MAGA Republicans stooped to new lows this week with their extremism, hypocrisy, chaos, and — as President Biden would call it — malarkey. In case you missed it: Donald Trump pledged to pardon violent January 6 insurrectionists during his disastrous interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference; Trump doubled down on his promise that his supporters “won’t have to vote anymore”; Trump refused to say JD Vance is fit to lead; Vance again refused to commit to certifying election results, doubled down on praise of Project 2025 leadership, and suggested repealing the Affordable Care Act would still be a priority for the Trump-Vance ticket; Vance defended his attacks on millions of Americans without children; Vance wrote a “violent” book foreword for Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts; Vance skipped a Senate vote on legislation to expand the child tax credit; another one of Trump’s draconian abortion bans took effect in Iowa; and a Trump ally reaffirmed that the RNC platform “absolutely” paves the way for a national abortion ban.

Donald Trump’s disastrous interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference was a “train wreck” where he once again pledged to pardon violent January 6 insurrectionists who assaulted police officers.

MSNBC: “Trump’s NABJ appearance was the train wreck many expected”

Rachel Scott, ABC News: “140 police officers were assaulted [on January 6]. Their injuries included broken bones, a lost eye, two cracked ribs, two smashed spinal discs, another had a stroke. Do the people who assaulted those 140 officers deserve pardons?

[Trump refuses to answer]

Scott: “But sir, my question is on those rioters who assaulted officers. Would you pardon those people?”

Donald Trump: “Oh absolutely I would. If they’re innocent, I would pardon them.”

Scott: “They’ve been convicted.”

The Hill: “Trump ‘did crap the bed’ at NABJ conference: CNN conservative pundit”

RawStory: “‘One of the worst interviews he’s ever done’: Internet ‘shocked’ at Trump’s Q&A with NABJ”

Axios: “Republicans reel at Trump’s ‘embarrassing’ remarks about Harris”

Newsweek: “Donald Trump’s Black Journalist Event Implodes as Kamala Harris Wins Voters”

Trump doubled down on his dangerous promise to voters that they “won’t have to vote anymore” if he’s elected president.

Trump: “I said, ‘vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again.’ It’s true. … You won’t have to vote anymore. I won’t need your vote.”

Trump: “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what – it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.”

JD Vance’s first two weeks on the ticket have been so bad that even Trump downplayed his own VP pick and refused to say if Vance is fit to lead.

Harris Faulker, Fox News: “When you look at JD Vance, is he ready on day one?”

Trump: “Does he what?”

Faulkner: “Ready on day one if he has to be?”

Trump: “I’ve always had great respect for him. And for the other candidates too. But I will say this, and I think this is well documented; Historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact, I mean virtually no impact.”

CNN: “Privately, Trump’s campaign acknowledges this isn’t the entrance it envisioned for Vance… the resurfaced clips have so far generated distractions and have forced Trump himself to defend Vance.”

Vance refused to commit to certifying election results (again), doubled down on praise of Project 2025 leadership, and suggested repealing the Affordable Care Act would still be a priority for the Trump-Vance ticket.

NOTUS: “‘Asked if that means he would go so far as to put Trump’s desires above his constitutional authority — as Pence has said he was asked to do on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump wanted him to send the election back to the states — Vance wouldn’t entertain the ‘hypothetical.’

[…]

“Asked if he regretted his kind words about [the Heritage Foundation], given the political problems Project 2025 is causing for Trump and Republicans, Vance was clear: ‘No.’

“‘The Heritage Foundation has some good ideas, and also has some ideas that … I think are bad ideas. And regardless of whether you think they’re good ideas or bad ideas, it has nothing to do with the Trump campaign,’ Vance said.

“He noted that Project 2025 was a 900-page document, and he was clear that he hadn’t read ‘the whole thing,’ but he certainly wasn’t about to disavow the entire effort.”

NOTUS: “Vance suggested repealing Obamacare would still be a priority.

[…]

“Vance said the ‘repeal and replace efforts’ during Trump’s presidency were ‘fundamentally focused around the idea of fixing what was broken, not about stripping people’s health care away. So yeah, I think you’re certainly gonna see efforts to reform the system. Obviously, what that looks like will depend a little bit on Congress because Congress has to have a role to play.’”

Vance defended his attacks on millions of Americans without children, including calling them “sociopathic,” “deranged,” and “psychotic.” 

ABC15 Arizona: “Do you see how [your comments] may have hurt people though?” […]

Vance: “I’ve already answered the question… I am happy to defend what I said because what I said is true… That’s what I said and I stand by it.”

CNN: “It’s not just ‘cat ladies’: JD Vance has a history of disparaging people without kids”

“Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance has a history of making disparaging remarks toward people without children, a CNN KFile review of his comments shows, including fundraising off his now-infamous ‘childless cat lady’ remarks in a series of emails that called Democratic leaders ‘childless sociopath’ who ‘don’t have a direct stake in this country.’

“In November 2020, Vance said on a conservative podcast that childless Americans, especially those in the country’s ‘leadership class,’ were ‘more sociopathic’ than those with children and made the country ‘less mentally stable.’ Vance added that the ‘most deranged’ and ‘most psychotic’ commentators on Twitter – now known as X – were typically childless.”

NBC News: “JD Vance doubles down on ‘childless cat ladies’ dig: ‘I’ve got nothing against cats’”

Pat Rynard, Courier Newsroom: “JD Vance says Americans without children should ‘face the consequences and the reality’ and not get ‘nearly the same voice’ in democracy”

ABC News: “[Vance] suggested that the country needed to ‘reward the things that we think are good’ and ‘punish the things that we think are bad’ — before suggesting that individuals without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children.”

Exposed: Vance wrote a “violent” book foreword for Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts, saying it’s time to “load the muskets” and calling for a revolution. 

New Republic: “Vance has deep ties to the Heritage Foundation, and in particular to Kevin Roberts, who has been president of the right-wing think tank since 2021 and is the architect of Project 2025. Vance has praised Roberts for helping to turn the organization ‘into the de facto institutional home of Trumpism’ and has endorsed elements of Project 2025. Vance is also the author of the foreword to Roberts’s upcoming book…

“But the inspiration for that extreme language can be found in Vance’s foreword, which ends with a call for followers to ‘circle the wagons and load the muskets,’ and describes Roberts’s ideas as an ‘essential weapon’ in the ‘fights that lay ahead.’ …

“Vance’s foreword is also, notably, a call for revolution. ‘The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems,’ he writes. ‘We are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach.’”

HuffPost: “As Trump Runs From Project 2025, JD Vance Links Its Architects Directly To Him”

Vance skipped a Senate vote on legislation to support families and expand the child tax credit…

Roll Call: “Bipartisan tax package blocked as senators head for exits”

“Former President Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance did not make it back from the campaign trail for the vote.

“Democrats took aim at Vance, who was in Arizona visiting the southern border on Thursday, for missing the Senate action.

“‘When the American people vote in November, they’ll remember that when Vance had a chance to show up for working families, he was nowhere to be found,’ Democratic National Committee spokesperson Aida Ross said in a statement.”

…so he could visit the southern border after caving to Trump by voting to kill the toughest, fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades.

JD Vance: “[The bipartisan border security bill] does nothing to secure the border.” 

May 2024: Vance voted against advancing the bipartisan border security deal.

Vox: “Trump made this clear when he reportedly urged Republicans in Congress to turn against the bipartisan Senate border security bill scheduled for a vote Wednesday so that he could keep the issue alive through the presidential election. His supporters have largely fallen in line.”

CNN: “Trump, who is hoping to make immigration a key plank of his presidential campaign, has suggested on Truth Social that approving additional resources for the border would make Republicans ‘look bad.’”

This week, another one of Trump’s draconian abortion bans took effect in Iowa, stripping lifesaving reproductive health care from millions of women across the Midwest.

Reuters: “Iowa, like other Republican-controlled states, moved to ban abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.”

Axios: “Iowa’s abortion ban, one of the nation’s strictest, takes effect”

Iowa Public Radio: “The law is set to go into effect July 29. Planned Parenthood estimates it will block nearly all abortions in the state.

“When it does, it will likely affect abortion access not only in Iowa, but in the entire Midwest region.”

Washington Post: “Iowa abortion ban taking effect as residents flee out of state for care”

“Reproductive care groups in neighboring states where the procedure remains legal are already seeing an influx of patients from Iowa. The Chicago Abortion Fund received more than 60 support requests from Iowa residents during the first three weeks of July, a 165 percent increase over previous months.”

Trump ally and Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins said the RNC platform “absolutely” paves the way for a national abortion ban and that  Trump’s allies want “no abortions in any state.” 

Jane Coaston, New York Times: “My last question is a yes or no question, which is challenging, but let’s see if we can do it. Does the 2024 Republican National Committee platform get you closer to your goal of abolishing abortion and making it ‘illegal and unthinkable?’”

Kristan Hawkins: “Yes, absolutely. The 14th Amendment is in there.”

Hawkins: “We have said from the very beginning, even when we were suffering under the tyranny of Roe v. Wade, that the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement is to see no abortions in any state and women and families served and protected from the predatory abortion industry.”

Hawkins: “We were pleased to see that the 14th Amendment was actually in the platform — that took some education.”

[…]

Coaston: “As the Republican Party seems to set aside discussing the idea of a national abortion ban, is the long-term goal to get that 14th Amendment Supreme Court opinion?”

Hawkins: “Yeah. I don’t think that has been a hidden agenda at all within the pro-life movement.”

Hawkins also railed against exceptions in abortion bans and pledged to continue pushing for a ban on medication abortion.

Hawkins: “The Supreme Court did not say chemical abortions are good to go. They said the case had not been handled correctly, and they didn’t feel that the plaintiffs were the ones that could bring the suit. We’ll be back at the Supreme Court on that issue.”

[…]

Hawkins: “I could never say certain children should be sentenced to death because of their parents’ income levels or circumstances of their conception…”