Comedy Is Hard and Totally Necessary in the Age of Trump

 

Todd Stiefel, mocking Jefferson Griffin
at the NC Supreme Court

Todd Stiefel bears watching -- and applauding. He's got the money to be a one-man satiric floorshow mocking the unsymmetric conservative personalities that have recently characterized the standard-bearers for the North Carolina Republican Party. Stiefel started his own political action committee (PAC) -- Americans for Prosparody -- and in the 2024 campaigns he uploaded a 14-fingered, AI-generated Mark Robinson to the social media and mass media airwaves, a somewhat unnerving simulacrum of Robinson speaking in a stilted mechanical voice some of the direct quotes that Mark Robinson was infamous for. The ad gave me the willies. 

Stiefel spent a reported $1 million on that project, which he could well afford because he's a millionaire.

His rather artless take-down of Robinson -- and the fact that Stiefel is a proud and pretty public atheist -- seems to have spooked Josh Stein, who was running against Robinson and who was probably going to beat Robinson anyway without the comedy stylings of Todd Stiefel, but Stein felt obliged to distance himself from the AI Robinson, afraid that the voters might think he approved of such fakery. Perish the thought! Stiefel's eleemosynary donations have been turned down by some non-profits in the Bible belt, so skittish are they to be associated with a crusading atheist (the last truly "untouchable" class among respectable do-gooders).

Stiefel scares some Democrats because Democrats are always prepared to be scared of something, anything, that threatens to jump the ruts and make new tracks through the mud. Stiefel as an independent voter might lean toward a more libertarian contempt for both sides in the "cesspool of American politics" (see the video below), but he was a major donor to both Stein and to the NC Democratic Party. He used to be a Republican but left the party when it went jihad on LGBTQ people. From a Chase Pellegrini de Paur profile of Stiefel published by IndyWeek:

"Stiefel says his family wasn’t strongly religious, but like many he went to college and started questioning the logic behind the faith. A Republican for his early adult life, he was surprised by what he saw as an outright disrespect toward atheists and an overall lack of compassion.

"For a decade, Stiefel has been especially focused on organizing and advocating for atheists. That work morphed into an education campaign against Christian nationalism, which found a perfect target in Robinson and his especially violent brand of political rhetoric."

Other Stiefel japes in 2024 included partnering "with a comedy team to ambush state superintendent candidate Michele Morrow [another favorite target of his] with printouts of her old tweets calling for Barack Obama to be executed." He hired a plane to fly a banner memorializing Morrow's "kill list" (Obama and other Democrats she wanted to execute on pay-for-view TV) over the state fair in Raleigh. While he was very recently trolling Jefferson Griffin outside the NC Supreme Court (photograph above), he hired a digital mobile billboard to cruise around the block with a photoshopped image of five Republican justices roasting marshmallows over burning boxes of ballots.

He's actually funniest when he's just being himself, as in his promotional video posted on the Americans for Prosparody website. He doesn't mince words, and who the hell doesn't love that!

Protesting Foxx and the Trump Admin in Boone, 2/21/25

 

Protest at Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's Boone office. Her staff locked the door and wouldn't let anyone in to voice an opinion.

If a Paper Tiger Roars in the Woods...

 

Some news outlets went a little giddy over the Senate video of Thom Tillis telling on Putin and pushing back hard against Trump's characterization of both Zelenskyy and Ukraine -- without ever uttering Trump's name. This led Morning Joe this morning:

CNN headlined "GOP lawmaker warns that Putin is a 'cancer' in fiery speech." 

But those of us in North Carolina know Thom Tillis better than that. Every time we think he's suddenly gotten a spine, it's all performative strutting, because the next minute he'll be bending the knee and toeing the line and drinking the Kool Aid. The fact that he occasionally speaks truth to power, as in that video above, doesn't mean he'll actually stand up. Talk is cheap. Also fairly safe, apparently. But you know Trump's gonna hear about this.

Rumplestiltskin Is Dragging the Allison Riggs Case

 

Lynn Bonner, for NCNewsline:

Chief Justice Paul Newby

The [Paul Newby] state Supreme Court has rejected a request to speed up the case Judge Jefferson Griffin brought against the state Board of Elections in his attempt to win a seat on the high court.

The State Board and Justice Allison Riggs wanted the case to go right from the trial court, where they won, to the Supreme Court, skipping the Appeals Court. Griffin opposed the move.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Board and Riggs’ request in a 4-2 vote.

What it's really about:

If the Appeals Court rules in Griffin’s favor, and the Supreme Court splits 3-3, the Appeals Court decision will stand. In a previous order, three of the Republican Supreme Court justices indicated they are open to Griffin’s arguments. [Republicans have an 11-4 numerical advantage on the NC Court of Appeals. The three Supremes who said they were "open" to Griffin -- Newby, Phil Berger Jr., and Tamara Barringer.]

If the Supreme Court had split 3-3 after agreeing to take the case directly from the trial court, the trial court’s decision in favor of Riggs and the Board would have stood.

Chief Justice Paul Newby is not anything if not a highly partisan, self-righteous, and spiteful ... lawyer. Parroted by two highly partisan associate justices, Baby Berger and Tamara. 

In her dissent, Associate Justice Anita Earls was as incisive and brilliant as she always is. She wrote that skipping the Appeals Court "would have been in keeping with past practice in other cases": 

Judge Riggs 

“There is strong justification for this Court to expeditiously address, with transparency, the significant issues in this case that go to the heart of what democracy requires under the state Constitution,” she wrote.

“Judge Jefferson Griffin’s opposition to the bypass petition begins by asserting that this Court should not hear this case because, as a Court of six members, we might split 3-3 leaving the lower court’s ruling as the final ruling in the case. In other words, he asks us not to hear the case because he might lose. Such outcome-determined reasoning has no place in a court committed to the rule of law.”

In a statement last night, Judge Riggs [who has recused herself from this case] said. “No matter how long this drags out, I will continue to defend our state and federal Constitutions and North Carolinians’ fundamental freedoms. As constitutional officers, judges must respect the will of voters. My commitment to upholding the rule of law is why voters elected me to keep my seat more than 3 months ago.”

Phil Berger Sends a Panicked Message to NC's Chief Justice

 

First reporter who got this out appears to have been Bryan Anderson (whose Anderson Alerts on Substack is required reading). 

Mr. Chief Justice

Looks like Phil Berger knows just how destructive to Republican rule, going forward, and to the entire North Carolina judicial system, how utterly destructive a Paul Newby Supreme Court ruling in Jefferson Griffin's favor would be, giving him that lusted-for seat on the Court in the most cynical way. So, speaking to the press two days ago, Phil Berger sent a message to our Rumplestiltskin Chief Justice: Don't do it, you dolt! Even though his comment singled out Jefferson Griffin and not Newby, any fool can see that Berger's real concern is the naked and crazy partisanship of the little man at the top of the Court who has already said publicly that he likes Griffin's chances.

In a rare public rebuke of a fellow Republican, GOP Senate leader Phil Berger on Tuesday suggested Griffin’s effort to remove voters over clerical issues was a bridge too far.

“The equities are with the voters there,” Berger told reporters on Tuesday. “I don’t think that they had a way of knowing that that was a deficiency as far as their registration is concerned."

Question remains: Will Newby get the message? Certainly, Jefferson Griffin has already shown he's not letting up, so it falls on the conservative super-majority on the NC Supremes to save the NCGOP from itself.

 

Sen. Tillis: Hooked Fish Flopping on the Riverbank

 

To recap the disgrace, Donald Jackoff Trump said in recent days that Ukraine is to blame for the start of the war. He reporters from his Mar-a-Lago estate that Ukrainian leaders “could have made a deal.” Yesterday, he sharpened his criticism, calling Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections.”

Enter Thom Tillis, timidly clearing his throat (according to the NYTimes):

Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who recently returned from a trip to Kyiv where he and two other senators reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, balked at the “dictator” remark.

“It’s not a word I would use,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

“There is no moral equivalency between Vladimir Putin and President Zelensky,” Mr. Tillis said of the comments Mr. Trump made in a post on his social media site.

But Mr. Tillis, who recently considered and then retreated from a confrontation with Mr. Trump over his defense secretary, was also careful to avoid directly criticizing the president’s approach. Mr. Tillis said he believed Mr. Trump would ultimately listen to his advisers and take note of the discomfort from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who may be privately urging him to avoid appeasing Mr. Putin.

Got new for you, Senator Bucko: Jackoff takes no notice of anyone's discomfort, especially yours and other members of his purported party in Congress.

Phil Berger: "You'll Not Hear Any More About Gambling Casinos Out of Me"

 

Phil Berger -- who tried to sneak four new private industry gambling casinos into rural North Carolina, while his own son who's chair of the Rockingham County Commission was rushing through a rezoning of some prime property already picked out for the Rockingham casino -- Berger got his ears pinned back on that deal. A hardcore group of Puritans in the NC House said no way, and the popular sheriff of Rockingham, Sam Page, led a protest of hometown Rockingham Republicans to Raleigh to denounce Berger's scheme in front of the legislative building. Page is now running against Berger in next March's Republican primary.

What's the saying? Once bitten, twice shy.

When News and Observer reporter Avi Bajpai asked Berger if casino legislation could be revisited this year, "Berger said he isn’t working on it, nor is he aware of any other lawmakers planning to introduce legislation on it." “I don’t think it’s something that will see the light of day as far as the legislative session we’re in,” Berger said.

Just a week ago Berger was telling the NandO's Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan that he saw no reason to talk yet about his plans for 2026 -- “I don't want to prejudge any decision that really doesn’t have to be made until later in the year,” he said -- but then Sam Page made a splash with his announcement that he intended to take out Phil Berger in the next election. Suddenly Phil Berger was announcing his plans to run for reelection. 

“My intent has been, all along, to run again, and I felt that the appropriate thing would be to make the announcement of that closer to the filing period [December],” Berger told reporters. “But, you know, I intend to run, I intend to continue to be the senator from the 26th district.”

Sounds nervous to me.

History Will Condemn Him, But We Must Defeat Him

 

Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago this month, bombing, killing, maiming, torturing, kidnapping a formerly free people. Yesterday in his gaudy bunker in Florida, Donald Jethro Trump blamed Ukraine. "You should never have started it," he said.

I have hate in my heart for that appalling man. I feel rage for the fate of the Ukrainians. I want to start, or at least participate in a shitstorm of protest and resistance.

Trump is delivering Ukraine into the hands of a killer and a tyrant, He is betraying every fiber of what "Americanism" used to mean.

The other bullshit Jethro spouted at Mar-a-Lago -- Zelenskyy's approval rating at 4%, etc. -- came directly from a Russian disinformation handout. Putin dictated it; Jethro repeated it. Plus he's out to extort Ukraine's rare earth minerals as part of his betrayal. There is no Hell hot enough.

Best Tactical Suggestion of the Day

 

Excellent idea! And you know who could make it happen? Ken Martin, the new chair of the DNC. He could do it. If he had any imagination at all.