CHRIS CRUCIAL: Donald Trump vs Daylight Savings Time!!! ⏰

PLUS: The biggest Pinocchios of the year! 🤥

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1. DJT and DST

Donald Trump won’t be president for another month but he’s already taking on the big fight: Daylight Savings Time.

I give you Trump on Truth Social Friday afternoon:

I, for one, welcome the attention paid to the ridiculousness of our twice-annual clock changing!

But here’s the thing: Trump is on the absolute WRONG side of the issue.

No one — or at least no one smart — wants to get rid of Daylight Savings Time. What should happen is that Daylight Savings is made permanent.

Why? Oh, here are 7 reasons:

1. Give us an extra hour of daylight every night

2. Free us from the dumb-assery of changing our clocks, for no good reason, twice a year

3. Reduce the number of car accidents on the roads — as it is lighter when people are commuting home

4. Reduce violent crimes

5. Conserve energy

6. Increase spending

7. Give us an extra hour of daylight every night (It’s important enough to mention twice)

Donald Trump’s Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio has long seen the — ahem — light on the issue.

“Just this past weekend, we all went through that biannual ritual of changing the clock back and forth and the disruption that comes with it,” Rubio said March 2022 after the Senate PASSED a bill that would have made Daylight Savings Time permanent. “And one has to ask themselves after a while why do we keep doing it?”

WHY INDEED.

(Sidebar: The House never acted on the Senate’s DST bill.)

The public is on the right side of the issue too! Back in November 2021, YouGov and the Economist asked about it.

A near majority (48%) favored permanent Daylight Savings Time, which the poll defined as “stay ‘sprung forward’ an hour for later sunset,” while only 29% of people said they preferred permanent standard time.

Plus: It’s not like we would be fiddling with something that the government has never played around with before.

We didn’t even have Daylight Savings time until 1966 when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act. And, prior to 2007, DST began in April and ended in October. But, President George W. Bush — in hopes of addressing the country’s long-term energy issues —made Daylight Savings Time start three weeks earlier and end a week later.

(Sidebar: The whole reason we have DST is not, as is commonly assumed, because we wanted to give farmers more time to work in the fields in the spring and summer. Instead, it’s aimed at reducing our electricity consumption by making it light later in the day.)

And yet, here we are — still changing our clocks around every fall and spring.

Why is Trump, you might ask, on the wrong side of the issue? I am nearly certain that he is simply confused. That what he means is that we need to eliminate “standard” time and make Daylight Savings Time the new, er, standard.

If he really means this — as in, he is genuinely supportive of eliminating DST entirely — it is grounds for impeachment. Yeah, I said it.

2. Four Pinocchio Time 🤥🤥🤥🤥

One of my favorite columnists at the Washington Post is Glenn Kessler aka the Fact Checker.

I had Glenn speak to my Georgetown class earlier this fall. Hearing him explain the thoroughness of his process to the students was genuinely inspiring.

Every year I eagerly await Glenn’s breakdown of the biggest lies of the past 365 days. (For those unfamiliar with Glenn’s ranking system, he awards four “Pinocchios” to things that are just plain false.)

What made the list this year? Glenn’s whole piece is worth the read — but here are a view of my favorites:

• “The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money [for hurricane relief]. … They spent it all on illegal migrants. … They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them.” — Donald Trump

• “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” — JD Vance

• “Over 13,000, the exact number’s 13,099, convicted illegal, alien murderers are now on the loose.” —Trump

• “I used to drive an 18-wheeler.” — Joe Biden

As you might have guessed, Trump is featured prominently. As Glenn wrote:

As usual with Trump, it’s hard to isolate a particular falsehood, but we focused on four — two having to do with immigration, one on tariffs and another on the unemployment rate. His running-mate, JD Vance, also landed on the list (not for the first time) for an immigration-related claim that Trump echoed in a presidential debate.

In fact, five of the 12 claims below relate to illegal immigration — showing it was a potent issue in the election season. President Joe Biden merited two spots, for a false claim on the inflation rate and for a roundup of his unverified claims about his life (this is a perennial). Biden’s flip-flop on pardoning his son Hunter earned a bonus award.

Read the whole thing. It’s like a greatest misses of the 2024 campaign.

3. Friday AMA

Every Friday, I do a livestream on my YouTube channel where I answer tons of questions from subscribers.

This week we talked Cabinet picks, confirmation fights, 2028, AOC and MORE! Watch it below. And SUBSCRIBE to my channel!

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“I wish I didn’t pull that damn fire alarm, you know what I’m saying?” — Outgoing New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman on this

ONE GOOD CHART

Rice pudding? Are you kidding me, Utah?

SONG OF THE DAY

I ❤️ a good cover song. And this Paste magazine list of the 15 best covers of 2024 was great. I particularly like Squirrel Flower’s cover of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer.”

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