Read Virginia’s Tea Leaves: This Election Is Chaos

Two hotly contested seats in Virginia’s primary on Tuesday are providing insight into how much influence Donald Trump and pro-Israel lobbying groups have over our elections.

The once-mighty Trump endorsement continues to deteriorate: Trump-endorsed election denialist Senator John McGuire’s race to oust incumbent Republican representative Bob Good remains too close to call as of Wednesday when vote tallying paused for the Juneteenth state and federal holiday. McGuire led by just 327 votes—0.52 percent—over Good. In response to the razor-thin margins, Good took to social media to sprinkle a touch of election denialism of his own, asking for “full transparency from the officials involved” in counting and certifying votes, as if that wasn’t already how the election certification process is run.

Good has courted controversy both with his efforts to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and with his early endorsement of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential campaign. Good has struggled to maintain his MAGA bona fides by demonstrating his undying love for Trump, who he’s described as “the best president of my lifetime.” Good made an appearance in New York City outside the courthouse to support Trump in his ill-fated hush-money trial. His appearance there sparked a brutal response from Trump who declared he’s “BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA” before giving McGuire his “Complete and Total Endorsement.” Despite efforts from Trumpworld to bolster McGuire, the infighting has largely left Virginia voters confused.

Further complicating Virginia’s primaries this week, pro-Israel lobbying groups continue to dump enormous resources into Democratic races across the country, despite data consistently showing that voters are primarily concerned about the economy, not with Israel. In New York, the lobbying effort has made a primary between incumbent Representative Jamaal Bowman and MAGA-funded Westchester County Executive George Latimer the most expensive House primary in U.S. political history.

Early showings from other primaries have suggested efforts from the pro-Israel lobby are largely paying off—except in Virginia’s 10th congressional district. In the crowded race with a dozen candidates, pro-Israel lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel PAC reportedly backed Eileen Filler-Corn to replace Representative Jennifer Wexton, who is retiring. On Tuesday, Filler-Corn landed in an abysmal fourth place, picking up just 9.3 percent of the votes.

The winner of that race, Virginia senator Suhas Subramanyam, received more than 30 percent of the vote. DMFI doesn’t seem too unhappy with the result, however, praising Subramanyam’s “commitment to Democratic values and his support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship,” and describing him as a “proud pro-Israel candidate.”

“Democrats in [Virginia’s 10th congressional district] have proven once again that being pro-Israel is not just wise policy, but also winning politics,” the group wrote.

How all this infighting will factor into the general election remains to be seen. The main message from Virginia’s primaries, both Democrat and Republican, seems to be that the 2024 election season has definitely activated chaos mode.

After being among more than 1,400 people charged over the January 6, 2021 insurrection and storming of the Capitol, Charles Hand III attempted to return to the scene of the crime by being elected to Congress. Unfortunately for him, he lost a Republican primary runoff for a House seat Tuesday.

Hand, who goes by Chuck, lost the Georgia 2nd congressional district race to former Trump administration official Wayne Johnson. In November, Johnson will face Democratic Representative Sanford Bishop, who has held the seat since 1993.

Hand previously received 32 percent of the initial primary election on May 21, proceeding to the runoff with Johnson, who received 44.6 percent of the vote. Under Georgia law, political candidates must receive more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff election.

Almost two weeks ago, Hand walked out of a debate after one of his opponents in the initial primary, Michael Nixon, mentioned that Hand’s wife, Mandy Robinson-Hand, had a criminal history of oxycodone possession and was Hand’s co-defendant in their Capitol riot case.

Hand admitted to breaking off “a piece of metal fencing” and placing “it in his back pants pocket” in his January 6 case, and was sentenced to 20 days in prison. Prosecutors wrote in his sentencing memo that after participating in the riot, he told his wife ”Like I said it was a perfect time to be a part of history!” He also encouraged his wife to not turn herself in and to “deny, deny, deny.”

Hand was one of many January 6 participants running for office in 2024. One of them, Derrick Evans, served three months in prison and ran for the Republican nomination in West Virginia’s 1st congressional district, only to lose in May.

A disgraced former NFL owner is desperately trying to stop the release of an upcoming film that contains a less-than-flattering depiction of Donald Trump—and he is uniquely positioned to do so.

According to an exclusive report from the Daily Beast, Dan Snyder, the former owner of the Washington Commanders (previously the Redskins), is working overtime to prevent the release of The Apprentice, a film that depicts Donald Trump as a sexual abuser.

Sources told Variety that Snyder is a friend of Trump’s and donated $1.1 million to his inaugural committee, and another $100,000 to his campaign in 2016. Now, Snyder has accidentally funded a film that could very likely hurt Trump’s image, and his chance at reelection, should it be released before November.

The Apprentice depicts the former president raping his first wife, Ivana. During her 1989 divorce case, Ivana claimed that Trump raped her, but she later refuted her own allegations ahead of the 2016 presidential election and said that the two were the “best of friends.” The film also portrays Trump cheating on his wife, doing hard drugs, and getting plastic surgery.

Snyder was initially willing to fund the film through its production company Kinematics, which is run by his son-in-law Mark Rappaport, because he thought it would be a flattering portrayal of the former president—but what he got was something else entirely. Snyder was reportedly “furious” when he first saw the film last month, according to Axios.

The Beast reported that Snyder is leveraging his financial stake in Kinematics to prevent the production company from striking a deal with the independent distributor, Briarcliff, to release the film. And Trump’s campaign is apparently “thrilled” by Snyder’s loyalty.

It may be that the movie is striking a little close to home for Snyder. An investigation into his time owning the Commanders found that he fostered a toxic work environment, sexually harassed an employee, and withheld $11 million in revenue from the NFL. Snyder was fined $60 million, and the team was simultaneously sold for $6.05 billion, according to ESPN.

Snyder was also accused of making hush-money payments to silence those who accused him of misconduct—similar to the former commander-in-chief, who was found guilty of trying to cover up payments to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. Perhaps that’s part of what has launched his protective streak against the former president, a sort of kick-back kinship. Snyder was also found to have given “misleading” testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

Whether or not the film could possibly affect the 2024 election is still up in the air. “This is not Barbenheimer,” one Trumpworld strategist, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Beast. “The idea that a movie would have any impact on the 2024 election is laughable.”

Even so, it would likely enrage Trump, who has shown himself to be particularly sensitive to unflattering depictions: He even privately seethes over courtroom sketches, according to Rolling Stone.

Turns out the White House has a red line when it comes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after all: Claiming the U.S. isn’t giving Israel enough weapons to bombard Gaza. The White House canceled a planned meeting with Netanyahu slated for Thursday after the prime minister released a video on Tuesday claiming the U.S. withheld military aid to Israel.

“It’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel,” Netanyahu states in a video address in English posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.

“Churchill told the United States, give us the tools, we’ll do the job. And I say, give us the tools, and we’ll finish the job—a lot faster,” said Netanyahu. (Churchill’s original quote is “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”)

Netanyahu’s video is technically true but overall false. The U.S. “paused” sending one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel ahead of their assault on Rafah, which Biden had previously declared was his “red line,” over concern of the civilian toll use of the bombs would take. Aside from that one shipment, however, the U.S. has continued sending weapons to Israel “as it normally would,” according to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Just this week, the U.S. approved a request from Biden to send an expected $18 billion weapons package to Israel.

According to Axios’s Barak Ravid, Netanyahu’s video enraged Biden’s top advisors. An unnamed U.S. official told Ravid that the meeting with Netanyahu scheduled for Thursday to discuss Iran was canceled to send a message, “This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts.”

“The Americans are fuming,” a senior Israeli official told Axios.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded to Netanyahu’s video on Tuesday, confirming a continued pause on just one shipment of bombs but that the U.S. had otherwise not stopped showering Israel with weapons. “We genuinely do not know what he’s talking about,” said Jean-Pierre.

Netanyahu is still slated to address a joint session of Congress on July 24, but the video has rankled officials in the Biden administration and provoked calls from Senator Bernie Sanders to make Netanyahu’s backhanded claim a reality, declaring “no more bombs for Netanyahu.”

“Let’s be clear: the right wing, extremist Netanyahu government has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 85,000, sixty percent of whom are women, children, or elderly,” said Sanders. “It is absurd that Netanyahu has been invited to address Congress. We should not be honoring people who use the starvation of children as a weapon of war. Instead, the United States should be withholding all offensive military aid to Israel and using our leverage to demand an end to this war, the unfettered flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, a stop to the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, and initial steps towards a two-state solution.”

It’s pretty well-documented that Donald Trump is a liar, but the rate at which he lies is actually sort of impressive.

At a rally in Racine, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, the former president delivered a ranting and rambling speech that lasted about an hour and a half—and was filled to the brim with false statements.

CNN’s Daniel Dale compiled a list of the 30 lies Trump rattled off during his appearance. This puts Trump’s lies-per-minute rate at about one lie for every three minutes, which is on par given the amount the former president was repeating himself.

Here’s just a few, according to Dale: Trump “said there was world peace in 2020. There was very much not. He said he won Wisconsin in 2020; he lost. He said the Democrats rigged the 2020 election, a lie. He said people around President Biden cheat on elections, no. He said people’s votes tend to disappear; they simply do not.”

Dale pointed out that although Trump claimed to have “saved” Kenosha in 2020 from riots following the shooting of Jacob Blake, it was actually Democratic Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers who sent the national guard to the city, before Trump ever told him to.

He skewered Trump for saying that “hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of cocaine” was found in the White House last month, when in reality, a small bag “generously in the hundreds of dollars’ worth” was found 11 months ago.

Trump breathlessly repeated invented numbers about immigration, the crime rates in Venezuela, and the number of people who have crossed the Southern border. He attempted to rewrite history by spinning lies about his previous term as president, imagining that he pulled American troops out of Syria and lowered the trade deficit with China. He even lied about what he did last week, telling the crowd that he was in D.C. for one of his many trials, when he was really there to meet with Republican lawmakers.

Republican Vermont state Representative Mary Morrissey apologized to Democrat Jim Carroll this week for a pretty bizarre reason: She was recently caught on video pouring water into her Democratic colleague’s bag, and has apparently been doing so for months.

The incident was first reported by Vermont independent weekly Seven Days. Morrissey said during a state house session Monday that her behavior was “disrespectful” and that she had given a private apology to Carroll, adding that she would work “toward resolution and restoration through our legislative process.” The two represent the city of Bennington in Vermont, and reportedly have known each other since childhood, even attending the same church.

“It was conduct most unbecoming of my position as a representative and as a human being, and is not reflective of my 28 years of service and civility,” Morrissey said, asking for forgiveness from her colleagues and Vermont citizens.

According to Carroll, Morrissey had been treating him badly in public as well. “[She] would say demeaning things in front of other legislators,” Carroll said. Water had been poured into his bag since January, so he set up a camera in the coat rack outside his committee room. Carroll’s videos show someone lawmakers later identified as Morrissey dumping a cup into Carroll’s bag.

According to Carroll, Morrissey said that at first she “flicked” water on the bag because she saw a bug on it. But later, she said she didn’t know why she decided to dump water on Carroll’s bag for months on end.

Seven Days got ahold of the footage from Carroll due to a public records request. “I have been very reluctant to disclose the video because I believe it will deeply embarrass Representative Morrissey,” Carroll wrote in a statement to the outlet. “However, it has become clear to me that the media are aware of the details of Representative Morrissey’s behavior and likely will continue to report on that behavior in the near future.”

Republicans don’t seem to be conducting themselves well in local politics. In May, a local moderate Republican councilman in central New Jersey was arrested after he was caught in a sting operation stealing political signs promoting rival MAGA-aligned conservatives. In that case, AirTags were pinned to the signs to apprehend the culprit.

Donald Trump keeps raising the bar of how far Republicans will go to spin President Joe  Biden’s debate performance. Reminder: it hasn’t even happened yet. 

During his rally in Racine, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, Trump suggested that if Biden performs well during the upcoming presidential debate, he’ll have hard drugs to thank.

“He’s gonna be so pumped up. He’s gonna be pumped up,” said Trump. “You know all that stuff that was missing about a month ago from the White House? What happened?”

As Trump was setting up his punchline, presumably about selling stolen goods to pay for drugs, he lost the plot and pivoted into incoherently rambling about Hunter Biden’s laptop. 

“Who left it? Somebody left it. I wonder, let’s see. Somebody left the laptop in an office of a gentleman who was supposed to fix the laptop from hell,” said Trump. “He never picked it up, and somebody didn’t pick up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine. I wonder who that could’ve been.”

“I don’t know—actually, I think it was Joe. Ha-ha,” he said, cuing the audience that he had, against all odds, made it to the end of what he wanted to say.

Obvious cognitive decline aside, Trump is once again mindlessly parroting something he heard Sean Hannity say, which has quickly become a regular Republican talking point: that Biden has a secret stash that saves him during public speaking events. Trump previously suggested that Biden was “higher than a kite” during the State of the Union address, and seems adamant on keeping the company line as he heads into the first Biden-Trump debate on June 27. 

In fact, just Monday night, Hannity reiterated his claim to Trump’s daughter-in-law and RNC Chair Lara Trump.

“I think the Joe Biden we see on the debate night is gonna be the guy that we saw at the State of the Union,” Hannity said. “He’s going to be all hyped up, hyper-caffeinated, whatever ‘it’ is.”

Donald Trump elaborated on a shocking threat during his visit to Racine, Wisconsin, Tuesday, warning the crowd that the country will be pushed into World War III if he isn’t re-elected in November.

“Under Crooked Joe Biden, the world is in flames, our border is overrun, inflation is raging, Europe is in total chaos, the Middle East is exploding, Iran is emboldened, China is on the march, and the worst, most incompetent, most corrupt president in history is going to drag us into World War III,” Trump said.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee had previously used the bleak image while speaking to attendees at CPAC in February, framing a Biden-led U.S. as not just causing the imagined international war, but also losing it.

“We won’t even be in World War III, we’ll be losing World War III with weapons the likes of which nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said at the Nazi-attended conservative conference. “These are the stakes of this election. Our country is being destroyed. And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me. It’s true.”

In a Senate hearing Tuesday, Senator Josh Hawley attacked Boeing CEO David Calhoun and urged him to resign.

Hawley grilled the executive on his pay, which this year is $32.8 million, and listed the Boeing disasters of the past year, which are numerous.

“You’re not focused on safety, you’re not focused on quality, you’re not focused on transparency, all of this is on the record,” Hawley said. “But actually, you’re focused on exactly what you were hired to do, which is that you’re cutting corners, you are eliminating safety procedures, you are sticking it to your employees, you are cutting back jobs because you’re trying to squeeze every piece of profit out of this company.”

“You’re strip-mining Boeing. It was one of the greatest American companies ever. It has employed thousands of people in my state, and you are strip-mining it for profit and shareholder value, and you’re being rewarded for it,” Hawley added.

The Missouri Republican certainly sounded like he was saying all of the right things when it comes to Boeing, which has had several scandals over the past several years, particularly with the many involving the 737 MAX plane. But, Hawley’s tough talk belies his record on corporate oversight, which has mostly concerned deregulation and attacking so-called “woke corporations.”

But Boeing is an easy target unpopular with most Americans these days thanks to the bad press over its disasters and the many whistleblowers that have come forward. Hawley has shown similar opportunism after rail disasters, despite receiving thousands in campaign contributions from the railroad industry. Perhaps the senator is worried about his own travel or about his challenger in November’s election, populist Democrat and Marine Corps veteran Lucas Kunce. Whatever the reason, Hawley unfortunately made a great point in his questioning Tuesday. Now, if only it would be followed by regulatory action, which isn’t either Hawley or his Republican colleagues’ strong suit.

Republican Senator Pete Ricketts on Tuesday killed a measure to ban bump stocks—before he and the rest of his colleagues could be embarrassed in a vote on the legislation.

The measure followed a controversial ruling delivered by the Supreme Court last Friday that overturned a ban enacted by Trump. But the Republican senator from Nebraska objected to the bill before a vote could be held, shooting down any hopes of maintaining a ban on the lethal accessory.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer brought the legislation to the floor Tuesday afternoon seeking unanimous consent, which allows a bill to pass so long as there are no votes against it.

“What today’s bill does is return things to the status quo set by Donald Trump, saying bump stocks are dangerous and should be prohibited,” Schumer said Tuesday morning ahead of the floor vote.

“If Republicans block this bill today after claiming to support bump stock bans in years past, shame on them,” Schumer said ahead of the bump stock ban vote on Tuesday afternoon, noting that the “MAGA Supreme Court” went even further to the right than Trump himself. In response to the bill’s introduction, Ricketts wrote it off as “the summer of show vote” by Senate Democrats and claimed the bill would not pass because “some people in this building still believe in the Constitution that affords people in this country their right to own a gun,” seemingly believing a bump stock attachment is a gun.

“I’m going to keep pushing this bill to get this done. I’m going to keep working with anyone who wants to do this, to ban bump stocks in this country once and for all,” vowed Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in response to Ricketts’s block on the bill.

Republicans were expected to vote against the measure en masse, including those who previously said they would support a bump stock ban.

Bump stocks and sales of bump stocks were banned in 2018 by the Department of Justice at the behest of Trump, which reclassified the lethal accessory used in mass shootings under the federal definition of a “machinegun.” Trump’s ban followed the October 2017 Las Vegas massacre where a gunman using an AR-15 altered with a bump stock fired more than 1,000 rounds at concertgoers over the course of 11 minutes, killing 59 people and injuring more than 500.

Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, which stunned survivors of the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, ruled on the basis that bump stocks don’t convert rifles into machine guns because a machine gun allows for continuous shooting while a bump stock allows a shooter to “rapidly re-engage the trigger.” The splitting-hairs distinction conveniently ignored that a bump stock converts the number of bullets that can be shot per minute from “however quickly you can pull the trigger” up to 400 to 800 bullets per minute.

“There’s no law enforcement application for a bump stock. There’s no military application for a bump stock. There’s no self-defense application for a bump stock. These things are, like, tailor-made for mass shootings,” Senator Martin Heinrich said on Tuesday ahead of the vote.