Obama: II GOP: 0
I fell back in like with my President this week. Not back in love — there’s way too much for Obama to do, way too much he needs to change — about Obama — for that to happen. Yet.
Go ahead, laugh, make jokes, tell me I’m a fool. Ridicule me.
But here’s what I’ll tell you: Obama started to grow a pair this week.
The State of the Union address was an unqualified success. Yes, it was short on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal details, but, it would appear, his message was received. We’ll know more Tuesday when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates makes his “major announcement” at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. I’m cautiously optimistic there will be significant movement. I’m also concerned Gates will present a long, drawn out process. Kind of like the way a crack addict would plan his own kicking the habit.
Obama faltered Thursday as he talked about equality in Tampa. That was a disappointment, because it seemed he really couldn’t find the words to show what we had hoped he believed.
Today, at what has now been christened “Question Time,” in a meeting reminiscent of British Parliament debates with the Prime Minister — albeit more civil — Obama found his voice. He spoke strongly and unreservedly to GOP Representatives at their retreat in Baltimore. He used phrases like, “You know that’s not true.” He quoted specific details that no president before, at least to my memory, ever could have. he called them on the carpet. In one exchange with GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling, he interrupted the endless wind-up to a question that never came, and accused him of posturing and cited his rhetoric as exactly what is wrong with politics today. It was classic.
David Corn just wrote,
“The event was gripping. As word spread through Washington, people rushed to their televisions and became fixed on it. CBS News reporter Mark Knoller, a veteran White House correspondent, tweeted that this was a first. It marked a giant step forward in political and governmental transparency. (It was not certain that the House GOPers would allow cameras into the session until the morning.) The debate was serious and intense. It just so happened that Obama cleaned the clocks of the GOPers, referring to them repeatedly as “you guys,” while they called him “Mr. President.” (“Interesting session,” Republican leader John Boehner tweeted afterward.) Consequently, Republicans may want to think twice before providing Obama another opportunity. Yet this was a good moment for the republic.”
I agree. A “good moment for the republic,” indeed.
The GOP Reps whined. Literally. Cries of, “We have ideas too” were embarrassing.
Obama accused the GOP of engaging in the “Politics of no.” When one lawmaker misquoted the president’s State of the Union speech, Obama said, “That’s not what I said. And I should know what I said because it was just two days ago that I said it.”
THIS is my president.
(West Wing aficionados will remember the episode with “Dr. Jenna Jacobs,” whom President Bartlet slams for her beliefs on homosexuality. In no way was THAT President Obama this week. But the last part of the clip, where Bartlet says, “Toby, that’s how I beat him.” THAT was Obama this week.)
Unsurprisingly, the GOP wind machine has been hard at work, attempting to put a good spin for their side on this. They got their clocks cleaned by the President of the United States, and they know it.
Here’s what the National Review had to say,
“Pence calls today’s Q&A session with the president in Baltimore a “useful†tool for the House GOP in spreading its message. “It’s not widely known, but Republicans have actually been offering positive solutions on the economy, fiscal discipline, energy independence, and health-care reform,†he says. “It’s not widely known because this administration has done a real number on us, smearing the GOP as the ‘party of no.’ Today we were able to push back on that, and even the president acknowledged that Republicans have been offering substantive alternatives on every major issue.â€
“Republicans, he adds, “gave as good as they got†in the question period. “We confronted the president with some very direct questions and statements — focused on policy, not politics. He responded, occasionally, with similar directness. It was productive.†So is Pence open to more House of Commons-like debates? “We welcome them,†he says.”
Yes, Obama has a LONG way to go on equal rights — and in no way, shape, or form am I letting him off the hook for what he hasn’t accomplished — or even attempted.
But this week, my president found his backbone. And it was a welcome relief to the millions who feared he had lost it.
What happens next week is anyone’s guess. But this was an excellent (re)start.
You can watch Obama’s meeting with the GOP from earlier today at C-SPAN. Sadly, the video cannot eb embedded. I’ll ty to get a copy of it over the weekend. Watch it. It will raise your heart a bit.
See what Julie Gulden at DailyKOS says, in, “Luke Russert nailed it…updated w/video.”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
