A new Quinnipiac poll has Joe Biden far out ahead of every other Democratic presidential candidate (41%), with Bernie Sanders (14%) and Elizabeth Warren (12%) in close to a tie. Notably, Biden and Sanders are in close to a tie among Democrats 18-49 (Biden 26%, Sanders 28%) while Democrats 50 and over are all but unanimous (Biden 52%, Sanders 5%).
Biden is beating Trump handily in a state match-up 50%-41%. And the rest are in the standard pattern. Sanders 48% v Trump 42%. Warren 47% v Trump 43%. Harris and Buttigieg both have a 1 point margin over Trump.
The New York Times has a rather lengthy and Timesian piece out this morning on the on-going mystery of Jerry Falwell Jr, his wife and family and this “pool boy” who they befriended and then put into the divey youth hostel business in South Florida. For those who’ve read the earlier reporting by Politico, Buzzfeed and Reuters, there’s no big new bombshell or piece of evidence in the new piece. (If anyone’s read it and thinks otherwise, let me know.) What there is is bits and pieces of more confirmation and nuggets of detail throughout. It’s a classic Timesian piece, the kind fellow journalists often grind their teeth over. The Times comes in late, largely with other people’s reporting and makes the whole thing official with splash of Times holy water. And yet, as usual, they’ve used their name and resources to unearth enough new details and additional confirmations to put the whole edifice on a rather firmer footing.
We still have a close to inexplicable chain of events in which Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife befriended young Giancarlo Granda, a pool attendant they met at a luxe, high life hotel in Miami Beach. As the Times puts it: “The Falwells, according to the person close to them, were impressed with Mr. Granda’s ambition. Soon he was hiking and water skiing with them in Virginia. Within months, they were offering to help him get started in business in Florida.”
I wanted to share this moment from last night’s campaign launch speech. In terms of projection, fury and borderline eliminationist rhetoric it captured the entire performance …
welp "Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice and rage. They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it." pic.twitter.com/zIc4qMZ8Wf
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 19, 2019
The NRA has tossed (technically “suspended”) its chief lobbyist for conspiring against Wayne LaPierre in the failed coup waged against him by deposed NRA President Ollie North, erstwhile ad firm Ackerman McQueen and other anti-Wayne forces who are now all going either to the rack or the sword.
I wouldn’t say this is altogether surprising. The President is pretty convincing on this front. But according to Jerry Nadler, in her closed door testimony, Hope Hicks told the House Judiciary Committee that she believed President Trump was serious when he said he would again accept foreign assistance in the 2020 presidential election. “Ms. Hicks made clear that she understood the president to be serious when he said that he would accept foreign interference in our elections.” The transcript of her testimony is expected to be released either today or tomorrow. As I noted last night, I expect it to come through channels like this.
Thanks to everyone who read my post on the free trial we’re going to be doing for Prime members to try out Prime Ad Free. If you missed it, please take a moment to read the post. Very important for the future of TPM.
In an obscure move that hasn’t garnered much attention, President Trump has begun the process of withdrawing from the international postal union that establishes protocols for global mail delivery, a move which threatens to jeopardize the ability of Americans overseas to cast absentee ballots.
As recently as last week, the White House convened a meeting of stakeholders who work with overseas voters to discuss the exit, TPM has learned. But voting advocates remain apprehensive that the federal and state governments are unprepared for the ramifications of a U.S. withdrawal from the postal union, which could come as soon as this fall.
Tierney Sneed has our exclusive report.
As we survey the strange scene this morning of Trump’s Iran policy, a helpful thread from former American diplomat Brett McGurk:
On Friday, a New York Times article made the rounds which profiled the Concerned Community Citizens (“or C-Cubed”) of Saint Cloud, Minnesota, an Islamophobic group obsessing over the local population of Somali refugees and fretting about white replacement. “I think of America, the great assimilator, as a rubber band, but with this — we’re at the breaking point,” Kim Crockett, vice president of a think tank called the Center of the American Experiment, told the Times. “These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible.”
This morning, the Saint Cloud Times, the local newspaper, hit back at the Islamophobia in its community.