Top Trump official humiliated by epic mic drop

Top Stories for May 14:

Secretary of the Interior humiliated over solar power ignorance
The man Donald Trump tapped to oversee 500 million acres of public land and manage the nation’s natural resources warned Congress yesterday that solar panels “produce zero electricity” when the sun goes down — an obviously fatal flaw that engineers somehow forgot to address before… oh, wait, never mind, we have storage batteries.

Seizing the moment Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was clearly unprepared for, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) requested unanimous consent to enter into the committee record “this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of: it’s a battery” — and in the process threw his name in the proverbial hat for deepest burn of the year on Capitol Hill. Can we please let serious people back in charge of our country soon?

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VIDEO OF THE DAY: Republicans hit with rare bad news in deep red state
In the very-deep-red state of Nebraska, fans of democracy and the idea of one day returning to some semblance of normalcy have a little more reason to hope this week. Democratic Senate candidate Cindy Burbank bested a Republican plant in the state’s Democratic primary this week and immediately announced she would vacate the race and throw her support behind left-leaning, independent insurgent Dan Osborn, who actually has a legitimate chance at knocking off GOP incumbent Pete Ricketts in November.

Brian Tyler Cohen breaks down the unusual turn of events in Nebraska what it could mean for our chances of retaking the Senate this fall.

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MAGA Speaker Mike Johnson’s House majority is down to just TWO VOTES
Flip the House: We have a very real opportunity to flip the House and finally put some clamps on Donald Trump’s reign of terror and chaos this November, but it’s not going to be easy. Trump has made it clear that there’s nothing he won’t do to tip the scales in his favor, so we need to win by a decisive enough majority to thwart his inevitable shenanigans. We’ve put together a donation page that will split any gifts between a group of Democratic candidates all locked in close, winnable House races, and every dollar might mean the difference between democracy or fascism. Will you chip in to help retake our country and stop Trump in his tracks?

China’s Xi warns Trump that differences over Taiwan could lead to conflict
China’s Xi Jinping warned Donald Trump on Thursday that their two countries could clash over Taiwan if the issue is not handled properly, an unusually harsh admonition that stood in contrast to Trump’s praise for his counterpart. According to a tweet by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, Xi told Trump that “the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations.” While Donald fawned over Xi, heaping praise on his host’s “great” leadership, the Chinese president was far more stark in his opening remarks, expressing hope that the US and China could avoid conflict and asking “whether the two countries can transcend the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new model for relations between major powers.”

We’re not big gamblers here at Daily Dose of Democracy, but we’d bet the house and the shirts off our backs that someone had to explain to Donald what Xi meant by “Thucydides Trap.“

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JD Vance insists Trump never said he doesn’t care about Americans — one day after Trump said he doesn’t care about Americans
Unfortunately for the cosplay hillbilly, there’s video proving otherwise. Keep shooting your shots, JD!

Obama defends his 2015 Iran deal with jab at Trump’s war: “We didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people”
During a sit-down interview with Stephen Colbert at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, the 44th president took a pointed swipe at the MAGA cult leader and essentially called “scoreboard” on how their respective approaches to dealing with Iran had fared. “Not only did I think [the 2015 Iran nuclear deal] was working, even Israeli intelligence thought it was working, even our intelligence services thought it was working,” Obama said. “So, there’s no dispute that it worked. And we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz.”

When Colbert countered that Donald did not agree, Obama quipped, “Yeah, because I did it. Which is fine. That seems to be a pattern.” Touché!

Miami residents sue to block Trump’s scammy presidential “library”
To be fair, if the serial con man’s future presidential “library” isn’t completely and utterly scammy, can it legitimately bear his name?

83-year-old House Democrat is MIA — with no explanation
Florida Democrat Frederica Wilson has not voted in the House of Representatives since April 17, having missed 43 consecutive votes without explanation. Wilson’s absence only drew more attention after her official Twitter account posted photos of a Service Academy day using pictures she previously posted last October. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority, while four House Democrats have died in office during the 119th Congress.

Senate Republican opposition to the Iran war slowly grows
They’re taking their pretty little time, but Republicans are finally growing weary of their cult leader’s “little excursion” in the Middle East and the economic struggles Donald’s imperial adventurism is exacerbating back home. Rand Paul, Lisa Murkowski, and perpetually concerned Susan Collins all went on the record yesterday voting in favor of reining in Trump’s warmongering. Funny how a few catastrophic polls showing overwhelming displeasure with a president’s job performance can move the needle, eh?