Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond hit back after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attacked Vice President Kamala Harris over new Black history curriculum teaching the “benefits” of slavery to enslaved people.

The VP torched the new curriculum — which includes teaching that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” and requires teaching “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” —in two speeches on consecutive days, and DeSantis responded by accusing her of lying, and defending the new standards at a press conference.

On Saturday’s edition of CNN Newsroom With Jim Acosta, Acosta asked Richmond to respond, and the former White House senior adviser tor into DeSantis and the slavery teachings for several minutes:

ACOSTA: You just heard Florida Governor Ron DeSantis say a few moments ago, trying to explain what’s going on in Florida and to, I guess, go back at the Vice President that somehow people who were enslaved and working as blacksmiths might be able to use those skills after they weren’t slaves anymore. I’m trying to make some sense of this. What’s your response to what Florida Governor DeSantis had to say about this?

CEDRIC RICHMOND, CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR, BIDEN-HARRIS 2024: Clearly, factually, he’s wrong. Slavery was an abomination. It was utterly evil, and it had zero redeeming qualities. But I think that it further illustrates how far this Republican Party and these candidates are going to the right and to cater and pander to extremists in order to get support.

And I think that Governor DeSantis, his campaign has been floundering. He’s been looking for attention, and I think that he is now embarking on going as far to the right as he possibly can just to see if he can be the extremist candidate.

ACOSTA: And Governor DeSantis went after the Vice President in a tweet as well, saying, quote, “Democrats like Kamala Harris have to lie about Florida’s educational standards to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students and pushing sexual topics onto children. Florida stands in their way and will continue to expose their agenda and their lies”. What’s your response to that?

RICHMOND: It’s the same. And I think that Governor DeSantis is going to continue to run to the extremists because he doesn’t have a record to stand on, and he will continue to push the culture wars, if not just flat out racism, in order to get a base and catch a foothold in the Republican primary. And I think that that is — I hope that Americans can see right past it.

And I don’t think that you can say that there were redeeming qualities to enslavement. I don’t think that you can bash the Vice President of the United States for defending such an atrocity.

ACOSTA: And in 2022, DeSantis signed into law what was dubbed the Stop Woke Act in Florida. That law seeks to prohibit the instruction about certain events that might cause some students to feel uncomfortable. I mean, as you know, DeSantis is certainly trying to stoke these issues for personal and political gain. You’re on team Biden. How do you counter this?

RICHMOND: I just think it’s unfortunate. And let’s just take a moment. I’m down in New Orleans with a home of Ruby Bridges and others, and you mean to tell me Ruby Bridges and the other three phenomenal young women that day who segregated schools can go through it at age four, but we can’t teach high school students about it now because it makes them uncomfortable.

And so I just think that it is such ridiculous line of thought, but I just want to be very clear in what he’s doing so Americans don’t get confused or follow a red herring.

This is racism at its best. This is the governor pandering to those far-right extremists, and it has no place in American government, has no place in American history. And it’s just really pathetic.

Watch above via CNN Newsroom With Jim Acosta.

CNN anchor Dana Bash praised the Biden economy after recent inflation numbers, and asked Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi why President Joe Biden’s poll numbers don’t reflect that.

As Biden and his team tout the benefits of Bidenomics, a key inflation indicator — the Consumer Price Index — hit a pandemic-era low last month.

On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Bash ticked through some of the numbers, and asked Pelosi why Americans don’t have a more positive view of Biden where the economy is concerned:

BASH: I want to ask about the economy.

Inflation, it looks good —

PELOSI: Yes.

BASH: — when you look at the numbers. Inflation is down to just 3 percent. The labor market is steadily adding jobs. Wages are up. Consumer sentiment is the highest since September of 2021.

PELOSI: Yes.

BASH: So there’s, a lot for President Biden to tout.

So the question is about why Americans don’t seem to be giving him the credit. A Quinnipiac poll this week found nearly six in 10 Americans still disapprove of his handling of the economy. Why is that? And what does he have to do to turn that around?

PELOSI: Well, a lot of it’s about messaging, of course. I’m so proud of this president. In the two years that we were in the majority working with him, he broke all records, on the level with a Lyndon Johnson or a Franklin Roosevelt, in terms of the caliber of legislation that he passed for the good of the people, lowering prescription drugs, again, cutting in half — as you indicate, cutting in half unemployment.

BASH: So, why isn’t the American public giving him credit for it?

PELOSI: Almost like 14 million jobs.

It has to be messaged. It is a legitimate question I ask myself all the time too. This president did such a remarkable job. He is a person of such knowledge, such vision for the country, such knowledge of the issues, such strategic thinking and such a legislator, and, on top of it all, a person who connects with the American people.

He just has to get out there. It’s a busy job being president. I can say that as being speaker. You’re doing your work. But he’s just going to have to make sure the American people know at that kitchen table what this means to them, in terms of jobs and pay, reducing inflation, as you indicated, lowest in the whole Western world.

BASH: Yes.

Watch above via CNN’s State of the Union.

Democratic Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro tore into Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott over “barbaric” measures he’s taken to prevent migrant crossings on the Rio Grande.

Abbott has overseen the deployment of a floating barrier festooned with razor wire and reports of inhumane treatment by Texas National Guardsmen.

On Saturday’s edition of CNN Newsroom With Jim Acosta, anchor Jim Acosta followed up a report from Rosa Flores on the unfolding controversy by asking Castro to weigh in.

Castro torched Abbott, and called on President Joe Biden’s administration to step in:

ACOSTA: All right, let’s continue this discussion. Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas. Congressman, great to see you. Thanks for sharing part of your weekend with us.

First of all, your reaction to what these pregnant migrant women were telling our Rosa Flores, continues to do great work down on the border that these Texas National Guard members denied them drinking water. Despite this dangerous heat, you know how hot it is down that part of Texas this time of year, what’s your sense — what’s your reaction to that?

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: It’s barbaric treatment, it’s extreme cruelty. There’s no need for that kind of cruelty. You know, that’s something, Jim, that you would expect to see in a country like North Korea. Those are the kinds of stories that we hear about coming out of North Korea.

And so, for the governor to have already ordered razor wire to be placed in the water, and particularly in parts of the water where the water rises, and people can’t see the razor wire. So they’re bumping into that razor wire without being able to see it to denying people in 100 and 510 degree heat. Any water is just extremely cruel and barbaric.

ACOSTA: And Texas Governor Greg Abbott has launched a border crackdown called Operation Lone Star. Yesterday, you led 87 House Democrats and calling the White House to intervene. I guess part of this is these floating barriers, these flooding barriers that the state put there in the Rio Grande that could cause a drowning hazard. What is your sense of it? What needs to be done? And do you think the federal government can force the governor to respond?

CASTRO: I absolutely believe that the Biden administration, that the Department of Justice can stop Greg Abbott’s barbarism. That the governor has no right to be placing that razor wire or the barrel traps taken together. These things are death traps, beat to place them in the river.

And so, the Department of Justice has given the state of Texas until Monday to respond about how they’re going to remove these things. If there is no response or the response is not satisfactory, then the federal government intends to go to court on Tuesday to get those things removed.

Watch above via CNN Newsroom With Jim Acosta.

Ex-President Donald Trump is crushing rivals in a new early-state poll that shows him 30 points ahead of Ron DeSantis in Iowa and 38 points ahead of Tim Scott in South Carolina.

Politico Playbook notes the results of Fox Business Network polls of Iowa and South Carolina show Trump clobbering the competition — but also providing a few of them with some good news:

In Iowa:

Trump … 46%
DeSantis … 16%
TIM SCOTT …11%
VIVEK RAMASWAMY … 6%
NIKKI HALEY … 5%

In South Carolina:

Trump … 48%
Haley … 14%
DeSantis …13%
Scott … 10%
MIKE PENCE … 4%

These results officially qualify Trump, DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy, Scott and CHRIS CHRISTIE for the debate, as Zach Montellaro and Steve Shepard write.

But as Politico notes, the current also-rans have qualified for debates that Trump is not likely to show up for.

And these results — early as they are — do not bode well for anyone hoping, like DeSantis, to squeak past Trump with a state-by-state strategy.

This was DeSantis on Friday being confronted about his failure to catch fire in the polls nationally:

REPORTER: Why Utah today? Your poll numbers behind President Trump have been pretty substantially behind and…

RON DESANTIS: Not here! (HUMAN LAUGH) (CHEERS) No look, I think at the end of the day…

REPORTER: You think you can parlay this into a national resurgence to overtake…

RON DESANTIS: It’s a state, it’s a state by state race. And so that’s how we’ve set everything up. You know, we are we are focusing on Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. And then as we get into Super Tuesday, which of course, is is Utah. And that really requires being on the ground or requires building out the organization. And we’re doing that and we’re doing that better than anybody is doing that right now. We really, I think most of you saw last Friday we were in Iowa for the Family Leader summit. That really was the kickoff to the caucus season.

But if these numbers hold, that will be a steep hill to climb — even for Scott in his home state.

MSNBC host Ali Velshi on Saturday trashed Republican investigations and hearings as being “riddled with stunts and conspiracies” that amount to nothing and are a “wild goose chase.”

On Saturday’s Velshi on MSNBC, the left-wing anchor defended President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden against various allegations repeatedly brought forth by Republicans, some of which have the subject of recent House or Senate investigations and committee hearings.

Velshi said if allegations made by Republicans are “sounding like déja vu, that’s because these allegations have already been investigated over and over and over again,” without ever finding “evidence of improper influence or wrongdoing by the president.”

Velshi particularly brought up the IRS whistleblowers hearing that took place Wednesday, which neither MSNBC nor CNN covered live.

During that hearing, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene displayed graphic images of Hunter Biden in a variety of compromising positions that were recovered from his laptop, a scandal that was also mainly ignored by outfits like MSNBC and which was censored to varying degrees on social media prior to the 2020 election.

Velshi described them as “explicit photographs” without saying where they came from, and extrapolated that investigations into the President’s family are just stunts for political gain.

“Now, if you thought a hearing with two IRS whistleblowers was going to be tame, you’d be wrong,” he said Saturday. “That hearing quickly devolved when the Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene displayed explicit photographs of Hunter Biden to the committee.”

“This is the reality of the Republican investigation into the so-called ‘Biden Crime Family,'” said Velshi. “It’s seemingly riddled with stunts and conspiracies.”

That is essentially the same thing Democrats in Congress had to say, as is usually the case on the network.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.

CNN anchor Jim Acosta suggested that the many tragic deaths of Kennedy family members may have played a role in Democratic hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. coming to believe in “conspiracy theories,” such as the ones he has espoused regarding covid vaccines.

Earlier this week, a report from the New York Post showed RFK Jr. floating a theory that Covid-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

On Thursday, RFK Jr. appeared before the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, where he sparred with other Democratic lawmakers over his comments. The political scion claimed that he has “never uttered a phrase that was either racist or anti-Semitic.”

Acosta was joined on Saturday by American political scientist Larry Sabato on CNN to discuss the recent controversies involving Kennedy’s candidacy.

“I just have to ask you, because you have studied the Kennedys and you wrote the book about the Kennedy half century. Is there something that ties the tragedies of the Kennedy assassinations in the 1960s to what has become of RFK Jr.’s life, or is that just being too charitable,” Acosta asked Sabato.

“He’s a man. He should be held responsible for what he says,” the anchor added. “But it could it be that it was such an awful experience being RFK Jr. that he became this person with all of these theories. Like you said earlier, you’re not a psychiatrist. But does it somehow tie to these tragedies of the Kennedy family?”

Sabato dismissed the reasoning, adding that the Democratic candidate has a lot of family members who have not replicated his behavior.

“I don’t know why that would be a specific reason why he is doing the outlandish things he’s doing. You know, normally when you come across someone like that, you should feel sympathy for them and then you should ignore them,” Sabato concluded.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro took 43 minutes to review the new Barbie Movie, where he lights Barbie dolls on fire to emphasize how much he despises the “woke” film.

The Daily Wire co-founder starts off his review by throwing a Barbie and Ken doll into a trash bin before lighting them on fire with a match. Shapiro’s video editors then add fake screams and fire graphics to showcase the doll’s destruction.

“Let me begin with my generalized assessment of movie,” he tells his audience. “This movie is not just a piece of shit. This movie is a flaming piece of dogshit piled atop an entire dumpster on fire piled atop a landfill filled with dogshit.”

One of the main criticism that Shapiro gives for hating the movie is due to the lack of comedy and the mismanaged plot, claiming the film’s writers could not decide “whether they hate Barbie, or they were supposed to kind of like Barbie. It seems they kind of despised Barbie as a fascist emblem.”

The Republican firebrand also believes that the overall political message from the movie is that men and women need to be divided. Shapiro notes:

The basic sort of premise of the film, politically speaking, is that men and women are on two sides of the divide, and they hate each other. And literally, the only way you can have a happy world is if the women ignore the men and the men ignore the women. That seems to be the final outcome of this film. I was trying to separate this into problems with plot and problems with character and problems with the politics and so on. But they’re all intertwined because the thing is just a mess. It doesn’t make any sense. Plot-wise, it makes no sense. Character-wise, it makes no sense.

Watch the full video below:

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