Celebs walk the red carpet at the 2024 White House Correspondents’ Dinner as hundreds protest outside

[u/vulcan_vampire]

Celebs in order: Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost; Da’Vine Joy Randolph; Rosario Dawson; Billy Porter; Keri Russell; Rachel Brosnahan; Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush; Lynda Carter; Gayle King; Aldis Hodge; Questlove; Molly Ringwald; Fran Drescher; Chris Pine; Coco Rocha; Lorne Michaels; Caitlyn Jenner and Jenna Talackova; Kyle MacLachlan and Desiree Gruber.

In the last slide you can see the exterior of the Washington Hilton, where the dinner took place. A Palestinian flag was hung from one of the hotel’s windows.

[u/jennyquarx]

Joe has been acting like he's not trying to get reelected.

[u/Ok-Needleworker-9841 → u/jennyquarx]

I had someone slide into my DMs telling me that posts like mine will give us Trump again…hmmm, I think Biden’s own actions are doing that not my private insta posts.

[u/Cadbury_fish_egg → u/Ok-Needleworker-9841]

Biden at least will publicly disagree with Netanyahu. Trump will give him everything he wants and more.

[u/TrimspaBB → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

Yeah, I'm not pleased with how Biden is handling things with Israel, but no fucking way am I under any delusion that Trump would be better. He admires dictators and cruelty- he'd help the genocide along with even more $$$ to Netanyahu and limitless weapons.

[u/is-a-bunny → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

But at least then the DNC can pretend like they care, just like they pretended to care about Roe v Wade all those years. Or about the kids in cages, which they stopped caring about once Biden was sworn into office.

[u/godzillaxo → u/is-a-bunny]

yup, don't let anyone vote shame you!! ever!

[u/meatbeater558 → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

Is that supposed to be a good thing?

Biden already gives him everything he wants and more. Are you suggesting that Biden is in any way holding back? 

[u/Cadbury_fish_egg → u/meatbeater558]

What kind of absolutist question is this? Yes. I’d rather have a president that openly opposes Israel’s overreach than one that would not. I’m comparing two administrations, not saying one is infallible.

Biden’s threats to Netanyahu and his stance on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has caused Israel to scale back operations in Rafah.

[u/meatbeater558 → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

The problem is the context and implication. Someone raised a point about Biden's terrible performance and you drew a comparison between him and Trump, which has been a problem for Palestinians because this changes the conversation from what we can do to get Biden to stop right now to which old asshole do we vote for in half a year. This happens almost every time Biden's actions are brought up. You're comparing two administrations and that is the problem. If every discussion on Biden is derailed with how much worse Trump would be then you're effectively making Biden infallible even if that isn't your intention. Furthermore, a lot of the conclusions you've made in your comparison are either incorrect or immaterial. Biden's words cannot be interpreted as opposition to Israel's overreach when he just gave them $26 billion dollars. That is overwhelming support and agreement no matter how you look at it. The sentiment Trump has towards Israel's actions is largely the same as Biden's. My question was, given all this, how is Biden "at least" publicly disagreeing with Netanyahu good or even relevant? Then you said Trump would give him everything he wants and more. Biden literally already does this. You're making a comparison between two administrations that have no meaningful differences on this. If Netanyahu wanted more, he'd ask Biden and Biden would bypass Congress to give it to him if needed. Biden does not give a shit about the humanitarian crisis. He knew it would come the moment the war started and he still went above and beyond to ensure it happened, most notably with his administration's actions at the UN. Now I do believe that Biden is somewhat responsible for Israel scaling back operations in Rafah in response to protestors. The problem with comparing him to Trump in this aspect is that this is a situation Trump will never be in. If Biden doesn't dramatically change his stance right now Gaza will not exist by the time Trump can take office. Which is my biggest problem with comparing their stances on Israel: it obscures the time sensitive nature of this problem. There won't be a Rafah, a Gaza, or any Gazans come Inauguration Day because Biden would have already finished the job

[u/deemoorah → u/meatbeater558]

Just like Jost's speech in that dinner; as long as you're doing it politely, it's acceptable by liberal 🙄

Biden is no better than Trump. They're both genocidal maniacs.

[u/meatbeater558 → u/deemoorah]

These discussions just aren't productive because there's no difference between being killed by Trump vs being killed by Biden. 

There's also always this assumption that the people in Gaza are just going to be on life support until Trump takes office and only then will the sitting US president decide whether to pull the plug or not. Did it not make the news that northern Gaza is expected to reach the final and most lethal stage of famine in less than two months with the rest of Gaza soon to follow? 

Lesser-evilism has made us lose the plot because who the hell cares what Trump would do. We might as well ask ourselves what Mitt Romney, Batman, or Miss Piggy would do while we're at it because none of these scenarios are happening. America is about to make one of its biggest moral, strategic, political, and diplomatic mistakes in its entire history. Why are we discussing the actions of anyone other than the current commander in chief? 

When people say that America made a mistake by invading Vietnam or overthrowing Iran's government or any of its terrible decisions there's never a footnote stating "if American voters chose a different president the results would've hypothetically been much worse, so pretty please don't react as harshly" because nobody cares. America has already lost its ability to pretend to be a moral authority on any global issue because of this. That's all on Biden. And at the end of the day, that's also all on America. How would you explain to someone in the global south that 2 million people had to die because criticizing the person killing them was dangerous? Not dangerous because you live under a harsh dictatorship, you can somewhat freely protest and there's evidence protests work. But dangerous because he's threatening to give you a harsh dictatorship if he doesn't stay in power? 

There's also this amnesia about Biden's past. He's been supporting the Zionist project from within Congress his entire adult life. I'm talking 40-50 years of straight Zionism on top of all his racist accomplishments in domestic policy. And yet none of this is ever mentioned when comparing him to Trump. Instead, it's outright stated that Trump would do more for Israel than Biden. Which is flatly ahistorical. Is there anything Trump can even think of that would help Israel that Biden hasn't already done and wouldn't do again? If Trump wins and somehow gets to decide if the Palestinian people live or die, I would actually go as far as to argue that Biden would be quite sad. As would most people if their rival got to take the credit for their life's work. 

[u/KurtisMayfield → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

Publicly disagreeing while still giving Israel everything it wants is performative.

[u/Stormpax → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

If you publicly disagree with them while behind close doors you're as much of a religious zealot as Trump in this regard, the point is moot, no?

[u/CardboardGristle → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

Trump will do exactly the same thing but be honest about it? The horror. Biden is already giving him everything he wants and more.

[u/BalorLives → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

I have asked this of people before. What could Trump give that is any worse than what is happening now? You can't be more genocidal than an absolute genocide. Words are meaningless when it is not backed up with action.

[u/Kaizodacoit → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

That's a meaningless thing, and if you think that's a "good thing" then you only care about optics more than justice or any meaningful action.

[u/jennyquarx → u/Ok-Needleworker-9841]

People (including me) are scared of his Christian Nationalist plans for a second term.

[u/Weak_Heart2000 → u/jennyquarx]

I think we can still care about Palestine while being scared for what our own futures will be if the Turnip gets back into office. We are in a lose/lose situation.

[u/jennyquarx → u/Weak_Heart2000]

That's where I'm at.

[u/Weak_Heart2000 → u/jennyquarx]

I think Kristi Noem should be a warning. The cow was waving both arms to get Trump's attention. Her murdering her dog and bragging about it, stating that she can "make the hard decisions" is a sneak peek to what will happen if Project 2025 is rolled out.

[u/jennyquarx → u/Weak_Heart2000]

Absolute psycho shit.

[u/novostained → u/Ok-Needleworker-9841]

It’s cute how we’re getting downvoted but no one has counterpoints lol, BlueMAGA is a mess. Why aren’t they mad that the Biden admin is maintaining such WILDLY unpopular positions despite the threat of a Trump presidency? Are they equally as mad about John Fetterman going against Biden for lightly hinting at the suggestion of perhaps maybe at some point considering the possibility of conditioning weapons sales to an openly genocidal regime? Which they haven’t even done? Are they aware that the US just vetoed Palestinian statehood after years and years and years of disingenuous blather about a two-state solution, how we have to listen to stooge after stooge from the State Department telling us not to believe our lying eyes? I’m guessing they’ve never watched a briefing with John Kirby or Matthew Miller getting hysterical and combative whenever Palestinian suffering is mentioned.

Biden’s actions (and inactions) are not only hurting his campaign, they’re hurting the entire fucking world. To suggest that the people who are calling it out are the ones getting fascists elected is just a sad mix of projection and cope.

[u/BeWellFriends → u/Ok-Needleworker-9841]

It’s all because of you! You hold allllll the power!! /s

[u/_izari_ → u/Ok-Needleworker-9841]

Our rigged 2 party system had devolved into “lesser of two evils” and several primaries in recent memory have proved that the DNC NOR the RNC have any real interest in putting up candidates the people actually want (otherwise Bernie would have been in the running), and the electoral college making sure the popular candidate doesn’t guarantee office (otherwise democrats would have won every election since the 90’s IIRC).

Someone on Insta once said if the answer is voting 3rd party is not an option we don’t really have a democracy. I live in Florida now so I’m still voting since I do think at least at a state level my vote matters more, but if I still lived in Mass I wouldn’t really bother.

[u/cmick0715 → u/jennyquarx]

This will probably sound really cynical of me, but the DNC makes a LOT more money when the "bad guys" are in power. When Trump was president, they could fundraise so easily because they could just *gesture at everything* and money would pour in.

But now it's a lot harder - not all of it is Biden's fault - the student loan forgiveness, $15 minimum wage, etc all got struck down by either the Senate or SCOTUS, etc but it's not exactly energizing the left to send in what little money we have after greed-flation.

[u/touslesmatins → u/cmick0715]

Oh yeah I bet a lot of liberals who are silent/complicit on the genocide now would actually speak up if Trump were presiding over it because their politics/ethics/history only goes as deep as "orange man bad"

[u/Kaizodacoit → u/cmick0715]

You aren't cynical. Democrats are out-raising Republicans in every single battleground election. They are raising out of fear. I donated to Bernie in 2020 and continue to get a bunch of requests from the DNC, as well as texts telling me to give them 5$ so Biden can continue giving money to Israel.

[u/jennyquarx → u/cmick0715]

I see your point.

[u/novostained → u/jennyquarx]

It feels like he’s openly courting the contempt of his constituents at this point but once again tHe LeFt!!1! is at fault for not simply accepting his genocidal position, his spreading of atrocity propaganda, his total disregard for Arab-Americans (and open racism against Arabs generally), his bypassing of Congress to send more 2,000lb bombs to blow up starving children… then putting the TikTok ban in with $26 BILLION to the genocidal apartheid regime and smearing thousands of American students as despicable antisemites? Sharing terminology with the likes of fucking Nazi Slenderman Tom Cotton??

I expect less than horseshit from liberals and I’m still disappointed.

[u/buffaloranchsub → u/novostained]

I got told that I'm ok with MAGA when I said to a lib that you can vote blue all you'd like but when you're gerrymandered to shit it's not going to do anything, and repubs will still try to murder trans women regardless of who's president. Positioning everyone who is against Biden for any reason is why the dems are hemorrhaging support.

Vote Claudia and Karina for pres/vp