fighting-words

A day after Rep. Emanuel Cleaver abandoned his post presiding over House proceedings in frustration over bickering between Republicans and Democrats, the Missouri Democrat urged lawmakers and the American people to ignore President Donald Trump’s online antics as he “tweets away his presidency.”

“We can’t continue to react to this,” Cleaver said Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day” about the chaos that ensued as Democrats tried to hold a vote to condemn racist tweets the president posted over the weekend attacking four minority female congresswomen.

President Donald Trump on Monday, for the first time in front of television cameras, suggested four freshman House Democratic congresswoman who have harshly criticized him should leave the United States.

Trump, very much in reelection mode during almost every public appearance, suggested the House freshmen congresswoman prefer the al Qaeda terrorist group over the United States and alleged they “hate our country.”

A routine House debate nearly exploded Wednesday when California Democrat Norma J. Torres implied her Republican colleagues were “sex-starved males” for opposing abortion.

“Mr. Speaker, it is tiring to hear from so many sex-starved males on this floor talk about a woman’s right to choose,” Torres said as lawmakers debated a rule setting up amendment consideration for a four-bill spending package that includes funding for public health programs.

In 2016, a New York City real estate developer who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars managed to win the presidency after convincing thousands of Rust Belt voters that the daughter of a textile salesman was an untrustworthy elitist because she gave a few paid speeches to a Wall Street investment bank. Four years later, some of the nearly two dozen Democrats running for president are retreading the populist path that runs roughshod over Wall Street.

The candidates hope bashing big banks still resonates with voters, but they’re also broadening the message to include other economic issues that divide the haves from the have-nots. “The last three presidential elections have all been Main Street versus Wall Street, and — increasingly — about the Rust Belt versus Wall Street,” said Andy Green, managing director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress.

A mistrial was declared Thursday in the case of a man from Stuart, Florida, who was charged last year for threatening to kill Rep. Brian Mast’s children over the Trump administration’s family separation immigration policy.

Laurence Key, 68, is charged with one count of communicating a threat to kidnap or injure a person. But the trial that began Monday in Miami was declared a mistrial after the jury was hung, TCPalm reported, citing court documents and a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — who has led opposition to House Democrats’ campaign finance, elections and ethics overhaul, HR 1 — said Wednesday he believed lawmakers who support the measure may imperil their re-election chances.

Yet, the Kentucky Republican again pledged to give the measure, which the House is expected to pass along party lines on Friday, zero floor time in his chamber, declining then to give senators an opportunity to test his theory in their 2020 campaigns.

A Twitter spat between New York Rep. Lee Zeldin and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar appeared to conclude at about midnight Friday, after a work week of back-and-forth accusations between the two lawmakers of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Omar, who is Muslim, invited Zeldin, who is Jewish, to meet with her in her office “over Somali tea” to “share notes on how to fight religious discrimination of all kinds.” The heated Twitter exchange began after Omar felt a tweet by Zeldin was an “Islamophobic dogwhistle,” and crested when Zeldin challenged Omar to condemn a voicemail left for his office by an unidentified caller who derided him, unironically, as a “Nazi Jew.”

Well, that joke went over people’s heads.

Twitter — usually not the best medium for conveying sarcasm — raked Rep. John Yarmuth over the coals this weekend after he suggested lawmakers impose a “total and complete shutdown of teenagers wearing MAGA hats until we can figure out what is going on.”