What A Day: Beach don't kill my flag | Crooked Media
25% OFF NEW ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS—Join Friends of the Pod Today! 25% OFF NEW ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS—Join Friends of the Pod Today!

What A Day: Beach don't kill my flag

FILE - Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito pauses after swearing in Mark Esper as Secretary of Defense during a ceremony with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, July 23, 2019. A second flag of a type carried by rioters during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was displayed outside a house owned by Alito according to a report published May 22, 2024, by The New York Times. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Most Recent

View All
FILE - Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito pauses after swearing in Mark Esper as Secretary of Defense during a ceremony with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, July 23, 2019. A second flag of a type carried by rioters during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was displayed outside a house owned by Alito according to a report published May 22, 2024, by The New York Times. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

NO FUN IN THE MAGA SUN

Top right-wingers seem downright peeved they can’t shred democratic norms without getting an earful from their neighbors, or, y’know, law enforcement. Can’t MAGA just have fun?

  • Poor Sam Alito. The conservative Supreme Court Justice is getting so much guff for flying anti-democratic “Stop the Steal” flags, he hardly knows what to say. The first time, like any strong family-values conservative, he blamed his wife. (Adding, for good measure, that she did it because a neighbor called her “the c-word,” which we presume is a detail she appreciated seeing in print.) But after a second flag tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection was ID’d fluttering over his beach house, he simply didn’t respond to questions about it from the New York Times. Now, top Democrats are demanding he recuse himself from election cases and face an investigation. Can’t the man just come home from a hard day’s work, raise an authoritarian banner, and enjoy a peaceful weekend at the beach like a normal guy? 

  • Rudy Giuliani is likewise miffed at agents who served him with criminal indictment papers at his birthday party last Friday, right after his guests finished singing “Happy Birthday.” One officer, Rudy complained, failed to exhibit good style. “He handed me a folded-up, crumpling piece of paper,” Giuliani groused. “It wasn’t, like, done stylishly.” Never mind the man stands accused of attempting to undermine two-and-a-half centuries of American democracy!  Indict him with style, or not at all! 

  • MAGA nutjob Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is likewise up in arms that he can’t have a cordial visit with former Trump advisor Peter Navarro, who’s jailed for spurning the congressional Jan. 6 committee. The nerve! What is this… prison!? Even the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 took selfies and celebrated as they broke into a federal building. Republicans went from calling them tourists to hostages after hundreds have been jailed for their part in the attack.  

  • They get it from the top, of course. Disgraced former President Trump may be facing 88 felonies for trashing democracy and allegedly hiding state secrets in his bathroom. But lately he can’t seem to stop complaining about how cold it is in the courtroom as he napped through his hush-money trial.

If you want to shred democratic norms, it’s a lot to expect your neighbors, the press, pro-democracy politicians and, y’know, the cops, to be chill about that. Pick one, guys: your anti-democracy flags, or your weekends. 

NEWS NEWS NEWS

The Justice Department filed an extensive antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment Thursday, alleging that the entertainment group is running an illegal monopoly on live events by squeezing out competition and driving up ticket prices. Live Nation denied that it is violating antitrust laws. “Live music should not be available only to those who can afford to pay the Ticketmaster tax,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said. That might be one thing that Swifties and the Bey Hive can finally agree on.

The Supreme Court gave South Carolina the go-ahead to use a controversial congressional map that a lower court said “exiled” thousands of Black voters in order to carve out a district in favor of a White Republican incumbent.Legal experts say the decision will make it more difficult to challenge maps going forward and raises the burden of proving racial gerrymandering as opposed to partisan preferences. Which, of course are both bad! Does that help?

Senate Democrats opened an investigation into Trump’s recent infamous meeting with oil execs, when he reportedly asked executives for $1 billion in campaign donations as a “deal” for rolling back Biden’s climate regulations. “Such an obvious policies-for-money transaction reeks of cronyism and corruption,” the senators wrote in letters to oil executives, according to Politico. Can’t believe they would make these accusations against the Trump campaign and the oil industry when neither group has ever done anything wrong.

That’s just the latest Big Oil probe launched this week by congressional Democrats. On Wednesday, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) demanded info from oil companies on whether they colluded with each other or the international OPEC cartel to inflate prices. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-NY) has formally asked the Department of Justice to review whether any laws were broken after decades of alleged climate deception. Go get ‘em, fellas.

The presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers Universities defended their decisions to negotiate with students to end pro-Palestinian encampments on their campuses in a House Committee hearing Thursday as House Republicans expanded their probe into universities’ handling of the protests to public universities. Both presidents said police action was not necessary and neither school agreed to sever business ties with Israel in their concessions with students. The chancellor of UCLA also testified, expressing remorse for the handling of an encampment that was attacked by counterprotesters in early May.

A political consultant who admitted to creating an AI robocall impersonating President Biden back in January was indicted in New Hampshire and fined $6 million by the FCC. The fake call told recipients not to vote in the state’s presidential primary and was the first known example of deepfakes being used in national American politics. And we are so sure it will not be the last.

Young voters say actress Zendaya has the most celebrity star power to influence their vote in the November election, according to a recent Blueprint poll, followed by Lebron James and Kevin Hart. This is the power of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers!!!Surprisingly, Taylor Swift came in 21st place in terms of net impact on voters ages 18-30. Biden’s campaign reportedly has been actively vying for the pop star to endorse him a second time.

 

Listen to today's episode