How We Got To The Precipice Of A Trump II Presidency

INSIDE: Elon Musk ... David Clements ... Charlie Kirk
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves at the end of a live interview with US commentator Tucker Carlson in the finale of the Tucker Carlson Live Tour at Desert Diamond Arena in ... Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves at the end of a live interview with US commentator Tucker Carlson in the finale of the Tucker Carlson Live Tour at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona, on October 31, 2024. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images) MORE LESS
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A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

What Might Have Been

As we head into the final weekend before the most momentous election in U.S. history, we got a faint echo Thursday of what might have been.

Special Counsel Jack Smith submitted a new filing in the Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump. The particulars of it hardly matter at this point, but for the record it was a response to Trump’s belated challenge of the legality of Smith’s appointment.

In reminding the court how the case arrived at this point, Smith wrote:

In November 2022, it was known publicly that the defendant was the subject of two ongoing federal criminal investigations. The first investigation involved potential criminal violations in connection with the 2020 presidential election, and the second investigation involved the defendant’s alleged retention of classified documents at his residence in Mar-a-Lago and related obstruction of justice. On November 15, 2022, while both investigations were pending, the defendant declared his candidacy for the presidency in 2024.

It’s a sobering reminder of how Trump’s aggressive strategy of delay succeeded in avoiding accountability for his alleged criminal conduct. The Mar-a-Lago case has been dismissed by the egregious U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, and the Jan. 6 case has been knee-capped by the similarly egregious six-justice right-wing supermajority of the Supreme Court. Even his conviction in New York state has been called into question by the Supreme Court and his sentencing delayed until after the election.

And so it is that we head into the election of our lives unable to rely on the rule of law to dispatch a flagrant criminal like Donald Trump. He has seized on the opportunity to position himself to retake the White House and then make the criminal cases against him go away for good. But he’s done more than that. So much more.

In barnstorming the country threatening to uproot the Constitution, exact retribution against his perceived foes, and use the military against the “enemy within,” among other threats and fomentations, Trump has promised to reorder civic life in an authoritarian image, undermining the rule of law not just for him but for all Americans. If he wins, those promises become a mandate.

If he loses, the criminal cases against him are revived. The rule of law has a chance to be resurrected and hardened against future attack. The worst case scenario will have been averted, but the work to keep this from ever happening again will have just begun.

The Disinformation Environment

  • CNN: Election officials are outmatched by Elon Musk’s misinformation machine
  • WaPo: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger warned that a video purporting to show Haitians claiming that they illegally voted for Kamala Harris is fake and likely the product of a Russian troll farm.
  • WSJ: Foreign Adversaries Target Specific Demographics in Attempt to Sway U.S. Election

Election Threats Watch

  • LawFare: David Clements: The Evangelist of Election Refusal
  • NBC News: ‘There’s no white knight coming’: Federal authorities will face limits responding to 2024 election lies
  • TPM’s Khaya Himmelman: Swing State Election Officials Are Preemptively Shutting Down Rogue Clerks

By The Numbers

A series of new Marist College polls of the Blue Wall states is out. These are all likely voter numbers:

President:

  • PA: Harris 50%, Trump 48%
  • MI: Harris 51%, Trump 48%
  • WI: Harris 50%, Trump 48%

Senate:

  • PA-Sen: Bob Casey 50%, David McCormick 48%
  • MI-Sen: Elissa Slotkin 52%, Mike Rogers 46%
  • WI-Sen: Tammy Baldwin 51%, Eric Hovde 48%

Tea-Leaf Reading

Data points, not predictions:

  • Doug Sosnik: Why Trump Has a More Plausible Path to the Presidency, in 19 Maps
  • Politico: Trump lagging in early vote with seniors in Pennsylvania
  • Aaron Blake: Polls show Harris with big lead, ranging from 19 to 29 points, among those who have already voted.

2024 Ephemera

  • Politico: Kamala Harris has more than twice as many donors as Trump’s campaign apparatus.
  • WaPo: MAP: Where millions of Americans have cast ballots during early voting
  • Politico: European Green parties implore Jill Stein to withdraw her candidacy.

A Deeper Dive On What SCOTUS IS Up To In Election Cases

Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck was so appalled by the Supreme Court’s intervention this week in the Virginia purge of supposed non-citizen voters that he’s out with a special edition of his weekly newsletter:

[W]hether you like the bottom line the justices reached or not, these kinds of cases are the precise disputes in which all of us—state election officials; voters; and everyone in between, including the Court itself—would be better off with more clarity as to why the Supreme Court did what it did. For reasons sketched out below, I’m skeptical that such an opinion would’ve been persuasive; but it sure would’ve been better than what we got.

Stay tuned for the Supreme Court’s pending decision in a election case in Pennsylvania.

Trump Sues CBS News In One-Judge Texas District

Donald Trump filed a specious lawsuit against CBS News, claiming it interfered in the presidential election by editing a 60 Minutes interview Kamala Harris. Trump filed the lawsuit in the Texas district where it is assured of being assigned to the sole federal judge there: the notoriously reactionary Trump appointee Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Quote Of The Day

Jamelle Bouie, on the historical consequences of a Trump II presidency:

Free of the guardrails that kept him in place the first time, affirmed by the Supreme Court and backed by allies and apparatchiks in the conservative movement, Trump will merge the office of the presidency with himself. He will shake it from its moorings in the Constitution and rebuild it as an instrument of his will, wielded for his friends and against his enemies. In doing so, he will erode the democratic assumptions that undergird our current constitutional order. And he will have the total loyalty of a Republican Party that itself is twisting and abusing the counter-majoritarian features of the American system to undermine and unravel democracy in the states it controls.

LOL

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Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for Zemod Zemod says:

    My mom made more money than my dad.

  2. Wall Street and its hangers-on have bet heavily on Trump to win. Not only that, but assets dependent on a Trump victory – oil stocks, bitcoin, gold, the private prison industry (!), health insurers (on the assumption of a repeal of ACA) – have recently been bid through the roof. Solar and wind energy, OTOH, have been shorted.

    Not only does this pointedly demonstrate the fundamental irrationality of markets, it also means that in the event of a Harris victory, all these positions will crash – thus creating the oligarchs’ self-fulfilling prophecy that “Democrats are bad for the stock market.”

    I guess this shows that outside their own very narrow professional niche (say, discounting corporate bonds, or whatever), the Lords and Masters of the Universe are no different, cognitively or emotionally, than the average MAGA slob who KNOWS he will become a millionaire if he just keeps buying lottery tickets along with his Camel Filters and Slim Jims down at the 7-Eleven.

  3. 2024 Presidential closing arguments

    Donald Trump is a convicted felon, a pathological liar, was twice impeached, a person who cares about only himself (every decision is transactional focused on HIS benefit), a tax dodger, a draft dodger, wants to be a dictator, admires authoritarian rulers throughout the world, a racist, a misogynist, has filed for bankruptcy six times, denigrates immigrants, is an adulterer, has been denounced by almost every person he “worked” with during his presidency, took the US out of the agreements that made the world safer (Paris, Iran), is responsible for the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans while he dilly-dallied during Covid-19, turned the Supreme Court into an advocate of Republican power (see the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the presidential immunity rulings for starters), and can’t speak in coherent sentences. He has denigrated members of the military and law enforcement. He is vulgar and profane. He incites violence with his words. He attempted to overthrow an election. He stole top secret government documents. He stated if he regains power, we “won’t have to vote again”. He is showing clear signs of physical and cognitive decline, but refuses to release his tax and medical records. He cosplayed being a McDonalds employee and a trash collector. He selected a sleaze-ball boot-licking, lying, opportunist as his running mate. The list of disqualifying traits and actions goes on and on.

    Kamala Harris has a terrific resume, has been at President Biden’s side for four years, and cares about other people. She does not denigrate others because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. She has stood up to criminals and predatory banks. She thinks before she speaks. She embodies the American dream of rising through hard work and persistence. Her idea of protecting women is to give them agency over their own medical decisions. She has drawn support from some of the most-committed Republicans. But most succinctly and importantly, she is the opposite of her opponent in every way.

    THE CHOICE IS OBVIOUS! LET”S RESOUNDINGLY ELECT KAMALA HARRIS!

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