Wednesday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

There’s not a lot of exciting politics news today; and that is probably a good thing, considering how bad things are looking for the country in the long run. We only have a little more than a month until Trump moves into the White House and tries to become president for life. 

Have you heard the latest gossip? Donald Trump, Jr., who is still engaged to Kimberly Guilfoyle, has a new girlfriend. 

Olivia Craighead at The Cut: Don Jr. Keeps Stepping Out With a Woman Who’s Not Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Is there trouble in paradise for one of America’s most unsettling couples? Sure seems like it. Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle may be on the rocks, if the Daily Mail is to be believed. While the fiancés were spotted together about a week after the election, the tabloid has been all over what looks like Don Jr.’s new relationship with Bettina Anderson, a Republican socialite who lives in Florida. So what’s going on here?

Let’s back up a few months. In September, the Daily Mail reported that Don Jr. and Anderson had been “spotted canoodling” during a brunch date the month prior. According to their sources, this new fling was “the talk of Palm Beach.” One source said that Anderson reached over “to plant a sexy kiss” on Don Jr. three times during their meal at the Honor Bar.

“She seemed totally smitten with Don — and he with her,” the source told the Daily Mail.

Bettina Anderson

Bettina Anderson

Guilfoyle was probably shocked to learn this information, right? Well, not so fast. The day after the first Daily Mail reports, friends of the former Fox News host told the tabloid that she might have had an idea of what was going on.

“Kimberly either didn’t know about Bettina — or didn’t want to know. Did she hear whispers that Don Jr. was fooling around with someone else? Probably,” one of Guilfoyle’s so-called friends said. “She’s no fool but it’s easy to deceive yourself when you’re so committed to someone and believe he’s committed to you.”

Guilfoyle and Trump have been together since 2018, and got engaged on New Year’s Eve 2020 (his birthday). During their time together, she became a mainstay in the MAGA world, often seen at Trump events, delivering speeches at Republican National Conventions, and sharing almost nothing but pro-Trump content on Instagram. By Election Night this year, it seemed like she and Trump Jr. had worked things out, as she stood by his side at his father’s victory speech.

But all was reportedly not well. The Daily Mail is back on the Trumpfoyle beat, and on Tuesday, they reported that the purportedly engaged couple has not been spotted together since November 12. Meanwhile, on Monday, Don Jr. and Bettina were photographed holding hands while out to dinner to celebrate her 38th birthday. The tabloid also reported that he has been living with his new girlfriend at her West Palm Beach townhouse instead of in the $15.5 million mansion he and Guilfoyle bought in 2021.

Gross. Who would want to hang around with Don Jr., much less live with him? I guess it takes all kinds.

According to US Magazine, via Yahoo News, Anderson is “a model and an influencer” with “more than 38,000 followers on” Instagram.

Anyway, Trump Sr. is giving Guilfoyle a consolation prize–He plans to appoint her Ambassador to Greece.

The Daily Beast, via Yahoo News: Trump Sends Don Jr.’s Fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle Abroad After Split Rumors.

Donald Trump has appointed former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle as his ambassador to Greece—just hours after pictures published by the Daily Mail showed her fiancé, Donald Trump Jr., hand-in-hand with another woman.

“For many years, Kimberly has been a close friend and ally,” the president-elect said in his announcement, which he posted to Truth Social.

Kimberly Guilfoyle and Don Jr

Kimberly Guilfoyle and Don Jr

“Her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics along with her sharp intellect make her supremely qualified to represent the United States, and safeguard its interests abroad. Kimberly is perfectly suited to foster strong bilateral relations with Greece, advancing our interests on issues ranging from defense cooperation to trade and economic innovation.”

Guilfoyle’s nomination requires Senate confirmation and would see her handling foreign affairs.

The announcement hit conspicuously soon after Trump Jr., 46, was pictured cozying up with Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson, 38.

Trump Jr. made no comment on the rumors on social media when he congratulated Guilfoyle in a brief statement to X Tuesday night: “I am so proud of Kimberly. She loves America and she always has wanted to serve the country as an Ambassador. She will be an amazing leader for America First.”

There’s more information coming out on Luigi Mangione, the man who has been arrested and charged with murdering of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson in NYC. Here’s the latest:

The mainstream media has refused to publish Mangione’s “manifesto,” but Ken Klippenstein has posted it on his website:

I’ve obtained a copy of suspected killer Luigi Mangione’s manifesto — the real one, not the forgery circulating online. Major media outlets are also in possession of the document but have refused to publish it and not even articulated a reason why. My queries to The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and NBC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered.

I’ll have more to say on this later — on how unhealthy the media’s drift away from public disclosure is — but for now, here’s the manifesto:

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

John Herrmann at New York Magazine: Luigi Mangione’s Full Story Isn’t Online.

When the identity of Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter, was revealed on Monday, the online search — a reporting process that’s become a collective online ritual — began. It turns out he left a lot of information online: an active account on X, an Instagram, a Facebook, a Goodreads, a Reddit account, and maybe even a Tinder profile. The dossier came together fast.

Luigi Mangione1

Luigi Mangione

Reporters and social-media users noted possible red flags, strange and eerie fragments of information, and small ironies. On Goodreads, he had posted a contrarian riff on Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto. Was it evidence of violent tendencies? He also reviewed a couple of books about back pain. On X, he posted about AI superintelligence and followed some anti-woke pundits. Had he tumbled down a slippery slope? Was he blackpilled? Some sort of accelerationist? On Reddit, he posted about backpacks and spinal injuries. Had he been hiding in plain sight all along?

In isolation, with the hindsight that they were posted by someone who went on to allegedly assassinate a health-care CEO, these accounts, and some of these posts, assumed new meaning, which is reasonable and understandable: It’s a crazy story that people want to understand, and the way social media has been processing it more broadly is unprecedented in about six different ways. But what’s most striking about Mangione’s extensive online dossier is that, had it been studied before the shooting took place, it wouldn’t have raised much alarm. You can spend hours reading these posts, sifting through his follows, and looking for clues about what Type of Guy he is, but the supportable theories are pretty thin: Mangione had an online profile consonant with his identity and context. He shared and posted and followed like a 20-something striver with a foot in the tech industry, listened to Rogan, and considered himself a rationalist or at least unusually rational….

His media consumption — wellness podcasts, a dash of “heterodox” punditry, tech personalities on X — might have placed him near some worrying ideological tendencies, but no more so than millions of other young men in his social milieu; on digital paper, he’s a bit like one of those young male swing voters that dominated post-election recriminations, albeit with an Ivy on his LinkedIn. If a dating profile led you to these accounts, you might wonder if he was going to talk at you about AI or if he might be sort of socially awkward. You might wonder if he’s a bit of a pod bro, or an RFK guy, but you’d also see a lot of stuff that looks — again, without future context — if not normal, then demographically typical. You wouldn’t have wondered if he was planning an assassination. You’d probably have assumed he was friendly! Now, everyone’s looking for the online trail that leads directly the sidewalk in front of the Midtown Hilton, but they haven’t quite found it. Nor, in 2024, should they expect to.

Herrmann argues that a criminal’s “on-line footprint” doesn’t really reveal who a person is anymore, if it ever did.

Faith in the existence of meaning in the “online trail” started waning when social media achieved full ubiquity. By the mid-2010s, the sorts of evidence you’d find in the aftermath of a shocking news event tended to be either hidden in places like 4chan — intentionally inscrutable communities within a fully mainstream internet — or left behind intentionally to be found and shared in the form of a manifesto, an archived Discord channel, or a recording of the act itself. These revelations could still be illuminating or at least shocking — the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter left a trail of posts on the right-wing social-media site Gab, for example — but in recent years, the post-news deep-dive, which has become a messy and fraught spectacle unto itself, wasn’t producing much in the way of understanding. Mostly, if you were planning a dramatic crime, you knew better than to post about it. If you wanted nobody to see you, or suspect you of anything, you simply didn’t post about it.

Mangione’s stubbornly normal online footprint, and the way the media and public have feasted upon it, marks the closing of this circle. Online, he was a guy with unremarkable niche interests and a serious appetite for boring productivity books. The reflexive assumption that his digital trail must contain essential, decodable truths about his motives has produced less in the way of insight than of fandom, which is constructed online through a similar process of breathless driven data aggregation.

Ashley Southall and Maria Cramer at The New York Times: Police Say Suspect’s Notebook Described Rationale for C.E.O. Killing.

Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with killing the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare at a company investors’ day, was arrested with a notebook that detailed plans for the shooting, according to two law enforcement officials.

The notebook described going to a conference and killing an executive, the officials said.

Luigi Mangione2

Luigi Mangione

“What do you do? You wack the C.E.O. at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” was one passage written in the notebook, the officials said….

When Mr. Mangione was arrested, the authorities also found a 262-word handwritten note with him, which begins by appearing to take responsibility for the murder. The note, which officials described as a manifesto, also mentioned the existence of a notebook. The recovery of the notebook was first reported by CNN.

The suspect saw the killing as a “symbolic takedown,” according to a New York Police Department internal report that detailed parts of a three-page manifesto found with him at the time of his arrest. The report added that the suspect “likely views himself as a hero of sorts who has finally decided to act upon such injustices” and expressed concern that others might see him as a “martyr and an example to follow.” [….]

On his way into court on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Mangione shouted about “an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience.”

It was not exactly clear what he was referring to as deputies worked to push him into the courthouse. On Wednesday, the sheriff of Blair County, James E. Ott, said that otherwise Mr. Mangione had not given deputies any problems.

Read more at the NYT.

The NYT has another article about Mangione’s wealthy Baltimore family: The Prominent Maryland Family of the Suspect in the C.E.O. Killing.

Daniel Gilbert at The Washington Post: Severe pain shaped UnitedHealth CEO murder suspect’s view of health system.

Even when Luigi Mangione was surrounded with people who cared about him, he was isolated by a spinal defect that dealt the athletic young man crippling pain and contributed to a jaundiced view of the American health-care system.

Authorities charged Mangione, 26, with murder in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York, but have said little about a motive for the killing. They found a three-page, handwritten document on Mangione that expressed disdain for the American health-care system, they’ve said.

On Reddit in April, Mangione foreshadowed that skepticism about the health-care industry as he offered advice for getting a doctor to perform spinal surgery.

“Tell them you are ‘unable to work’ / do your job,” he wrote. “We live in a capitalist society. I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”

Nothing in his Reddit posts reviewed by The Postindicate violent intentions. Authorities have not laid out their case for what drove Mangione to escalate his frustration with the health system, which is common in the United States, into an allegedly premeditated murder of a prominent health-care executive….

Mangione’s arrest has stunned his friends and family, most of whom appear to have lost touch with him in the last six months.

“We all condemn violence of any kind,” said Josiah Ryan, a spokesman for Surfbreak HNL, a co-living community in Honolulu where Mangione lived for six months in 2022. He added, “There’s sadness, because he was a person who was well-loved and no one saw this coming.”

Mangione's back x-ray

Mangione’s back X-ray

Ryan said that Mangione’s back pain was well known within the Surfbreak community. “It was a real problem for him, and he had to think about that in a way that most 24-year-old young men living in Hawaii would not have to worry about their health,” he said.

Mangione’s struggles with his back pain offer a glimpse into the interior life of a young man who outwardly lived a charmed existence — the scion of a wealthy family in Maryland who was valedictorian of his prestigious private school in Baltimore and earned degrees in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania….

In archived Reddit comments, Mangione doesn’t express anger toward UnitedHealthcare or other health insurers. But the posts chronicle his struggle over years to deal with back pain that became increasingly debilitating.

“From childhood until age 23, my back would always ache if I stood too long, but it wasn’t too bad,” he wrote in February. But as he entered his mid-20s, the pain began to disrupt his life, and he also struggled with cognitive issues.

In a Reddit group focused on brain fog, he wrote, “The people around you probably won’t understand your symptoms — they certainly don’t for me.”

Lots of people live with chronic pain (including me), but we don’t kill people over it.

A bit of Trump crime news: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is trying to keep his case against Trump alive. Laura Italiano at Business Insider: Bragg says Trump’s crimes and ‘history of malicious conduct’ are too serious for his hush-money case to be dismissed.

In an 82-page court filing made public Tuesday, Manhattan prosecutors say Donald Trump’s “history of malicious conduct” is too serious for his hush-money case to be dismissed.

The filing, signed by DA Alvin Bragg, also fights Trump’s claim that he enjoys something called presidential-elect immunity — above and beyond the presidential immunity bestowed on him by the US Supreme Court in June.

“There are no grounds for such relief now, prior to inauguration,” Bragg wrote in opposing Trump’s 11th-hour motion to dismiss, “because President-elect immunity does not exist.”

With just six weeks left before his January 20 inauguration — and six months after a Manhattan jury convicted him — Trump is again demanding that New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan immediately dismiss his hush-money case.

It’s his third time trying to void his indictment or his conviction. If successful, Trump would escape altogether his already thrice-delayed sentencing.

NYC Commissioner Bribery Investigation

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg

The president elect faces as little as no jail time and a potential maximum of four years prison for falsifying 34 business records throughout his first year of office to retroactively hide a hush-money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels. (Legal experts have said that it’s unlikely Trump would be sentenced to jail time as a 78-year-old first-time offender convicted of low-level felonies, and any jail sentence would be stayed as he appeals.)

Trump paid for Daniels’ silence just eleven days before 2016 election, and jurors unanimously found that he thereby conspired to promote his own election by unlawful means, Bragg wrote.

The evidence presented against Trump was “overwhelming,” reads the filing, which is also signed by a lead prosecutor on the case, Christopher Conroy.

“The crimes that the jury convicted defendant of committing are serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York’s financial marketplace,” which relies on honest record-keeping, Bragg wrote.

Finally, at Public Notice, Liz Dye writes: Trump plots to steal Congress’s budget authority.

One of the strangest aspects in living in a declining democracy is that everyone is forced to learn about arcane areas of the law … if only to see them trampled by the despot.

The first Trump administration taught us about the Logan Act, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, and the Presidential Records Act. Those were all about the limits of the president’s authority. Could Trump dispatch Mike Flynn to secretly negotiate with the Russian ambassador before taking office? Could he simply stack federal agencies with his cronies serving in an acting capacity and avoid Senate confirmation? Could he steal or destroy government records?

The answer was an enthusiastic “yes,” thanks to the Supreme Court, with an assist from Judge Aileen Cannon. In the name of ensuring that he can act “boldly” and “without hesitation,” six conservative justices gave the president unlimited authority to commit crimes without fear of prosecution. The imperial presidency is upon us.

But even that blank check isn’t enough for Trump and his enablers. To reshape society, they need the legislative and judicial branches to be more than supine. They need to steal Congress’s power, too. And so, while we’re learning about Trump’s plans to use recess appointments to sidestep the senate’s constitutionally mandated “advice and consent” role, we now have to learn about the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

I can’t do this important post justice with excerpts, but there’s no paywall, so please go read it at Public Notice. Here’s a bit more.

It all goes back to Nixon

The Constitution vests “the power of the purse” in Congress.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, AKA the Spending Clause, specifies that “Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” And Section 9 says that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”

Congress passes the budget and allocates government revenues as it sees fit — that’s just black-letter law. And so in 1972, Congress passed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, allocating $5 billion for 1973, $6 billion for 1974, and $7 billion for 1975 for municipal sewer updates. President Richard Nixon tried and failed to veto the law, and, after it was passed, he instructed EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus to allot “[n]o more than $2 billion of the amount authorized for the fiscal year 1973, and no more than $3 billion of the amount authorized for the fiscal year 1974.”

The City of New York sued, and in a 1975 case called Train v. City of New York, the Supreme Court held that Nixon had no discretion to refuse to spend money allocated by Congress. Ruckelshaus was obligated to dispense the $18 billion over three years, despite Nixon’s strong belief that cities should simply live with rotting pipes.

And while that case was percolating through, Congress went one further and passed the Impoundment Control Act, to make it clear to Nixon that he should quit encroaching on their turf and monkeying with the budget….

Under the ICA, the president must either spend the funds obligated by the legislature, or come to Congress with a “special message” and explain why not. Congress then has 45 days to vote for rescission, rescinding the original allocation. If Congress doesn’t agree, or simply ignores the message, the funds must be spent as originally ordained. (Here’s a handy ICA fact sheet from the Dems on the House Budget Committee.)

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who clearly don’t know or care about the separation of powers, are currently promising to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget and delete entire federal agencies through their fake DOGE committee. But even in his first administration, Trump violated the ICA by withholding the defense allocation for Ukraine in 2019.

Read the rest at the link.

That’s all I have for today. We’re having a stormy day here, so I’m going to try to distract myself with a good book. Have a nice day, everyone.


Tuesday Reads: GOP National Hatefest, Day 1

Good Morning!!

I didn’t watch any of the first night of the GOP convention; but from what I’m reading this morning, it was as bad as I expected.

Holly Baxter at The Independent: The first night of the Republican National Convention was deeply, disturbingly weird.

Most of us knew the Republican National Convention was going to be deeply weird before we tuned in; expecting normalcy from this kind of event is like opening your mouth next to a UV light and expecting it to cure you of coronavirus. Nevertheless, what we saw tonight was so especially weird that it’s worth discussing beyond the usual, “Wow, was that a fever dream?” or, “Did you get anything from that word salad?” Because this was a glimpse of what we’re in for over the next four years if Trump continues the usual trend and wins himself a second term — and it’s both darkly funny and horribly dangerous.

Who to mention first? Natalie Harp, the woman who survived a diagnosis of terminal bone cancer because of experimental treatment and who claimed that “when Democrats say free healthcare, they mean marijuana, opioids” and “death panels” for the disabled? Representative Matt Gaetz, who referred to Democrats as “woketopians” (what?) ready to “disarm you, unlock the prisons” and “invite MS13 to live nextdoor” (a racist dog-whistle if ever I heard one)? The speaker opening the convention who reeled off a list of “Democrat policies” which would harm the country, none of which were actual Democrat policies? Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley saying that “Joe Biden is good for Iran and Isis, great for communist China”? Don Jr claiming that “the left” is trying to “cancel” the Founding Fathers? The nurse from a 2,000-person town in Virginia who said “I don’t want the media taking my story and twisting it so let me be clear: Donald Trump saved countless lives” during the pandemic, as the death rate surpassed 177,000? Or perhaps the St Louis couple who famously pointed their guns at Black Lives Matter protesters showing up to complain they’re facing charges and claim Democrats want to “abolish the suburbs”? Oh, I don’t know, Mom, don’t make me choose!

Now we know why convalescent plasma was suddenly given FDA approval this morning: it was central to quite a few speeches vaunting Trump as the hero of Covid-19 (“without him, millions would have died,” said Natalie Harp, without irony.) The fact that this important medical turning-point was timed perfectly for the beginning of the Republican convention really should give us all pause. Plenty have opined that a vaccine might be rushed through right before Election Day in November for the same reasons. Trump’s buddy Vladimir Putin made a similar PR move himself in August, announcing that the country had won the race for an inoculation despite the fact that only 24 percent of Russian doctors say they would take the vaccine themselves — so, y’know, it has precedent. Still, it beats injecting bleach into your veins.

Read the whole thing at The Independent.

Many people who watched the proceedings thought Donald Trump Jr. looked stoned during his convention speech.

Bob Brigham at Raw Story: Was Donald Trump, Jr. ‘coked out of his mind’ during RNC speech?

Donald Trump, Jr. addressed the Republican National Committee on Monday, urging Americans to trust his father with four more years in office.

But instead of focusing on the words coming out of his mouth, many Twitter users were focused on his eyes, with many wondering if he might have been on drugs.

Examples:

https://twitter.com/ReadYouForFree/status/1298098969650900994?s=20

Read more tweets about Don Jr.’s speech at Raw Story.

Junior’s girlfriend also gave a speech last night.

Eric Lach at The New Yorker: Kimberly Guilfoyle’s High-Volume Trumpism at the Republican National Convention.

Quietly, Guilfoyle has become a key figure in the preservation and furthering of Trumpism. This week, the journalist Jason Zengerle wrote in the Times Magazine that Guilfoyle and Donald, Jr., “have become fund-raising powerhouses,” helping to amass the war chest that is keeping Trump—despite a pandemic, an economic crisis, and widespread civil unrest—within at least striking distance of a win in November. In early March, in what might go down as one of the final pre-pandemic fêtes of Trump’s first term in office, Guilfoyle celebrated her fifty-first birthday during a big donor retreat at Mar-a-Lago, the President’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida. “It was like a Gatsbyesque extravaganza,” one guest told Zengerle. The President stood by Guilfoyle as the crowd of a hundred people sang “Happy Birthday.” Afterward, Trump kissed her on the head. “Four more years!” Guilfoyle shouted.

On Monday, Guilfoyle shouted some more things. Earlier in the day, the Trump campaign held a call with reporters, one of whom asked whether Guilfoyle, in her prerecorded speech, might go after Kamala Harris, the California senator and Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee. (Guilfoyle was formerly married to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been described as Harris’s political “sibling.”) The campaign demurred, not wanting to give anything away. But the expectation that Guilfoyle might be deployed in some kind of surgical political strike proved misguided. At the podium, she delivered a short speech whose tone might be described as high-key dystopian. Going into the Convention, the Trump campaign had suggested that it was looking to strike a note of sunny optimism. Guilfoyle’s speech wasn’t it. “They want to destroy this country, and everything that we have fought for and hold dear,” she said. “They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think, and believe, so that they can control how you live! They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal, victim ideology, to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself.” Howard Dean’s Presidential aspirations are popularly remembered as falling apart after one misdeployed yelp. On Monday, Guilfoyle went on for six minutes.

 

More on Guilfoyle from Ed Mazza at HuffPost: Kimberly Guilfoyle’s ‘Screams’ Scare Stephen Colbert Right Off His Chair.

Colbert was stunned by the speeches from Donald Trump Jr. ― son of President Donald Trump ― and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle. Trump Jr. delivered a sweaty rant that name-checked the Loch Ness Monster while Guilfoyle fired off a screaming speech that had Colbert reaching for the volume control. Or, as Colbert described it, “some very nuanced screams.”

Then he rolled clips of Guilfoyle’s loud address.

“And that wasn’t her only story to shriek,” he said before throwing to footage of her even louder closing lines in which she told viewers that Trump “emancipates you and lifts you up to live your American dream!”

When the camera came back to Colbert, he was in hiding.

“Is the loud lady gone?” he asked as he reemerged. “I’m scared. It’s the first time in my life I’ve had to turn down the volume on C-SPAN. God, I’m glad we already had our kids because I was too close to the TV, I might’ve been sterilized by that.”

Later, Colbert discussed Trump Jr.’s speech. He couldn’t get over “Junior’s sweaty face and wet, bloodshot eyes.”

“Either he’s high or that’s what happens when you live in the splash zone of Screamin’ Guilfoyle,” he said. “Just bring a poncho.”

 

Politico pointed out that the first night of Trump’s convention highlight the very few people of color who support his racist campaign: A GOP convention surprise: Trump goes all-in on race.

Tim Scott waxed about his family arc — “from cotton to Congress in one lifetime” — and invoked George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Nikki Haley spoke of her Indian roots and alluded to her decision to take down the Confederate flag. Herschel Walker said he’s seen “racism up close” — and it’s not Donald Trump.

For a president credibly accused of stoking racial fears and divisions throughout his term, Trump, with his choice of speakers, leaned hard into the topic during the first night of his convention on Monday. One Republican after another defended Trump’s record on race, while highlighting Joe Biden’s race-related gaffes and history pushing the 1994 crime bill.

But even as speakers such as Scott and Haley attempted to soften Trump’s image on race — while essentially making the case that the racial justice movement has gone too far in its views of policing — others took a harder-edged tack that undercut the message of inclusion. In an ominous presentation that warned suburbanites that their safety is at risk if Democrats win, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their home in St. Louis, made clear that the president’s outreach would go only so far.

“What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country,” Patricia McCloskey said. “Make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

More reporting on the RNC convention:

AP: Republican Convention takeaways: All Trump, all the time.

CNN: Fact check: First night of the Republican National Convention features more dishonesty than four nights of DNC.

The Washington Post: Fact-checking the first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention.

The New Republic: Republicans Invite America to Play the “Dear Leader” Lottery.

The New York Times: Nominating Trump, Republicans Rewrite His Record.

I don’t think I can bear to watch day 2 of RNC either.

Take care of yourselves today, Sky Dancers!