‘Spectacle of lies.’ That’s CNN’s own senior media reporter Oliver Darcy’s take on CNN’s “town hall” last night with Donald Trump …
■ The Daily Beast: “CNN failed America” … with what one CNN insider called “one of the worst hours I’ve ever seen on our air.”
■ The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes says it was “a sh*tshow for the ages.”
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones: CNN’s Kaitlan Collins got “steamrolled.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: Trump used the forum to “lie and lie, then lie some more” …
■ …including, as Politico’s Shia Kapos notes, another disingenuous swipe at Chicago.
■ The AP’s recap begins this way: “Trump with the long, twisting answers; the interviewer at times struggling to fact-check him … and then, eventually, both talking over each other as Trump flings insults her way.”
■ The Trump-friendly audience laughed as he mocked his rape accuser …
■ … which U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said put a sexual abuse victim at risk.
■ Ex-Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Twitter called it “an absolute joke … like watching a man at the end of his life ranting in a nursing home.”
■ Why Did They Bother Dept.: PolitiFact fact-checked Trump.
■ Know how Chicago Public Square often links to full video of events? Nah.
He’s coming this way. To “fight the radical Progressive Left’s Marxist agenda,” Florida Gov.—and potential presidential candidate—Ron DeSantis is headed to Peoria Friday.
■ Popular Information: DeSantis is about to make a mockery of campaign finance law.
‘Needed money for a barbecue.’ That, according to prosecutors, was part of the motivation for four teenagers charged in the shooting death of Chicago police officer Aréanah Preston …
■ … the culmination of what prosecutors call a “violent robbery spree.”
■ All four come with extensive juvenile criminal backgrounds …
■ … and one of them appeared in a gun-filled music video posted to YouTube.
■ Ignoring the Chicago Police Department’s history of charging the wrong guys (2020 link), Mayor Lightfoot left the key word alleged out of her statement praising police “for working swiftly to apprehend and bring to justice the four individuals responsible.”
‘A travesty.’ A Sun-Times editorial mourns that, as Lightfoot takes “victory laps this week … the city is stuck with an event, brought under her administration, that raised red flags from the very start”: NASCAR street races.
■ In the Biden administration’s biggest move yet to cut Earth-warming pollution, the EPA is proposing new limits on coal- and gas-fired power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions.
■ The Heated environmental newsletter: Fossil fuel interests are getting lies about “natural” gas codified into law.
‘The end of the COVID emergency really is about yanking back certain medical benefits.’ Columnist Neil Steinberg mocks: “Well, THAT’S over. Finally. Thank God.”
■ The Conversation: In practice, it’s likely to spell the end of government health coverage for 15 million humans.
■ Here’s what today’s deadline means in Illinois.
■ Axios: Judging by mobile device activity, downtown Chicago’s still at only 57% of its pre-pandemic activity.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s signed a law granting full disability benefits to cops and firefighters who contracted COVID before vaccines emerged.
■ Millions in federal COVID relief cash will erase $79 million in medical debt for 72,000 Cook County residents.
Tagged out. Police have arrested a woman accused of attacking other women with a baseball bat on the Northwest Side Tuesday.
■ Here’s one attack caught on video.
‘The ugly truth.’ ProPublica reports that HomeVestors of America (“We Buy Ugly Houses”) trains its franchisees in Illinois and elsewhere “to zero in on homeowners’ desperation.”
■ Had experience with predatory home buyers? Let ProPublica know.
■ The Onion again: “First-Time Homebuyers Purchase Nice Starter Doorknob.”
‘This one phone call will save us $600 over the next 12 months.’ Eric Zorn encourages you to take a simple step to cut your TV—and newspaper—bills.
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