Biden has been conspicuously avoiding speaking at unscripted public encounters for quite a while now, though, and reading from an autocue at SotU is a far cry from having to react on the fly and put together coherent arguments in response to moderator questions and Trump’s lies during a debate. I have the feeling Biden’s staff knew full well that the debate was going to be rough going into it.
That’s the point - they closed ranks and kept riding the Biden train whilst desperately hoping that no one would notice that wheels were in danger of falling off.
Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves. They stayed mum for three and half years and now they’re reaping the whirlwind.
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Being a narcissistic, bloviating despot is exactly what everyone expected of Trump. In fact, he came off rather well from the time constraints, muted mics, and the total lack of fact-checking because the format of the debate didn’t expose his weaknesses like it did for Biden.
I’d say a good-sized part of it is simply the American preference for watching beautiful, weathly people doing beautiful, wealthy people things. Hollywood rom-coms and US TV shows in general clearly skew towards upper middle class settings when compared to the equivalents from, say, the UK.
In other words, I reckon US media prefer their fictional characters to be aspirational whereas other cultures prefer theirs to be relatable.
hasn’t Biden had a stutter from a very young age and struggled with it most of his life?
That may be, but it hasn’t apparently impacted his public speaking for most of his political career:
https://youtu.be/86Nrv5izaTs?si=bZ9WNXIEZNOaBV3T
The dude is just too old now, let’s face it.
Calling Biden articulate is being incredibly generous. I mean, what on earth was he trying to communicate here?
Overall, Biden put in a very lackluster, unconvincing performance while Trump did his usual schtick of rambling off topic and refusing to answer any questions on policy. The whole thing was a shambles.
I think Tlaib did a decent job at giving some kind of pushback, but it was particularly galling to see Moskowitz stand up and repeat Israeli propaganda without anyone calling him out on it.
In his speech, he alluded to misinformation that was debunked over a month ago: that the numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry were allegedly unreliable and that the numbers of dead civilians had recently been halved by the UN. Neither of these things were true, and so therefore he was either lying on Israel’s behalf or he didn’t care enough to do the appropriate research.
More frequent kernel updates.
Yes, but those figures are very broad and primarily involve activities related to public relations, tourism and trade agreements. AIPAC is different.
Not only does AIPAC directly involve itself in US elections, it is not registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which puts extra scrutiny on where the money comes from and how it is spent.
It’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Firstly, ultra-orthodox Jews (a.k.a Haredim) are mostly non-zionist. They also only make up roughly 33% of Israeli settlers.
Traditionally, the Haredim have voted for their own center-right Haredi parties, but more (especially the younger generation) are now drifting further rightward towards the nationalist Religious Zionist party of Ben Gvir and Smotrich that are particularly popular amongst the settlers. Despite this recent trend, though, the majority of Haredim remain Anti-Zionist.
It’s this stance, combined with the fact that Haredi men haven’t had to serve in the military, that has caused a lot of resentment towards them from the rest of Israeli society in which they are a minority. As the article above notes, this removal of their military service exemption has overwhelming support amongst the general population.
That’s why they’re running the disclaimers now - the trial hasn’t been held yet and they’re bracing themselves for impact.
Unlike Fox News, who could settle with Dominion for $787M and carry on as usual, Newsmax’s pockets don’t run nearly as deep. If the court rules against them in September, they’ll most likely be utterly screwed.
It really is insane. Just imagine a different PAC whose sole purpose is to advocate for any other foreign nation - and not just the obvious “baddies” like Russia, China, etc. - spending millions of dollars to oppose the election of congress members who don’t follow their agenda, and then openly bragging about it on social media. People would lose their goddamn minds, and rightfully so.
A few US outlets have mentioned it briefly, but here’s confirmation from Haaretz.
Here is a flyer circulated by the protest organizers:
Here is a flyer advertizing the real estate sale itself:
Here is an archived copy of the real estate sale web page (which is currently unavailable):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240624010428/https://homeinisrael-il.com/
Much as it was when the counter-protesters showed up at UCLA last month and attacked the protesters with pepper spray and sticks for hours while the police stood by and watched.
Yes, to be fair I now see the LA Times did mention it. Fair play to them, as I’ve read several articles about this incident and this the first time I’ve seen the reason for the protest actually included in the article.
Important context: the synagogue in question was holding a real estate sale for land allegedly stolen from Palestinians in the West Bank.
This wasn’t protesting Jews praying at a synagogue; this was a protest against the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and against settlements that Biden’s own administration considers illegal.
But I suppose the AP doesn’t consider that relevant information.
I wonder why the US news media is neglecting to mention this highly relevant fact 🤔
The thing is, Biden and his staff called this debate and agreed to its terms. Trump also behaved exactly as expected by avoiding policy and spouting off as much nonsense as possible, just as he did in 2020.
The conditions of the debate were exactly as Biden should have expected going into it, so the idea that he was caught off guard doesn’t seem likely.