I will just add a personal note here: This breaks my heart, even as I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the right and really only path now possible for the country, for the Democratic Party and for Biden’s legacy. Joe Biden has been an extraordinary President under the most difficult of circumstances, managing to pass multiple pieces of historic legislation with what amounts to a tie Congress. There are comparable accomplishments abroad which I don’t have time in this brief note to enumerate. I also believe Biden’s a deeply good man. And I don’t think the two verdicts are unrelated. Terrible that his political career ends with this dismal, horrible three and a half weeks. But there’s time to see the larger arc of the story which remains a powerful one and a consistent one, and one that will need to be crafted and captured to find a campaign victory in November.
Back To This
Yesterday CNN’s Sanjay Gupta published the most detailed set of questions about how little we know about the injury Trump suffered a week ago. It’s a very good piece and raises a lot of good questions quite apart from the ones I’ve been raising. But it was also notable for noting explicitly, if in passing, what I’ve been calling attention to for the last few days: that we still don’t know what actually caused Trump’s injury.
Here’s the quote from Gupta that caught my eye: “It’s not even clear that he was struck by a primary projectile from the rifle, a secondary projectile or a combination of both. Sometimes, it can be difficult to know without an in-depth evaluation.”
Just to explain the meaning, the bullet is the primary projectile. A secondary projectile is another flying object put in motion by the bullet — so a metal fragment, a shard of glass, etc.
Pelosi Going Full Thunderdome?
Politico and other outlets this morning are reporting the Nancy Pelosi has ‘voiced support’ for the ‘open convention’ approach to replacing Joe Biden if he steps aside. I find this more than a little surprising. To put it mildly.
Two thoughts occur to me.
The first is that in a chaotic and fevered moment like this you simply can’t believe everything you read. I don’t mean the stories are fake. I mean there’s a huge appetite for information and often not enough to fill it. So you get shards of information either fourth hand or badly out of context. This applies especially to a lot of the ‘King Lear’ reporting you’re currently seeing about Biden and the various things he’s ‘thinking’. Much of this reporting is really people on the 2nd or 3rd ring of Biden’s circle of advisors trying to figure out what’s happening or relaying what they’ve heard or surmised. Then this gets turned into a story with an official imprimatur and it’s rapidly woven into an official narrative of what’s happening. Suddenly there are lovers and haters of what ‘happened’ when it’s really not clear the thing happened in the first place.
In this case, though, the reporting seems more specific. Politico says this came up at a July 10th meeting of the California Democratic House delegation. In a discussion of next steps if Biden steps aside, Pelosi was apparently against anything that looked like party bosses making the decision rather than its voters.
Continue reading “Pelosi Going Full Thunderdome?”A Mandate From Above
Blessed By A Bullet?
Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕
Does almost getting killed make you a leader? That’s what Tucker Carlson suggested on Thursday night at the RNC, where he distilled what many other speakers were suggesting into a simple formula: Trump survived his assassination attempt thanks to “divine intervention,” and that, in turn, anointed him “leader.”
Continue reading “A Mandate From Above”Mass Shooter/School Shooter Theory Gets Some New Proponents
I wanted to flag to your attention another data point that suggests that reader of ours was on to something when he posited that Tom Crooks, 20 year old who tried to shoot Donald Trump, was more in the line of school shooters and mass shooters than political assassins as we’ve conventionally understood them. CNN now reports that Crooks had been googling information about Ethan Crumbley, a 2021 school shooter, who’s parents were later prosecuted over his murders. Indeed, the FBI seems to be quite literally moving toward this theory of Tom Crooks’ murders.
Continue reading “Mass Shooter/School Shooter Theory Gets Some New Proponents”Marianne Williamson Is Making A Play For Joe Biden’s DNC Delegates
Marianne Williamson wants to step into the void. With the future of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign in doubt, Williamson’s emissaries have been reaching out to Democratic National Convention delegates to convince them to pull support from Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Continue reading “Marianne Williamson Is Making A Play For Joe Biden’s DNC Delegates”Let’s Keep It Going
We’re now in our third day of this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. We hit our goal for yesterday which was to reach $150k. (I was a bit surprised and very relieved.) We have a much more modest one for today which to hit $175k by the end of today. We’re currently at $161k. These goals aren’t arbitrary. We’ve learned over the years where we have to get each day to hit our goal. Anyway, this annual drive is always really important to TPM’s vitality and future. So please consider making a contribution if you haven’t already. Just click right here. If you’re flush like so many others in the Biden economy make it big. But if not even a buck or two pushes us in the right direction. Please accept our appreciation in advance and thank you for being readers, members and contributors.
A Stretch Of Italian Beach Looks Like The Caribbean Thanks To Pollution
Most Italian beaches have the quintessential look of the Mediterranean: dark water and rocky beaches. However, there is a stretch of beach on the western coast of Italy, known as Spiagge Bianche (White Beaches), that looks bizarrely similar to the Caribbean, with white sand and light blue waters. Unfortunately, this seemingly beautiful beach is not a natural phenomenon. It is the result of a nearby chemical plant discharging thousands of tons of toxic wastewater every year into the Mediterranean Sea.
Belgian chemical industry Solvay has managed the site for over a century and although the dumping is legal and monitored, this activity still has considerable environmental and health implications. For this reason, you likely will not find these white beaches on any Italian tourist guides.
A sign warning ‘no bathing’ at Spiagge Bianche in front of the Solvay plant
People enjoy the beach with the Solvay soda ash plant in the distance
Tourists at Spiagge Bianche
A drainage canal carries industrial waste into the sea
The drainage canal coming from the Solvay soda ash plant
One of the entrances to Spiagge Bianche
Sunbathers set up on Spiagge Bianche in front of the industrial plant
A stretch of artifically white, sandy beach in Rosignano Marittimo, Italy
The drainage canal with a smoke stack from the Solvay plant in the background
A close up of the ‘white sand’
The water gets darker and the beaches less white as you look beyond Spiagge Bianche
Despite its dubious source, tourists come to Spiagge Bianche for a beach day
One Other Detail
Here’s a small update on the lack of any word from federal law enforcement or hospital officials on the what and how of the injury Donald Trump suffered last Saturday in western Pennsylvania when a 20-year-old gunman tried to shoot him. As I’ve noted, Pennsylvania State Police initially told reporters on the scene that Trump had been struck by shards of glass. Then Trump himself said he’d been hit with a bullet and that was the end of the matter. There’s small detail from a local news report from last Sunday that suggests it as at least plausible that the initial report was correct, that Trump was struck by some flying debris.
A report from local TV station WPXI at 4:50 PM Sunday said this (emphasis added) …
Continue reading “One Other Detail”The GOP As We Knew It Is Long Gone And May Never Return
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Historic Third Time
Last night, Donald Trump (2016, 2020, 2024) joined Richard Nixon (1960, 1968, 1972) as the only three-time presidential nominees in the history of the Republican Party. Once they find a good one, they sure can’t let go.
TPM’s Josh Kovensky watched last night’s TV spectacle so you didn’t have to:
- If you can’t take much of the melding of low culture and authoritarianism, here are his five takeaways.
- If you’re a glutton for punishment, you have the option of scrolling through his full Hulk Hogan-saturated live blog of the evening’s proceedings. Stay strong.
Credit where due: Much of the political reporting this week has acknowledged and engaged with the fact that the Republican Party is now fully captive to Donald Trump and his cult of personality to a degree it wasn’t in his two prior runs for the White House. That’s an important baseline from which to cover the rest of this campaign and a possible Trump II presidency.
What is perhaps less obvious (and I’ll admit is speculative) is that the chances of the Republican Party emerging intact after the Trump era have markedly declined. The hope that eventually Republicans of good faith who have battled Trumpism – people like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney – would rise to the top again seems more far-fetched than ever. Likewise, the effort to create some sort of permission structure for conservatives to abandon Trump seems like a ship that has sailed.
It’s not just that the Republican Party will emerge from the Trump era with a brand so badly damaged that it will need to be scrapped, it’s that there is likely to be little left of it that is recognizable as a political party in a democratic and pluralistic society. Having become so cultish and thoroughly authoritarian, there won’t be the pieces to pick up again to reform it and restore it as a pro-democracy party. Trump has wrecked it. But as with so many Trump projects, the bright lights and gold leaf draw the eye away from the structural rot.
The GOP’s Rejection Of Democracy Requires A Strongman
Heather Cox Richardson on the GOP convention and the rot on full display: “Paul Manafort walking onto the floor of the Republican National Convention yesterday illustrated that the Republican Party under Trump has become thoroughly corrupted into an authoritarian party aligned with foreign dictators.”
Messiah Complex
Sarah Posner, TPM’s go-to expert on the Christian Right, catalogues the renewed effort since Saturday’s shooting to cast Donald Trump as beneficiary of divine providence and explains how that fits into the Christian nationalism suffusing the far right.
Eating Their Own
TPM’s Nicole Lafond: Usual Cast Of Far-Right Extremists Goes Into Racist Tailspin Over JD Vance’s Wife
Quote Of The Day
It’s not over on election day. It’s over on inauguration day.
Trump campaign senior advisor Chris LaCivita, portending a 2020 redux if Trump loses the election
GOP Still Thinks Registering New Voters Is Bad
TPM’s Khaya Himmelman: The RNC Is Suing Gretchen Whitmer To Make The Swing State’s Election System Seem Sketch
Biden’s Support Among Dem Electeds Further Erodes
No dramatic movement on the Biden front in the past 24 hours, but what movement there has been was all in the direction of trying to push the president out as the Democratic Party nominee:
- Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), whose tough reelection campaign is among those most critical for Democratic hopes of holding their Senate majority, publicly called for President Biden to drop his own re-election bid.
- Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) sent President Biden a letter earlier this month and newly obtained by the NYT urging him to withdraw his candidacy.
- Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) continues to keep the pressure on Biden mostly behind the scenes, telling “California Democrats and some members of House leadership that she thinks Biden is getting close to deciding to abandon his presidential bid,” the WaPo reports.
- Former President Obama does not appear to be trying to bail Biden out, but rather is expressing his own concerns privately and serving as a sounding board, according to the WaPo.
UPDATE: Trump Assassination Attempt Aftermath
- The Secret Service is encountering criticism from close-protection experts on how long it took for agents to get Donald Trump off the rally stage after shots were fired by a would-be assassin.
- Top Hill Republicans are demanding the resignation of Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle.
- ABC News tracks what Thomas Matthew Crooks was doing in the hours leading up to the shooting.
You’re Not Gonna Like This
Former TPMer Tierney Sneed talks to legal experts about the difficulties that Special Counsel Jack Smith will encounter in trying to remove U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon from the Mar-a-Lago case, even at this late juncture with so many anomalous rulings, delays, and her preferential treatment of Trump.
Oh, Rudy
Rudy Giuliani is pushing the judge handling his bankruptcy case to the breaking point.
Totally On The Up And Up
Bloomberg: “The US Securities and Exchange Commission sued Patrick Orlando, the former chief executive of the blank-check firm that helped bring Donald Trump’s social media company public, for allegedly misleading investors about his firm’s plans for a merger.”
Global IT Outage
Massive worldwide disruption after a CrowdStrike software update apparently crippled many devices running Microsoft Windows.
Bob Newhart, 1929-2024
Bob Newhart was such a boss that not only did he have two long-running sitcoms – one in the 1970s and one in the 1980s— but when the one in the 1980s ended he styled the final episode as if the entire run of the second show had just been a crazy dream of his character in the first show. How boss a move is that?!?
To this day, Newhart is the only comedian to win Grammy Awards for best new artist and album of the year.
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