A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
After New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin released new phone call recordings of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) privately calling out Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as a security threat in wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Gaetz put out a statement on Tuesday night mocking the two leaders for “holding views” about him and Trump “that they shared on sniveling calls with [then-House GOP conference chair] Liz Cheney, not us.”
Assuming he’s telling the truth in that little missive, Gaetz does have a point: if McCarthy and Scalise really were so upset about his conduct, they should have confronted him. So this ends up being yet another example of McCarthy’s presenting different faces to different people and getting caught out, and this will lead to his not being Speaker of the House, having sown salt his own self on those hopes.
We won’t have to worry about Gaetz once the long arm of the law taps him on the shoulder and prosecutes him to the fullest extent of the law for his drugs/underage girls/trafficking crimes.
OMG, sometimes I crack myself up!! Gaetz. Prosecuted. Hoo-haw!!! That was a good one!
In mid-November 2020, lawyer Sidney Powell turned to a provocative source in her quest to build a bogus case that votes had been electronically altered through foreign interference, with collusion from Deep State actors, to tip the presidential election from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
A 37-page declaration from an anonymous person representing themself as a former “electronic intelligence analyst under the 305thMilitary Intelligence [Battalion]” with “extensive experience as a white hat hacker used by some of the top election specialists in the world,” was filed in Powell’s lawsuits in Wisconsin and Arizona on Dec. 1, 2020.
The anonymous declarant was Terpsehore “Tore” Maras, host of the popular pro-Trump “Tore Says” podcast. Less than three months earlier, a North Dakota state judge had found that Maras raised funds for victims of an apartment fire and homeless shelters, and then used the funds for herself through purchases at McDonald’s, Walmart and Target. The judge also found that Maras “created an entirely fake online persona,” including claiming “to be a 22-year veteran of Naval intelligence and a Purple Heart recipient.”
A sharp fall in Tesla’s share price is raising doubts that CEO Elon Musk will be able to go ahead with his $44 billion purchase of Twitter. Tesla fell by 12.2 percent on Tuesday, slashing $126 billion off the market value of the electric automaker. That drop cut the value of Musk’s Tesla stake by $21 billion, which, as Reuters noted, was exactly the same amount he has committed in equity to the Twitter buyout. One analyst said the possibility of Musk selling shares, and becoming distracted by the bid, was causing “a bear festival on the [Tesla] name.” Others said continued falls in Tesla’s share price could jeopardize his funding arrangements. On a bad day for tech stocks, Twitter shares also fell back to trade around 8 percent below Musk’s offer price of $54.20 a share—reflecting fears that the world’s richest man might walk away from the deal.
