and Lt. Gov. Pamela Everett, who are reportedly Mace’s future rivals in the governor’s race.

… Mace commented on Wilson’s denials that he was behind the ads: “The best part of this idea that I might run for Governor is the establishment already hitting the panic button, because they’re scared. The AG and Lt. Governor either deny or don’t comment on who was behind it. It’s all so predictable. So fake. So contrived. The establishment can go clutch their pearls a little bit harder.”

… It seems that a mystery sugar daddy stepped up yesterday and bailed Rudy Giuliani out a jam by putting up a major chunk of cash to settle the defamation case and contempt proceedings with Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. He had to agree never to speak about them again. It had to have been a substantial amount of cash to get this done, and Rudy is broke.

… Rudy: “This litigation has taken its toll on all parties. The whole episode was unfortunate. The plaintiffs and I agreed not to ever talk about each other in any defamatory manner, and I urge others to do the same.” Freeman and Moss don’t talk about Rudy. They have never talked about Rudy. They aren’t the issue.

… Somebody came up with a big check for Rudy, but who? CNN said they contacted attorneys for both sides in the case, and nobody is talking. We will keep digging. It certainly should be interesting to find out who it was.

… Rudy isn’t off the hook yet, though. He still has several criminal and civil cases pending against him.

… The NYT is reporting that Stephen Miller is so racist that he sometimes goes too far even for racist Trump: “In one meeting during the 2024 campaign, Trump said that if it was up Miller there would only be 100 million people in this country, and they would all look like Miller.”

… Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that he has appointed his Lt. Gov Jon Husted to JD Vance’s vacated seat in the Senate. He apparently ignored Trump’s recommendation to appoint Vivek Ramaswamy. Husted is considered an old guard establishment Republican, so MAGA activists aren’t exactly thrilled. I dug up an old Husted tweet about Trump from 2015 and posted it on X for all the MAGA influencers who follow me:

… WaPo is reporting that now Vivek will leave his partnership with Elon Musk on the DOGE committee to run for Governor of Ohio. So he quit before it even started.

… Long-time Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who is rumored to also be running for governor in 2026, has to be praying that Vivek will get the Republican nomination. He is absolutely the most beatable Republican in Ohio for that race. Especially when someone does a deep dive on how he made his fortune.

… Trump told Dan Bongino on his show that Republicans need to hold disaster aid to CA fire victims hostage to include it in his reconciliation bill with massive tax cuts and all of his other toxic stuff, which would hold it up and force some Dems to have to either vote against aid to CA or vote for his entire agenda: “They want that aid for LA so badly. We should not do a bill unless LA is included. When we include LA, then we will get everything we want” from Democrats.

… But Alabama Senator Katie Britt told Politico that she does not agree with fellow Republican AL Senator Tommy Tuberville and others that aid to CA for the wildfires should be conditioned: “I think what we need to be doing right now is standing firmly with the people of CA, letting them know they have or support and that we stand ready to be thoughtful about ways that we can help in making sure that they have the resources they need.”

… Bongino also asked Trump about his pardon announcement for J6 defendants. Trump: “Your audience is going to be very happy with the things I’m going to be announcing on Monday.”

… Bongino has been calling for J6 pardons for all defendants. But Vance said last week it would only be for non-violent J6ers, and got huge MAGA backlash. That Vance appearance now feels a lot to me like Trump had him put that out there to see how strong the reaction was going to be from his base, and now he is going to change his position again.

… That is a classic Trump move. Have a surrogate float or leak something that he thinks might be unpopular with MAGA. If there is not much reaction, he rolls it out. If there is a big backlash, he blames the surrogate and lets them take the heat, or just claims the whole thing was fake news. I think he has been doing that with J6 pardons.

… Olivia Troye had words for Stephen Miller’s wife Katie after she trashed their former boss Mike Pence because he fired her: “You were a completely incompetent press secretary who put Americans lives at risk, gave poor advice and behaved liked the office toddler. Your ineptitude, lack of morals & integrity were obvious to the entire Mike Pence operation. Speaking of DEI hires and ‘standards’— the only reason you got hired was because you used your hateful fear mongering husband as your qualifications. Go back to eating your fro-yo, smacking your gum and being the office troll. The role suits your level of expertise.”

… Katie Miller responded: “I’ve never chewed gum. Your grift is gross.” That was it, so I guess she admits the rest of it is true except the gum part.

… The PM of Greenland told Fox they have no interest in becoming part of the US. Mute Egede: “We want to be Greenlanders. We will always be part of NATO. We will always be a strong partner of the US. But we also want to be clear: We don’t want to be Americans. We don’t want to be part of the US.”

… Another Greenlander told Fox: “The US used to be a place that was sort of admired here. And basically, all the goodwill that they used to have is almost gone now.” It will be completely gone in a month. Thanks Trump.

… Elon Musk’s latest rocket blew up shortly after launch during its 7th attempt, sending fiery debris streaking above the Caribbean sea and grounding nearby aircraft. SpaceX lost the upper portion of the Starship rocket, which exploded 8 minutes after it blasted off. The mishap caused widespread disruptions to air traffic. Some flights at Miami International Airport had to be grounded, and least 20 commercial flights had to be diverted to other airports or altered course to avoid potential debris.

… Musk: “Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall.”

… Rand Paul on the CA wildfires today: “I see these homes burning, if they just had a generator and a hose, you start sucking the water out of the Pacific Ocean. Why don't they take the ocean water and put it in cisterns have a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up? Once again, bad local government.” A generator and a hose. Why didn’t CA firefighters think of that?

… Former CNN correspondent Oliver Darcy is reporting that CNN is about to move Jim Acosta’s popular daytime show to the cable news graveyard of midnight-2 AM. It is reportedly being done because he is perceived as too anti-Trump by the network. Acosta has strong ratings in his time slot and is one of the most popular hosts on the network with their remaining viewers. Darcy: “The move would effectively exile Acosta to the Siberia of television news.”

… Trump despises Acosta, once calling him “a rude, terrible person.” Darcy quotes a media executive with this take: “They want to get rid of Acosta to throw a bone to Trump. Midnight is not a serious offer when his ratings are among the best on the network.”

… Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan says he wants to do DNA testing on migrant children to see if they are really biologically related to their parents or if they have been smuggled in to be trafficked: “We know for a fact that some of these families aren’t families. We need to do a deep dive to make sure these families are really families.”

… Not only did Trump have Mike Johnson remove anti-Putin Rep. Mike Turner from his position as Chair of House Intel, he had him removed from the committee entirely, when there is no single House Republican more knowledgable, reliable, and experienced to serve on that committee than Turner.

… After Turner was removed, he skipped all votes in the House for the rest of the day and then skipped all votes yesterday.

… Rep. Jamie Raskin on Turner’s ouster: “The autocrats at Mar-a-Lago don’t want him. The autocrats in Moscow don’t want him. He’s extremely popular with Democrats and who knows what is going to happen at this point.”

… Sen. Adam Schiff: “There was a time when Republicans speculated about whether Trump could become Speaker of the House. In many ways, it appears he already is.”

… Mike Johnson continues to whine and cry about Gavin Newsom posting video clips on social media calling out his lies: “Instead of making highly produced clap-back videos with social media influencers, you should go to work helping Californians.”

… This is how you know what Newsom is doing is effective. Newsom understands that the world has changed and in this new era where right-wing politicians pounce on every natural disaster or tragedy to spew a torrent of lies against Dems using their influencers, the only way to combat that is to fight back with a torrent of truth.

… For too long, Dems have been slow to respond to things like this and let Republicans set the narrative. Newsom is showing everyone else how to deal with that effectively - and every Democrat should learn from it. Johnson wouldn’t be crying so much about it if it wasn’t working.

… Joe Biden in his final interview as president to MSNBC: "The mistake I think I made was not getting our allies to acknowledge that ‘Democrats did this.’ So for example, call a new $1B bridge over a river 'the Democratic bridge,' figuratively speaking. Talk about who put it together. Let people know this was something Democrats did. I’m not a very good huckster. I spent too much on the policy, not enough time on the politics.”

… CNN reports that at the US Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington today, the 40 Republican and Democratic mayors in attendance were asked to raise their hands if they had a project in their cities that was funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure law. All of them did. Too bad voters didn’t know about that.

… A major confrontation is brewing between Republicans who are budget hawks and want to massively cut spending, and the rest of them who just talk about the deficit but want to enact Trump’s agenda with tax cuts and tons of new spending for the military and migrant deportations that will explode the deficit. NOTUS is citing multiple Republicans saying they think that House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington could be an obstacle for Trump.

… Arrington made it clear he is opposed to Trump’s attempt to eliminate the debt ceiling during his presidency: “We talk about the debt being unsustainable and mortgaging our children’s future on the campaign trail. Now we have an opportunity to actually do something about it, and that makes some people uncomfortable.”

… Thomas Massie reacted to the article: “We finally get a Chairman of the Budget Committee who wants to balance the budget and they attack him.” Chip Roy, Tim Burchett and Mike Lee said they agreed with Massie.

… Apparently, Ron Desantis decided this was another opportunity to separate himself from Trump on an issue where he knows the base will agree with him, chiming in about critics of Arrington: “Swamp gonna swamp …”

… The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Tik Tok divestiture today, which everyone expected. Biden has said he won’t enforce the ban at the deadline this Sunday and leave it up to Trump. However, the reports are that the company will shut down the app on Sunday anyway.

… What I think is happening is that they will turn it off, everyone will get furious, then the next day or the day after they will turn it back on with Trump announcing that he “saved Tik Tok” and his new pal, the Chinese CEO, will give him all the credit. And it was Trump and Republicans who wanted the ban in the first place and got some Dems to sign on to it.

… Sen. Tom Cotton: “Senate Democrats attempted to extend the deadline for the ban of the Chinese Communist spy app Tik Tok. I blocked this effort because Tik Tok is a harmful app that endangers our national security and poisons our children.”

… Mike Pence: “The Supreme Court's decision upholding the law requiring TikTok to divest from the Chinese Communist Party is a victory for the privacy and security of the American people. This law was the result of a bipartisan cooperation and I commend it's authors and supporters in Congress for enacting this vital law for our national security. The CCP has been put on notice that the American people’s data is no longer for the taking. The incoming Trump administration must be prepared to uphold this TikTok divestment law and put the privacy and security of America first.”

… The incoming Trump Admin will not be doing what Pence is asking them to do. On this, and a great many things.

… Senate Majority Leader John Thune also expects Trump to enforce the TikTok ban they passed: “I would think he would, but hopefully they’ll figure out a way to get it sold.”

… Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD): “This is a big step to protect America from the China threat. I’m proud to have led the charge on this in Congress.”

… But not so fast guys! Trump to CNN after the SCOTUS decision: “It ultimately goes up to me, so you’re going to see what I’m going to do. Congress has given me the decision, so I’ll be making the decision.”

… Republicans are flip-flopping all over the place on the Tik Tok ban trying to act like they were always against it. Last year, Trump’s NSA nominee Rep. Mike Waltz said that Tik Tok was “Chinese Communist Party spyware.” Now he says “its a great platform that many Americans use and was great for Trump’s campaign.”

… Marco Rubio said in 2022: “Why are we allowing Tik Tok to operate in America when we know for a fact that the CCP openly uses it to steal the data on our phones, interfere in our elections, and push their propaganda.” Rubio today: “Trump has the authority to waive it for 90 days.”

Sorry this is out late tonight, but that is only because there was just so much news today that it was hard to keep up with everything. I could have cut it early and omitted a bunch, but tomorrow is my off day until the weekend recap on Sunday night so I wanted to make sure I got as much covered from today as possible. Again, thank you to all the paid subscribers who support my work and everyone else for reading.

… Trump in a March 2023 Truth Social post: “When I wanted to disable TIKTOK 3 years ago, I was met with opposition from RINOS to Democrats to everyone else. They actually went to court in an effort to stop me. Now they realize I was right, and have changed their tune. Sadly, I’ve been right about everything!” Now apparently he was not right. Or he was right then and is now right again even though they are