[guest post by Dana]

Feel free to talk about anything you think is newsworthy or might interest readers. I’m not putting up any news about the Iranian situation because JVW has it covered.

I’ll start.

First news item: Trump Brand 2024:

The survey was conducted Dec. 14-17 among 4,436 adults, including 1,854 Republicans/leaners and 1,769 Democrats/leaners. The modeled error estimate for this survey is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Second news item: “…when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Not always:

A former Fox News reporter has accused President Trump of inviting her to his office for a kiss before he was president.

Courtney Friel, who now works at KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, made the claim in her forthcoming book…

“Though he said I couldn’t be a judge since I worked at a different network, he did ask me about my career goals and complimented my work at FNC,” she reportedly wrote in her book. “Then, out of nowhere, he said: ‘You should come up to my office sometime, so we can kiss.’”

The Daily News reported that Friel said she was “shocked” and later replied, “I believe we’re both married,” before ending the call.

Third news item: Pot, kettle, and I just can’t even:

President Trump took aim at 2020 contender Pete Buttigieg at a Friday rally in a Miami megachurch, claiming the South Bend, Indiana mayor was faking his faith ahead of the election. From the pulpit of Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesús, the president said Buttigieg was “trying to pretend he’s very religious” and claimed the mayor only started talking about his faith recently. “All of a sudden, he’s become very religions… this happened about two weeks ago,” he said.

Fourth news item: Democrats sure love their millionaires and billionaires:

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg saw a 6-point bump in the latest Hill-HarrisX survey of the Democratic presidential primary.

The nationwide poll, which was released Friday, shows Bloomberg up from 5 percent to 11 percent support for the nomination nationally. The former New York City mayor is now in a dead heat for third place with top-tier candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who also received 11 percent support.

Biden, meanwhile, continues to lead the Democratic field with 28 percent followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 16 percent.

Fifth news item: Sadly having to state the obvious: Anti-semitic attacks are not the fault of those enduring them:

As evidenced by the Monsey attack, many of the anti-Semitic attacks aren’t coming from the far right, but from non-white people immersed in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that are just as baseless, virulent, and dangerous as those spread by white nationalists.

For example, in Jersey City, the attackers were part of an extremist wing of the Black Hebrew Israelites that believes Jewish people are imposters (as one acolyte put it in 2007, “Negroes are the real Jews”) and worthy of death. One attacker posted about how Jewish people controlled the government and referred to Jewish people as being part of the “synagogue of Satan,” a phrase derived from the Book of Revelation that has become an anti-Semitic calling card.

And while violence aimed at Orthodox Jews and people who are visibly Jewish (those who wear kippahs, for example) has been increasing for months, media attention and, more importantly, attention from law enforcement agencies, has been sparse. Some media outlets have even appeared to blame the rise in violence on Orthodox Jewish people themselves, arguing that growing Orthodox communities were causing “predictable sparring.”

But anti-Semitic attacks aren’t the fault of the community enduring them. While it’s almost impossible to pinpoint an exact origin for the recent spate of violence, many of the attacks are tied to long-simmering anti-Semitic attitudes based on conspiracy theories and myths that have largely gone unchecked — coupled with political inaction at best and outright anti-Semitism coming from politicians themselves at worst.

Have a good weekend.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana