Video: On the “Friday Power Lunch,” Rachel Bitecofer and Gene Rossi Both Cut Loose – on Virginia’s 2025 Elections, the Failure of Dems to Communicate Effectively, Trump’s Dire Threat to Democracy and Rule of Law, etc. It’s Definitely Worth Listening To!

There was some really good stuff on Network NOVA’s Power Lunch this past Friday, with Rachel Bitecofer (Virginia connection: worked for several years at Christopher Newport University, including as assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy) and Gene Rossi (ran for the Virginia Democratic Lt. Governor nomination in 2017), both of whom were really fired up – for good reason!  See below for video, as well as a few highlights, including:

• Rachel Bitecofer: “You guys are in Virginia, so…you’re my very very special people because you have an election this year. I really wish your DPVA chair was here to hear this… You guys are ground zero and you’re going to be on the front lines of the Trump backlash effect that is brewing.”
• Rachel Bitecofer: “[Trump et al are] going to decimate rural places. So the long shot candidates if there is any on this call or you guys are going to have them on, make sure they understand this is a hey Trump’s screwing us moment…talk to your rural people and obviously in Northern Virginia the suburban educated federal employees.”
• Katherine White: “We have a problem branding…We’re seeing ads in Virginia where Republicans are breaking through but we don’t see the ads anybody else is running about this. And so, you know, Jen Kiggans, the representative who took over from Elaine Luria running ads, we’re seeing them come on the phone, there’s not counter ads.”
• Finale Norton: “So that’s what I wanted to say is this is what’s making me crazy. And so I agree about them not being in power. But at the end of the day and I mean this kindly, but I get a call every day, I get text messages every day for money, and I don’t see one single thing…and I’m Googling late at night and I see an ad, a digital ad, which I know they don’t cost all that much, of Kiggans saying how much she’s done for Virginia and the community and our district, and I don’t see jack squat from anybody else.”
• Rachel Bitecofer: “I’ll tell you guys the honest truth, like I mean I’m flying and giving state f’ing dinners right at the Missouri Democrats, I’m like their keynote speaker at the banquet. NO calls from Virginia Dems – they have never once had a conversation with me, EVER. And that’s your problem….I can’t make them call me.”
• Rachel Bitecofer: “We should have 50 state parties humming like Wikler’s…I mean, the red-state parties obviously will never have the same resources, but the
  strategy is the same everywhere. And yeah, Virginia drives me particularly nuts, because like I’m telling you guys, we should be able to win all three statewides on these fundamentals and like really expand that House majority; and anything less is failure in my mind.”
• Gene Rossi: “The president of the United States is a convict. The president of the United States is a criminal and he has no moral compass…This is the first time in history that the president of the United States has had three of his personal lawyers holding the attorney general spot, the…deputy attorney general and this Emil Bove who’s sort of the Iago of the Justice Department…What is going on in the Department of Justice is coldhearted categorical retribution. And I just want to focus on one of the most hideous US attorneys ever to be appointed even as acting. Hs name’s Martin, not to be confused with our DNC chair, but the US attorney in DC is engaged in a witch hunt on steroids. All the prosecutors who were involved in J6 cases, he wants to investigate whether they broke the law and he wants to take retribution on the FBI agents who supported that. Well I represented one of the Oathkeepers, not because I believed in Trump, but he’s entitled to due process, 21-year-old kid he had autism…”
• Gene Rossi: “[Thursday’s Supreme Court] opinion is is a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. We had a 9-0 opinion that basically said that Mr. Garcia is entitled, shocker…to due process of law. That I even have to say that is embarrassing. So the Supreme Court has acknowledged that you can’t just take somebody who’s a citizen, who hasn’t done anything wrong, put them on a plane to a freaking torture chamber in El Salvador – and it is a torture chamber. I want to say this to all of you here, please follow what’s going on in that prison in El Salvador. They’re putting like hundreds of people in one big room…I think they have one bathroom, it’s not really a bathroom. They’re not getting shower. You know we don’t have to provide a haircut…manicure and pedicure to prisoners, but you have to treat them like human beings…it’s said the best way to judge a society is to go to their prisons. We’re doing something that is outrageous. We’re sending people without due process to prisons in another country. This is the United States of America! So what this opinion says is he has to come back and they have to facilitate it, which is kind of a weasel word but at least the Supreme Court has acknowledged that you can’t just drag somebody out of the country. So this is not the greatest opinion, but it’s a beginning. And I predict…that Coney Barrett and some of the others are going to have an epiphany and they’re going to realize that the United States of America is going to live beyond their years and they have to worry about their legacy. So I think even Clarence Thomas, even Clarence Thomas is going to have some little semblance of an epiphany.”
• Gene Rossi: “Let’s talk about the law firms. And for those who aren’t familiar with this issue, our lovely president issued an executive order or orders basically attacking law firms who dared to represent people that were filing lawsuits against him. How dare they, ok? Those executive orders are prima facie unconstitutional. However, there were two or three law firms Paul Weiss was one of them, there were a couple other big law firms, alright I’m going to hold my tongue on that…because I don’t want to inject too many profanities into this meeting. But let me tell you this, I would love to drop as many f-bombs…those three law firms that groveled to President Trump – Paul Weiss included…this is unbelievable folks…the head of one of the biggest law firms in the United States groveled to the president of the United States and met with him three hours in the Oval Office…to work out a deal where they would provide I think $40 million in pro bono work for Trump-related causes…The Mark Eliases of the world, the Perkins Coies of the world…who are fighting the good fight and protecting the integrity of lawyers and their independence, god bless them…I’m kind of embarrassed to be part of the profession on this issue.”
• Gene Rossi: “The last thing I want to talk about is…my view of what’s going to happen in November…I think these legal issues are going to be part of it too. And I predict this…[2017] was a good year…We’re going to kick their ass this fall. I have never seen so much overt and latent enthusiasm. And it’s only April, it’s only April. I didn’t see this in April of 2017. People were mad at Trump but it wasn’t as deep and pervasive and intense as it is now. People want to just climb the moats…they want to vote today. And I want to end with this – Obama when he ran in 2012 said ‘Don’t boo, vote.’ We can all hold up placards and this and that and the other thing but we have to vote. We have to vote.”
• Gene Rossi: “Kristi Noem…she skates on thin ice in an ocean of lunacy. She is hideous. She had that book where she killed her goat and her dog. That doesn’t surprise me. She was almost giddy…like a kid on Christmas Eve opening a present when she was having her photo taken with the prisoners behind her. All I can say that’s a sick person That is a sick person.”

As I said, these folks were FIRED UP – and for very good reason, as our country is facing the gravest threat at least since the Civil War, reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters in human history (at a Seder the other night, folks were comparing this to the rise of Hitler…). So definitely, do NOT look away, do NOT assume it “can’t happen here,” and do NOT take our democracy or our rights for granted…because that’s exactly what the authoritarians want us to do, as it makes their job much, much easier.