Frank Bruni: Bristol Palin’s ‘Righteous Leadership’ Makes Limbaugh Proud
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni today, in “The Right’s Righteous Frauds,” takes on Bristol Palin and other radical right wing hypocrites who have decided “personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone from claiming righteous leadership.”
Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol publicly weighed in. Because, you know, the world was on tenterhooks.
In a blog post she focused on the reference that Obama made to his daughters — and to the same-sex parents of some of the girls’ friends.
“It would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends (sic) parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage,†wrote Bristol, making her heady debut as the new Dr. Spock for a nascent millennium. She added that “in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.â€
Fathers like…Levi Johnston? It’s with him that she conceived her child — out of wedlock, at the age of 17 — and by most accounts, his relationship with her and the Palin family isn’t any warmer than Juneau in January. A mother/father home is not what he and Bristol have succeeded in creating.
What’s more, she has made sure that their son, Tripp, will at some point be treated to a worldview-shaping image of Dad as something akin to a date rapist. That’s the description of him immortalized in her memoir, one of her many efforts to monetize her surname. It recounts the loss of her virginity as a result of getting drunk and blacking out in the company of Levi, who pounced. What a gift that narrative is to Tripp, now being hauled into a TV reality show, “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp,†already in production. Little children are known to thrive in such environments.
I hesitated before picking on Bristol because she’s an easy target. It’s like shooting moose from a helicopter flying low over the tundra.
But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists: hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be cashed.
She proves that they’re not going away anytime soon — a new generation rises! — and that they haven’t been daunted by the ridicule justly heaped on Newt Gingrich during the Republican primaries, when he dared to cast himself as a religious conservative.
Certainly Rush thunders on. Last week he bellowed that Obama had decided to “lead a war†on traditional marriage. Seems to me Limbaugh started those hostilities long ago, if not with his first divorce then certainly with his second and third.
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Prominent podcaster Joe Rogan warned that the handling of the Epstein files “looks terrible” for President Donald Trump and his administration.
“During Tuesday and Thursday’s episodes, Rogan criticized redactions the Department of Justice made from the files,” The Hill reported.
“Who knows what f — — happens with all this Epstein files s — —,” he said, according to video of his streaming show. “It just keeps getting crazier and crazier and crazier and deeper and deeper.”
“Why would your name be redacted if you’re not a victim?” Rogan also asked. “Like, this is what’s crazy about all this. Like, how come you redact some people and you don’t redact other people?”
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“Like, what is this?” the podcaster continued. “This is not good. None of this is good for this administration. It looks f — — terrible. It looks terrible. It looks terrible for Trump when he was saying that none of this was real. This is all a hoax. This is not a hoax. Like, did you not know?”
“Maybe he didn’t know if you want to be charitable? But this is definitely not a hoax. And if you’ve got redacted people’s names, and these people aren’t victims, you’re not protecting the victim. So what are you doing?”
“And how come all this s — — is not released?” Rogan asked.
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Far-right extremist livestreamer Nick Fuentes — who leads a “Groyper” following of mostly young men and brands himself “America First” — is putting President Donald Trump on notice ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“I won’t even consider voting in the midterms unless the Epstein Files are fully unredacted, mass deportations resume, and we don’t go to war with Iran,” wrote Fuentes, who has 1.2 million followers on the X social media platform.
Some of Trump’s MAGA allies were furious this week as Attorney General Pam Bondi deflected numerous questions in a congressional hearing on that very topic.
Even before Bondi’s widely-criticized performance, Fuentes had called for her impeachment.
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“Pam Bondi needs to be impeached,” he said on his February 9 Rumble show, “America First,” as The Daily Beast reported. “You lied about the existence of the files. You lied about unindicted collaborators and accomplices.”
Fuentes has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist,” an “admirer of fascists,” and someone who “frequently relies on antisemitic tropes.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, “Fuentes has used his platforms to make numerous antisemitic, racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments,” and spreads “white supremacist propaganda.”
President Trump “has not condemned Fuentes,” and Vice President JD Vance “has only criticized him for attacking his wife,” The Week reported last month. “But Vance also appears keen to avoid alienating young Fuentes supporters, who could help him secure the GOP presidential nomination in 2028.”
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Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump issued another batch of pardons on Thursday, granting clemency to five former NFL players — the latest in what the Cato Institute has labeled a “blizzard” of pardons.
Trump’s pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson praised the move, which covers cases including those involving drug-related offenses and perjury convictions, according to The Guardian,
“Today, the President granted pardons to five former NFL players—Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry, and the late great Dr. Billy Cannon,” wrote Johnson. “As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again. So is our nation.”
Johnson went on to applaud the president “for his continued commitment to second chances.”
“Mercy changes lives,” she added.
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The Cato Institute on Wednesday had said the scope and magnitude of Trump’s “blizzard” of pardons are “unprecedented.”
Before this latest round of pardons, Trump had issued 166 pardons — plus the mass pardons of about 1,500 people convicted on charges in connection with January 6 — since taking office just over one year ago. By comparison, President Joe Biden in four years issued 80 pardons.
“In other words,” Cato’s Dan Greenberg wrote, “even putting aside the rioters’ collective pardon, Trump is now issuing pardons at eight times the rate Biden did.”
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Greenberg put Trump’s pardons into several categories.
He noted that Biden’s pardons eliminated about $680,000 in penalties owed to victims or the federal government, whereas Trump’s pardons have wiped away about $1.5 billion.
Greenberg also said that “Trump has normalized the pardoning of disgraced politicians, such as former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez (who orchestrated a spree of state-sponsored drug trafficking leading to a 45-year prison term),” and others, such as Nevada legislator Michele Fiore, Virginia sheriff Scott Jenkins, Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, and Arkansas legislator Jeremy Hutchinson.
Other concerns Greenberg noted are that aspects of some of Trump’s pardons “set off alarm bells for self-corruption—either of the president or of his associates.”
Finally, “Trump has increasingly focused on providing pardons to his campaign supporters who stretched or broke the law, such as John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and Jenna Ellis.”
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Image via Reuters
Rogan on Epstein Files: ‘Looks Terrible’ for Trump
Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice Over Epstein Files
Trump’s Pardon ‘Blizzard’ Grows With Clemency for Five Former NFL Players
‘No Going Back’: Report Warns Post-MAGA America Will Never Be the Same
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