Just a few more dollars, please
Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska, now an 89-year-old presidential candidate, may not have the support to make the Democratic debates, but he’s got the backing of porn star Sidney Leathers.
Last week, Leathers, who is also the ex-sexting partner of former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-New York, said on Twitter that for enough contributions as small as $1 to the Gravel campaign she’d post nude photos of herself.
The candidate tweeted back a thank-you and said he was “honored to have Sidney’s endorsement.” Her work, he said, is “work just like any other work, and doesn’t draw arbitrary lines. We need to recognize the humanity of all people, no matter their occupation.”
Gravel went on to say that “if we keep up the pace from today we’ll qualify in TWO DAYs.” It was unclear what threshold he meant, to be a part of the next Democratic debates or to see Leathers’ nude photos.
“Everyone involved in politics is a whore,” said Leathers, responding to a news story about her proposal. “I’m just open and honest about it.”
Gravel and Weiner aren’t the only Democratic candidates the porn star has engaged with. She also had a 2015 texting relationship with Indiana state House member Justin Moed, who lavished her with a pink leash collar, Steve Madden pumps and sex toys.
A-Mazie-ing response
U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, did not help her reputation as one of the most out-of-touch senators last week when she was asked about the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, only the most discussed trade issue in the country for the last year or more.
Queried as to whether U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should bring up the USMCA, the senator said, “The what?” The reporter asked the question again, and the senator again said, “The USMCA?”
One of Hirono’s staffers flew to her rescue, explaining it was “the new NAFTA.” Hirono paused awkwardly, then said, “I have to think about that.” Asked if a trade deal should wait for a Democratic president, Hirono said she didn’t know if “the new NAFTA is that much of a big improvement over the old NAFTA.”
Finally, asked how she would vote on it, she said, “I do not know yet.”
The White House is expected to send the USMCA to Congress after Sept. 1 and is hoping for a vote by the end of 2019. So Hirono has a few months to learn what it is.
Stumbling out of the gate
To say Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Amy McGrath is off to a difficult start in an uphill effort to defeat Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is an understatement.
Following a rambling interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, in which she signed off by saying “Great to have you,” she reversed course twice in a day on whether she’d have supported Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearings last fall.
Last week, in an interview with the Louisville Courier Journal, McGrath said she would have supported the judge, a fact the newspaper reported. That, in itself, was a change from a year ago when she was running for a U.S. House seat. At that time, she said in a Facebook post that she echoed “so many of the concerns that others have articulated over the nomination.” She also said he would be a “hardcore partisan,” and that the testimony of the nominee’s sexual assault accuser was “quite compelling.”
Four hours after her revelation to the newspaper, she tweeted something different, saying she believed she was answering based on Kavanaugh’s qualifications. “But upon further reflection and further understanding of his record,” she tweeted, “I would have voted no.”
Kentucky, which voted for President Donald Trump by nearly 30 percentage points in 2016 and McConnell by nearly 16 points in 2014, is not likely to vote for a candidate of McGrath’s caliber.
Protecting our brethren
The first round of Democratic debates found candidates taking positions they found large majorities of the American people didn’t want – open borders and free health care for illegal immigrants, among them.
So host network CNN has come to their rescue. Last week, it released the outline for the July 30-31 debates in Detroit.
Banned are shows of hands, one-word responses and down-the-line questions. In other words, voters won’t get to see whatever everyone on stage thinks about one particular issue.
In this way, the far-left news outlet protects its favored far-left candidates.
But the rules did include one that made sense, given the talk-over-each-other brawl the first debates were. In the next debates, candidates who “constantly” interrupt will have their time reduced.
We bet the candidates will be unable to help themselves, though, so if CNN sticks to the rules, many of the candidates may be unable to talk for the last hour of the broadcast. Nice.