A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Teetering On The Brink
Everything that will confound historians about 2024 was distilled, bottled up, and thrown back in one big shot this weekend. It burned all the way down the gullet.
Former President Trump appears to have been the victim of a foiled assassination attempt on one of his golf courses in Florida. A suspect is in custody.
Trump and his running mate continued to target immigrants for abuse and reprisals, directing their invective against Haitians in the small city of Springfield, Ohio, which is now under siege from threats of violence. Or to put it another way, JD Vance, the state’s junior senator, has spent days stoking an anti-immigrant fervor against his own constituents that is crippling the functioning of a city he represents.
When pressed, Trump refused to denounce the bomb threats in Springfield, but he did manage to declare his “hate” for the world’s biggest pop star, who endorsed his opponent. A WSJ headline was a reminder that sometimes saying exactly what happened is the best way to capture the inanity of the moment: “Trump Posts Disdain for Taylor Swift, Vance Defends Pet-Eating Claims.”
In the midst of the simmering political violence, we got a glimpse of the internal workings of a deeply corrupted Supreme Court that in its last term handed Trump unprecedented victories against the rule of law and a gave him an endlessly long leash with the promise of wide-ranging immunity from prosecution if he were to be re-elected.
Amid the chaos, the slo-mo deterioration of civic order, and the erosion of democratic institutions, there is an impending national election that remains far too close to call and upon which almost everything we take for granted in American public life depends.
Quite a weekend.
On The Ground In Springfield, Ohio
A sampling of some of the real-world impacts of the Trump-Vance racist vitriol:
- Two Springfield hospitals were locked down Saturday after bomb threats.
- Wittenberg University closed all of its campuses for the upcoming week and moved to remote classes after reported threats.
- Clark State College similarly went to remote classes for the week after receiving threats.
Trump Declines To Denounce Bomb Threats
Reporter: Do you denounce the bomb threats in Springfield?
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 14, 2024
Trump: I don't know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it's been taken over by illegal migrants, and that's a terrible thing that happened. pic.twitter.com/1PnnSAhujK
A Glaring Admission
JD Vance protests that he didn’t say what he said and tries to re-craft his own words:
Vance claims he and Trump have to "create stories" about migrants eating cats and dogs "so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 15, 2024
There is then some awkward dead air as Bash tries to highlight the absurdity of what he just said pic.twitter.com/IN26ZGYsvE
The JD Vance Beat
- Politico: Is There More to JD Vance’s MAGA Alliance Than Meets the Eye?
- The Bulwark: JD Vance and the “Southern Bourbons”
Second Trump Assassination Attempt Since July
The Secret Service opened fire on a gunman on the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the former president was playing. It’s not clear if the gunman got off any shots before he fled the scene. Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii has been identified in news reports as the man later detained as a suspect in the incident. The New York Times interviewed Routh back in 2023 as part of a story about Americans volunteering to help Ukraine after Russia’s invasion. He has no military experience but he told the Times that he had traveled to Ukraine and was willing to fight and die to help Ukraine.
Trump, who was uninjured, was evacuated from the course.
Vice President Kamala Harris posted on X Sunday afternoon expressing her relief that Trump was not harmed.
The NYT’s Big SCOTUS Story
Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak have extensive new behind-the-curtain reporting on the Roberts court this term in “How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak.”
Good Catch
The NYT was among those to catch Trump’s “slip” during the debate last week: “He used the pronoun ‘we’ to describe some of the rioters, grammatically placing himself among those who have been charged with storming into the Capitol.”
Time To Settle?
A judge cleared the way for Smartmatic’s giant defamation lawsuit against Newsmax to go to trial later this month over its bogus claim that the the voting machine company was involved in rigging the 2020 presidential election.
2024 Ephemera
- Vance backtracks on whether Trump would veto national abortion ban.
- Donald Trump called his literal and figurative fellow traveler Laura Loomer a “free spirit” in a California press conference.
- Biden administration announced a new effort to combat the influence of Russian state media network RT as part of its larger effort to combat Putin-backed disinformation and malign influence operations.
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First?
Do it today, Let em vote!!
Assassination attempt? AR 15? Oh. Well in that case…
I want Fatso alive and whining right through election day, so he can poison the republican well and drag down the rest of his shitty party.
He’s always been an idiot, but now he’s a panicking and desperately flailing idiot, and he’s damaging everyone around him.
Well, citizen sick fuck, there are ways to find out about the bomb threats if you are so inclined. Have you tried the google?
But of course your claim of knowing nothing about the threats is just another of your lies. You know, you approve, and should you be reinstalled in the WH you’ll be handing out Presidential Medals of Freedom to the perps,