Editors’ Blog
You’ve helped us get off to a great start to our Annual TPM Membership Drive. We’ve currently signed up 320 new TPM Members toward our goal of 1,000. It would be really, really great to end today with 350 new members. It’s a great time to do it. Our team is doing amazing work worthy of your support. The benefits of being a member are great. And we’re currently running a 40% discount offer during the drive. If you’ve been considering joining, can you take the plunge this afternoon? You can just take out your wallet this moment and it’s like a minute or two tops to sign up. Just click here. We truly appreciate it.
We Have Met the Enemy and He Owns the Valet Booth at Trump Tower 
As we can see, the New York State civil judgment against Donald Trump, totaling roughly $450 million, and Trump’s seeming inability to post a bond for the amount in order to appeal the judgment, is the real deal. But it has also reminded us, brought us back to the Russian nesting doll, the infinitely layered onion of Donald Trump not being real. The effort to collect the judgment spins us right back around to why there is a judgment in the first place. Trump is now fundraising off threats to “seize Trump Tower.” The New York Post is headlining the same basic idea. But as a friend reminded me yesterday evening, Trump doesn’t own Trump Tower.
Read MoreDon’t miss Josh Kovensky’s review, reminder, survey of just who Paul Manafort is and what he was up to and probably still is up to at the nexus between the politics of Ukraine, Russia and the United States. Newly relevant with Donald Trump saying he wants to bring Manafort back into his campaign. But really it never stopped being relevant since it’s part of an ongoing and still only half-understood story going all the way back to 2015. Read it.
We would really really like to end tonight, the third day of the annual drive, with 250 new members. Right now we are at 234. Have you been considering it? Can you make now the moment? Just click right here.
Welp, Maybe Not!
Schumer says in a statement that it’s cool with him if Netanyahu wants to come speak to a joint session of Congress.
Earlier this week Schumer rejected Netanyahu’s request to address Senate Democrats saying it was inappropriate to handle such discussions in a partisan manner. Senate Republicans held a Zoom session with Netanyahu.
Said Schumer in the latest statement: “I will always welcome the opportunity for the prime minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way.”
Johnson Inviting Bibi While Still Reading His Own Onboarding Papers
Speaker Mike Johnson is now saying he will invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to address the U.S. Congress, dramatically upping the ante in wire crossing between U.S. and Israeli politics. Just after crying foul over Chuck Schumer saying Israel should hold new elections at the end of the Gaza War, Netanyahu yesterday did a GOP-only Zoom session with Republican senators. But here’s the thing. Johnson can’t actually do that. A joint session requires both houses of Congress to agree. So he needs Chuck Schumer’s sign off. What he can do is hold a House-only speech.
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Campaign Comes Into Focus
The Post has an interesting story today about why both presidential campaigns seem to feel they have an interest in leaning into Biden’s stutter. The stutter is something that earlier iterations of Biden’s political life story narrative treated as a challenge he overcame in the past, in his childhood. But as a President it’s clear he did not entirely overcome it. He may have tamed it. But it’s still there and it’s a component of his sometimes halting or garbled speech. The change — from describing the stutter as something Biden overcame to something he still wrestles with — has a few different drivers. One is that we just think about these things differently today as a society. It’s what we might call the Therapeutic Turn in American culture. It’s that whole mix of the valorization of empathy, the therapeutic overcoming of physical, intellectual or mental challenges and the call for society to loosen or expand the strictures of what is acceptable for full participation in public life. It’s deeply ingrained in what we might call Blue State political culture.
Read MoreA new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss Donald Trump’s recent comments (and how they’re being covered), Mike Pence’s refusal to endorse his old boss and Republicans’ embrace of Bibi Netanyahu.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
There were a few responses to yesterday’s Backchannel about the “everything sucks” era that I wanted to share with you.
The first is from TPM Reader JY …
Read MoreIt would be great to get to 175 new TPM Members tonight, the end of the second day of our drive. We’re currently at 156. If you’ve been on the fence or maybe just waiting till you have a free minute, maybe just take a second right now and join us. Just click right here.
Late Update: 173! Two more to go for the night!