Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: The Lay Of The Political Land

Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show went on site of the Trump trials this week to keep his finger on the pulse of the MAGA nut jobs. And they were plentiful. The prize winner had to be the old lady that Klepper kept going back to in his video. She claimed to be at the J6 insurrection, she thought the QAnon Shaman was particular intelligent, very articulate and was able to smell shit a mile away.

Witchfinder Sam Alito has let stand a ruling from the 5th Circuit that essentially ends mass protests in three southern states: [T]he Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act. The article dryly notes that this is personal: For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rogue police station in 2016. We now turn to the Pod Saves Whatevs newsletter because DeRay McKesson is one of their hosts:read more

Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell reached the pinnacle of hypocrisy when claimed the Senate had reached an "unfortunate precedent" over the House impeachment of Mayorkas, ignoring his own past behavior. After the Senate dismissed two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, the turtle was upset. We've set a very unfortunate precedent here. This means that the Senate can ignore, in effect, the House's impeachment.

I'm not sure what happened to Jon Voight, but his support for Trump apparently turned his brain into mush a long time ago. Voight posted the video above to his account on Xitter, and the responses to Ron Filipkowski who re-posted the clip were a lot more appropriate than the nutters in Voight's timeline there. Here's the transcript for anyone that doesn't want to watch it: VOIGHT: Bring back what was lost.

The only Donald Trump criminal trial that's likely to take place this year starts today in New York. Trump is charged with falsifying business records in order to cover up an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. Amanda Marcotte thinks that testimony from Daniels will be "devastating" for Trump, largely because, as Daniels told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes in 2018, their sexual encounter was not fully consensual and was miserable for her: Stormy Daniels: And I was like, "Ugh, here we go." (LAUGH) And I just felt like maybe — (LAUGH) it was sort of — I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone's room alone and I just heard the voice in my head, "well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this." Anderson Cooper: And you had sex with him. Stormy Daniels: Yes. Anderson Cooper: You were 27, he was 60.

Senator Ron Johnson (MAGA/Q - Moscow) is in mid-election season form with his flip-flopping. For example, if you ask RoJo how he feels about absentee ballots, and if he were being unusually honest, his answer would be yes. During an interview, he warned that absentee ballots were part of a nefarious Democratic scheme to get illegal immigrants to be able to vote in American elections: But let's face it, New York - they allow illegal immigrants to vote in their local elections.