Some MAGA Republicans Break with Fox Over Ukraine
Plus: Former AZ AG Mark Brnovich joins the hall of shame.
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WILLIAM SALETAN: Some MAGA Republicans Break with Fox Over Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has moved from city to city: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kherson, Bakhmut. But its outcome, oddly, might be decided by a political contest thousands of miles away. The contest isn’t between Ukrainians and Russians. It’s between Republican hawks and Fox News.
Vladimir Putin is betting that the international alliance in defense of Ukraine will unravel. His best shot to win that bet is in the United States, where polls show that public support for arming Ukraine has declined, particularly among Republicans. War fatigue and unease in the Republican base are being channeled and fueled by Fox News, whose primetime anchors have worked to undermine America’s support for Ukraine.
AUSTIN SARAT AND DENNIS AFTERGUT: Yet Another Election Denier Needs To Be Held to Account.
Before this week, former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich was best known as the named party in a 2020 Supreme Court voting rights decision.
On Wednesday, however, the Washington Post revealed that there will be another entry on his Wikipedia page: He was for election denialism before he was against it. Here’s what happened.
While running for the Republican Senate nomination in 2022, Brnovich had his office spend 10,000 hours investigating claims of fraud and supposed 2020 election irregularities in Maricopa County.
Did you miss TNB? Catch up here:
The Next Level: Marjorie Taylor Greene Loved Divorce So Much, She Wants The Nation To Split Up
The Georgia jury forewoman needs to stop talking, Norma Desmond took a break from Mar-a-Lago, Charlie and Tim disagree on Roald Dahl, and DeSantis lectures New Yorkers on law & order while the big cities in Florida have a higher crime rate. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod.
Jill Lawrence joins B2D to discuss the revelations about Fox, Biden v. De Santis on Ukraine, and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s national divorce talk.
Eric and Eliot are joined by former New York Times reporter and editor Philip Taubman, current lecturer at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and the author of In The Nation’s Service: The Life and Times of George P. Shultz.
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JAMES C. CAPRETTA: Democrats and Republicans Are Both Deluded About the Nation’s Fiscal Outlook.
The competing budgetary myths of Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin. Both want to be seen as defenders of the middle class, and so they pledge to restrain deficits and debt without imposing any costs on families of average means. To hit spending and revenue targets, they contend that sacrifice is only required by less favored constituencies, although they differ on who should be on the receiving end of this concentrated fiscal pain.
The problem for both is that, with the budget outlook deteriorating rapidly, their tales are becoming more implausible by the day. Voters may not mind in the short run, but eventually, reality will catch up.
SONNY BUNCH: ‘Cocaine Bear’ Review.
Sometimes a movie’s marketers have to get a little tricky to entice folks into the multiplex.
The Menu, for instance, was marketed as though it were a riff on “The Most Dangerous Game,” something like The Hunt by way of Pig. Strange World was marketed as a movie about the glories of exploration rather than a parable for global warming and a warning for humanity to stop trying to expand and settle for less. She Said was marketed as an awards-caliber film when it … well, you get the idea.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Happy Friday! The nice 80° weather is gone and the wind is here, with snow(‽) in the forecast tomorrow. D.C. can’t get its act together.
The future of the GOP… Some of you asked last night in the chat about Tim Miller and Karl Rove having a debate earlier this month. There is video! Enjoy.
Who said it? Our friend Stuart Stevens at Resolute Square put together this little quiz: Vladimir Putin or MAGA Republicans? (I went 6/8.)
“A battle royale for the soul…” Of the University of Virginia? A Youngkin appointee seeks to downplay slavery in the school’s story.
Too good to be true? The WSJ reports the backstory of the cocaine bear is a tall tale.
Is CPAC in trouble? Mike Pence declined to speak at the annual confab as the group remains defiant in the face of allegations about Matt Schlapp’s personal life.
Mike Pence’s dangerous gambit… Judge Luttig writes in the NYT why he should be careful what he wishes for in challenging Jack Smith’s subpoena. “The former vice president should not want the embarrassing spectacle of the Supreme Court compelling him to appear before a grand jury in Washington just when he’s starting his campaign for the presidency.” Indeed, but Pence needn’t worry about his Presidential campaign much anyway, because he’ll never win. The number of #NeverPence ultra MAGA types is far, far greater than those with strange new respect for him for doing his job on January 6. It’s just math.
Life… In dog years. A wonderful essay at Texas Monthly that might hit home if you have aging loved ones.
Megachurches… And their threat to Christianity, an interesting Twitter thread by Pastor Ben Marsh.
Meanwhile in the “free state of Florida…” The state’s surgeon general is being investigated for allegedly falsifying a report with COVID data.
New Jersey botched the quotes in the Bon Jovi rest stop… At Defector, a deep dive into fake or misattributed quotes.
Your word of the day: Resimercial. Yes, that’s now a thing. Which reminds me of this classic about living at work for 500 days. Or the Duke grad student who lived in his van.
In local news… The government sanctioned monopoly that runs the District of Columbia’s sports gambling is… finally making money. I can’t wait for the next scandal!
The real reason… Nick Fuentes is on the no fly list. Spoiler alert: He’s a jerk to airline employees in addition to being a “groyper.”
The Internet Archive is in court… And while I agree that publishers are giving libraries and schools a very raw deal, I’m not sure their complaint will succeed on the merits. But check out why they’re suing. Knowledge is power, and publishers like the very bad current arrangement. (Think Ticketmaster level bad.) America should demand better. As my colleague Sonny Bunch reminds us: physical media is better than digital.
That’s it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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