Jonathan Chait correctly informs us that "Donald Trump Was Never Vetted" yet manages to completely miss the most fundamental reason why this happened: Everyone assumed Hillary was going to win so no one bothered. To be fair to Chait, this was not the only reason and he does an ...read more
Young Turks journalist David Sirota is known for stirring division within the Democratic Party. Throughout 2015 and 2016, he dedicated most of his reporting to attacking Hillary Clinton while showering Bernie Sanders with praise, despite receiving criticism for failing to ...read more
Yesterday Democrat Gil Cisneros finally took the lead over Republican Young Kim to become the next representative from California's 39th district. The district, which encompasses Yorba Linda - home of the Nixon Library - had been held by retiring Republican Ed Royce since 2013 ...read more
It is hard to know what to make of long time Clinton adviser Mark Penn's op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal this past weekend. Penn argues that Hillary Clinton is preparing to mount a challenge to Donald Trump in 2020, predicting that she is prepping a "Hillary 4.0" ...read more
Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has challenged America's belief that its history was an upward trajectory, correcting past mistakes and rising towards Abraham Lincoln's "more perfect union." Other countries had experienced grave democratic crises, but we thought we were the ...read more
I became a freshman at Northwestern University, right outside Chicago, when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008. He was the first candidate I ever voted for. I had filled out my absentee ballot for president on a Saturday in my dorm room, right before heading out to a ...read more
The New Yorker's stunning expose of the server communications between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alfa Bank during the 2016 election is a must-read piece that exposes the tantalizing threads of the Trump-Russia investigation. Reporter Dexter Filkins reaches no hard ...read more
A few weeks ago, Real Time host Bill Maher invited Steve Bannon onto his show, after he was disinvited from the New Yorker Festival. The interview was criticized by the left, just as Bannon's recent appearance in The Economist's festival and his documentary with Errol Morris, ...read more
Last night on Anderson Cooper 360, panelists Jeffrey Toobin and Kirsten Powers found themselves having to calm down Michael Caputo, whose defense of Brett Kavanaugh turned into a full-on temper tantrum when they called him out on his lies. Caputo, a Republican aide, has worked ...read more
Last Friday, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 opened in 1,719 theaters across the country – the biggest opening for any of his films – but only made $3.1 million. Although it had the highest opening for a documentary in 2018, it was a letdown compared to the famous weekend in ...read more
It took a number of years for me to figure out why none of my minority friends saw things the same why I did. Over time, I began to see that because I was so enamored with my own brilliance, I could not see that my own experience of life had colored the way I thought politics in ...read more
On Tuesday, Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, released a document detailing millions of dollars paid to Trump's mobbed up lawyer Michael Cohen by both a Russian oligarch and several corporations: Among the other payments to Mr. Cohen’s company described in the ...read more
Yesterday, Reuters/IPSOS released a new poll that, if you believe the headlines, could mean trouble for Democrats in the 2018 midterms. The poll is accompanied by a look into the primary for New Hampshire's First District, where millennials appear wishy-washy as to which ...read more
This week, to the shock of absolutely no one, former BernieBro extraordinaire H.A. Goodman, who built his brand on mindless, conspiracy-laden hatred of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, has come out as a Trump supporter. In a tweet to his followers released Friday, April 20th, ...read more
In the year since Donald Trump's election, former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau has become an important voice for the Resistance. With his White House colleagues Dan Pfeiffer, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, he started Crooked Media, which produces the popular podcast Pod Save ...read more
Nina Turner, the former Ohio State Senator and head of the SuperPAC Our Revolution, has managed to offend almost every reasonable center-left Democrat in the last two years. One of the only prominent African-American women to endorse Bernie Sanders in the primary, she refused to ...read more
Societies have long known that when inventors don't ask hard questions of themselves, the results can be catastrophic. Mark Zuckerberg learned this the hard way this week when he testified before Congress over two consecutive days concerning Cambridge Analytica's breach of ...read more
Yes, folks, you read that headline correctly. In a story broken by Axios this morning, Paul Ryan, the 54th Speaker of the House of Representatives, will retire from Congress at the end of this current session, becoming the first sitting Speaker to forgo re-election in an ...read more
One of the main reasons I became a journalist was to push back against the disinformation I saw coming from Bernie Sanders supporters when he first entered the race for President in 2015. Whenever I would post even the mildest critique of him online, an army of white, ...read more
I had the good fortune of talking to David Corn this week, who, with Yahoo! News's Michael Isikoff, has written what is sure to be remembered as one of the best books on the 2016 election, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald ...read more
When Conor Lamb won his special election in Pennsylvania last week, he distanced himself from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, calling for new leadership if the Democrats retake Congress in November. Since Lamb won by only a handful of votes, this may have been shrewd ...read more
In the 2016 campaign, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was criticized for...well, everything, but in particular for her remarks that half of Donald Trump's voters could be thrown into the "basket of deplorables" for their racism and misogyny. She wasn't wrong - look at ...read more
This morning, New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer published a summation of Christopher Steele and his investigation into Donald Trump that culminated in BuzzFeed leaking his dossier to the press shortly before Trump's inaugural last year. It is the most thorough article that I have ...read more
Failed presidential candidate and notorious racist Rudy Giuliani reportedly insulted Hillary Clinton about her weight at a Trump fundraiser in his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this weekend. Reported Axios: On Friday night, President Trump entertained around 250 Republican ...read more
Last night, I saw this tweet, and variations of it, explode across my social media feeds: To be honest, I blew it off because it sounded like something taken out of context. For most of 2017, there was a very healthy media cottage industry built around keeping the ...read more
Jill Stein, Susan Sarandon's candidate, isn't having a good weekend. This Friday, Mueller revealed in his indictments that Russians interfered on behalf of her campaign, posting on the Instagram account Blacktivist, "Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it's not a ...read more
Since the rise of Trump, it's been tempting to revise our collective memory of the 2012 election and make Mitt Romney seem like a good guy. After all, he smiles a lot, he seems like a loving grandfather, and he did invent Obamacare. I've gone easy on him too: on my second day of ...read more
The story broken by the New York Times today that revealed Hillary Clinton protected a male staffer accused of sexual harassment during her 2008 campaign against President Obama does not look good for the former first lady and Secretary of State. However, it is important to keep ...read more
Yesterday, Politico reported that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has made his first overture to run for President in 2020, holding a meeting with his top political advisers last week. In attendance at the meeting were Our Revolution President Nina Turner, former campaign manager ...read more
Yesterday, as the press corps visited the White House to hear briefings on immigration from senior officials, Donald Trump unexpectedly showed up to answer a few questions. Just before he left, he made one of the most egregious off-the-cuff remarks of his presidency thus far: ...read more
Congressman Darrell Issa announced this morning that he will not seek re-election this fall, making him the 36th House Republican to do so. “Throughout my service, I worked hard and never lost sight of the people our government is supposed to serve," he stated today. "Yet with ...read more
In November 2016, I felt pretty ashamed to be an American, but damn proud to be a Californian. The last year has only made me happier for my home state as we've led the Resistance and served as a role model for the rest of the country in how to eat progressive policies. This has ...read more
The Banter Long Read: The crux of West's essay is felt in the title: "Ta-Nehisi Coates is the Neoliberal Face of the Black Freedom Struggle." For eighteen paragraphs, some consisting of only one sentence, he accuses Coates of not fully understanding white supremacy because he ...read more
If you want a perfect example of the bottomless narcissism that exists on the far Left, look no further than self proclaimed "social justice activist" Saira Rao, the co-founder of In This Together Media. In a breathlessly idiotic screed published on the Huff Post late last week, ...read more
The Banter Long Read: I knew going into the 2016 election that the press was going to give Hillary a hard time. If I'd read 2003's What Liberal Bias? before the election, I would have know Hillary was going to lose before she even officially announced.... To continue reading ...read more
When I wrote my article yesterday about voter suppression in Alabama, I was resigned that Yellowhammer State would elect Roy Moore - a racist, misogynistic, pedophile - to the Senate seat formerly held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But as I read reports on Twitter about the ...read more
When it was first adopted at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the Unity Reform Commission sounded like a good idea. The primary had been one of the most contentious in history, with the Sanders side accusing the Clintonites of benefiting from party support, and Hillary ...read more
Just when you thought The New York Times couldn't sink any lower than their piece lionizing conservative Ben Shapiro, and then another one about Ohio Nazi Tony Hovater (who likes Seinfeld, Applebee's, and ethnic cleansing) their magazine, not to be one-upped, said "hold my beer" ...read more
Since she told Chris Hayes that Donald Trump would "bring the revolution," Susan Sarandon has dug herself further and further into a foxhole of crazy, never once backing down from her remarks over this last year. Her unrepentant, strident attitudes would be admirable if they ...read more
The American Women's Party is a new group that should be on your radar for 2018 and beyond. Differing from groups like She Should Run, which encourage women to run for office, The AWP is dedicated to empower the voices of voters, educate them on their rights, and encouraging ...read more
Earlier this week, I published a piece for Banter Members arguing that Bill Clinton was likely a rapist and that now was the time for the left to denounce him. I've received a lot of flak for the piece on two fronts, firstly that I attacked a Clinton, and secondly that I ...read more
The Banter Long Read: As hard as it might be to swallow for the left, it is now the time to disavow Bill Clinton and exorcise him from public life. After the wave of naming and shaming high profile celebrities and politicians for their grotesque behavior towards women, there can ...read more
Syria finally agreed to sign the historic 2015 Paris Climate Accords, making the United States the one major nation to not participate in deal, which would ask governments to limit temperature rises as a way to combat the devastating effects of climate change. The Sierra Club ...read more
Matt Taibbi is not having a good month. As American women rise up to defend themselves from the predatory behavior of men in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, every prominent male media figure with a history of misogyny has suddenly become an open target for ...read more
In a perfect world, Virginia's election for governor tomorrow, between Democrat Ralph Northam and Republican Ed Gillespie, would not even be close. Gillespie has stoked the flames of racist Virginians with dog-whistle ads chastising NFL protestors, utilizing Latino gang members ...read more
Now that the Purity Left (as well as Trump and his supporters) is all up in arms again over Donna Brazile's "courageous" revelation that the dreaded Hillary Clinton rigged the primary, robbed poor Bernie, kicked a puppy, and stole money from the orphanage, the rest of the story ...read more
The Banter Long Read: Evidence is coming out that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to cheat his way to the presidency, and his attorney general finds himself caught in the lies. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates have been indicted; George Papadopoulos has pled guilty; and ...read more
Well, I guess we’re going at it again, folks. The circular firing squad of the Democratic primary has restarted with an astonishingly dishonest excerpt from interim DNC chair Donna Brazile’s new book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump ...read more
Today, Newsweek revealed that Russian bot accounts were responsible for pushing stories related to the non-scandal Uranium One deal in the run-up to Robert Mueller releasing his first indictments this week. Hamilton 68, a non-partisan organization tracking Russian bot activity, ...read more
One of the things that drives me nuts about the Left is that, more often than not, we allow GOP operatives to run roughshod over us with their stupid, unsourced arguments and talking points. Back in January, Chuck Todd (not a liberal but a good example of the phenomena) got ...read more
