Posts by Bill Palmer

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A new poll yesterday from Emerson, a respected polling outlet, has Joe Biden five points ahead of Donald Trump in the critical state of New Hampshire. Given how much emphasis the national political media places on New Hampshire, you’d think that this poll would get major media attention. It hasn’t. That’s because it simply doesn’t…

When Mike Johnson first became Speaker of the House, people were “sounding the alarm” left and right about how dangerously powerful he was. While he’s certainly an unhinged far right extremist in an inappropriately high ranking position, the reality is that his party picked him for the job specifically because he’s a nobody with no…

Donald Trump recently attended a UFC event, which basically consists of two people beating the crap out of each other. So maybe House and Senate Republicans understood the assignment when they decided to try to emulate Trump this week. How else to explain the fact that they’re now trying to turn Congress into a street…

House Republican James Comer tried to spin a seemingly harmless personal loan from Joe Biden to his brother into a major scandal. Then it turned out Comer had also loaned his brother money. Instead of letting the facts speak for themselves, Comer is going completely off the deep end about it. House Democrat Jared Moskowitz…

You knew House Republicans were in trouble when it took them fifteen rounds to elect a Speaker, and then nine months later they ousted him and had to go through half a dozen candidates before settling on someone who doesn’t know how to tie his own shoelaces. But somehow these House Republicans have managed to…

When you’re going on criminal trial and you’re facing the distinct possibility of spending the rest of your life in prison, your goal is to win. Everything else is secondary. You zero in on the kind of defense strategy that can help you win at trial, and you commit yourself to that strategy. Anything less…

Last month indicted House Republican George Santos was seen wandering the congressional halls with a baby that he admitted wasn’t his, before ditching the baby and running down the halls yelling the “F” word. It was the kind of surreal scene that no one would have believed if there weren’t video. Well, the baby was…

In the midst of a week in which House Republicans had to give up on their hope of shutting down the government, and had to give up on their hope of impeaching DHS Secretary Mayorkas, you’d think that any distraction would help them. Instead they’ve managed to land on the one kind of distraction that’s…

When you flip underling co-conspirators against a crime boss, it’s not just to make things simpler, or reduce the number of trials needed. It’s that these are often the only people who can give you first hand testimony that what you think is true is in fact true. Raise your hand if you already knew…

When the public takes interest in ongoing criminal probe, a familiar pattern tends to play out. That probe largely plays out behind the scenes, with most or all of the details (and sometimes even the probe’s very existence) remaining out of public view. This prompts the public mistakenly conclude that nothing is happening, or things…

When you’re trying to figure out why anyone in Trump world does anything these days, there’s a helpful axiom to keep in mind: they’re idiots. I don’t mean that in a glib or taunting sense. I mean that they are, as a statement of fact, idiots. Everyone in Trump world is trying to please the…

New York Attorney General Letitia James and her team have finished putting on their case for the prosecution in the New York civil fraud trial against Donald Trump. Now it’s time for Trump and his attorneys to put on a defense presentation. Let’s just say that it’s already going poorly for them. For instance, after…

Rudy Giuliani has already been criminally indicted in Fulton County, and also appears to be on track to be criminally indicted by Jack Smith. But what about the people around him? After all, Giuliani’s crime spree appears to have spread across multiple continents. Now we’re seeing some movement on that front. One of Rudy Giuliani’s…

Donald Trump knows he’s already lost his civil fraud trial, he knows his assets are gone, he knows there’s nothing he can do to stop it, and he knows that his criminal trials are going to send him to prison for the rest of his natural life. Trump is losing everything, and therefore appears to…

The media has obtained the proffer interviews that Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell did with Fulton County DA Fani Willis, and it’s set off a firestorm. People are abuzz about who leaked the footage (doesn’t ultimately matter), whether the leak will help Donald Trump (it won’t), and the fact that Trump’s spokesman Dan Scavino told…

You know the major media outlets have dropped the ball in refusing to cover Donald Trump’s worsening senility when Saturday Night Live beat them to the punch this past weekend. When a comedy sketch show is willing to admit something that 95% of the political media has been afraid to say, then something is wrong.…

As part of their cooperating plea deals, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis did “proffer” interviews where they gave up everything they knew, so that Fulton County DA Fani Willis could determine what kind of deal to give them in return. Willis ended up giving them each multi-year probation sentences, with no prison. Why was she…

When Republican Glenn Youngkin ran for Governor in the swing state of Virginia in 2021 and very narrowly won by pretending to be a moderate, it wasn’t a sign of anything, really. Too many Democratic Party activists were still too hung over from 2020 and dropped the ball, and that’s a good way to lose…

We need to stop talking so obsessively about what’ll happen if Trump wins. It’s good to periodically remind everyone of what the nightmare scenario would look like. But our side does it obsessively. In no other walk of life would you sit around talking all day every day about how you’re going to lose, and…

The polling averages have Biden and Trump tied in 2024. Those polling averages are suspect, because they include some polls that severely undersample or oversample certain demographics. But even if the polls were right, how could the media possibly conclude that Biden is “doomed” or even in any real trouble, if the polls are tied?…

I’m not a doctor of course. But since Donald Trump never allows real doctors to get anywhere near him, the rest of us are stuck trying to provide nonprofessional best guesses about what’s wrong with him. Is it dementia? Is it Alzheimer’s? Is it senility? Take your pick. But something occurred to me. Trump keeps…

If you’re a washed-up villain who’s out of power, and you’re trying to keep yourself relevant, you do it by talking about all the evil things you’ll do once you’re back in power. It evokes such a panicked response in people, they start obsessively and fearfully talking about how awful it’ll be when you’re back…

The only thing more pathetic than the fact that the Republican Party’s current “frontrunner” is a senile man who’s on his way to prison and isn’t even viable for 2024? The fact that the entire rest of the 2024 Republican field is losing to a senile non-viable candidate who’s on his way to prison. We…

Donald Trump’s attorneys are now pushing to get his January 6th federal criminal trial televised. This isn’t really a thing when it comes to federal criminal trials, so it’s not clear if Team Trump is actually trying to get it televised, or is merely instead making this filing so Trump can play victim to his…

With about a week left before the November 2023 elections, the available data and trends spelled out that it was increasingly likely that the Democratic Party would sweep all of the competitive elections: Kentucky Governor, Ohio referendum, and the Virginia State Senate and House of Delegates. The media largely refused to admit that the Democrats…

Even as Donald Trump’s financial house of cards has continued to collapse, and his brand name has become toxic, his name still remains on a number of buildings for pure licensing reasons. But that number just dropped by one. Hilton has run the “Trump International Hotel” in Waikiki, Hawaii, since 2009. But in a long…