ROUND ONE
Boner Candidate #1: I HAVE A BROWN SON AND HE’S MORE LIKELY TO COMMIT A VIOLENT OFFENSE.
Tuesday night’s Republican National Convention featured a speech from Abby Johnson, who explained how she went from being the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic to becoming an anti-abortion activist. It’s a story she’s told publicly many times before, first in an appearance on Huckabeeon November 8, 2009, a month and a day after quitting her job at Planned Parenthood, and most recently in Unplanned, a 2019 film based on her 2011 memoir. It’s also a story whose basic facts are still in dispute. Here’s Johnson’s full speech from the RNC: About two months after Johnson started telling her conversion story, two investigative reports raised questions about its veracity. At the Texas Observer, Saul Elbein reported that Johnson had been put on a “performance improvement plan” at Planned Parenthood after an incident involving “inappropriate use of work-email,” while two former friends of Johnson’s related that she’d been having money problems and contemplating bankruptcy; one said Johnson had told her she was contemplating joining an anti-abortion organization because she’d been promised high speaker’s fees. “This whole thing is really just about a disgruntled employee,” one of them told Elbein.
Boner Candidate #2: POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL CAN’T FIND A JOB
In its lineup of speakers Tuesday night, the Republican National Convention highlighted a recent college graduate who said she could relate to struggling Americans: millionaire heiress Tiffany Trump. “Like so many students across the world, I graduated from law school during the pandemic. Our generation is unified in facing the future in uncertain times ― and many of us are considering what kind of country we want to live in,” she said. “As a recent graduate, I can relate to so many of you who might be looking for a job.” Trump, the 26-year-old daughter of the wealthiest president in history, is set to inherit millions from her father and graduated from the prestigious Georgetown law school in the spring. It is true that she is less involved in her father’s businesses than her siblings and has generally gone a different route. But it’s also true that she’ll be fine in her job search and has little in common with most people looking for work right now.
If she doesn’t immediately get a job, she won’t face eviction or worry about getting health care.
Boner Candidate #3: ONE OF THE MANY REASONS TO NOT VOTE FOR BURGESS OWNES
Today, we learned even more disturbing news about Utah’s 4th Congressional District candidate @BurgessOwens. To date, we know the following about Mr. Burgess (multiple tweets to follow):
— Jeffrey Merchant (@jeffreymerchant) August 25, 2020
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ROUND ONE
Boner Candidate #1: I’M SURE HE DESERVES EVERY PENNY
Jerry Falwell Jr. is expected to receive a $10.5 million severance package as he leaves his post as president of Liberty University. Falwell told The Washington Post that he will receive $2.5 million over the next two years, during which he will not work for a competing institution. He will then receive about $8 million in retirement as part of a contract he signed in July 2019. “The board was gracious not to challenge that,” Falwell told the newspaper, maintaining “I haven’t done anything.” Liberty University officially accepted Falwell’s resignation on Tuesday, with the longtime university leader leaving the institution under a cloud of personal scandal. Falwell first came under scrutiny earlier this month after he posted a photo of himself on a yacht with his arm around a young woman and his pants unzipped. A longtime business partner then claimed Falwell was a willing participant in a years-long affair involving his wife, Becki Falwell. The couple has acknowledged the affair but has denied that Jerry Falwell was involved, claiming the former business partner was trying to blackmail the couple – allegations the former associate has dismissed. Becki Falwell described the extramarital affair as embarrassing in an interview with The Post on Tuesday. “I wish Christians, and people, would be as forgiving as Christ was,” she said.
Boner Candidate #2: I DON’T HAVE TO HAVE A REASON.
PROVO — Provo Mayor Michelle Kaufusi says she intends to veto a mask mandate unanimously passed by the Provo City Council Tuesday night. After hours of fine tuning, the council passed an ordinance that would require “all individuals living within or visiting Provo, Utah, to wear face coverings while in indoor or outdoor areas accessible to the public or in attendance at large gatherings.” There are caveats — those exercising, or gathered with people they live with would be exempt. The order also requires masks “where consistent social distancing of at least six feet from individuals not dwelling in the same household is not possible, reasonable, or prudent,” which Councilwoman Shannon Ellsworth pointed out leaves a lot open to interpretation. But council members were mostly united behind the ordinance’s over-arching motive — make masks the norm in Provo. “The vast consensus is that masks help,” said Councilman Bill Fillmore. “Even if we feel that maybe they don’t help me that much in terms of preventing me from getting the virus, it does help other people. … Call it an act of charity.”
Boner Candidate #3: SHE KNOWS THE TRUTH. SHE SEE’S THE CONSPIRACY.
A speaker scheduled to appear on the second night of the Republican National Convention was pulled from the lineup hours after she promoted an anti-Semitic QAnon conspiracy theory on Twitter. Mary Ann Mendoza was scheduled to appear about an hour into the convention Tuesday night in a video message, one of several women voicing their support for President Donald Trump. Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh confirmed that Mendoza was dropped. “We have removed the scheduled video from the convention lineup and it will no longer run this week,” he said in a statement to ABC News. The campaign did not cite a reason for dropping Mendoza, but the move comes after The Daily Beast reported that early Tuesday morning, Mendoza shared in a since-deleted tweet an anti-Semitic thread on the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family. The thread claimed that “malevolent Jewish forces in the banking industry are out to enslave non-Jews and promote world wars,” and included references to the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, the Daily Beast said. Mendoza took to Twitter Tuesday night to apologize for “not paying attention to the intent of the whole message,” and said that the thread “does not reflect my feelings or personal thoughts whatsoever.”
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