In Donald Trump’s desperate bid to win over voters who are, justifiably, concerned about the perilous position into which the Dobbs ruling has placed access to crucial fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization, the former president tried to cast himself as a “leader” on IVF during Tuesday night’s debate.
Continue reading “On IVF, Schumer Dares Senate GOP To Put Their Money Where Trump’s Mouth Is”The Skyscraper-Sized Tsunami That Vibrated Through The Entire Planet And No One Saw
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Earthquake scientists detected an unusual signal on monitoring stations used to detect seismic activity during September 2023. We saw it on sensors everywhere, from the Arctic to Antarctica.
Continue reading “The Skyscraper-Sized Tsunami That Vibrated Through The Entire Planet And No One Saw”Trump’s Two Campaigns
I wrote soon after Kamala Harris become the de facto Democratic nominee that I did not think that Donald Trump had the mental acuity, stamina or energy to fight for the presidency from behind. As long as he was a bit ahead — very durably a bit ahead — his energy and focus didn’t seem to matter. Everything I’ve seen since then has confirmed this judgment. Tuesday’s debate did so perhaps more than anything. But what I’ve also been increasingly aware of is that Trump has two campaigns in a way that is almost unique in modern presidential politics.
First, there’s Donald Trump, the guy we saw in the debate, the guy we see at the rallies and the guy Trump is, mostly, on social media. (People like Dan Scavino tweet for him sometimes. But even then it’s more an impersonation of feral Trump.) This persona was really the entirety of the campaign in 2016 because there just wasn’t any campaign infrastructure around, though a bit was built up in the last couple months. This campaign is mostly about Trump’s anger and grievances and shows all the signs not only of his longstanding degeneracy but his cognitive and personal decline over the last decade. Let’s call it the Trump campaign. But then there’s an entirely distinct and relatively traditional campaign being run by Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. That campaign wants to talk about inflation and the southern border. That campaign is running a vast and complex TV air war across all the swing states. Let’s call this the “Trump” campaign.
Continue reading “Trump’s Two Campaigns”Listen To This: A Philly Massacre
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh process the first (and maybe only) Kamala Harris-Donald Trump debate.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
What The Abuses Of Trump II Might Actually Look Like In The Real World
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Trump’s Slow-Burn Authoritarianism
An important piece out this morning from my former colleague Greg Sargent that grapples with one realistic and less overtly authoritarian scenario for a second Trump presidency:
A second Trump presidency could unleash a kind of lower-profile, slow-burn authoritarianism, something that unfolds much more quietly and largely behind the scenes. In its targeting of internal enemies and its efforts to carry out revolutionary changes via far-right governance, it could end up being much less dramatic, visible, or splashy—but at the same time, extremely insidious, difficult to track, and very challenging to mobilize against.
Sargent talks to people who are already gearing up to be targeted or have their clients targeted by a Trump administration, with an unconstrained DOJ willing to do the president’s bidding. It may not lead only to show trials but also to the slow, expensive, grinding down of perceived foes, vocal critics, and public servants just doing their jobs:
These are Trump critics who have already hired lawyers who are advising them to gird for low-grade bureaucratic bullying. They are advocates anticipating years of legal warfare against vulnerable populations like transgender Americans. They are state-level officials scouring statutes to prepare for legal tussles over who controls the National Guard. They are career government officials bracing for the corruption of official information to serve the autocrat in chief’s whims and propagandistic needs, and the underhanded subversion of rulemaking processes to deliver spoils to his cronies.
I’ve been hearing for months about people inside and outside of government who are girding for Trump II because of the roles they’ve played in, variously, investigating Trump, serving in the Biden administration, or simply working for a targeted department or agency. It’s toxic stuff that has real world effects already, even if Trump ultimately loses the election. The potential threat itself is corrosive to the civic space.
A quick final point: Trump won’t have to pick between scenarios like the one Sargent lays out and more overtly authoritarian ones. It can be both/and.
Security Beefed Up For Jan. 6, 2025
Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote, set for Jan. 6, 2025, has been designated a “national special security event” for the first time. That elevates it to the same level as the inauguration, the national political conventions, the UN General Assembly, and the Super Bowl.
Strange Bedfellows Alert
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, forced to resign his position in the George W. Bush administration over the U.S. attorneys scandal, penned an op-ed endorsing Kamala Harris for president, calling Donald Trump “perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation.”
Important
WaPo: Trump stokes suspicions about assassination attempt, raising fears of more violence
Hate To See It
Right-wing extremist Laura Loomer traveled with Donald Trump aboard his private plane to the Philadelphia debate and hung out with him Wednesday during events in Manhattan and Pennsylvania commemorating the anniversary of 9/11, which she has called “an inside job.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) took the opportunity of Loomer’s increased profile to call her out for a tweet from over the weekend that targeted Kamala Harris, declaring it “appalling and extremely racist.”
That set off Loomer, who began attacking Greene over her sex life and for being a “raging anti Semite.”
Good times.
Meltdown
ICYMI:
I asked Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump's top advisors, what is the evidence for saying that Caracas and Venezuela are safer than the United States. He began by answering that it is the government's numbers. I asked him if he trusted Maduro's numbers. And this was his… pic.twitter.com/qkXTNiGmt0
— José María Del Pino (@josemdelpino) September 11, 2024
A Philly Massacre
More debate fallout and reaction:
- Another debate? The Harris campaign continued to push for another presidential debate while the Trump campaign weighed its options.
- The xenophobia: “[T]he debate highlighted how Mr. Trump has escalated his assaults on immigrants in the 2024 presidential campaign, and how he uses the issue to overshadow other topics, including tariffs or the economy.”
- Reax: Josh Marshall and Kate Riga process the debate …
2024 Ephemera
- WaPo: Elon Musk’s misleading election claims reach millions and alarm election officials
- The North Carolina Supreme Court’s last-minute decision ordering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed from the fall ballot after the statutory deadline will cost state taxpayers $1 million to destroy old ballots and reprint new ones.
- Real consequences:
Grotesque
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: Father of Child Killed in Ohio Crash Begs Trump, Vance To Stop Politicizing Son’s Death
Leonard Leo Pushes To ‘Weaponize’ Conservative Ideas
“[V]astly insufficient funds are going toward operationalizing and weaponizing [conservative] ideas and policies to crush liberal dominance at the choke points of influence and power in our society,” conservative activist Leonard Leo told organizations he funds, in a letter obtained by Axios.
Mike Johnson Has The Tiger By The Tail Again
After yanking his preferred temporary spending bill – larded with a poison pill anti-immigrant provision – Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) finds himself in the same servile position as every other recent GOP House speaker. Behold the headlines:
- TPM’s Nicole Lafond: Trump And Johnson’s Bid To Suppress The Vote, Shut Down The Government, And Stoke Panic Falls Apart
- NYT: Johnson Scraps Vote on Spending Extension Amid Bipartisan Resistance
- WSJ: GOP Objections Force Johnson to Pull Bill Keeping Government Open
- Politico: Johnson faces GOP ire after conservative spending plan blows up
- Punchbowl: Speaker Mike Johnson is in an extraordinarily unenviable position.
‘There’s A Lot Information On The Internet’
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) distinguishing himself as one of Tennessee’s best and brightest:
Hagerty on Trump’s claims about Haitian immigrants: I’ve heard conflicting reports. There’s conflicting evidence. There’s a lot information on the internet that this is happening. pic.twitter.com/DQ5xnTsca2
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 12, 2024
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Trump And Johnson’s Bid To Suppress The Vote, Shut Down The Government, And Stoke Panic Falls Apart
Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson are very proud of their plan to link a must-pass piece of government funding legislation to a bill that lays the groundwork for Trump to blame undocumented immigrants for his potential defeat in November. The only problem, we’re now learning, is that no one of any influence is on board with this plan besides the two of them.
Continue reading “Trump And Johnson’s Bid To Suppress The Vote, Shut Down The Government, And Stoke Panic Falls Apart”The Day After the Beating
I wanted to share a few more thoughts about last night’s debate. You can find my overnight wrap-up here.
There are two realities: First, the race is going to remain close. It’s going to be a slog right up to Election Day, and Trump could win. Second, Harris thoroughly dominated and even humiliated Trump from the first minutes of the debate right through to the end. These things are both true. We just don’t know exactly how those two realities are going to interact over the next two months as they combine with other developments, news cycles and possibly new shocks we can’t predict.
Kate and I just recorded this week’s podcast which was basically all about the debate. In those conversations there’s some urge to hold back on saying just how thoroughly Harris dominated him because you don’t want to sound too frothy or exuberant or give people any sense that that thoroughness will be reflected in changes in the polls. My best guess is that it may have a small impact on the horse race polls and drive some negative news cycles for Trump.
Continue reading “The Day After the Beating”Father of Child Killed in Ohio Crash Begs Trump, Vance To Stop Politicizing Son’s Death
The parents of a Springfield, Ohio boy whose death last year became fodder for the anti-immigrant right told national Republican politicians on Tuesday to stop abusing their son’s memory.
Continue reading “Father of Child Killed in Ohio Crash Begs Trump, Vance To Stop Politicizing Son’s Death”Kamala Harris Directly Confronted The Trump Menace In Our Midst
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Standing Up To The Bully
Kamala Harris practiced a different kind of dominance politics in last night’s debate, confronting the menace of Donald Trump directly and taking him down a peg like you would a schoolyard bully.
After nearly a decade of Trump doing as he pleases with little accountability, a lot of appeasement, and very rare consequence, he was brought up short by an opponent who looked him in the eye, called him out, didn’t back down, and in the process threw him off his game and took command of the debate stage.
The emotional weight of her presentation was centered on confronting him with a combination of mockery, scorn, bemusement, disdain, and condescension. Yes, it got under his skin, Yes, he was rattled, Yes, it turned him into a fulminating old man. I’m less interested though in the stagecraft she used than in the catharsis it provided to viewers who have craved to see Trump get his comeuppance for so many years, only to be repeatedly and endlessly disappointed.
It was Joe Biden’s failure to confront Trump on this level during their debate in June that led to the existential crisis among Democrats. Biden failed in multiple ways in that debate, but the biggest letdown was his failure to stand up to Trump in a convincing fashion and instead let Trump run all over him.
In contrast, Harris confronted Trump repeatedly. She referred to him as a “disgrace” twice, as “dangerous and unfit,” as “confused,” and as lacking the right “temperament” to be president. She derided him to his face as someone dictators know “they can manipulate … with flattery and favors.” She often referred to him in the second person, a more charged and direct way of punching the bully in the nose. She called him out for warring against the rule of law and the Constitution and for his own criminally-charged conduct.
Just don’t confuse catharsis with election victory. The most sobering part of the evening was knowing that a solid 40+% of the country remains under the sway of this petty bully, huckster, narcissist, a chronic fabricator of falsehoods and misinformation. But at least Harris called him for those things.
Trump has no affirmative case to make for being president. He can’t win over new voters, so his only path is to tear down Harris to make her an unacceptable choice. By that measure alone, Harris was able to turn the tables.
A Panoply Of Kamala Harris Reaction Shots
A grateful nation vicariously reacted to Donald Trump through the facial expression of Kamala Harris (click to enlarge):
A Final Flex
The Harris campaign immediately called for another debate with Trump as soon as the candidates left last night’s debate stage. Trump waffled a bit when asked about it post-debate and refused to commit to another installment.
The Debate By The Numbers
The most annoying thing the moderators did was to repeatedly let Trump grab control of the microphone and talk out of turn. That led to considerable disparities in total time spoken and number of times speaking:
‘I Have Concepts Of A Plan’
Step aside “Infrastructure Week,” we have a new winner in the category of endless Trump promises that he never delivers on.
Somehow Trump went backwards from always on the verge of releasing his own Obamacare replacement plan while president to four years later having only the “concepts of a plan.”
What it looks like when a huckster is exposed:
Post by @aaron.ruparView on Threads
Harris’ Embrace Of The Military
It was a low-key point of emphasis, but Kamala Harris explicitly aligned herself with the military eight different times in the debate, by my count.
At first I thought it was an effort to highlight’s Trump’s consistent disparagement of the service members, but it came up in enough different contexts to make me think it was also a calculated effort to bolster her national security credentials and inoculate her against doubts about her becoming the first woman commander in chief.
The Most Absurd Non-Trump Moment
Climate change got short shrift in the debate, a single question framed in the most unsophisticated, open-ended way:
The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change? And Vice President Harris, we’ll start with you. One minute for you each.
It’s a measure of the degraded state of our public discourse about climate change that the debate question would be so general and non-specific – with an entire 60 seconds to respond.
Look What You Made Her Do
Taylor Swift, the preeminent childless cat lady, timed her endorsement of Kamala Harris to land just after the debate ended, which led to the odd scene of Rachel Maddow reading Swift’s Instagram post to Tim Walz live on the air.
Big News
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that a measure to enshrine abortion rights will remain on the November ballot.
Army Stonewalls On Trump Arlington Fiasco
New reporting from Greg Sargent:
The Army has yet to provide Democrats in Congress with its internal incident report detailing the confrontation, even though they have been demanding it for almost two weeks, a congressional aide familiar with the situation tells me. Democrats have also demanded a blow-by-blow account of what exactly was communicated to the Trump campaign before the incident. Trump aides were warned against carrying out prohibited activities, and a full accounting would show the degree to which they knew in advance that their filming would violate specific laws and regulations. That has not been forthcoming either, the aide says.
More On The Terrorgram Indictment
Joyce Vance, on the feds busting up the Terrorgram Collective with the indictment of two of its alleged leaders:
Terrorgram Collective is a transnational terrorist group that operates on the digital messaging platform Telegram, where it promotes white supremacist accelerationism, an ideology centered on the belief that the white race is superior; that society is irreparably corrupt and cannot be saved by political action; and that violence and terrorism are necessary to ignite a race war and accelerate the collapse of the government and the rise of a white ethnostate.
Good Read
The Atlantic: Why Mike Lee Folded
It Will Forever Be Known As The Pet-Eating Debate
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Harris Baits A Bitter And Defensive Trump Into Exposing His True Colors
Just like the first first presidential debate of 2024, the second first presidential debate of 2024 (now with a different Democratic candidate) was quite an experience. A very different kind of experience.
Confrontation was a clear theme that ran throughout the hour and 45 minutes. Vice President Kamala Harris baited former President Donald Trump over and over again, leaving him glowering, defensive and bitter.
Continue reading “Harris Baits A Bitter And Defensive Trump Into Exposing His True Colors”