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Jeb Bush, Bowing Down To Big Money Donors, Flip Flops On Gay Rights – Sort Of

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Likely 2016 Republican candidate Jeb Bush is changing his positions – and revealing his ignorance – on gay rights and “religious freedom” laws, based on which big money donors he’s addressing.

On Monday, Jeb Bush sat down with conservative radio show host Hugh Hewitt and threw his support to Mike Pence on the issue of the Indiana governor’s highly controversial and discriminatory “religious freedom” law.

“I think if you, if they actually got briefed on the law that they wouldn’t be blasting this law. I think Governor Pence has done the right thing,” Bush told Hewitt. “I just think once the facts are established, people aren’t going to see this as discriminatory at all.”

That played well with Hewitt’s audience, and Bush’s base of right wing evangelicals.

On Wednesday, Bush couldn’t pull off a repeat performance, so he flip-flopped. Sort of.

The former Florida governor was speaking “in a closed-door Silicon Valley fund-raiser, telling a small group of potential supporters that a ‘consensus-oriented’ approach would have been better at the outset,” the New York Times reports. 

“Bush’s comments were strikingly different in tone and in scope from what he said on Monday night,” the Times observes.

“By the end of the week,” Bush told donors Wednesday, “I think Indiana will be in the right place, which is to say that we need in a big diverse country like America, we need to have space for people to act on their conscience, that it is a constitutional right that religious freedom is a core value of our country.”

But “we shouldn’t discriminate based on sexual orientation,” he added. “So what the State of Indiana is going to end up doing is probably get to that place.”

Salon’s Joan Walsh labeled Bush’s updated comments “a steaming bowl of mush.”

And here’s why.

“Bush was in a tough place,” Walsh explains. “It was all such bad timing – as he headed to Silicon Valley to raise megabucks for his Right to Rise PAC. Bay Area businesses like Twitter, Yelp and Salesforce, plus valley titan Apple, had all blasted the law. Still, on Monday night, Bush sounded like Sen. Ted Cruz in his support for poor Mike Pence, who had been asked five times on Sunday whether the bill allowed discrimination against LGBT Americans and couldn’t ever say yes or no.”

She notes Gov. Pence, who on Tuesday called for an amendment to “clarify” the “religious freedom” law, had “pulled the rug out from under Bush, just as he headed to Silicon Valley. Already, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci reports, the former Florida governor has ‘sucked the oxygen out of the room’ when it comes to California cash. A Republican insider told her Bush has become ‘the darling of tried-and-true donors, and they’re solidly behind him.'”

That “solidly behind him” may not hold up, exactly.

As the Times notes, just after Wednesday’s donor event, “a prominent venture capitalist” observed that in “Silicon Valley, we are very liberal on the issues of gays and women’s rights, and we’re all sensitive to the apparent wording of the law.”

“I don’t know what Jeb feels,” he added.

 

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‘He Was the Only One’: Trump Mocked for Declaring Iran’s Moves ‘Shocked’ Him

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March 16, 2026

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President Donald Trump is facing criticism and mockery after admitting he was “shocked” that Iran fought back against Operation Epic Fury.

“Trump just admitted publicly that his administration underestimated the Iranian response to his attack,” The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin reported.

During a meeting of the board governing the Kennedy Center, Trump said, “look what happened. In the last two weeks, they weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Those missiles were set to go after them. So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”

Focusing on Trump’s “shocked” remark, some critics blasted the president, once again, for what many have previously said is a Commander-in-Chief who was unprepared to go to war against Iran.

The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser called Trump’s comments a “Remarkable admission.”

READ MORE: ‘Lazy and Unstrategic’: GOP Senator Slams ‘Republican on Republican Violence’

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Justin Amash declared, “We are governed by complete morons.”

Podcaster Clint Russell noted, “Just FYI, this is the EXACT reason our generals have consistently advised against a war with Iran. Even Charlie Kirk had laid this all out on his show a couple years ago. Iran was no threat to America but they were fully capable of destroying the global economy by striking oil facilities and transit throughout the region.”

Robert Manning, a Distinguished Fellow in Global Foresight at the nonpartisan Stimson Center, wrote: “If so, he was the only one surprised. Strategic planners have war games this for 40 years. Hard to believe JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] didn’t advise Trump this was likely.”

“I’m pretty confident every war plan US has ever done in last 30 years gaming out this conflict was based on expectation that Iran could in fact [and] would in fact do this,” noted The Nation’s Jeet Heer.

“Every institution built to prevent exactly this outcome existed, was bypassed, and we are now watching the president express shock at conclusions that were already written in the classified assessments he didn’t read,” observed Christine Villaverde, the chairwoman of Anchoring Democracy.

READ MORE: Kristi Noem at Center of Push for DOJ Perjury Probe: Report

 

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‘Lazy and Unstrategic’: GOP Senator Slams ‘Republican on Republican Violence’

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15 hours ago

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March 16, 2026

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A prominent Republican senator is denouncing his own party while lamenting the lack of an official presidential endorsement in the highly contentious Texas Republican Senate runoff election.

Agreeing that it is a mistake for President Donald Trump to withhold his endorsement of either Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton or U.S. Senator John Cornyn, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) warned, “I think the more time we spend millions of dollars with Republican-on-Republican violence, Democrats are in the marketing department, loving the idea of a competitive runoff.”

“I get tired of Republicans being lazy and unstrategic,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju, appearing to suggest there are other ways for one of the candidates to pull ahead.

“People on my side of the aisle, and people at the far right of the political spectrum, are trying to swing for the fences, and they’re not gonna succeed,” he warned.

READ MORE: Kristi Noem at Center of Push for DOJ Perjury Probe: Report

A runoff election between Cornyn and Paxton will take place on May 26, and the president has yet to endorse either contender.

Reports suggest a Cornyn endorsement is more likely, although Paxton has been a reliable MAGA supporter. Trump has even suggested that whichever candidate does not get his backing should quit the race entirely, clearing the way for the presumptive nominee to battle the Democratic nominee, James Talarico.

“The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, on March 4, “cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW! We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively!”

He vowed to make his endorsement “soon,” but has yet to do so.

Each passing day gives Talarico more time to campaign and build his war chest as the two GOP contenders spend their time and money battling each other.

READ MORE: Gas Prices Near $4 in These Five States

 

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Gas Prices Near $4 in These Five States

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18 hours ago

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March 16, 2026

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Gas prices are continuing to substantially increase, with five states now hovering near $4 a gallon and several others seeing sharp increases as President Donald Trump’s war in Iran enters its 17th day.

“Big gas price hikes just now starting to happen in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri today, which will likely push the national average to $3.75-$3.80 by mid-week,” reports Patrick De Haan, the head of Petroleum Analysis at GasBuddy.

But, he also notes that Michigan and the Chicago area are already seeing $3.99 per gallon as of Monday. Indiana drivers are seeing $3.89, and Ohio and Kentucky are seeing $3.79 per gallon.

De Haan directly attributes the increases to the summer gasoline changeover and the ongoing Iran situation.

“The national average is up 80.0 cents from a month ago and is 66.1 cents per gallon higher than a year ago,” WANE reports, citing GasBuddy’s data.

Drivers should not expect to see prices come down significantly anytime soon.

“Until we see a meaningful resumption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, upward pressure on fuel prices is likely to persist,” De Haan said. “At the same time, seasonal forces are beginning to intensify as several regions complete the transition to summer gasoline, creating a double headwind that could continue driving pump prices higher in the weeks ahead.”

READ MORE: Kristi Noem at Center of Push for DOJ Perjury Probe: Report

 

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