Jill Biden Said What?
As Trump's presidency degrades the nation, we're reminded who put him back in office.
This newsletter is free: Subscribe to get more. Or level up to a paid subscription for the daily “Morning Read-In” (MRI), where I curate the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life — with micro-essays of insight via the Subscriber-only chat feature.
JILL BIDEN SAYS says she feared her husband was suffering a stroke as she watched then-President Joe Biden stumble through a career-ending debate performance in 2024 that helped put Trump back in office. “I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” the former first lady told CBS News in an interview scheduled to air Sunday.
I call BS.
First, anybody with eyes and an open mind saw Joe Biden “like that” — rambling, mumbling, shuffling, physically and mentally declining — before and after the debate. Lying eyes belonged only to professional Democrats and Biden’s family, people making bank on his power.
Second, if the president’s wife had thought he was having a stroke, Joe Biden would have been rushed to a hospital that night, thoroughly examined, kept for observation, and forced to disclose the medical scare to the public.
None of that happened, which means she’s lying. Or it did happen, which means she’s part of a massive conspiracy to cover up the stroke scare. I’ll give Team Biden the benefit of the doubt and say she’s lying.
Third, the former first lady is selling her book and is desperate for coverage.
Her book tour will be a sad reminder of the 2024 election campaign, when the country was denied an open Democratic presidential primary that could have elevated a stronger candidate than Biden and kept the disastrous Trump out of office.
SPEAKING OF TRUMP: “I don’t care about the midterms,” the president declared Wednesday to the painful chagrin of GOP politicians who do.
At a superficial level, it might be refreshing to hear a commander in chief put his national security agenda ahead of his political interests. That’s the spin Trump put on his response to Iran seeking a one-sided peace deal to end his highly unpopular war.
“They thought they were gonna outwait me. You know, ‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms,’” Trump said at a meeting of his sycophantic Cabinet. “I don’t care about the midterms.”
But he does care about his sagging war-time approval ratings, and he will care about a Democratic Congress investigating him in 2027, should his Iranian gambit lead to a GOP route in November.
Furthermore, his “I-don’t-care-about-the-midterms” bromide might sound to war-weary Americans like be doesn’t care about them. It wasn’t that long ago when Trump tried to make the same national security argument and instead uncorked this truth bomb:
“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”
Still a most-fitting epitaph for the Trump presidency: “I don’t think about anybody.”
A CIVIL JURY heard the evidence gathered by E. Jean Carroll’s legal team in 2023 and ruled that Trump sexually abused the former magazine editor the mid-1990s. If those jurors happen to hear the latest development in the case, they might conclude that Trump is assaulting Carroll again.
The Department of Justice — weaponized against Trump’s political rivals and led by the attorney who defensed him in the rape trial — has opened a criminal investigation into whether Carroll committed perjury in civil lawsuits against Trump, multiple news outlets report.
Carroll may or may not have lied at the trial. We don’t know. But we do know there are appropriate venues to make that case, starting with the civil court that handled Trump’s trial, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, which already has Trump’s appeal at hand.
The exact wrong place for Trump to litigate Carroll’s conduct is with his FBI and DOJ.
CITING THE LAW and common sense, the head of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing tried to block Trump’s audacious bid to place his portrait on a $250 bill and was punished, forcibly reassigned to a lesser role inside the Treasury Department.
“The buck stopped here,” Patricia “Patty” Solimene wrote in an email to colleagues the day after her April 27 reassignment. Clever dig.
No living person has appeared on U.S. currency since 1866, when it was outlawed after the image of a mid-level Treasury bureaucrat appeared on a 5-cent note, The Washington Post reports. Legislation to put Trump’s face on the $250 bill was introduced in Congress last year and languished.
And yet Trump’s political appointees at Treasury are still demanding that the printing bureau execute Trump’s personally approved bill design, according to the Post.
It’s maddening to watch a wartime president who promised to put America first instead put so much time into placing his face and name on so many things — a ballroom, an arch, multiple federal buildings, White House walls, and U.S. coins and currency.
IRAN FIRED four one-way attack drones at American and commercial ships early today. American F/A-18, F-16 and F-35 jet fighters shot down the drones, The Wall Street Journal reports, then the F/A-18s hit the ground-control unit before it could launch a fifth drone.
The cease fire isn’t holding.
Iran is far more prepared to retain its nuclear program than Trump told the American public.
Thanks to Trump’s blunderous war, Iran now holds a negotiating card it did not possess before the conflict: The Strait of Hormuz, and through that waterway, the health of the U.S. economy.
Trump’s choices are all-out war, a bad peace deal, or this ugly status quo. Unfortunately, we can’t wind the clock back to President Obama’s term and make America’s position on Iran greater again.
Today’s newsletter is a rare free sample of the daily “Morning Read-In, exclusive to Convulsions’ paid subscribers. In today’s news environment, don’t you want a daily MRI?
"No living person has appeared on U.S. currency since 1866"
Actually Calvin Coolidge appeared on a 50 cent coin in 1926.
Just sayin'
Ron, her halo is looking a little tarnished. I would have more respect for people if they just said we love power and we don't want to give it up. As an average Democratic voter, my fondest wish is for everyone involved in 2024 - the Bidens, Harris, Waltz - to just shut the hell up. Them and James Carville. Just go away.