Joe Biden

Democrats have enjoyed some major victories in Pennsylvania in recent years, including Justice Daniel McCaffery's win in a state supreme court race in 2023. The previous year, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) flipped a U.S. Senate seat that had been mostly in GOP hands for decades, and Gov. Josh Shapiro enjoyed a double-digit landslide win over far-right MAGA Republican Doug Mastriano.

But Pennsylvania is a volatile swing state where candidates have to work extra hard in statewide races. 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 but lost it to now-President Joe Biden in 2020, and Biden's reelection campaign views Pennsylvania as a must-win state. Many polls are showing a very close race in the Keystone State in a hypothetical Trump/Biden rematch.

On the first "Morning Joe" episode the day after Christmas, the pared-down MSNBC panel immediately pounced on Donald Trump for his ugly tirade on Truth Social where his Christmas message included wishing people would "rot in hell."

Fill-in in host Jonathan Lemire kicked off the discussion by reading from the former president's post where Trump wrote, "Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith, the out of control Lunatic who just hired outside attorneys, fresh from the SWAMP (unprecedented!), to help him with his poorly executed WITCH HUNT against 'TRUMP' and 'MAGA' Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and 'sick' as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

Lemire then turned to Rev. Al Sharpton and asked, "The anger from Donald Trump, the bad faith attacks about his political opponents, what does that say to you just about where he is right now mentally and emotionally as this year draws to a close and we barrel into an election year?"

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"It's two things," Sharpton began. "I think it shows that these indictments and the civil case, despite his pretense otherwise, has gotten to him, because he's reacting and responding in a way of no one projecting self-confidence or like this is nothing."

"I also think it shows an inner kind of anger and displacement that he has, because who spends the holiday with this kind of venom, particularly when he is a guy that claims to be this self-confident, self-made guy with this kind of darkness, unless you are just that kind of dark person," he added.

"We've certainly gotten used to Trump's unorthodox holiday messages, 'the haters,' but this one hit a new low, even for him," Lemire chipped in.

Watch the video below or at this link.

The New York Times is reporting that former President Donald Trump is planning to reignite trade wars with foreign nations if he's reelected next year in a move the paper describes as "a high-stakes gamble with the economy’s health."

While Trump levied tariffs on foreign competitors in his first term, the Times reports that a second term would see that effort go into overdrive with the goal of severing the economic relationship between the United States and China.

Unable to set politics aside for the Christmas holiday, self-avowed Christian Marjorie Taylor Greene felt compelled to share a video of her Christmas tree which set off a wave of criticism because of the wrapping paper on some packages that she appears to be proud of.

The video, shared on X, by the Georgia Republican was accompanied by her boast, "I love my Impeach Biden wrapping paper! Merry Christmas Eve!"

Despite Donald Trump's commanding lead in the polls, not all Republican and conservative voters are willing to send the ex-president back to the Oval Office if he ends up winning the battle for the 2024 Republican party nomination.

According to a report from the Guardian, doubts about giving the four-time indicted former president another crack at becoming the commander-in-chief have increased due to his recent comments about wanting to be a "dictator" for one day after being re-elected.

Although many observers have suggested Trump is using that kind of language to get a rise out of his detractors, some Republicans are a bit wary that he means it and are looking elsewhere at either one of Trump's GOP rivals for the nomination or contemplating holding their noses and voting for President Joe Biden.

In interviews with conservative voters in the key state of Pennsylvania, the Guardian's Chris Stein found more than a handful of former Trump voters who expressed growing alarm at the former president's increasingly authoritarian rhetoric.

While 67-year-old Roger Williams defended the Trump "dictator" comments by saying, "For one day – don’t get it twisted. He wanted to put his foot down and dictate some things that needed to get done. That’s what he meant,” others weren't so sure.

ALSO READ: Trolling, erotica, vulgarity: Trump, Biden Facebook pages are unmitigated trash heaps

Conservative Bob Capparell, 74, claimed he'd prefer former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie or ex-U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and worried that Trump might make good on boast about being a dictator by telling the Guardian's Stein, "He would be, absolutely. You’d never get him out of office, never.”

Bob Buchman, 72, a Trump voter in 2016 because he “believed his baloney,” turned to Biden in 2020 and may vote that way again.

Donald Trump kicked off his Christmas morning by lashing out in yet another all-caps rant aimed at the prosecutors, the DOJ and the FBI before offering his fans his "Merry Christmas" wishes.

Taking to Truth Social after a Christmas Eve spent lashing out at special counsel Jack Smith, the former president spread his attacks around and added a shot at President Joe Biden.

With the battle between Donald Trump's lawyers and special counsel Jack Smith likely headed to the Supreme Court no matter which way an appeals court rules on his banning from Colorado's ballot, the former president runs the risk the nation's highest court may rule in such a way that the former president's political career will be ended.

In his column for CNN, SiriusXM radio host Dean Obeidallah suggested the court could step in and not just agree with the Colorado Supreme Court, but also disqualify the former president from ever running for office again.

Donald Trump has spent the better part of the last week trying to clean up his language after adopting some of Adolf Hitler's ideology about blood purity. According to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the ex-president knew exactly what he was doing.

Republicans struggled to try and dismiss the comments. Some claimed he was just "joking," a common refrain, and reframe, of whatever objectionable thing the ex-president had uttered. Other lawmakers went so far as to claim that it wasn't "real," and that Trump simply uses that kind of language to get Republican voters excited. Some outright embraced it while the Republican Party stayed silent.