If you haven’t seen it, I have video of Cheney reading out text messages from Fox News personalities and family members - even Don, Jr. - begging him to do something about the insurrection on January 6:
(Side note: when my parents watched Dynasty back in the day, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen. When I watch clips of it now I still think it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, but that’s why it was great. God, I miss the eighties.)
Related: The Washington Post reports that some evangelicals who backed Trump for his strong support of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu are upset to find out that Trump didn’t get a damn about Israel nor Netanyahu.
One of former president Donald Trump’s major evangelical backers on Monday condemned recently reported attacks by Trump on former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and warned that he risked alienating his Christian base by distancing himself from the Israeli leader.
Trump, in interviews published this week by Axios reporter Barak Ravid, railed against his onetime ally for congratulating President Biden on his victory once it became clear that the Democrat had won the 2020 election. Trump said the call was a betrayal of their relationship and the several controversial changes in U.S. policy toward Israel that Trump had ordered during his one term, including moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
“F--k him,” Trump was quoted as saying of Netanyahu. “The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with.”
In the interviews, Trump also said Netanyahu never seemed genuinely interested in seeking peace with the Palestinians. Conversely, the former president heaped praise on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, describing him as “terrific” and “almost like a father.”
“I thought he wanted to make a deal more than Netanyahu,” Trump said, according to accounts of the interviews published by Axios.
Evangelical leaders in the United States — many of whom are ardent supporters of both Trump and Israel — have been largely silent on the former president’s reported comments. But Mike Evans, one of Trump’s early evangelical backers, said he was “horrified” by the sentiments and said they would offend significant numbers of evangelical voters.
Evans, in a letter to Trump that he shared with a Washington Post reporter, implored the former president to “understand that Benjamin Netanyahu has much greater support among evangelicals in America than you.”
“Please, I beg of you, don‘t put us in the position to choose between you and Bible land,” the letter said. “There is no possibility you can win again if Bible-believing evangelicals see you as the ‘F--k Netanyahu’ president who considers Abbas a father-like figure and blames the State of Israel, and not the Palestinians, for not making peace.”
Evans has been one of Trump’s most visible, and controversial, supporters in Israel, where he travels frequently. He founded the Friends of Zion Museum in downtown Jerusalem, which was festooned with a 40-foot “God Bless Trump” after the embassy move was announced. That was one of several times Evans paid to have posters hung around the city, all celebrating Trump’s support for policies favored by Netanyahu and his right-wing allies.
These banners and posters kind of remind me of this book cover from back in the day:
Coulter, to her credit, has actually very publicly turned hard against Trump:
“We finally got the authoritarian liberals have been talking about,” the right-wing firebrand told The Daily Beast. “And I want to point out what a gigantic pussy he is. Who are these people still supporting Trump and this nonsense ‘stop the steal’? I don’t understand why. Why are you doing this for Trump when he doesn’t give a crap about you? These poor, working-class Americans, hanging on by their fingernails! No, he didn’t have time for them. He was too busy talking to Bob Woodward.”
Coulter went on: “He held a rally and he encouraged them to march on the Capitol while he goes back to the White House to have a nice lunch because he’s a gigantic pussy. He always has other people doing his dirty work. He was this tough guy on The Apprentice. He couldn’t even fire his own attorney general. He sent Corey Lewandowski to do it. He just trash-tweets Jeff Sessions on Twitter. Oooohh what a big man!”
Coulter sputtered with rage as she vented about the soon-to-be ex president. “I hate him,” she seethed.
Coulter said she initially couldn’t accept that Trump supporters—which she conceded fit only the broadest definition of conservative—were actually rioting in a manner that, in her decidedly debatable view, was every bit as bad as Black Lives Matter and antifa. But, in true Coulterish fashion, she concluded that yes, indeed, they had been incited by their unworthy hero.
“The thing about antifa is that the men are scrawny and the women are 300 pounds. And I do see a lot of beefy-looking guys who look like Trump supporters,” she reasoned.
“Trump betrayed his own supporters at every turn,” Coulter added. “He turned over his presidency to Idiot Boy Jared. Who is still supporting this guy? So now we see. And he tells them, ‘yeah go march on the Capitol,’ and then he goes back to the White House, gets in bed and starts tweeting.”
Remarkably, Coulter declined to acknowledge that she had been misguided to boost Trump’s candidacy, largely on the basis of his anti-immigration, isolationist, and “America First” rhetoric.
“He was the only one saying this stuff,” Coulter reasoned. “I hate him. He’s a betrayer. But I’m pretty confident we’re never going back to the Bush Republican Party…Yes, I knew he was a coarse vulgarian. Yes, I knew he was a huckster. I think we all did. But one thing there was no warning of was Jared and Ivanka. They ran this presidency and all they cared about was impressing Kim Kardashian and sucking up to Wall Street…After he was elected, we got the most gigantic bait-and-switch in history…That was a shocker.”
If only other members of the Trump cult would realize they’ve been had, follow her lead and speak out. Yes, I’m now at the point where I’m disappointed that more conservatives aren’t as brave, outspoken and principled as Ann Coulter.
Further to yesterday’s post, more evidence that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is extremely contagious, but maybe relatively mild:
The omicron variant appears to cause less severe disease than previous versions of the coronavirus, and the Pfizer vaccine seems to offer less defense against infection from it but still good protection from hospitalization, according to an analysis of data from South Africa, where the new variant is driving a surge in infections.
The findings released Tuesday are preliminary and have not been peer-reviewed -- the gold standard in scientific research -- but they line up with other early data about omicron's behavior, including that it seems to be more easily transmitted.
Still, some experts cautioned that it's too soon to draw conclusions about the outcomes from omicron since the variant is still quite new and hospitalizations can lag weeks behind infections.
According to an analysis conducted by Discovery Health, South Africa's largest private health insurer, and the South African Medical Research Council, a two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination appeared to provide just 33% protection against infection during South Africa's current omicron-fueled wave, but 70% protection against hospitalization.
[…]
In the weeks since the variant was detected, South Africa has experienced rapid spread of the virus -- concentrated in its most populous province, Gauteng. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in the country rose over the past two weeks from 8.07 new cases per 100,000 people on Nov. 29 to 34.37 new cases per 100,000 people on Dec. 13, according to Johns Hopkins University. The death rate hasn't increased during that same period.
Many are now looking to South Africa for clues about what the world could be in for.
"The omicron-driven fourth wave has a significantly steeper trajectory of new infections relative to prior waves. National data show an exponential increase in both new infections and test positivity rates during the first three weeks of this wave, indicating a highly transmissible variant with rapid community spread of infection," Noach said.
Although case numbers are rising, hospital admissions for adults diagnosed with COVID-19 are 29% lower compared to the wave that South Africa experienced in mid-2020, after adjusting for vaccination status, according to the analysis.
It shows that people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine had 33% protection against infection in the first weeks of South Africa's current omicron-driven wave. That's a significant drop from the 80% protection against infection afforded during earlier periods.
In addition, the study showed that people fully vaccinated with Pfizer had 70% protection against hospital admission during the omicron surge. That's a drop from the 93% protection seen in South Africa's delta-driven wave.
Vaccines against COVID-19 might not be as effective against Omicron as they were against other variants, but from all indications it’s still much better than no protection at all. If you haven’t already gotten your shots, get out there and do it today.
As for those who remain dead-set against vaccination, well, I suppose a less-deadly variant of COVID-19 is the best we could have hoped for. We’ll all be immune eventually, only some people insist on doing it the hard way.
Though there are things about Liz Cheney I do not care for, I have been more and more inclined to give her some serious respect and props as regards her role on the Jan. 6 committee and all things related.
The flip side of that is Ann Coulter, for whom I've never had one iota of respect, and now have even less. Admitting to knowing he was a "coarse vulgarian" and a "huckster", WTF did she actually think would happen when he got his slimy mitts on the levers of real power? And using "Jared and Ivanka" as an excuse for the wool being even more dense in covering her supposedly otherwise 20-20 girly-greens is about as lame as it gets.
When we find ourselves at a point where we are disappointed - facetiously or otherwise - that more conservatives aren't as brave, outspoken and as principled as Ann Coulter, we are in a sorry state indeed.
The bar sinks ever downward.