MAGA Launches Deranged Campaign to Replace Marco Rubio With Nepo Baby

MAGA world is trying to cast its personal faves into seats opened up by Trump Cabinet nominations. Its fan fictions may unfortunately become reality.

Republican senator and election denier Katie Britt told Axios Tuesday that she thinks Florida Governor Ron DeSantis should appoint Lara Trump, President-elect Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, to Marco Rubio’s Senate seat as he leaves to serve as Trump’s secretary of state.

“She just got off a historic win,” Britt told Axios. “She understands the America First agenda. For me, I think she would be a tremendous pick, a voice for hard working families and another mom of school aged kids that understands what we’re up against, and that’s to fight to protect the American dream.”

Britt isn’t the only one calling for a Senator Lara Trump. “Lara Trump needs to be the nominated replacement by Governor DeSantis for Rubio,” MAGA Representative Anna Paulina Luna said on X. “She will keep the seat and avoid a messy primary for FLORIDA. Well spoken. Kicked butt on election integrity. Etc.”

CNN’s Steve Contorno reported that DeSantis is feeling the “constant drumbeat” of pressure from MAGA acolytes to make this happen. Lara Trump has yet to comment.

Far-right trolls, chauvinists, and the people who idolize them have made it abundantly clear in the days since Donald Trump was elected that, in their world, women will not be autonomous and should not feel safe.

Across social media, young men are parroting white supremacist, Hitler fan, and far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes, who wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “Your body, my choice. Forever,” hours before the election was even called in Trump’s favor.

That post was viewed more than 90 million times and reposted more than 35,000 times, according to an analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. But between Thursday and Friday, the ISD found that the phrase itself had taken root online, proliferating by a 4,600 percent increase.

Just for reference, that’s exponentially larger than the last major hate-speech wave on X, which saw a ninefold increase in the use of the n-word in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform.

And the violent, misogynistic phrase has seemingly spilled from the digital ecosphere into daily life, as well, with parents reporting that young boys were caught leveraging the violent language against girls in school.

School officials in Minnesota issued a notice to parents on Friday that they were aware of “misogynistic … transphobic, and homophobic memes and messages” directed toward students in nearby school districts, including the phrase “your body, my choice.”

“Our country is facing a period of significant division, and the recent election has stirred a range of emotions. Although Hopkins Public Schools is nonpartisan, we recognize that the outcome of the election has and will continue to spark instances of racism, homophobia, and sexism in school communities across the nation and state, including here in Hopkins,” wrote Dr. Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, superintendent of the Hopkins Public Schools system, in a letter that encouraged parents to reach out to local authorities if their children received such messages.

The election results have seemingly created a safe space for misogynists to crawl out of the woodwork. In Texas, activists celebrating Trump’s win overtook Texas State University’s San Marcos Campus, raising signs that read “Women are property” and “Homo sex is sin,” and lists that designated women and slaves as “types of property.”

At best, the comments are unsavory rage bait being regurgitated by people who are unaware of the ramifications or depth of the hyperconservative, misogynistic belief. But they have the double-sided effect of making women—who have had their reproductive rights systematically stripped away from them on a state-by-state basis since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022—feel incredibly unsafe on the precipice of an overwhelmingly far-right administration.

Even the Exxon CEO is telling Trump to reel it in on the environment.

Exxon Mobil chair and chief executive Darren Woods warned President-elect Donald Trump against withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement—as Trump has promised to do again—at the annual United Nations COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Tuesday.

“I don’t think the challenge or the need to address global emissions is going to go away. Anything that happens in the short term would just make the longer term that much more challenging,” the executive said in an interview with Politico.

The Exxon CEO warned about the danger of carbon border tariffs, in particular, which have been floated by some in Trump’s inner circle and would levy taxes on imports produced at a higher carbon emissions level than in the United States.

“I think it’s a bad idea. It’s a really bad idea,” said Woods. “I think carbon border adjustment is going to introduce a whole new level of complexity and bureaucratic red tape. I don’t think it’s going to be very effective.” He said he prefers a regulatory apparatus based on carbon intensity.

While Woods complained about Biden’s energy policies, he still warned Trump about making too dramatic a rightward shift on the climate issue in general.

“We all have a responsibility to figure out, given our capabilities and ability to contribute, how can we best do that,” Woods said. “How the Trump administration can contribute in this space is to help establish the right, thoughtful, rational, logical framework for how the world starts to try to reduce the emissions.”

The only problem is that Trump is completely uninterested in a “rational, logical framework.” The president-elect thinks climate change is a “hoax,” wants to “drill, baby drill,” and is sure to roll back any Biden-era environmental regulations, as he’s nominated climate denier Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Donald Trump wants to save TikTok, after trying to get it banned during his first administration.

Before leaving office in 2020, Trump attempted to ban TikTok through an executive order claiming the app was a threat to “the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” Now he is expected to halt a ban put in motion by President Joe Biden.

So what changed?

Kellyanne Conway explained the president-elect’s newfound support for the insidiously addictive video-sharing app.

“He appreciates the breadth and reach of TikTok, which he used masterfully along with podcasts and new media entrants to win,” Conway told The Washington Post.

“There are many ways to hold China to account outside alienating 180 million U.S. users each month. Trump recognized early on that Democrats are the party of bans—gas-powered cars, menthol cigarettes, vapes, plastic straws, and TikTok—and to let them own that draconian, anti-personal choice space,” she said.

Conway managed to describe the president promising to bring back his “travel ban” targeting people from predominantly Muslim countries, including refugees from Gaza, as being in opposition to the so-called “party of bans.”

As Conway said, Trump was able to use TikTok to appeal to younger voters, which helped propel him to victory. Trump’s social media team garnered 3.2 billion TikTok views since the president-elect started using the app in June, according to the Post. In one of his first videos on the app he declared, “I’m gonna save TikTok.”

But Trump’s affair with TikTok started before he ever used the app.

After Trump stated his intent to ban the app, TikTok altered its algorithm and content moderation so that pro-Trump content would do better, according to The Information.

Trump would go on to court Jeff Yass, a major Republican donor and one of the largest investors in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance. Yass also reportedly donated to Accuracy in Media, which funded the doxxing of pro-Palestinian college students.

The deadline by which ByteDance must divest from its U.S.-based TikTok operations is January 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration. The company has given no indication that it intends to comply, and challenged the ban as being unconstitutional.

Donald Trump has tapped former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to serve as the next ambassador to Israel.

“Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years,” Trump said Tuesday in a statement. “He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”

This will be the first time that the two-term ex-governor has held a diplomatic post, and the nomination gives little indication that Trump has legitimate intentions to deescalate the war. Huckabee has been a vocal defender of Israel amid its lopsided conflict against Palestine. In June, he came out against a potential ceasefire deal between the two countries, arguing to NewsNation that Hamas should not be negotiated with and that the only solution for the war would be their complete surrender.

“This is like trying to negotiate with the Nazis in World War II. You just don’t,” Huckabee told the network. “You beat them. You defeat them. You eradicate them.”

Israel has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza in the more than yearlong war, with an additional 102,000 people injured in the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. A report by the United Nations Human Rights Office, published last week, found that close to 70 percent of those killed were women and children, with five- to nine-year-old children comprising the majority of the dead. Roughly 80 percent of the victims were killed in residential buildings or similar housing.

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, first visited Israel in the early 1970s at the age of 17, and has since visited the country dozens of times. In 2011, Politico reported that the two-time Republican presidential candidate would make a meal out of his trips to Israel, often spending several weeks in the country, while other visiting politicos would simply stop there to “check a box” along their campaign trail.

Huckabee has argued that the term “West Bank” is offensive—he prefers referring to the region in the Old Testament terms “Judea” and “Samaria.”

And Huckabee has landed himself in the midst of a litany of other Middle East controversies for his staunch defenses of Israel. In 2015, the conservative drew ire for likening the Obama administration’s maneuverings on the Iran Nuclear Deal to the Holocaust, claiming that the president was “marching Israelis to the door of the oven.”

This story has been updated.