Quotes and Links

A week in review

Former FBI Director James Comey sat down for an interview with MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, Tuesday, May 21, 2024.

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of various notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”

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• “His Pregnancy Came as a Shock. Florida’s Abortion Law Made It Harder” — Time magazine headline

• “The elites, for their part, wish to change everything: sex, the climate, our history, your automobile, your diet, even the straws with which you slurp your smoothie. For them there is no good and evil, no right and wrong, only oppressors and oppressed. Every transaction demands their intervention to protect designated oppressed groups. ‘Social justice’ translates neatly into ‘elite control.’” — Former CIA analyst Martin Gurri

• “If this held through the general election, this would be by far the best performance for a Republican among black voters in two generations.” — CNN’s Harry Enten, on Trump more than doubling his support among black voters.

• “Why don’t those individuals who didn’t receive $35,000 in debt cancellation deserve a $35,000 check from other Americans for whatever means they would want to use it?” — NBC’s Peter Alexander, who posed the question to Karine Jean-Pierre during a White House press briefing on Wednesday. Biden cancelled the student debt of another 160,000 borrowers this week, bringing the total debt canceled by the administration to $167 billion. Highly recommend perusing the “Reader Picks” comments on this NYT piece.

• “I don’t care how you feel about Joe Biden, you must vote for him.” — Ex-FBI director James Comey, during an interview on MSNBC.

• “It was a burgeoning Catholic city and they dropped the nuke right beside the Cathedral as Christians were praying.” — Candace Owens, on why the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki during WWII.

• “They gave him a free pass. He committed larceny, it’s a higher degree of a felony than what Donald Trump is charged with. Yet they gave Michael Cohen a free pass even though he’s now admitted that he stole what amounts to $60,000.” — CNN’s Elie Honig

• “It didn’t really sound like stealing $30,000, it sounded a lot like Michael Cohen doing the little that he could within that calculation to rebalance the bonus he thought he deserved.” — MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell

• “When Michael Cohen’s Lies Help the Case Against Trump” — New York Times headline

• “To the extent polls have been wrong in recent presidential elections, they’ve been wrong because they’ve been biased toward Democrats. Trump ran stronger in 2016 and 2020 than polls predicted.” — New York Times’ Ezra Klein

• “And by the way, he’s doing it in the South Bronx not to make a point, but because he’s got court, and the man practically has the legal version of an ankle bracelet on him and he can’t leave the five boroughs because he always has to be in court.” — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on why Trump held a rally in the South Bronx on Thursday, and all but admitting that at least part of the reason for the lawfare being waged against Trump is to limit his ability to campaign, which strikes me as election interference.

• “It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or brown or white or whatever the hell color you are, it doesn’t matter. We are all Americans and we’re gonna pull together as Americans.” — Donald Trump, at his Thursday night rally. A crazy number of people showed up, which even CNN was forced to acknowledge. I mean, look at this. The enthusiasm gap is astounding at this point.

• “Why Red Lobster’s downfall hits differently for Black communities” — MSNBC headline

• “Police kiIIings of unarmed black people are responsible for more than 50,000,000 additional days of Poor Mental Health Days per year.” — Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), in a video message regarding legislation she has introduced to commemorate the death of Michael Brown ten years ago.

• “Sadly, elements of our society are driven by a cacophony of falsehoods, lies and conspiracy theories that get repeated often enough, that after awhile, they stand largely unchallenged ominously leading to an insidious acceptance of what I call the ‘Normalization of Untruths.’” — Anthony Fauci, in his commencement address to Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons’ Class of 2024.

• “When I walk through the grocery store people come up to me and grab my hand and say ‘We’re going to be okay aren’t we? [Trump] won’t win, will he? They won’t let him back in the oval office will they?’” — Former Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill, during a speakers series event at the (“nonpartisan”) University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

• “When I was vice president, things were kinda bad during the pandemic.” — Joe Biden, speaking at a dinner for the NAACP in Detroit, Michigan.

• “And I also took this as an opportunity to again flex on MAGA and let them know that I will always be smarter than you.” — Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), during an interview on MSNBC. Crockett was talking about her handling of an insult from Marjorie Taylor Greene at a House Oversight Committee hearing last week.

• “This reminds me of Saddam Hussein and the good old days when you had the big mustache.” — New York Times’ Lourdes Gnavarro, regarding Republican representatives wearing red ties at Trump’s Manhattan trial, which she calls the “Trump uniform.”

• Wall Street Journal: “The Facebook Group Reuniting People With Their Stolen Cars”

• A Washington Free Beacon piece on how UCLA Medical School has put race at the forefront of admissions to such an extent that half the students fail standardized tests on basic medicine, which has led to such an egregious drop in standards that admissions officers felt compelled to speak to reporters.

• “Bloodied Macbooks and Stacks of Cash: Inside the Increasingly Violent Discord Servers Where Kids Flaunt Their Crimes,” from Vice.

• A Los Angeles Times story on the “shocking state of the restaurant industry.”

• Rolling Stone: “Grady Kurpasi Went to Ukraine to Fight. Then He Disappeared”

• “The $30 Million Lottery Scam,” from the Atlantic.

• City Journal: “California’s Looming Crime Catastrophe”

• “The Bridesmaids Going Into Debt for Their Friends’ Weddings,” from New York magazine.