Happy Friday!

And a happy welcome to the first full day of Summer 2024!

Dancing in the streets? Sorry. Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing wherever there’s air conditioning.

How hot is it in DC? So hot that even if Joe Biden froze again, he’d quickly melt. Kamala Harris’s word salads are instantly wilting. And the city’s criminals? They’re only carjacking ice cream trucks right now.

No Decision on Presidential Immunity Yet from Supreme Court

Even if the temperature wasn’t turning Washington into a pressure cooker, the U.S. Supreme Court still would be. The High Court announced rulings in four cases yesterday, but not the highly anticipated ruling on presidential immunity. (A decision involving J6 defendants would impact former President Donald Trump’s case as well.) Those rulings may drop today.

Congressional Aide Boasts About Having Real Americans Pay Off His Student Loan

You already pay his salary, and now you’ve paid off his student loan. Aren’t you generous? And aren’t you a sucker?

Ben Kamens, a congressional aide to Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D), thought it’d be a good idea to boast on X about you paying off his student loan. Of course, he credits the Big Guy. “Just got a call to let me know my student debt has been canceled. This is why elections matter. Thanks @JoeBiden.” (Kamens has limited the number of people who can see his post.)

He wrote that as if Biden paid off the debt out of the dough given him by the Chinese, rather than money from the pockets of hard-working Americans.

Kamens is paid a salary exceeding $80,000 a year from the public trough, and according to one enterprising internet sleuth, lives in a crib valued at nearly $600,000.

Oddly enough, according to Fox News, Kamens’s boss criticized Biden’s 2022 effort to “cancel” student-loan debt.

What about the people who didn’t rack up that level of debt? What about people who put college on hold? What about the systemic problems we have in the student loan program, where you walk into an admissions office at a college and they give you a credit card, and you get the money, and you can spend the money on a car or a vacation or whatever, and then the student doesn’t graduate. There’s a lot of issues.

Italian Prime Minister Blocked Biden’s Effort to Push Abortion on Demand at G7

Not only did Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni rescue Joe Biden from wandering off at last week’s G7 summit, she blocked him from pushing his radical abortion ideology onto the other government leaders there. The U.S. president wanted them to commit to allowing abortion on demand in all their nations in the final statement from the conference.

Meloni shut that bid down. “I believe it is profoundly wrong, in difficult times like these, to campaign using a precious forum like the G7,” she said, according to The Washington Stand. Because you need a consensus for the G7 communique, the reference to abortion was stricken. An angered Biden tried to push back but was unsuccessful.

Biden wasn’t just peddling abortion, though; he also was trying to force LGBTQ+ ideology into the G7 statement. According to Bloomberg News, Meloni again stepped up and blocked the reference to “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”

CNN: RFK Jr. Doesn’t Qualify for Next Week’s Presidential Debate

It’s gonna be Trump vs. Biden at next week’s presidential debate on CNN. (Or Trump vs. Tapper, Bash, and the Big Guy, if you want to be specific.) CNN announced Thursday that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. did not meet all the requirements necessary to make it onto the stage.

Meanwhile, sources at the White House are telling CBS News to “expect some surprises” from Biden in terms of “content and physical performance.”

Huh? Is he going to break out the one-armed push-ups like Jack Palance did at the 1992 Oscars?

Biden will have to have some tricks up his sleeve — or maybe some special juice. Even CNN’s Van Jones admits that if Biden “messes up” during the debate, “it’s game over.”

'This Is The Entire Election': Van Jones Says If Biden 'Messes Up' During Debate, 'It's Game Over' pic.twitter.com/RMvaAg3FMu

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 20, 2024

Paranoid Celebs Worry Trump Will Come After Them

Seems there’s a new trend among celebrities: expressing worries that Trump will come after them personally if he’s reelected. Most entertainingly, model and social media influencer Chrissy Teigen told Deadline it’s a “strange feeling.” Apparently in 2019, Teigen said some nasty, even vulgar things about Trump and his wife. Trump tweeted about “boring musician (John Legend) and his foul-mouthed wife.” So naturally, if reelected his first order of business will be to send her to Gitmo.

Joy Behar of The View is also really worried. She thinks if Trump is reelected he will somehow force The View off the air. As much as that would improve the intellectual level of daytime television, where does Behar get the idea that The View is that important? MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow also thinks she’s in Trump’s crosshairs.

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman was on CNN Thursday morning, saying he’s worried Trump will retaliate against him if he retakes the White House. (Hoffman has bankrolled many of the lawfare efforts against the former president.) Still, he had the nerve to say, “Maybe [Trump] will persecute his political opponents with the instruments of state. I’ve literally talked to business leaders who are fearful about speaking out against this because they’re fearful of retaliation.”

He says this with a straight face while the man he has tried to destroy is facing four coordinated criminal cases utilizing the “instruments of state.” What would that alleged “retaliation against businesses” look like? Having to fork over nearly a billion dollars for defrauding absolutely no one? Getting convicted of 34 felony counts for a bookkeeping entry? Can anyone say “projection”?

But really, shouldn’t these people root for Trump to win the election? Think for a second: Who’s a bigger threat to you? A president with the burdens of the world and the public and courts watching, or a billionaire with a grudge and nothing to lose?

Elon Musk Reveals Two Attempts on His Life Were Made in the Past Seven Months

Dangerous times. Elon Musk told Tesla shareholders he “actually did have two homicidal maniacs in the last roughly seven months come to aspirationally try to kill me, and a bunch of other people.” The X owner said the would-be assailants weren’t driven by an “actual issue,” they were “just in the homicidal maniac career.” Evoking the murder of former Beatle John Lennon by a crazed fan, Musk said the incidents have forced him to be “a bit more standoffish” when in public.

Along The Stream

In a world of great shaking, sorrow, and surprise, Dr. Michael Brown says we need to remain “Standing on the Solid Rock of Christ.”

At 9 a.m., James Malloy tells us why “Common Sense, Decency, and Faith Must Defeat Woke Beliefs.”

 

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.