The American right’s love affair with Hungary seemingly knows no bounds. Hungarian officials appear at GOP events; CPAC has a Budapest event. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán met with Donald Trump last month, and earned a dilatory shoutout from the Republican candidate at the RNC, where Trump called Hungary a “strong country, run by very powerful, tough leaders — a tough guy.”
Continue reading “An Insider’s View of the Love Affair Between Hungary and the American Right”Jack Smith Wants More Time To Figure Out SCOTUS Immunity Ruling
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Hurry Up And Wait
Today was the deadline set by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for Special Counsel Jack Smith and Donald Trump to propose a schedule for pretrial matters as she resumes the Jan. 6 case following the Supreme Court’s horrendous ruling on presidential immunity.
But Smith, in a bit of a surprise move, asked Chutkan in a filing late yesterday to provide more time for him and other DOJ components to sort out the implications of the Supreme Court decision. Trump, the king of delay, did not oppose Smith’s request for more time.
Smith wants another three weeks – until Aug. 30 – to confer with Trump and submit the proposed scheduling order. Smith also asked Chutkan to delay the status conference originally scheduled for next Friday, Aug. 16, until after Aug. 30.
Typically, you would expect the judge to be amenable to this kind of request, but Chutkan was clearly ready to move when the case was finally returned to her, so it’ll be interesting to see how she reacts. I still doubt she’ll force the issue, but nothing about this case is routine.
What does it all mean?
This case was already not going to trial before the election, so it doesn’t change those odds. It reduces the window available for holding any kind of evidentiary hearing on the immunity issue, making it less likely that that will happen before the election (for what it’s worth, I was having trouble getting excited about that as any kind of real pre-election accountability moment for Trump anyway). Whether the case goes to trial after November depends almost entirely on whether Trump loses the election, so Smith’s desired delay wouldn’t really change that either.
Beyond that, we’re left to speculate about what Smith is grappling with internally. It’s all speculation at this point. But before I get into the more tenuous speculation, the simplest and most obvious answer is that the implications of the Supreme Court immunity decision are in fact difficult to parse and to apply to the facts of this case. The high court didn’t give a clear road map on all of the legal issues involved, as Politico explains extensively this morning. And there are a lot of legal issues involved, as this Just Security project published this week outlines in great detail.
Beyond that, the speculation about the delay ranges from internal disputes at DOJ about how to move forward to more mundane bureaucratic slowness in dotting i’s and crossing t’s to one possibility that I’ve tried to keep in mind all along … but again this is purely speculative: If you’re not going to get to try Trump before the election, does it make sense to change the strategy of a stripped-down indictment of only Trump and broaden the federal case to charge the full conspiracy, including all possible crimes committed by Trump, plus adding co-defendants and co-conspirators?
I mention this possibility because the whole point of the current approach was to keep things narrow and targeted, largely for judicial economy and speed. It didn’t work. Trump succeeded in dragging it out past the election. Given that the goal of the original strategy is no longer achievable, there’s a logic to changing the strategy. And remember: if Trump loses the election, Smith has all the time in the world.
What Can Be Done About The Georgia Election Board?
NBC News’ Lisa Rubin takes a closer look at the recent shenanigans of the MAGA-infused Georgia Election Board on behalf of Donald Trump.
That Crazy Trump Presser
Casual readers of other news outlets probably got the sense that Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday where he proposed more presidential debates, dodged some abortion questions, and made preposterous claims about the size of his crowds. But it truly was the kind of performance that had it been anyone else, or even him eight years ago, would have produced a cacophony of stories asking what is wrong with this guy. If you missed it, perusing the TPM liveblog of the presser might be the best way to get a proper sense of how much we’ve collectively normalized the man.
Harris Campaign Unleashes Its Young And Very Online Staff
I’ve read a million campaign press releases over the years and at this point ignore most of them, so I’m not holding up this Harris campaign press release responding to Trump’s press conference yesterday as some kind of Rosetta stone of the current moment. And yet … if you want to see the difference in tone and tenor between the Biden and Harris campaigns, this is as good of an illustration as any:
Nancy Pelosi Is Having A Moment
The former speaker is on a roll since President Biden ended his re-election bid.
Here she is, telling the AP about her crusade against Trump: “‘How can I say this in the nicest possible way: My goal in life was that man would never step in the White House again,’ Pelosi said, slapping the table with every word.”
Here she is giving The New Yorker’s David Remnick her assessment of Biden’s campaign: “I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation. They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The President has to make the decision for that to happen.”
Historical Context
Just gonna leave this right here:
Good Read
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: A Journey Through the Authoritarian New Right – A non-exhaustive look at the influencers behind Republicans’ recent turn toward the bizarre.
Reader Mailbag
TPM Reader AN checking in this week from the Paris Olympics:
Thanks for including that item about Armand Duplantis in the Morning Memo. My husband and I were there last night at the Stade de France, and it was absolute magic.
We are the biggest nerds in the world, totally un-sporty, never watch any sports, barely know what pole-vaulting is. Some friends gave us their extra tickets to Saturday night’s, and then last night’s, track and field event, so we thought, what the hell, it’s the Olympics, let’s go.
Well. We had a spectacularly good time watching all the events on both evenings: discus, shotput, long jump, high jump, sprints, relays and the men’s 10,000 meter final. But the pole-vault! It was just spectacularly entertaining, in large part thanks to the showmanship of the athletes, especially Sam Kendricks and Mondo himself. They had the crowd clapping in unison, they mugged for the camera, raced around, emoted, hugged each other between attempts.
It was crazy how much higher Mondo vaulted than the other guys–at the beginning, he was clearing the bar by probably half a meter. He seemed to be floating. When he had beat everyone else and won the gold at 6.10 meters, there was a pause. Then came the announcement that Mondo would go for the world record. The crowd went crazy and stayed that way until the very end. What a joy.
I’m not sure this experience has turned us into sports fans, but after this, we certainly get what all the fuss is about.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
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Trump Shows Us What Election Denialism 2.0 Will Look Like
As he refused to answer questions about whether he’ll accept the results of the 2024 election and avoided acknowledging where he stands on that thorny issue of a peaceful transfer of power, Donald Trump on Thursday painted a rather stark portrait of how exactly he might try to undermine the results of the election if he loses.
Continue reading “Trump Shows Us What Election Denialism 2.0 Will Look Like”Desperate For Attention, Trump Holds A Press Conference
Former President Donald Trump spent most of his hour-plus press conference from his Mar-a-Lago compound on Thursday not hearing questions, doubling down on racist attacks about Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ biracial identity, bragging about his crowd sizes, not committing to accepting election results, claiming no one died on Jan. 6 and not remembering Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s name.
This was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris officially became the presidential nominee and selected Walz as her running mate. Trump spent a good deal of his time in front of the cameras claiming Harris is scared of answering questions and doing interviews — unlike the man ticking off grievances who stood before them.
It was a Trumpian attempt to shift the news cycle back to his campaign amid the positive media coverage the Harris-Walz campaign has been getting — most notably breaking through in the form of memes on almost every mainstream social media platform.
Catch up on our live coverage below:
Listen To This: Balls To The Walz
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss VP Kamala Harris’ veep pick and the first few weeks of her campaign.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Votes of Confidence
Earlier today we hit the $350,000 milestone in the TPM Journalism Fund drive.
You may wonder how we think about this sort of thing internally. How do we talk about the fact that so many people are willing to contribute (generally speaking) over and above their membership fees to a small journalism outfit doing what it can to not just survive, but thrive in uncertain and unprecedented times?
Well it’s very simple: That’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our work. That’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our reporting, our analysis, and our commentary. That is 350,000 votes of confidence in our business model, which has kept us going even while countless other publications have, in recent years, failed or made significant cuts. It’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our belief that journalism can’t be hierarchical, so publications should offer free memberships to those who need them. In short, it’s 350,000 votes of confidence in us.
Look, let me be clear: We know not everyone can contribute over and above the membership fees. We’re thankful and appreciative of each and every member we have regardless of whether you ever contribute to the Journalism Fund. Memberships are the engine that sustains TPM. We thank you. Period.
One of the guiding principles at TPM is preparedness in the face of unexpected change. Change in the news environment or change in the business climate. We don’t always know what the changes will be or how they’ll affect us, but we know they are coming. They always do. That’s why the theme of this year’s Journalism Fund drive is “to help us prepare for what comes next.”
If you have not yet contributed but are able to, please consider doing so. The revenue will help us grow and expand our journalism. It will help us distribute that journalism to more people. And, just as important, it’s a little confidence boost that all the work we put in day in and day out makes a difference in people’s lives. Because the difference between an organization like TPM and many other companies purporting to do journalism is that we care about more than our profit — we care about our impact on the world, and especially our impact on those who help us do what we love to do.
One last thing: Last year, more than 5,000 people contributed. I’m absolutely positive that if we hit that marker again, we’ll hit $500,000. Any amount you can contribute, no matter how small, makes a difference.
Times and WaPo Jump On Board Trump Camp Swift Boating of Walz
The Post’s and the Times‘ pieces on Tim Walz service record are more egregious and spurious than you’re probably able to imagine. The accusations come from two members of his unit who are clearly MAGA partisans and who floated them during his 2022 reelection campaign for Minnesota governor in coordination with Walz’s Republican opponent. The attacks aren’t just “like” the Swift Boat attacks from 2004. They’re literally the work of the same guy. Chris LaCivita was the strategist who ran the Swift Boat attacks in 2004 and cut the commercials. He’s now the co-manager of the Trump campaign. He started this and then handed it off to Vance. As David noted, even Politico headlined it as a “Swift Boat” attack. Politico!
The accusation, such as it is, is that Walz retired from service just before his unit was deployed to Iraq.
Continue reading “Times and WaPo Jump On Board Trump Camp Swift Boating of Walz”A Journey Through the Authoritarian New Right
There’s a lot of talk about the authoritarian leanings of the modern Republican Party. Donald Trump commits to pardon the January 6 rioters who sought to steal him an election; his rank-and-file supporters cheer him on when he says he’ll be a “dictator on day one.” Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Trump’s Vice Presidential pick, likes to muse that “universities are the enemy” and play with the idea of unleashing the DOJ on political opponents.
Continue reading “A Journey Through the Authoritarian New Right”20 Years Later, Political Press Still Falls Hard For Swift Boat Attacks
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Will They Never Learn?
JD Vance launched a spurious and baseless attack on Tim Walz’s military service reminiscent of the Swift Boat attacks in 2004 that targeted one of John Kerry’s key political strengths: his heroism and valor in Vietnam. But instead of using the last 20 years to reflect and reconsider the familiar coverage patterns, some political editors still get played like a fiddle when it comes to covering GOP attack lines.
The WaPo was probably the worst culprit, with this headline: “Tim Walz’s military record, National Guard departure get new scrutiny.” It happily launders the Vance attack line without self-awareness or historical understanding of the last two decades of American politics. “New scrutiny” – like its weasel-word compadres “raises questions about” and “is said to” – confers a miraculous virgin birth to scurrilous political attacks even if they’re launched right out in the open.
To its credit, Politico is much more direct and puts the attack in the broader context with a story headlined: “Vance runs a Swift Boat attack against Walz’s military service.” You might quibble with Politico’s handling of it, but it’s clearly not the same laundering operation the WaPo ran on this one.
The irony of the Vance attack and the media coverage of it is that the originator of the Swift Boat attack against Kerry back in the day was Chris LaCivita, who is now a senior Trump campaign adviser.
Can’t Memory Hole Project 2025 That Easily!
Further undermining Donald Trump’s bogus claims that he knew nothing about Project 2025, the WaPo has discovered a private flight (photo included) that Donald Trump took with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in April 2022 to a Heritage conference where Trump seemed to reference Project 2025. The work of Project 2025 has been done under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation.
Meanwhile, Roberts has postponed the launch of his new book – with a foreword by none other than JD Vance himself – until after the November election.
On The Trail
- Kamala Harris once again tamps down a “Lock him up” chant, this time at her campaign rally in Michigan:
- At the same Michigan rally, Harris also shut down hecklers (y’all, that look at the 2:12 mark):
- Donald Trump has only one campaign rally this week – and it’s in the deep-red state of Montana.
Quote Of The Day
The Holocaust is taught too often purely as a historical event, an anomaly, a moment in time. Students understood what had happened and that it was terrible and that the people who did this were monsters. The problem is that relieves us of responsibility. Obviously, the mastermind was sociopathic, but on the scale for it to happen, there had to be a lot of people in the country who chose to go down that path. You have to make the intellectual leap to figure out the reasons why.
then-Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN), in a 2008 interview with the NYT, recounting teaching high school students in Nebraska in the 1990s about genocide
2024 Ephemera
- WaPo: Trump complains about campaign as advisers try to focus on attacking Harris
- NYT: Tim Walz’s Sudden Rise in the Democratic Party Was No Accident
- WSJ: Tim Walz’s and JD Vance’s Personal Finances Couldn’t Be More Different
Biden Warns Trump Won’t Lose Peacefully
In his first interview since ending his re-election bid, President Biden says he’s “not confident at all” that there will be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses the November election:
Arizona Grand Jury Wanted To Indict Trump, Too
The Arizona grand jury that handed down indictments in the state’s fake electors probe was interested in indicting Donald Trump, too, but were discouraged from doing so by prosecutors with the state attorney general’s office, according to a new filing this week defending against attacks that the prosecution was politically motivated. Attorney General Kris Mayes has not publicly addressed the thinking behind that strategy since the filing.
Jan. 6 Defendant Taken Into Custody After Threatening Posts
Prosecutors moved to revoke bail for a Jan. 6 defendant who allegedly posted online threats against Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Attorney General Merrick Garland, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Georgia Judge Scott McAfee.
The 2020 Election Still Isn’t Over In Georgia
The Georgia Election Board voted 3-2 to reinvestigate Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 presidential recount. The three Republican members who voted to ask the state attorney general to reexamine the results yet again have been praised publicly by Donald Trump as recently as this past weekend.
For Legal Nerds …
An unusual sequence of events this week in the legal fight over Texas’ installation of buoys in the Rio Grande, a move the federal government is fighting but recently lost on at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is now back to the trial judge. Here’s where things get interesting.
After a status conference two days ago, the Texas attorney general’s office took the unusual step of racing to the appeals court to tattle, basically, on what the trial judge had said in the status conference. That prompted a swift order from the trial judge hauling the parties back into court yesterday for a second status conference in which he lambasted the attorney general’s office.
Politico senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein has some choice excerpts from the transcript of the second status conference.
Astronauts May Be Stranded Until 2025
The two astronauts who departed Earth for a planned eight-day mission aboard Boeing’s Starliner two months ago may not return until 2025 as NASA works on a backup plan to have them hitch a ride on a Space X vehicle. The astronauts have been stuck on the International Space Station because of technical issues with the Boeing craft that have raised safety concerns about using it for the return trip.
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MAGA Group ‘True the Vote’ Is Working With Sheriffs To Monitor Drop Boxes
Ahead of November, the election denying activist group with ties to Donald Trump, “True the Vote,” is asking sheriffs across the country to monitor ballot drop boxes for supposed suspicious or fraudulent activity in swing states — an apparent attempt to revive conspiracy theories leftover from Trump’s campaign to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Continue reading “MAGA Group ‘True the Vote’ Is Working With Sheriffs To Monitor Drop Boxes”