Below I flagged this big fact about Thursday’s Trumpified 4th of July festivities in DC: the RNC has been put in charge of distributing at least some number of the tickets for the event. Consider the following tentative. But I think we’ve gotten at least a sense of how exactly they’re doing this. It’s fascinating and in some ways an entirely different kind of outrageousness.
Let’s start with the fact that it is customary and certainly a matter of longstanding practice that a different set of rules apply to events which this and any other President holds at the White House. The President holds political events there. They even get into de facto fundraising events, sometimes to some controversy. You’ll note that in the Huffington Post article I flagged earlier, an unnamed RNC official actually flagged this as a precedent. “For context, we receive an allotment for other events like White House Christmas Open Houses, Garden Tours in spring and fall, etc.”
A new Quinnipiac poll is out this morning which shows that Sen. Kamala Harris got a dramatic boost after last week’s Democratic debate and Joe Biden’s support has fallen precipitously.
The toplines are Biden 22%, Harris 20%, Warren 14%, Sanders 13%. After that you go way down to Buttigieg at 4 and Booker at 3.
A couple weeks ago I told you about an offer we’re going to be making to existing Prime subscribers later this month and also a request, one that is very important to the future of TPM. If you didn’t get a chance to read my note then I would greatly appreciate if you could take a few moments read what we’re doing and why it’s very important to the future of TPM.
Don’t miss Matt and Josh’s report on Trump’s big speech/fundraiser/military spectacle and personal fireworks display at the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow evening. It turns out Trump will have his own personal fireworks display put on just behind and over the Lincoln Memorial. (Remember this mini-event within an event is “hosted by the President of the United States.”) It finishes just before the regular America fireworks start. All of it, unsurprisingly, seems very last minute. There’s even trash talk between the fireworks vendors about whose will be the biggest. ““I’m not putting [the main fireworks display] show down — it’s one or two shells at a time. Ours are going to be dozens and dozens at a time,” Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan told TPM. Finally, the White House didn’t just hook up the RNC as a ticket distributor for big donors. According to the Maryland GOP, “our friends at the White House” hooked them up as a ticket distributor too.
Matt Shuham explains (membership required) that while the fireworks industry were donating more than a million dollars worth of fireworks for Trump’s personal fireworks display at the Lincoln Memorial they were also trying to convince him not to follow through on tariff threats that affect their industry.
I laid out where we are the census citizenship question as of mid-afternoon today, but this report from CNN nicely captures the inanity of the President acting out on Twitter while lawyers are trying to represent the government in an actual federal court with rules and consequences and such:
Word is trickling out that a federal judge in Maryland has moved up a deadline for the Justice Department to confirm that a citizenship question will not be on the 2020 census form.
In a major reversal, a top Justice Department official tells a federal judge that the administration is working to find a way to get the citizenship question back on the 2020 census and is considering taking the matter directly to the Supreme Court.
For all the build-up, the actual Trump Lincoln Memorial speech was pretty tame – smallish crowd, pretty unremarkable speech. At least on camera the military hardware was basically invisible. In the event, it was two tanks and two fighting vehicles parked nearby the speech. They made occasional cameos. The Blue Angels came at the end.
To the degree there was news, it was that Trump didn’t go off script. Reportedly, White House staffers were petrified that Trump would go off script and turn the event into a MAGA rally. That didn’t happen. The speech was similar to the State of the Union speeches Trump has given. Trump tone but pretty standard speechifying.
The whole thing was pretty standard.
Today looks like a sleepy day after the holiday and day before the weekend day. But we’ve got some major news coming at 2 p.m. ET. That is the deadline for the DOJ has to explain to a federal judge just what it’s doing in the Census litigation. You’ll remember earlier this week the DOJ didn’t appear to cave but actually did cave and announced the Commerce Department was sending the 2020 Census forms off to the printer. President Trump apparently got wound up in a series of phone calls with conservative pals and possibly to a degree in reaction to the celebration of the plaintiff’s attorneys and announced on Twitter that it was full speed ahead asking the citizenship question. This led to that incredibly awkward spectacle on Wednesday in which a career DOJ lawyer had to admit to a federal judge that he truly didn’t know what was happening, that he was telling the truth as far as he understood it the day before and really didn’t know what was happening other than what the President tweeted.
Well, today they have to tell the judge what’s going on.