Ebrahim Raisi

Dear Commons Community,

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died yesterday in a helicopter accident after the craft crashed in the mountains. He was 63. The country’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, a provincial governor and other officials were also on board during the crash and are presumed dead. The news shocked Iran and the world as officials said a massive search and rescue operation was underway. Raisi had been traveling with an entourage to the country’s border with Azerbaijan, where he jointly inaugurated a new dam with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. As reported by The Huffington Post and other media.

The helicopter crashed near the border around 1 p.m. local time, and officials said earlier there was bad weather and heavy fog in the area. An official cause of the accident has not yet been determined. Rescue teams had searched through dense forest for more than 12 hours, at times calling off the search due to the fierce weather.

Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, is expected to assume the presidency. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country’s operation “will carry on smoothly and orderly” during the crisis.“There will be no disruption in the country’s operation,” the supreme leader said in an address shortly after the crash was reported.

Raisi had widely been seen as a potential successor to the ayatollah. He previously led the country’s judiciary and was known as a hard-line leader. Under his tenure, Iran began enriching uranium at near-weapon-grade levels, and the country has supported Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Iran has also seen years of large-scale protests against the government and ruling theocracy.

Tensions between Israel and Iran have also flared in recent months amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas. Iran launched its first direct attack on Israel last month in retaliation for the killing of an Iranian military leader, sending 300 drones and missiles towards the country, most of which were shot down.

New elections must be organized within 50 days, although those plans could be complicated with the ongoing war.

Tony

Shannon Bream and Elise Stefanik.  Courtesy of Fox News.

Dear Commons Community,

Representative  Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) bashed Fox News’ Shannon Bream yesterday for asking about her reported change of tone toward former President Donald Trump.

Stefanik, who is reportedly on Trump’s vice presidential shortlist, was asked about the “veep-stakes” to be his 2024 running mate before Bream pointed to a 2022 report by The New York Times regarding her “revisionism” toward the former president.

The New York Republican once described Trump as “whack job,” according to The Times, while criticizing him for being “insulting to women” in an August 2015 interview.

The report also cited Stefanik’s former friends who described the Republican as having “thought Mr. Trump was too awful and ridiculous to be taken seriously.”

“So the question is when, more importantly why, did you change your mind about President Trump?” Bream asked Stefanik, who has since become a staunch supporter of the former president.

“Well, Shannon, it’s a disgrace that you would quote The New York Times with nameless, faceless false sources –,” Stefanik replied.

“But they’re quoting your friends so I’m giving you a chance to respond to that,” Bream said.

“No, no, no, no, Shannon. Shannon, Shannon, they’re not quoting my friends. Those names are not included because they are false smears,” Stefanik said.

The two tried to speak over each other before Bream invited viewers to read the article “for themselves.”

She later returned to Stefanik’s reported 2015 comment that Trump was “insulting to women,” remarks which CNN cited in an earlier report.

“Is that a misquote? Did you not say that?” Bream asked.

“I said the statement that the Democrats leaked out in 2016, that that was insulting, however, Shannon, I stood by in support of him and I strongly support him,” said Stefanik, who talked up Trump’s support for women.

Stefanik is another Trump toadie!

Tony

People standing in line for Trump’s Hush money trial.  Photo courtesy of Adam Gray/Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

Below is a story published yesterday by NBC News.  I must confess that I know very little about the professional line-stander business.

Tony

—————————————————————-

NBC News

Trump’s hush money trial makes big money for professional line-standers!

Alex Seitz-Wald and Katherine Doyle and Adam Reiss and Alec Hernández and Gary Grumbach

Updated May 18, 2024 at 4:44 PM

Some moms get flowers for Mother’s Day; Paige Singh got to see Donald Trump on trial.

The Bay Area mom, in town from California to accompany her husband on business, snagged a spot on Tuesday for what has quickly become one of the hottest tickets in New York City, thanks to her husband and the professional line-stander he hired as a Mother’s Day gift to hold a spot for her in the queue outside the courthouse.

“My husband? He thinks it’s crazy,” she said. And her kids “just laugh.”

But for Singh, the hundreds of dollars she sent via Zelle to a stranger holding her place outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse was well worth the chance to see the former president of the United States on trial.

The paid place-holding went so well that Singh, who also attended part of E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Trump, changed her travel plans to squeeze in an extra day at the court.

“It was so easy, so I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll go Tuesday.’ So I changed my flight,” she said.

Professional line-standers are a growing part of the gig economy. But the criminal trial of a former president accused of illegally covering up hush money payments to a porn star has translated into a windfall for people who get paid to wait — and who, as the trial goes on, have increasingly been hired by members of the general public with no stake in the trial other than curiosity.

“We’ve definitely had to staff up,” said Robert Samuel, who runs Same Ole Line Dudes, which bills itself as “New York’s Premier Professional Line Sitting Company.”

For the Trump trial, Samuel doubled his prices, expanded his stable of standers from 26 to 32, and has been too busy to watch the “Bridgerton” episodes he loaded on his iPad to pass the time during waits.

Admission to the court is free, of course, but it is first come, first served, and seating is limited. The first person in line Wednesday morning had paid $1,800 to have someone else hold that spot. A little further back in line, a woman was offering up her spot for $450.

“This is a unique experience that you can only see here,” Samuel said.

In New York, professional line-standers are more familiar working the queues of restaurants that don’t take reservations, ticket booths, sample sales, book signings, pop-up events and new product launches — anywhere that someone with more money than time might want to pay someone to wait.

“Skip the queues and enjoy your time in the big city!” reads the page advertising line-standing services on TaskRabbit, the gig work platform. “Even the DMV can be conquered with help from Taskers!”

In Washington, line-standers have long been a quiet but essential cog of the influence economy, where lobbyists and lawyers who charge their clients hundreds of dollars an hour hire others for $60 an hour (for a three-hour minimum) to wait in line and secure spots for them at congressional hearings and major court cases.

One legal courier company touts its “high quality line standing services for Congressional hearings or other events” while another boasts they’ve “helped our clients get very difficult to obtain seats for hearings on Energy, Telecommunications, Broadcasting, Health Care, Banking, Congressional Ethics, and more.”

Elsewhere, line-standers, like their ride-share-driving brethren, convene on big events, like billionaire Warren Buffett’s annual meeting in Omaha, which can attract twice as many people as there are seats. Hiring someone to wait in line is “probably what I would do” to get in, Buffett himself said in 2017, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Aside from lawyers, media outlets are also a bread-and-butter client of those who wait in lines, given the limited space at high-profile trials and the imperative for reporters to be in the room for proceedings that are not televised.

But the Trump trial, especially during this past week’s star witness testimony from Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen, has led ordinary Americans to hire professional line-sitters like never before.

One woman — a lawyer and self-described “political junkie” who declined to give her name — ended up paying $750 for someone to hold a spot in line for her overnight after trying to get in line herself the previous day. When she showed up the first time, she realized she was already too late and would not make it inside. It was 4 a.m.

On TaskRabbit, several New York City line-standers specifically advertise the Trump trial in their bios, while several others have posted photos from the trail or show work histories suggestive of working the Foley Square courthouse as well. (They’ve been booked most days for weeks, except Wednesdays, when the trial breaks.)

“We’ve done other trials, but nothing compares to what this has been,” said Samuel, whose “line dudes” can be spotted outside the courthouse in their signature black-and-yellow baseball caps. “Now, we have the whole general public contingent that we’ve never done with other trials.”

He’s worked on plenty of high-profile trials before. But no one who didn’t have a professional need to was paying to see Jeffry Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, fraudster crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, or disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

For the Trump trial, Samuel doubled his typical trial rate, from $25 to $50 an hour, given heightened demand and the potential security risks that are not present when waiting for limited-edition Nikes or primo “Hamilton” tickets.

There have been reports of scuffles and disputes between paid line-standers and civilians during the dark overnights, which Samuel blamed on wildcat line-standers who get in line without specific clients or try to buy spots from others who are already there, hoping to flip them for profit.

He frowns on that kind of wheeling and dealing and thinks it calls negative attention to an industry that is already viewed negatively by many.

“It’s like if you’re a plastic surgeon and you go by the book and have all the licenses and then there’s somebody doing botched butt implants in their basement. You’re going to look down on that,” he said.

Professional line-standing has been controversial, especially in Washington, where critics argue that the wealthy and powerful should have to wait in line like everyone else.

The Supreme Court’s visitor policy explicitly states that “‘line standers’ are not permitted” in the queue for members of the Supreme Court Bar, and it asks the general public to “not hold a space for others who have not yet arrived.”

But those policies are frequently flouted. SCOTUSBlog spotted at least a dozen “suits” switching places with line-standers one morning in 2020 just after sunrise — and just before the Supreme Court’s police officers came around to start distributing tickets.

Then-Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, even once tried to outlaw paid line-standing on Capitol Hill, saying in 2007: “We need to make sure this place is available to the people who own it and that’s the people of this country, not the lobbyists.” But the “Get in Line Act” went nowhere.

Outside the Manhattan courthouse, while the professional line-standers appear to comprise a sizable portion of the queue any given morning during the Trump trial, there are also some brave citizens doing it themselves.

Jim Neely, a 70-year-old retiree from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, said he got in line at 10 p.m. to secure a spot for the next day.

“I wanted to be part of history, see it in the making right before my eyes and try to remember the visceral as well as the intellectual bits and pieces that don’t come through from the airwaves,” said Neely, who said he used to be a “dyed-in-the-wool Republican” before Trump.

He said the overnight was “not a bad experience,” even though the plastic sheet he brought proved to be less waterproof than expected when it started to rain. He’s already planning to come back for the trial’s closing arguments — and he won’t be paying anyone else to wait for him.

“I’m going to do it again,” he said.

U.S. Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Photos courtesy of Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images via Shutterstock ; Michael Brochstein/Sipa via AP Images; Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez do not appear to get along is an understatement such that Thursday’s House Oversight Committee Meeting floor proceedings looked more like trashy reality TV and started when Republican lawmaker Greene from Georgia leveled a personal insult against fellow congresswoman Crockett of Texas.

The fireworks began after Crockett asked Greene to clarify how claims she made connecting the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in New York City to Democratic officials in the House were relevant to Thursday’s itinerary.

“I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Greene replied to Crockett.

The fight — which erupted during a House Oversight Committee meeting meant to review resolutions to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress — was quickly joined by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who angrily demanded Greene’s comments be struck from the record.

“That is absolutely unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez snapped. “How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person?”

Greene then mockingly asked Ocasio-Cortez if her feelings were hurt, which struck another nerve.

“Oh girl, baby girl, don’t even play with me,” Ocasio-Cortez from New York’s 14th district shot back.

Top committee Democrat Jamie Rankin smirked as his Republican counterpart, Rep. James Comer, ruled Greene’s comments didn’t constitute a personal attack and tried to continue the hearing as intended.

But Crockett wasn’t having it.

“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling,” she interjected before making an obvious reference to Greene. “If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blond, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities. Correct?”

On Friday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson — whom Greene unsuccessfully attempted to remove from his post last week — said Thursday’s debacle was “not a good look for Congress,” according to MSNBC. Democrat Jaime Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, says it’s “worth investigating” whether lawmakers were drinking during Thursday’s explosive hearing, after rumors circulated that noncommittee members were intoxicated.

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman wrote on social media on Friday.  “In the past, I’ve described the U.S. House as ‘The Jerry Springer Show.’ Today, I’m apologizing to ‘The Jerry Springer Show.’ ”

Tony

Scottie Scheffler at the 2024 PGA Championship in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

PGA golfer Scottie Scheffler was arrested yesterday morning on his way to the PGA Championship, with stunning images showing him handcuffed as he was taken to jail for not following police orders during a pedestrian fatality investigation.  As reported by The Associated Press.

In a span of four hours, the top-ranked golfer in the world was arrested wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt, dressed in an orange jail shirt for his mug shot, returned to Valhalla Golf Club in golf clothes and made his 10:08 a.m. second-round tee time.

Louisville Metro Police Department said Scheffler was booked on four charges, including second-degree assault of a police officer after his vehicle dragged an officer to the ground.

Scheffler said the incident was a “big misunderstanding.”

“This morning, I was proceeding as directed by police officers,” he said in a statement released as he was warming up on the range. “It was a very chaotic situation, understandably so considering the tragic accident that had occurred earlier, and there was a big misunderstanding of what I thought I was being asked to do.

“I never intended to disregard any of the instructions,” he said. “I’m hopeful to put this to the side and focus on golf today. Of course, all of us involved in the tournament express our deepest sympathies to the family of the man who passed away in the earlier accident this morning. It truly puts everything in perspective.”

His attorney, Steve Romines in Louisville, also described it as a misunderstanding and told The Associated Press, “We will litigate the case as it goes.”

Louisville mayor Craig Greenberg said tournament vendor John Mills was the pedestrian killed and offered sympathies to his family. Greenberg also said the incident involving Scheffler and LMPD was “unfortunate” and that the police department was investigating.

Traffic was backed up for about a mile in both directions on the only road that leads to Valhalla in the morning darkness with light rain, with dozens of police vehicles flashing red-and-blue lights near the entrance.

Police said a pedestrian had been struck by a bus while crossing the road in a lane that was dedicated to tournament traffic and was pronounced dead at the scene about 5:09 a.m.

ESPN reporter Jeff Darlington said Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world who was to start the second round at 8:48 a.m., drove past a police officer a little after 6 a.m. in his SUV with markings on the door indicating it was a PGA Championship vehicle.

The officer screamed at him to stop and then grabbed onto the car until Scheffler stopped about 10 yards later, Darlington said. The officer, identified in the arrest report as Det. Gillis, was dragged “to the ground” and suffered “pain, swelling, and abrasions to his left wrist” after the car “accelerated forward,” according to Louisville police.

Scheffler was booked at 7:28 a.m. — about 2 1/2 hours before his updated tee time after the second round was delayed because of the fatality. In addition to the assault charge, he was booked on charges of third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding traffic signals from an officer directing traffic.

“The main thing is he was proceeding exactly as he was directed in a marked vehicle with credentials,” Romines said. “He didn’t do anything intentionally wrong.”

The officer was dressed in a high visibility reflective jacket when he stopped Scheffler’s car to give instructions, the arrest sheet said. Gillis was taken to the hospital for his injuries.

Darlington watched it unfold. He said police pulled Scheffler out of the car, pushed him up against the car and immediately placed him in handcuffs.

“Scheffler was then walked over to the police car, placed in the back, in handcuffs, very stunned about what was happening, looked toward me as he was in those handcuffs and said, ‘Please help me,’” Darlington said. “He very clearly did not know what was happening in the situation. It moved very quickly, very rapidly, very aggressively.”

Mitchell told Louisville radio station WHAS the man was crossing Shelbyville Road about 5 a.m. and the bus didn’t see him. Mitchell said the man was pronounced dead on the scene.

Scheffler was released by police and returned to the course at 9:12 a.m. He made his way to the practice area around 9:30 a.m. and was welcomed by fans — one shouted “free Scottie!”

Scheffler seemed like his normal, relaxed self, sharing a few laughs on the driving range. Then he went out and made a birdie on his first hole of the day after sticking his approach shot to three feet.

With cars backed up in the morning darkness, other PGA-marked vehicles tried to move slowly toward the entrance. Traffic finally began to move gradually a little before 7 a.m.

Darlington said police were not sure who Scheffler was. He said an officer asked him to leave and when he identified himself being with the media, he was told, “There’s nothing you can do. He’s going to jail.”

Darlington said another police officer later approached with a notepad and asked if he knew the name of the person they put in handcuffs.

PGA of America, which runs the PGA Championship, offered sympathies for Mills’ family and said in a statement, “As it relates to the incident involving Scottie Scheffler, we are fully cooperating as local authorities review what took place.”

Scheffler is coming off four victories in his last five tournaments, including his second Masters title. He was home in Dallas the last three weeks waiting on the birth of his first child, a son that was born May 8.

Scheffler opened with a 4-under 67 and was five shots out of the lead as he tries to become only the fifth player since 1960 to win the first two majors of the year.

Incredible development!

Tony

Giza Pyramids. / Credit: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Scientists have discovered a long-buried branch of the Nile river that once flowed alongside more than 30 pyramids in Egypt, potentially solving the mystery of how ancient Egyptians transported the massive stone blocks to build the famous monuments.

The 40-mile-long river branch, which ran by the Giza pyramid, was hidden under desert and farmland for millennia, according to a study puyblished on Thursday.

The existence of the river would explain why the 31 pyramids were built in a chain along a now inhospitable desert strip in the Nile Valley between 4,700 and 3,700 years ago.

The strip near the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis includes the Great Pyramid of Giza — the only surviving structure of the seven wonders of the ancient world — as well as the Khafre, Cheops and Mykerinos pyramids.

Archaeologists had long thought that ancient Egyptians must have used a nearby waterway to move the giant materials used to build the pyramids.

“But nobody was certain of the location, the shape, the size or proximity of this mega waterway to the actual pyramids site,” lead study author Eman Ghoneim of the University of North Carolina Wilmington in the United States told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The international team of researchers used radar satellite imagery to map the river branch, which they called Ahramat — “pyramids” in Arabic.

Radar gave them the “unique ability to penetrate the sand surface and produce images of hidden features including buried rivers and ancient structures,” Ghoneim said.

Surveys in the field and cores of sediment from the site confirmed the presence of the river, according to the study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

The once mighty river was increasingly covered in sand, potentially starting during a major drought around 4,200 years ago, the scientists suggested.

The Giza pyramids stood on a plateau roughly a kilometer from the banks of the river.

Many of the pyramids had a “ceremonial raised walkway” which ran alongside the river before ending at the Valley Temples which served as harbors, Ghoneim said.

This indicates that the river played “a key role in the transportation of the enormous building materials and workmen needed for the pyramid’s construction,” she added.

Exactly how ancient Egyptians managed to build such huge and long-standing structures has been one of history’s great mysteries.

These heavy materials, most of which were from the south, “would have been much easier to float down the river” than transport over land, study co-author Suzanne Onstine of the University of Memphis told AFP.

The banks of the rivers could have been where the funeral entourages of pharaohs were received before their bodies were moved to their “final burial place within the pyramid,” she suggested.

The river may also indicate why the pyramids were built in different spots.

“The water’s course and its volume changed over time, so fourth dynasty kings had to make different choices than 12th dynasty kings,” she said.

“The discovery reminded me about the intimate connection between geography, climate, environment and human behavior.”

Most interesting!

Tony

(Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki is not confident that the debates between President Biden and former President Trump will actually go forward. 

“I’m still a skeptic, a little bit,” she said in an interview Wednesday on “Pod Save America.” 

Psaki, now an MSNBC host, warned that Trump could object to the terms presented by Biden’s team, causing the scheduled debates to fall apart almost as quickly as they were agreed to. 

“Trump could certainly say, ‘I never agreed to those terms,’ and he probably will,” Psaki said. “That’s how this all falls apart.” 

Biden and Trump on Wednesday morning agreed to two debates, one on June 27 hosted by CNN and a second on Sept. 10 hosted by ABC. 

Biden quoted Trump’s words back at him when he offered the debate terms: “As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.” Trump agreed, calling Biden “the worst debater I have ever faced” after the pair faced off during the 2020 presidential campaign. 

“I think this is an interesting play by the Biden team,” Psaki said, explaining that the president is under pressure to debate Trump, especially as anti-Israel student protests cause confusion domestically and the Israel-Palestine war looms over international affairs. 

“It feels chaotic,” she said. “And it feels a little weak that he can’t unilaterally make all these things calm.” 

Psaki said if President Biden had said he was “considering” debates, it would play into the “Sleepy Joe” narratives about his age.

Psaki praised Biden’s team for presenting a list of rules for a debate with Trump, calling the move “smart.” 

The Biden-Harris campaign asked that the debates occur inside a TV studio, with microphones that automatically cut off when a speaker’s time limit elapses.

Psaki also explained why she believes that the Biden campaign felt forced to move first against Trump and challenge him to a debate. 

“I think internally they knew that at some point this was going to hit a head,” Psaki said. “They were either going to be ahead of it, or they’d be responding to Trump.” 

Psaki knows a lot about Washington and presidential elections.  She may be right about this.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Today is the 70^th Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Decision that declared segregated public schools “unconstitutional”.  In perhaps the most important decision of the 20^th century, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decreed on May 17th, 1954, that in the field of public education, “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”   As many of us know, this decision changed the face of education throughout the country but especially in the South.   The strategy to use the courts to challenge segregation in public education began in the 1930s with the NAACP under the leadership of  Charles Hamilton Houston.  Houston was the dean of Howard University Law School.  Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, was recruited by Houston.  Houston died in 1950 and never saw the fruits of his decades of labor.

The Brown Decision paved the way for much progress in education and race relations in this country but there is still much to be done in creating a truly equitable public school system.  Attorney Jack Greenberg, member of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s legal team in Brown, poignantly refers to the numerous individuals who were involved in the case: “Before lawyers can win cases there have to be clients willing to stand up for their rights. The American Blacks who proved willing to fight segregation and discrimination were organized for the most part by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in an environment hostile to change in the kind of justice afforded Blacks.”

For anyone wanting to read about the case, one of the more informative books, Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice is highly recommended.   A foundation created by the family of Oliver Brown, the lead plaintiff in the case, and led originally by his daughter Linda Brown, has a plethora of resources.

Tony

Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News hosts are freaking out after President Joe Biden challenged Donald Trump to a debate and the two quickly agreed to meet twice between now and Election Day.

The first debate will be next month on CNN, the second will be in September on ABC.

While Trump pushed for a Fox News debate, it didn’t happen ― and the network’s hosts are in meltdown mode as a result.

Sean Hannity attacked CNN’s Jake Tapper, who will be one of the moderators, as a “radical left-wing partisan,” demanded that moderators mics get cut off so they can’t fact-check Trump, then launched into some wild conspiracy theories about Biden.

He claimed Biden will take a “heavy dose” of “whatever he took before the State of the Union” to win the debate. He also said Biden is “secretly” trying to get Trump to cancel:

Meanwhile, Jesse Watters sounded impressed by Biden’s crack about Trump’s packed court calendar.

“Let’s pick the dates, Donald,” Biden said in his video challenging Trump. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays.”

“Wooooooooow! The day the Democrats aren’t tying him down in court,” Watters said.

But Watters, too, had a ton of problems with the debate conditions, moderators, networks and more ― and had some conspiracy theories of his own, such as a claim that Biden scheduled the debates early to fight shadowy Democratic “kingmakers” looking to replace him.

And like Hannity, Watters claimed Biden will be “shot up” with something to enhance his performance.

Hannity and Watters are just fuming that Fox News was left out!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have agreed to two debates, one on June 27 on CNN and one on Sept. 10 on ABC News, the first onstage clashes between the former president and his successor in more than three years.  As reported by The New York Times.

While some of the details were still being hammered out, the agreement to the two debates, reached in a series of social-media posts yesterday morning, raises the likelihood of the earliest general-election debate in modern history and immediately delivered a jolt of electricity to a campaign that had settled into something of a rut.

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden believe firmly that if the American people get a look at their opponent on a debate stage they will be less likely to vote for them.

Mr. Biden opened the exchange on by saying he was willing to debate Mr. Trump twice before the election, and as early as June, but on the condition that the arrangements bypassed the nonpartisan organization that has managed presidential debates since 1988.

Mr. Biden and his top aides want the debates to start much sooner than the dates proposed by the organization, the Commission on Presidential Debates, so voters can see the two candidates side by side well before early voting begins in September. They want the debate to occur inside a TV studio, with microphones that automatically cut off when a speaker’s time limit elapses.

And they want it to be just the two candidates and the moderator — without the raucous in-person audiences that Mr. Trump feeds on and without the participation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or other independent or third-party candidates.

It remains unclear whether the Trump campaign will agree to the Biden campaign’s proposed rules, including the mic cutoff and lack of an audience.

Before the Biden campaign’s debate proposal Wednesday morning, at least one behind-the-scenes conversation between aides to both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump had taken place, according to four people familiar with the discussion. The two campaigns had mutual interest in both circumventing the debates commission and excluding Mr. Kennedy.

That mutual interest between the two camps did not necessarily mean mutual agreement.

Mr. Trump added a new wrinkle when he announced on his social-media site Truth Social that he had agreed to a third debate on Fox News on Oct. 2. But the Biden campaign slammed the door on that.

“President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms,” Mr. Biden’s campaign chair, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, said. “No more games. No more chaos. No more debate about debates.”

Shortly after the Biden campaign had announced that they would consider invitations from news organizations seeking to host the debates, Mr. Biden posted on X that he had accepted an invitation from CNN for a debate with Mr. Trump on June 27 in Atlanta.

“Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place,” Mr. Biden wrote.

Mr. Trump quickly responded, telling Fox News Digital that he would “be there” and was “looking forward to being in beautiful Atlanta.”

A short time later, Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social that he had accepted the ABC News debate. The Biden team then said the president will attend that one as well.

CNN reported last night that both candidates agreed that there would not be audiences at either debate and that the moderators would have a mic cutoff option.

Tony