J.D. Vance Admits to “Sucker Punch” by Kamala in Stunning Leaked Audio

Senator J.D. Vance knows that Vice President Kamala Harris is a big threat. While he may not be willing to say it publicly, he’s certainly admitting it to donors.

In a new recording released Monday by The Washington Post, Vance spoke candidly at a fundraiser in Golden Valley, Minnesota, on Saturday, where the Ohio senator’s line to donors was far different from the about-face that he and former President Donald Trump had been presenting publicly.

“All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch,” said Vance. “The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.”

While Vance’s admission was not particularly surprising given Harris’s slate of high-profile Democratic endorsements and how successful her initial fundraising efforts have been, it was a tune that the public hasn’t heard Vance sing.

As CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pointed out Monday night, this line was extremely different from what Trump was saying concurrently, over on Fox News.

“I think she’s a worse candidate than him,” Trump said in an interview with Laura Ingraham. She’s far more radical left. She is younger, but I mean she’s 60 years old. A lotta people—I didn’t know she was 60 years old, I thought she was a little younger.”

In general, the “Kamala’s worse than Biden” line seems to be the main strategy for the Trump campaign, but it certainly isn’t the reality they’re facing.

In the leaked audio, Vance admitted that the Trump campaign had the “unique opportunity” to shape public perception of a candidate that voters are far less familiar with, trying out different lines of attack to see what has the most impact.

“Love ’em or hate ’em, everybody has an opinion about Donald Trump and Joe Biden after the past eight years,” Vance said to the room of donors. “But Kamala Harris, people don’t really know.”

But shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out, Vance acted like nothing had changed.

“I don’t think the political calculus changes at all,” Vance told reporters on July 22. “We were running against Joe Biden’s open border, Kamala Harris’s open border. Kamala Harris supported the Green New Scam. Kamala Harris, frankly, covered Joe Biden even though it was obvious he was mentally incompetent for a very long time.”

Vance spokesman Will Martin released a statement Monday in response to the leaked audio. “Poll after poll shows President Trump leading Kamala Harris as voters become aware of her weak, failed and dangerously liberal agenda,” Martin said. “Her far-left ideas are even more radioactive than Joe Biden, particularly in the key swing states that will decide this election like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.”

Donald Trump did little, if anything, in a Fox News interview Monday night to explain what he meant when he told a group of supporters on Friday, “You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Laura Ingraham asked Trump what he meant, and Trump gave a meandering answer that didn’t answer the question, talking instead about how much Christians support him and how Jewish people who don’t support him “should have their head examined.”

When he finally came back to the question at hand, he said “Christians are not known as a big voting group. They don’t vote, and I’m explaining that to ’em. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country; you won’t have to vote anymore. I won’t need your vote.”

Ingraham interjected to try to help the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee, saying, “You meant you don’t have to vote for you, because you’ll have four years in office.”

Trump still didn’t answer the question, talking about how gun owners don’t vote. When Ingraham pressed the matter again, Trump again came back to how Christians don’t vote and that they ought to this time, and then once again repeated his promise that people won’t have to vote in the future if he’s elected.

“Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore, I don’t care, because the country will be fixed, and we won’t even need your vote anymore because frankly, we will have such love if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK,” Trump said in one of his trademark run-on sentences.

It doesn’t make sense as to why Trump keeps repeating this statement. Is he hinting at some sort of authoritarian takeover where voting doesn’t matter? And why is he claiming that Christians don’t vote when devout, fundamentalist Christians have been involved in politics for most of America’s history?

Also, last week Trump told his followers, “We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” sending a weird message just before the election. While Democrats won’t mind, this might be another sign of Trump’s continued cognitive decline.

MAGA Representative Matt Gaetz accidentally threw some shade at former President Donald Trump on Monday while trying to weigh in on Venezuela’s contested presidential election.

Venezuela’s election authority declared Sunday that President Nicolás Maduro had won the country’s presidential election, having secured 51 percent of the popular vote, while his U.S.-backed opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez, earned only 44 percent, according to the Associated Press.

The opposition party has disputed the results, claiming that Gonzalez had earned a whopping 70 percent of the vote and that they had the data to back it up. Venezuela’s voting authority delayed the release of the detailed vote tallies Monday as protests broke out across the country, and foreign leaders have been reluctant to recognize a winner. Not Gaetz though—he’s all in.

“Maduro lost the election in Venezuela badly, then simply declared victory anyway. He is an illegitimate dictator,” Gaetz wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Did that description not sound the least bit familiar to the Republican congressman, who has turned into one of Trump’s most devoted sycophants?

“We stand with the people of Venezuela and their diaspora throughout the world in calling for an end to his murderous regime. It is sad but true that a nation can vote its way into socialism, but almost always has to fight its way out,” Gaetz wrote.

A loyal Trump toady, Gaetz has repeatedly downplayed the January 6 insurrection, pushing the conspiracy theory that the FBI was involved in the attack. A year after the deadly riot, Gaetz referred to the rioters as “patriotic Americans … who had no intent of breaking the law and doing violence.”

“We’re ashamed of nothing,” Gaetz said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in January 2022. “We’re proud of the work we did on January 6 to make legitimate arguments about election integrity,” he added.

Republican Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, fellow Trump stooges, also posted their criticisms of Maduro to X, proving self-awareness is dead.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday shut down Vivek Ramaswamy’s attempt to fire back at the Kamala Harris campaign’s criticisms of Republicans as “weird.”

It started when Ramaswamy posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday night about how “this whole ‘they’re weird’ argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile.”

“This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest. It’s also a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches ‘diversity & inclusion.’ Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please,” the failed Republican presidential candidate said in his post.

On Tuesday morning, Ocasio-Cortez clapped back, pointing out how Republicans’ actual policies are the weird part.

“It’s an incel platform, dude. It’s SUPER weird. And people need to know,” Ocasio-Cortez posted.

It appears that the criticisms of Vance and Trump are starting to get to Republicans, which signals that they’re working. For the past week, Vance has been heavily mocked, as his campaign speeches fell flat and a false internet rumor circulated about him conducting a sex act with a couch. Old remarks where he compared Democrats to “childless cat ladies” resurfaced and drew criticism from celebrities as well as lawmakers.

Ramaswamy could hardly have expected his post to shut the criticism down. But then again, he’s not known for his powerful language actually working, as those who have heard him try to rap can attest. Tuesday’s post from AOC isn’t even the first time she’s shut him down this month, as she recently destroyed his RNC speech in which he tried to paint Republicans as “cool.” Unfortunately for Ramaswamy, it didn’t work.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has tapped a January 6 conspiracy theory-touting  Republican lawmaker to join a new bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.

Johnson unveiled his list of picks Monday, which included his fellow Louisiana Republican, MAGA Representative Clay Higgins.

Higgins subscribes to the outlandish far-right theory that “FBI informants” pretending to be Trump supporters descended on the U.S. capital the night before the deadly January 6 insurrection using “ghost buses.”

During a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee in November, Higgins raised this theory to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who “emphatically” denied his claims. As proof, Higgins pointed at a picture of buses parked outside of Union Station in Washington, D.C., the night before the attack, claiming that they were ghost vehicles, or vehicles with the windows painted over to keep their purpose secret.

“These buses are nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants dressed as Trump supporters, deployed onto our capital on January 6,” Higgins insisted, saying he had “extensive evidence” about the two vehicles. 

When the committee’s Chairman Mark Green pushed Higgins to wrap it up, the Louisiana Republican warned: “Your day is coming, Mr. Wray.”

Higgins released a statement Monday about his new appointment. “I am honored to serve on the bipartisan Task Force on the attempted assassination of President Trump,” he said. “The American people demand answers, and we will use every tool at our disposal to reveal granular detail of what led to the attempted assassination, ensure accountability, and identify security failures. I look forward to working with my bipartisan colleagues to deliver the truth.”

If his previous statements are any indication, Higgins might be vulnerable to believing the far-right conspiracy theories about Trump’s brush with death. In fact, he’s already shared one.

“American Patriots are united behind President Trump,” Higgins wrote in a post on X, shortly after the shooting at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The left will not stop MAGA Nation.”

Donald Trump is getting fed up with Fox News over the network simply doing its job.

“Why is FoxNews putting on Crazy Kamala Harris Rallies?” wrote Trump on Truth Social Monday afternoon.

Amid articles about Ted Cruz “safeguarding” schools from the Chinese Communist Party and Whoopi Goldberg reacting to “drag queens” at the Olympics, Trump couldn’t find enough Fox News articles sucking up to him. Earlier this month, Trump issued a similar complaint that the network wasn’t doing enough to help him, writing “STOP PUTTING ON THE ENEMY!”

In the past, Fox has done plenty to boost Trump, especially around his false claims of 2020 election fraud. That support cost them nearly $800 million to settle a lawsuit.

“Why do they allow the perverts at the failed and disgraced Lincoln Project to advertise on FoxNews? Even Mr. Kellyanne Conway, a man so badly hurt and humiliated by his wife (she must have done some really NASTY things to him, because he is CRAZY!), is advertising on FoxNews,” Trump continued Monday, referring to his former adviser Kellyanne Conway’s ex-husband, George Conway.

Trump seems to be playing willfully ignorant that Fox News has been the most-watched news network for more than 20 years, making it desirable for well-funded advertisers, in order to make the point that he’s frustrated about its supposed disloyalty.

It’s more likely that Trump is annoyed that Fox aired a favorability poll over the weekend that showed Harris leading over him in swing states.

“We have to WIN WITHOUT FOX!” wrote Trump.

How do the right-wing respond when they see white men, typically their most reliable supporters, powerfully mobilizing for Kamala Harris? Derogatory name-calling.

When a Harris campaign account announced Monday that registration for a “White Dudes for Kamala” event had surpassed 75,000 people, Donald Trump Jr. just had to weigh in.

“They should give it a more fitting name,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter), suggesting instead, “Cucks for Kamala.”

Using a typical insult from alt-right internet trolls, Trump is implying that any man supporting Harris lets another man satisfy their wife in the bedroom.

Trump likely stole this particular joke about “white dudes” for Kamala being “cucks” specifically from far-right commentator Steven Crowder, who posted about the dig on X Monday morning. Crowder himself likely lifted the joke from the controversial website 4chan before that.

Trump’s insults came as a similar group, White Women for Kamala, continues to break fundraising records. The groups are modeling their fundraising efforts after that of Win With Black Women, which hosted a Zoom call last weekend that attracted close to 44,000 attendees and raised more than $1.5 million. By Friday, white women had raised over $8.5 million.

As affinity groups in support of Harris meet, strategize, and raise cash for the campaign, right-wing grifters, including the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, continue to attack the efforts, calling them “racist.”

Perhaps the Republicans are freaking out since Trump is losing the support of white male voters.

Threatened much?

New security footage from the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot have revealed possible new crimes in Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election results.

Former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro and a Trump campaign staffer, G. Michael Brown, were caught on camera handing fake elector documents from Washington and Michigan to aides of Republican Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania on January 5.

The video corroborates what Chesebro admitted in a text message on January 6: that he dropped off fake elector documents to Kelly’s aides a day prior.

The documents ultimately didn’t get to Vice President Mike Pence, who was in charge of certifying the election results, thanks to the Senate parliamentarian refusing to accept the documents from Kelly’s aides. Bizarrely, after the documents were rejected, the aides wandered the halls on the second floor of the Capitol for a half-hour, waiting for instructions.

It’s bad news for Kelly—and even worse news for Chesebro, who is already in trouble in Michigan for his involvement in the fake elector scheme in that state. Chesebro was charged with felony fraud for his efforts to overturn Wisconsin’s presidential election results in June. He was named as a co-conspirator in Georgia’s fake elector charges, where he is cooperating with the state and has pleaded guilty to planning the scheme there. He is reportedly also cooperating with prosecutors in Michigan and Wisconsin.

This new set of evidence could lead to new charges, as it apparently wasn’t previously uncovered by the House January 6 committee, according to journalist Jamie Dupree. And while Kelly’s role was known, the extent of his involvement in the fake electors plot was not. Aside from that, however, the footage shows how close Trump’s cronies got to overturning two key states’ elections, as only the Senate parliamentarian and Vice President Mike Pence stood in their way.

After President Joe Biden announced his plan to rein in Supreme Court corruption Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson promised to stand in his way.

Johnson accused Biden and other Democrats of trying to “change the system that has guided our nation since its founding simply because they disagree with some of the Court’s recent decisions.”

Biden’s plan calls for setting term limits for justices at 18 years and enforcing a binding code of conduct that would require justices “to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.” Further, Biden also seeks to undo the court’s recent “presidential immunity” decision through a constitutional amendment called the “No One Is Above the Law Amendment.”

Johnson is probably mostly taking issue with the last point, but he is happy to slam Biden on any and all proposed tweaks, considering his repeated attempts to shield Donald Trump from prison. Johnson slammed the reforms as “ongoing efforts to delegitimize the Supreme Court,” claiming they would “tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice.”

Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the right-wing Federalist Society, was eager to back up Johnson and criticize the Biden administration on the issue of Supreme Court reform.

“No conservative justice has made any decision in any big case that surprised anyone, so let’s stop pretending this is about undue influence,” Leo said. “It’s about Democrats destroying a court they don’t agree with.”

Unfortunately for Johnson’s argument, the damage to the Supreme Court’s legitimacy has already been done. A poll conducted last year by NPR, PBS NewsHour, and the Marist Institute found that nearly two-thirds of Americans lack confidence in the high court, the lowest number since the poll was first conducted in 2018.

Sixty-eight percent of people said they thought the justices should have term limits. These results spanned the political spectrum. So, actually, Biden’s suggested reforms might boost public opinion of the Supreme Court.

While Biden says he looks forward to working with Congress on the plan to “prevent the abuse of Presidential power, restore faith in the Supreme Court, and strengthen the guardrails of democracy,” it seems like the House speaker has no interest in hearing him out.

“This dangerous gambit of the Biden-Harris Administration is dead on arrival in the House,” promised Johnson.

At least 70 pro–Donald Trump election denialists are working as election officials in key swing states, according to a report published Monday from Rolling Stone and the right-wing extremism research newsletter American Doom.

Officials who had promoted election conspiracy theories were identified in at least 16 counties in six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. These individuals were identified through scouring coverage of refusals to certify 2020 election results and other denialist behavior, as well as sifting through the social media profiles of election officials in these states.

Across these swing states, Trump loyalists stand ready to disrupt the results of democratically held elections—at least 22 of them have already refused or delayed certification in recent years, indicating likely chaos in November.

Republicans have even begun fighting for the right to refuse to certify elections based on absolutely nothing.

In May, Fulton County election board official Julie Adams launched a lawsuit against the county, hoping to access voting records that she claims she was barred from seeing by Fulton County’s election director, and seeking a court ruling on whether her duty to certify election results is “discretionary, not ministerial, in nature,” according to the suit. Fulton County is a Democratic stronghold.

Adams, a staunch election denier, is backed by the America First Policy Institute, or AFPI, a Trump-supporting think tank. Adams is hoping to upend years of precedent and Georgia state law, according to Protect Democracy, a democratic nonprofit that contends that certifying election results “is a mandatory, ministerial duty, meaning that officials have no discretion to refuse to certify election results.”

While legal experts predict that it’s unlikely a judge will side with Adams, she once again refused to certify the results of a run-off election later in June.

Adams isn’t alone in her state. David Hancock, an election official in Gwinnett County outside of Atlanta, is “working to change” the guidelines around election certification, according to a post on his Facebook page. In March, he refused to certify the results of his county’s presidential primary election, although he has yet to give a real answer as to why.

Georgia has had the highest number of certification refusals since 2020 of anywhere in the country. Its five-person state election board—which American Doom found contained two election-denying conspiracy theorists—has set to work formulating a new rule that would allow election officials to refuse to certify results if a “reasonable inquiry” can be made into claims of election fraud. The Trump-friendly board has been accused of ethics violations after not giving proper notice to its Democratic members about a meeting that it used to advance election rule changes.

All of this is particularly problematic because Republicans believe that refusing to certify the results of an election in and of itself can be used as evidence of election fraud. In a never-issued executive order from December 2020, Trump cited officials in Coffee County, Georgia, refusing to certify the results of the 2020 election as proof that voter fraud had likely occurred, and reason enough to seize voting machines.

Should the refusal to certify results become discretionary, Republicans will have a pile of so-called evidence to point to in November. It’s entirely likely that Republicans will use their own widespread claims of voter fraud, and refusal to certify, to not only stall but ultimately refute election results.