Wed: Billionaire Wants Worst Global Depression in History

When a State Elects a Football Coach to the Senate, Expect A Lot of Fumbles

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) didn't know that Gen. Mark Milley must leave his office on Oct. 1, 2023. Speaking to an NBC News reporter and others, Tuberville said that he's sure Milley would stick around. Legally, he can't.

"I'll call Milley and wish him good luck, but I don't — I don't know whether he'll go anywhere until they get somebody confirmed," said Tuberville.

Reporters had to explain that statutorily, he's required to leave the office.

"He has to leave?" Tuberville asked the reporters. "He's out. We'll get somebody else to do the job. But, um, hopefully, it's done by then."

Wallace's face scrunched and she let out a big sigh. "Hopefully what's done? You're the problem!"

"I think a lot of us have seen, with Sen. Tuberville, how ignorant he is," Ret. Marine Corps. Col. Amy McGrath explained. "The fact that he has really no idea about national security policy, how the laws are enacted with regards to our military, that's not surprising to a lot of us. I think the bigger issue here, Nicolle, is not Sen. Tuberville's ignorance, it's the fact that the rest of the Senate Republican caucus, the members of the so-called party of national security, have not stood up to him. He basically has had little pushback."

Gen. Barry McCaffrey told Wallace that called Republicans allowing Tuberville to sit on a national security process "astonishing."

He Became the Nation's Ninth Vice President. She Was His Enslaved Wife.

Julia Chinn was born into slavery in Kentucky around 1790, the year after George Washington was elected first president of the United States. The plantation owner’s son fell in love with her. They couldn’t legally marry, so they were joined in an illegal ceremony organized by the other enslaved people of the plantation, at Great Crossing Baptist Church. The son was Richard Mentor Johnson, who eventually became the 9th vice president of the United States.

Johnson openly acknowledged Julia as his wife and their two daughters as his children.

Johnson’s story is not all heroic. Though by all existing evidence he loved Julia and regarded her in every sense as his wife, he never freed her, and she remained enslaved her entire life. Whether she consented to the relationship with him is not known, since none of her letters to him have survived. But during Johnson’s long absences from the household, she was clearly in charge of running the 2000-acre plantation. She hosted the Marquis de Lafayette when he returned to the US to reconnect with his compatriots from the American Revolution. She was by every account an accomplished and brilliant administrator, educator, pianist — a true Renaissance woman. She was also a skilled nurse and healer, ultimately dying of cholera contracted while ministering to Native American children at a school established by Johnson.

After her death, Johnson’s life took a darker turn and he became notorious for his numerous enslaved mistresses. After his death, his brothers burned all of their letters and property records so they could seize control of the plantation from Julia and Johnson’s daughters.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Johnson inevitably paid a political price for his relationship with Julia. Johnson was Martin Van Buren’s (remember him? I didn’t think so) running mate in the 1836 presidential election:

Johnson’s relationship with Chinn became a campaign issue. Southern newspapers denounced him as “the great Amalgamationist.” A mocking cartoon showed a distraught Johnson with a hand over his face bewailing “the scurrilous attacks on the Mother of my Children.”

Van Buren won the election, but Johnson’s 147 electoral votes were one short of what he needed to be elected. Virginia’s electors refused to vote for him. It was the only time Congress chose a vice president.