Editors’ Blog
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One of the abiding themes of election coverage this year is that if there’s a second Trump presidency it will be more extreme, more organized and ideologically coherent and more prepared. There’s some level of psyching out the opposition going on here. But it’s still mostly correct. The major guideposts in the storyline are first that the various forces that went into Trumpism came into 2016 and 2017 not really realizing Trump was the guy. And that’s not surprising. He was Donald Trump after all, something our whole political system has difficulty remembering. Trump also staffed most of his administration with what for him were the equivalent of Hollywood leading men: ex-generals, legitimate multinational corporation CEOs, Wall Street sharks. They weren’t people Democrats like but they weren’t ideologues or even very in line with the goals Trump was pursuing by the end of his term.
The part of the story that is still too little articulated is how Trump’s personal and legal challenges galvanized and really created the whole thing. Trump’s desire for dictatorial power, to control the government in depth, to have the entire state mirror and obey his will grew from his frustration and fear of the various legal probes that stalked him. He thought when he became President that he had managed a hostile takeover of a rival company. The state and the country was his. So he could do whatever he wanted. But it didn’t turn out to be that way. And that’s how the drive to vanquish the “Deep State” was born. In other words, the kernel of Trump’s dictatorial, strongman ambitions were there from the start. But it was only the shock and ego injury of being faced with the difference between owning and governing that set him on the track, for entirely personal and self-protective reasons, of transforming the state to make it serve him in the way he wanted.
Read MoreA new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss abortion ballot initiatives in Florida and elsewhere, and how they may affect the 2024 election.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
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Thanks to so many of you for writing in in response to yesterday’s post about SCTV. It hadn’t occurred to me that lots of the sketches and maybe whole shows are on YouTube. But of course that makes perfect sense. One of the interesting things about those notes is that many of you mentioned something that I didn’t say explicitly in my post but was likely implicit, which is that being a fan of SCTV was a bit like joining a secret club. About half way through it’s run it got picked up by NBC and then it ran I think after Saturday Night Live. That’s a helluva time slot. But still, that’s network TV. Before that, though, you had to be a bit of a freak to even have found it. It would only be available as a syndicated show on one of the non-affiliate channels picked up from whatever rando station produced it in Toronto. (And yes, for you youngs, this was back when there were like 5 to 7 channels total, the three affiliate channels, PBS and then two or three low budget local channels that probably ran mostly repeats of like I Love Lucy and Brady Bunch.) So it really was a bit like being in a secret club. The few, the elect, the viewers of a show that was legit funnier than SNL.
Here’s a recollection from TPM Reader PK … (and God is he right about John Candy)
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We have a cluster of new national polls out today. And they continue to show a bumpy and uneven but still clear movement in Joe Biden’s direction. Polls are complicated these days because there are so many different ones and more importantly the quality and reliability of those polls vary greatly. So we have five polls out since the 25th. And those are Marist (Biden+2); Data for Progress (Biden +1), Big Village (Biden +2); Morning Consult (Biden +2) and Trafalgar (Trump +3).
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Do you remember Joe Flaherty? He died yesterday at age 82, according to this obituary in the Times. I only half remembered his name. But I definitely remembered him, his various characters and even more the show he was part of, Second City TV. Did you watch this show either at the time it aired (1976-1984) or since? I’m not sure how well known it is today. But I watched it as a little kid when it first ran and even today I can remember my uncontrollable bouts of laughter. It was the kind of stuff I’d remember or play back in my head the next day in school and just start giggling in a way I couldn’t control and then get in trouble for disrupting class. Eventually I came up with a list of really sad things I would have on hand to think about if some part of the last episode popped into my mind during class or even worse during a test. Like that funny.
Read MoreWe’ve signed up 759 new members since we kicked off this year’s annual TPM membership drive. That’s just over 3/4 of the way toward our goal. I really want to thank everyone who has signed up so far. Truly. Thank you. If you’ve been considering signing up, please take the plunge today. We’re so close to hitting our goal of 1,000 new members. With your help we can probably get to 800 today. Just click here. We really appreciate it.
I wanted to share a few thoughts with you about the pretty big news out of Florida this afternoon. If you haven’t already heard, the state Supreme Court signed off on two ballot initiatives which will now appear on the ballot this November: one legalizing abortion and another legalizing marijuana. This is a big deal both for the rights in question and the potential impact on the general election. So starting with the correct assumption that this is a big deal I want to note a few complexities and complications.
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I have been in the absolute thick of it. As a campaign trail reporter and White House correspondent throughout Donald Trump’s rise and presidency, I had a front row seat to the tsunami of paranoia, racism, and political violence that now threatens to consume American society as we knew it. The experience brought me back to TPM after nearly a decade away.
As we are in the final stretch of our membership drive, I’d like to tell you the story of my back-and-forth journey with TPM and why I hope you will join me here.
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I mentioned last week that Truth Social — Trump’s social network — only had a bit more revenue than TPM. And needless to say, TPM doesn’t have a multi-billion dollar stock valuation. (If anyone disagrees on this point, contact me.) Today the company released its first 8-K, basically one of the many SEC-mandated disclosures for public companies in which lying means committing a crime. There’s a bit more there on the inflows and outflows. TS brought in about $4.1 million last year and spent $58 million. So that means that TS had about 30% more revenue than TPM and roughly 20 times the expenses. Not great! There’s some other interesting details, like the fact that $39 million of that $58 million went to interest payments. Go figure.
These data points are pretty good evidence that this company is a joke. And they make for good fun. But it’s not proof. A social network in its early stages can be bleeding lots of money and still be legitimately worth a ton of money. This isn’t just hypothetical. Facebook had already become a force of nature before Mark Zuckerberg turned his attention to monetizing the engine of value he created. So there was a time when Facebook was also spending way more money than it made and investors were dying to buy in. Those who did made tons of money.
So the revenue and expenses aren’t the proof. But the proof is there.
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Along with seven or eight other papers, which tend to be in swing or swingish states, I subscribe to The Cleveland Plain Dealer. So I get various emails from them. And one is an email that comes from their editor, Chris Quinn. I glance at these occasionally but they normally deal with local issues or issues about the paper that are more for local residents. But one came Saturday that grabbed my attention. The headline was “There aren’t two sides to facts” and, as Quinn explains, it’s an answer to Trump supporters who complain that the paper judges Trump and Biden by two separate standards.
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