There are countless reasons why people are upset about the results of the 2016 presidential election. The final tallies in the critical states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were extremely close. But we cannot help noticing that Green Presidential candidate Jill Stein’s fundraising goals for recounts in these three states keeps rising as she brings in more money. The initial goal was for $2.5 million. That was bumped up to $4.5 million. Now it has been raised again to $7 million.
That’s very fishy.
We’re assuming Republicans will have a 52-48 seat majority in the Senate next year. That’s likely the case. But it’s not a done deal yet. There’s still one Senate race to be decided. It’s the Senate runoff in Louisiana on December 10th. Louisiana is a pretty red state. And the most recent poll – albeit from a Republican polling firm – shows Republican John Kennedy with a big lead over Democrat Foster Campbell. But there are two big reasons why Democrats should move quickly to make a race of it.
This news should not surprise you if you’ve been reading TPM over the last year. It’s something I’ve discussed a number of times in different contexts. But we’re now getting the first comprehensive studies showing that Russian propaganda campaigns played a major role in spawning and in other cases simply spreading “fake news” stories aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton and aiding Donald Trump.
This Washington Post piece does a nice job in explaining some of the patterns which have emerged.
Huffpo found another. During his November 9th congratulatory call with Turkish President Erdogan, Donald Trump talked up his Turkish business partner who now seems primed to be a key intermediary between the two heads of state. This new revelation follows the pattern I mentioned a couple days ago: we’re only finding out about this because it bubbled up in the pres of the country in question. That’s how we learned about Trump’s transition meeting with his Indian business partners, his alleged discussion of building permits with the President of Argentina, the UK wind farms and Nigel Farage.
We’re going to be putting out formal job listings probably just after Thanksgiving. But I want to put out the word now that we are currently looking to hire two newswriters in New York, one editor in New York and one reporter in DC. I am/we are particularly interested in hearing from people with interest in the editor and reporter positions. These are both critical slots for our expanding news gathering efforts going into next year. If you have experience relevant to these two positions and want to do big things next year, let us hear from you.
You’ve heard that Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos is from the billionaire DeVos family, heirs of the Amway fortune. She’s a big supporter of ‘school choice’, charter schools, vouchers, etc. But this doesn’t quite capture who the DeVoses are. In terms of scale of wealth and intergenerational devotion to laissez-faire conservative ideology that are right up there with the Kochs – with activism ranging from breaking unions to opposing LGBT equality on basically every front. In fact, Betsy DeVos and her family are parts of the network of conservative donors the Kochs have assembled in recent years.
There’s a lot of chatter this morning about a group of election lawyers and cybersecurity experts who believe they’ve found evidence of or at least statistical anomalies suggesting that the voting results may have been hacked in the three critical states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Note that these are the three states where Clinton lost the election. Ohio, North Carolina and Florida were huge too. But Trump was always likely to win Ohio and North Carolina and Florida were always toss-ups, although Florida seemed pretty promising.
So here’s my take.
Kellyanne Conway got asked about Paul Ryan’s Medicare Phaseout plan on the NewsHour last night. She started with vague comments about being “open to hearing” Ryan’s ideas about alternatives to Medicare. (You can see her at length quotes here.) But the give away is in the precise language she uses. Note here with emphasis added: “In this case, he will go ahead and look at alternatives, Judy, as long as it does not interfere with what he has said, his commitment to keep the promises to those currently relying on them.”
“Currently” is the whole story here.
For the Thanksgiving edition of my podcast I’m answering your questions. Got a question? Send it to our main comments email at talk (at) talkingpointsmemo (dot) com – the election, TPM, the Trump administration, the Democrats, whatever you want. Put the subject line: Podcast Question. I’ll be recording the next episode tomorrow. So get them in today and I’ll do my best to answer.