| | MEDIA WINNER: Ed Lavandera CNN senior national correspondent Ed Lavandera exposed how two Texas billionaires are propelling the state's far-right political shift. In a new CNN documentary special, Deep in the Pockets of Texas, Lavandera traced the money trail between a small group of Texas billionaires and the state’s far-right political shift. Because of Texas' campaign finance law, Texas billionaires, including Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, ;can underwrite staggering sums for their chosen candidates, sometimes providing a majority of their total contributions. “They don’t have to win the election to have moved the needle in Texas,” Quorum Report editor Scott Braddock told Lavandera. “Let’s say you’re a Republican representative in the Texas House and you get a well-funded challenger and that challenger is funded by some of these West Texas billionaires, and, therefore, you have a tough race — you’ll adopt some positions that you otherwise might not have adopted.” “They force Republicans to the right, whether they win or lose,” Lavendera replied. “That’s right,” Braddock agreed. Wilks and his brother Dan Wilks also donated heavily to races with more of a national impact, including providing about two-thirds of the funding for the Super PACs that backed Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) 2016 presidential campaign and backing a $1 million loan that helped secure a primary win for Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX), who spearheaded a lawsuit attempting to overturn the 2020 election and spoke at the Jan. 6, 2021 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. Lavandera impressively uncovered how these families have been leveraging their wealth into enormous influence, ultimately disclosing that “a handful of billionaires” could do that in a state of 30 million people. |
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| MEDIA LOSER: Charles Barkley Charles Barkley wants us to ignore Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record. After admitting that he might resign from TNT to join Saudi-backed LIV Golf, the NBA legend went after critics of the league, saying they should focus on “civil rights here in the United States." "Everybody picks and chooses. I just think it’s funny they’re more worried about civil rights in Saudi Arabia, a place 99.9 percent of people in the United States have never been and all of a sudden they’re worried about civil rights in Saudi Arabia," he told sportscaster Dan Patrick on Sunday. Perhaps Americans are "worried" considering U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Any concern regarding the Saudi's violation of human rights, however, gives Barkley "a chuckle." "I say you don’t worry about civil rights of people here in the United States," he said. "But all of a sudden when guys start taking money you’re like ‘I’m more worried about civil rights in Saudi Arabia.’ And that just makes me laugh." Apparently unable to grasp how one could be concerned or interested in multiple things at once, Barkley went on to advise that Americans worry about the U.S. "before we worry about what’s going on in Saudi Arabia." Barkley has also already admitted that his decision to potentially join the league is propelled by money he does not even need. “Hey, I don’t need the money. I need to kinda — I need the kinda money they throwing around though,” Barkley told Gary McCord. Barkley also joked that he would "kill a relative" for $150 million while on The Next Round. And whether or not Barkley joins as a broadcaster, he is set to play in the LIV Tour Pro-Am event at Trump National in Bedminster, New Jersey. |
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| Is Murdoch turning on Trump? Both the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal and New York Post published harsh criticism of former President Donald Trump in the past few days, calling him “utterly failed” and “unfit for office,” respectively. The op-eds follow damning evidence put forth Thursday night by the House Select Committee about Trump’s actions, or lack thereof, during a fateful 187 minutes while the Capitol riot unfolded. The WSJ Editorial board published a piece titled “The President Who Stood Still on Jan. 6." “No matter your views of the Jan. 6 special committee, the facts it is laying out in hearings are sobering," read the lede. More damning to Trump was its conclusion: “Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.” The more populist New York Post also hit out at Trump in a similar jeremiad that concluded with, “It’s up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.” On the other hand, Fox News, the largest piece of Murdoch's empire, has largely kept its powder dry when condemning Trump’s actions surrounding January 6th. While news anchor Bret Baier called Trump’s inaction on that day “horrific,” the top-rated opinion hosts on the network have been largely dedicated to dismissing the January 6th hearings as a political theater that should be ignored. Will Fox News be the next Murdoch outlet to condemn Trump? Mediaite's Colby Hall advises you not to hold your breath. FOR LATEST JAN. 6 COMMITTEE HEARING COVERAGE CLICK HERE In Other News... Entire CNN Panel Calls Out Dems for ‘Propping Up’ MAGA Candidates: ‘Undercuts’ Message That the Far-Right is ‘The Greatest Threat to Democracy’ Trump Rages at ‘Terrible’ Fox & Friends for ‘Botched’ Poll Numbers’: They’ve ‘Gone to the Dark Side’ Adam Kinzinger Admits He’s Guilty of Political Cowardice By Voting for Trump and Opposing First Impeachment, Says He Felt ‘Dirty’ Casting That Ballot New Yorker Editor Goes Scorched Earth After Getting Fired, Calls Magazine ‘Ground Zero’ for ‘Class Exclusivity’ RATINGS: MSNBC Rakes in Largest Jan. 6 Hearing Audience Yet, Fox News Still Wins the Day |
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'This, of course, is bad' In a failure of Asimov’s First Law of Robotics, a chess tournament took an apocalyptic turn when a robot programmed to play the game attacked its 7-year-old opponent. In the midst of the match, the bot grabbed the boy's hand and fractured his finger before he could be freed. “The robot broke the child’s finger — this, of course, is bad," Moscow Chess Federation president Sergey Lazarev said of the incident. Watch here. |
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