There’s so much news that we haven’t wanted to give all the front page real estate over to our 20th Anniversary (“twenty years, twenty tales”) package. But I do hope you’ll find time this weekend to read the two latest additions to the package and those which we published earlier in the week. Nicole Lafond tells the story of TPM alum Hunter Walker’s trip to Toronto to bestow the Golden Duke Award – the actual physical figurine award – on the late Rob Ford, then Mayor of Toronto. Summer Concepcion tells the story of how the TPM union came to be.
Today is the one year anniversary of Donald Trump’s impeachment. One year is not that long ago. Yet it seems almost like a lifetime. I’ve been watching discussions about whether it was worth it, what impact it had on the 2020 election and whether the Democratic opposition’s strategy looks good or bad in retrospect.
On this point intra-Democratic bickering is still hung up on whether it was a mistake or not to keep impeachment narrowly focused on President Trump’s extortion scheme in Ukraine. It’s not like there weren’t other things President Trump had done that could merit removal from office. Little more than six months earlier the Mueller Report had included voluminous evidence that the President had obstructed justice at the very least.
So why limit an impeachment inquiry to just his latest crime?
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Word on the street (or, rather, Axios) is that President Trump is going to issue a wave of pardons today as a grand gesture of Christmas clemency to some of his closest friends and family.
JoinWe have about six hours of voting left in the quarterfinals for our Duke of Dukes competition.
These are some choice match-ups you won’t want to miss:
- Randy “Duke” Cunningham vs. Scooter Libby
- Rod Blagojevich vs. Dick Cheney
- Anthony Weiner vs. Dinesh D’Souza
- Rudy Giuliani vs. Paul Manafort
Cast your vote here by 6 p.m.
The House Judiciary Committee still wants to hear from former White House counsel Don McGahn.
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I’ve been thinking in recent days about taking a pledge. I hope others do too. It’s sprawling enough in its scope that I haven’t known quite how to whittle or distill it down for the sake of pledging it or sharing it with others. But I will take this post as an opportunity to explain it both to myself and to you. Because I think it’s quite important.
Think of it as a rough draft.
Republicans like Marco Rubio are now claiming to be aghast, hurt and more than anything else unwilling to believe in Democratic promises of rebuilding national unity because Joe Biden’s campaign manager and incoming Deputy Chief of Staff called congressional Republicans “fuckers” in an interview. Days ago we heard that Biden’s forceful denunciation of Republican efforts to overturn the result of the election was “burning bridges” to Trump supporters. We’ve seen this pattern before: bad faith taking of umbrage to justify new forms of bad behavior and predation.
It’s not only that. The production of and the stoking of grievances is central to contemporary conservatism and its apotheosis, Trumpism. But it is mostly the weaponization of bad faith.
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For several weeks now evidence has been accumulating that the COVID-19 vaccine won’t be widely available until significantly later in 2021 than the Trump administration is publicly claiming. Here’s some of the best evidence yet, picked up today by our Josh Kovensky in little-noticed remarks from some of the lead officials on the Pentagon’s Operation Warp Speed.
JoinNot a huge thing perhaps. But this is worth noting. Donald Trump has been lashing out at any and every Republican willing to question his claim to have won the 2020 election. But his swipe at Mitch McConnell today was really barely a swipe at all. Perhaps somewhere between a nudge and a plea. Trump has been go wild on Governors like Brian Kemp of Georgia and Doug Doucey of Arizona. He’s called for them to be primaried or even jailed. But Trump seems to know that he needs to tread gently with McConnell. That’s his limit. With Mitch he goes beta.
Today we’re kicking off our celebration of TPM’s 20th Anniversary, “Twenty Years, Twenty Tales”, 20 stories about TPM and its history, with six of those stories dropping today. They range from the technical and serious – how TPM started, the business dynamics of the operations to the giddy, louche and even frivolous, our epic tradition of TPM-ified mixed drinks and staff carousing.
I am particularly excited to see this launch because I get to read the 20 stories. They’re all new to me. I didn’t write any of them, though I was interviewed for two or three of them. My involvement in the whole project was almost entirely limited to answering questions and digging up some documents, photographs and the like. History is seldom best told by those who were part of it. It distorts perspective. So I am doubly blessed not only to have had the good fortune of these last twenty years but to see what my colleagues make of it, see it through their eyes and the eyes of various alums and observers who shared their perspective on what the team has done -how and why and when – going back to 2000.
I hope you enjoy it. I hope it adds to your understanding of the site and its history. I hope, for many of you, it brings back memories. My way of celebrating is to think about the future. I hold close the words of my mentor: websites, like people, not busy being born are busy dying. We have those tumultuous, creative energies – enlivened and energized by a new generation of smart and ambitious TPMers – propelling us forward to a future we will create.
Who could have seen this coming?