GOP infighting, Riggleman's running, Carter's longevity legacy, and 2024 - intense, relentless, and covered up.

1980 Best Of - The Clash, AC/DC, and Blondie

Dec 31, 2024

2024 - The Year of Living Intensely

Axios 2024's chaotic news cycles in one chart:

This year's epic, relentless news cycles were driven by months of near-unprecedented political violence and uncertainty — plus the Olympics, according to Axios' annual analysis of Google Trends data.

Bottom Line: We seem to live one intense news cycle to the next. It’s exhausting. Wait, there was an Olympics? Click the link if you dare.

Matt Taibbi - 2024: Year of the Coverup The most ignored real stories of 2024, a year in which national media made the mass production of "pseudo-events" a stand-in for news

WHO’S RUNNING THE COUNTRY? In what may be the most ambitious coverup of the modern era, Joe Biden withdrew as candidate for re-election without a clear explanation of why (“I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down”), technically remained president despite obvious unfitness and non-engagement, yet his White House to this day has escaped questions about who’s making executive decisions. We now know America hasn’t had a functioning president for at least this year and probably longer, which means someone other than the president has been making presidential decisions.

Bottom Line: The legacy media failed to do their job. More to come…

Jonathan Martin - Politico : ‘The Black Swan Election’: Trump’s Campaign Chiefs Tell Their Inside Story LaCivita and Fabrizio explain what their inside numbers showed, where Harris messed up and why Trump wanted Vance.

Until this interview, neither had spoken at length on the record about Trump’s victory. You’ll want to read the entirety of our free-flowing conversation. Fabrizio discusses the Biden alternative who tested the strongest against Trump, LaCivita reveals one of his few regrets, and both weigh in on who they think will emerge as the 2028 GOP nominee.

Bottom Line: GREAT read. Highly recommend.

And now onto 2025:

Former Congressman Denver Riggleman announced an exploratory committee for a statewide office in 2025 during his appearance on Bloomberg TV yesterday. Pick it up at the 8:30 mark for talk of running - leaves open door for Governor…more likely at this point to be gunning for Lt. Governor.

On running as an Independent and NOT a Democrat or Republican:

No, I’ll be running as Denver *beep*ing Riggleman

Bottom Line: Binary politicos better buckle up, Denver is dangerous.

Michael Warren in The Dispatch: The Festering Conflicts in the MAGA Family From NatCons and tech bros to institutionalists and mavericks, the Trump-era siblings are squabbling.

For a party so united and ready to take total control in Washington, Republicans sure have a lot of divisions.
In the House of Representatives, there are the Freedom Caucus hardliners versus the pragmatic, moderate conservatives. In the Senate, you’ve got the institutionalists versus the disruptors. And across the Trump administration, there will be ideologues on various sides of questions from military intervention to fiscal priorities to the engines of economic prosperity.

Bottom Line: Congratulations! You won. Now comes the governing part.

President Carter’s passing

The Dispatch - Kai Bird, Jimmy Carter biographer:

Bird offered an even more effusive evaluation of Carter. “History will judge Carter as a president ahead of his time,” Bird wrote in The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter. “But most citizens and the punditocracy routinely label his a ‘failed’ presidency, ostensibly because he failed to win reelection. But in truth, Carter is sometimes perceived as a failure simply because he refused to make us feel good about the country.”

Bottom Line: Carter “refused to make us feel good about the country”

And the country returned the affection in an electoral blowout 489-49.