‘Is Betty Buckley Still Alive?' Trump Asked. She Certainly Is.
An hour into Betty Buckley's first set at Joe's Pub, she began the aching ballad from 'Cats' that has won her legions of fans. Among them, she now knows, is President Trump.
Ms. Buckley, 77, who regularly reposts social media content critical of the Trump Administration, did not mention the president when she tore into 'Memory,' which brought the reverent Thursday evening crowd to its feet, whistling and whooping. She didn't mention him when she finished the number, either.
But then she pivoted to Paul Simon's 'American Tune' — with lyrics like 'I don't have a friend who feels at ease' and 'I wonder what's gone wrong' — and called it 'particularly perfect for what's happening these days, which is weird, and not cool.'
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The early Republican criticism of Ossoff points to the Democratic senator's vote on legislation in February that would make it a Title IX violation (jeopardizing federal education funding) for states to allow transgender women and girls to participate in female sports. The bill failed to get the 60 votes it needed to advance in the Senate. One Nation, the nonprofit aligned with Senate Republicans' main super PAC, has spent at least $400,000 airing an ad reminiscent of a key tagline from one of Trump's anti-Harris ads from last year: 'Man-to-man defense isn't woke enough for Ossoff, he's playing for they/them.' Carter's opening salvo of ads included a spot touting the congressman's MAGA credentials while a person purporting to be a transgender woman holds sports trophies and stands in front of a transgender pride flag talking about how Ossoff has been an ally to the community. 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The Democrat called Republicans, particularly GOP political consultants, "obsessed and preoccupied with this issue." Thinking ahead about "top of mind" issues for voters in 2026, Ossoff added, will it be "whether or not federal bureaucrats are investigating the sexual biology of adolescent athletes? I don't think so," he added. Amy Morton, a Democratic strategist in Georgia, elaborated that she believes the midterms will instead be a "referendum on the economy" and Trump's handling of it, emphasizing the Democratic attacks on the GOP's broad policy bill that's working its way through Congress. "They're going to continue to lean into that issue because they don't want to talk about the issues that are really impacting Georgians," she said, adding, "They made a strategic decision to wrap their arms around Donald Trump so there won't be a degree of separation between his failure as an executive and their failure." A Democratic strategist who worked on Sen. Raphael Warnock's successful re-election in Georgia in 2022 added that, like their former boss, Ossoff's high-profile elections have helped to define him in the state, making them skeptical that a GOP attempt to brand him as extreme will stick. They added that while Warnock's 2022 Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, leaned heavily on social issues during his unsuccessful bid, Kemp won comfortably with a very different message on the same ballot, showing how a campaign can focus on the issues it wants and leave others to the side. "You saw Brian Kemp run an extremely disciplined race on the economy. You were hard-pressed to get Kemp on the record about abortion in 2022 — the man was laser-focused on small businesses, jobs and the economy. That was the consistent message you heard out of Brian Kemp. You compare that to Herschel Walker and, you can do the math: 300,000 votes," the Democrat said. But the economy was also a top issue in the 2024 election, and Trump and the Republican Party still managed to turn their attacks on trans issues into a memorable tagline that stuck with some voters. That's why one national Republican strategist told NBC News that the attack isn't a "replacement" for a cogent economic argument, but "part of the equation." 'It's an issue that obviously had a massive impact in 2024. The Trump campaign's 'Harris is for they/them' ad is one of the greatest ads of our generation in that it's so simple and was so effective,' the strategist said. Ads about transgender participants in women's sports can run "on top of: Oh, he also voted to help ensure that illegal immigrants get government-paid health care and he voted against the Laken Riley amendment in 2024 before it was convenient," the strategist added. While the transgender sports attacks are drawing headlines, both sides have been running ads focused on spending in Washington, too. Democrats have attacked the GOP's policy bill working its way through Washington, and Republicans hit Ossoff for backing former President Joe Biden's signature spending bill in 2022. Tharon Johnson, a Georgia Democratic strategist who worked for Biden's 2020 campaign in the state, agreed that Republicans are "going to be hard-pressed to make Jon Ossoff into this radical," in part because of his work both in office and on the campaign trail. And while he believes the situation Harris found herself in last year isn't the same one Ossoff finds himself in now, he said Democrats can still draw a lesson from it: "Respond sooner, and more effectively." So far, Ossoff's response has been to stay focused on the economy and try to frame the debate as about local control. This article was originally published on
