A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the Trump assassination attempt over the weekend, Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance and where things stand now on Joe Biden’s candidacy.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
One of the top officials on former President Donald Trump’s campaign let slip during the Republican National Convention on Thursday that 2024 may bring another attempt by his side to contest the results. The result of a presidential election can be challenged and changed up until Inauguration Day, Trump campaign senior advisor Chris LaCivita suggested.
“It’s not over on Election Day. It’s over on Inauguration Day,” LaCivita told Politico’s Jonathan Martin during a Thursday interview at the RNC.
The statement came as Martin asked a question, saying, “One of the things that I’ve said is that, at this point, perhaps the Democrats can’t win the election any longer.”
LaCivita interrupted Martin.
“We don’t even think that way,” LaCivita said. “The way we’re structured, the way we are made … we grind every single day. I mean its not over until he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath. It’s not over til then. It’s not over on Election Day. It’s over on Inauguration Day. Cause I wouldn’t put anything past anybody.”
“What do you mean?” Martin asked.
“There is a well-documented report that talks about all of the efforts that the Democrats had in place in 2020 … about ways to prevent if Donald Trump had quote on quote won. So, like I said we plan for every worse case scenario. That way we are ready for it,” LaCivita said.
Listeners to the interview could be forgiven for hearing in LaCivita’s rhetoric echoes of the Stop The Steal movement, which culminated in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to convince then Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election results on Jan. 6, 2021.
It could also be understood as an attempt to normalize the events that took place before and after the 2020 election, and to prepare the country for what might happen if Trump does not win in November.
For the second installment of Inside TPM, I spoke with Kate Riga, who, like many at TPM, wears many hats. As podcaster/Capitol Hill reporter/Supreme Court reporter/(possible author???), she is a true multihypenate. Kate talked about how TPM chooses the Supreme Court cases it covers and how she prepares for the unique challenges involved in covering Supreme Court oral arguments and decision days. She also gives some book recommendations and her take on the state of the WNBA (at 6-19, her Washington Mystics are struggling just as much as everyone else in DC these days).
Two other things real quick. First, if you missed the last episode with Josh Kovensky, check it out here. Also, if you haven’t seen, we launched our TPM Journalism Fund drive. Our goal is to get to $150k today. If you can contribute, we’d greatly appreciate it!
I wanted to share a few thoughts with you about the current state of things with President Biden’s candidacy. See it more as comparing notes with you than reporting, per se.
Yesterday there was a frenzy when President Biden’s interview with BET was released and he said that he would leave the race if doctors told him he had some medical condition or illness that made it necessary. Was this planting the seed? Was this how it was going to happen? When it was reported a couple hours later that Biden had COVID, I thought to myself: Are we going full Aaron Sorkin here? Is this really happening? It was one of those few moments when I literally couldn’t figure out what was going on. Is this for real? Are we saying the interview was a cue up for the COVID? Does he really have COVID? Are the writers just pushing the bounds of realism?
But as I alluded to yesterday afternoon there are other things happening that are not cinematic. Random backbenchers telling Biden he should end his candidacy was never going to do it. As we’ve said from the beginning, the people who can deliver that message to the President are Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, perhaps Barack Obama, though that last one is a lot less clear to me. Starting yesterday it became clear that all three congressional leaders either had or were in the process of doing that. That matters, in ways that all the other stuff does not.
Continue reading “President Biden”A group of top Republicans on Capitol Hill have responded to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump during a Saturday afternoon campaign rally in western Pennsylvania by calling for Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle to be replaced.
Continue reading “Top Hill Republicans Are Demanding Secret Service Director Resign After Trump Shooting”The Republican National Committee and Donald Trump’s campaign have filed a lawsuit in federal court against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over their efforts to make voter registration more accessible.
Continue reading “The RNC Is Suing Gretchen Whitmer To Make The Swing State’s Election System Seem Sketch”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The events of the past 24 hours have placed President Biden’s renomination in greater jeopardy than at any point since his June debate performance upended his campaign and the trajectory of the general election.
We now know that private entreaties from other leading Democrats for him to withdraw his re-election bid – which were suspected but not yet confirmed – were in fact made over the past week. The emissaries to the president included, separately, Sen. Charles Schumer (NY), the leading Democrat in the Senate, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY), the leading Democrat in the House, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA), the former speaker of the House.
It is obvious by his words and deeds that Biden rebuffed those appeals.
What happened yesterday was the other shoe dropping: It appears through strategic leaks and off-the-record confirmation of those leaks that leading Democrats let it be known via the press that they had tried and failed to dislodge Biden. Making that information public was another step in the pressure campaign to get Biden out. Private appeals having failed, the pressure campaign from leading Democrats went public.
At the same time, the likely next senator from California, Rep. Adam Schiff (D), came out publicly against Biden remaining as the nominee. Schiff’s position as an active Senate candidate from the most populous state was another indication of the darkening political environment for Biden.
In a parallel move, the Democratic National Committee delayed from July until August a virtual roll call vote to make Biden the nominee. The move reportedly came at the urging of Schumer and Jeffries. The effect is to buy the anti-Biden movement more time to exert pressure on him to withdraw. Meanwhile, Democratic donors continue to make their displeasure with Biden known.
It’s fair to say that there is no real historical precedent for this situation, certainly not since the implementation of the current presidential primary system in the 1970s. It’s astonishing to consider the ousting of the sitting president as the party’s standard bearer at such a late date, but it is at least as difficult to envision how he survives this widespread intra-party revolt against his candidacy.
The president was on a campaign swing through Nevada when he tested positive for COVID. He will isolate at his Delaware home. His symptoms are described as mild.
As preliminary after-action reports continue to trickle in, let me offer one caution on sourcing for the details of the security failure that led to Donald Trump narrowly escaping assassination.
There are four broad categories of sourcing:
No single source is inherently more or less reliable, except No. 4 above, which is always fraught because it is second hand and because members of Congress filter the information, sometimes deliberately and other times unconsciously, through their own political prisms.
With that said, here are some of the key stories from the past 24 hours:
Four GOP senators confronted Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle at the Republican National Convention over the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and continued to follow and berate her after she tried to end the exchange.
The senators were James Lankford (OK), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Kevin Cramer (ND), and John Barrasso (WY). Here’s video of the encounter posted by Blackburn:
The Secret Service felt compelled to a defend its female employee against right-wing attacks, providing a statement to NBC News that read in part: “It is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender. Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce.”
AP: “Four days after a gunman’s attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, the public is still in the dark over the extent of his injuries, what treatment the Republican presidential nominee received in the hospital, and whether there may be any long-term effects on his health.”
The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that Minnesota’s ban on 18- to 20-year-olds carrying handguns in public is an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. Relying on recent Supreme Court decisions, the appeals court said the Second Amendment applies to all adults.
TPM’s Josh Kovensky offers four takeaways from JD Vance Night at the Republican National Connvetion.
Trump White House official Peter Navarro was released from federal prison yesterday and made a beeline for Milwaukee, where he was reward with a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Navarro had served four months in prison for contempt of Congress after stymying the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), now convicted on federal bribery charges, is considering resigning his seat under pressure from Senate Democrats, the NYT reported. NBC News took it a step farther, reporting that Menendez is telling allies he will resign.
Roger Parloff has yet more on the part of the ruling that is most flagrantly favorable to Trump’s particular situation and puts the New York hush-money conviction at risk.
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As you know, I’ve been pressing the simple point that we don’t have any information about the injury to the former president’s ear or what caused it other than a social media post from him on Truth Social a few hours after the Saturday afternoon shooting. That’s not just inadequate. It’s frankly bizarre. Someone did just flag to me that two days ago the Times made a very oblique reference to this in an article devoted to Congressman Ronny Jackson’s description of changing the gauze on Trump’s ear on his flight to Milwaukee (“Former White House Doctor Describes Tending To Trump’s Wounded Ear“). That article says in passing: “So far, only Mr. Trump has described his injuries; his team has not provided any formal medical briefing to the public since the shooting.” And that’s it.
Continue reading “Pretty Passive”The third night of the Republican Convention in Milwaukee had two goals: introduce audiences to the MAGA 2.0 take on foreign policy, and to former President Trump’s newly selected vice presidential candidate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).
In both cases, what was included was as notable as what wasn’t.
Continue reading “4 Takeaways From The Night Of JD Vance’s Big Introduction At The GOP Convention”Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) will deliver the keynote speech at the RNC on Wednesday night, marking his first full-length public appearance after Donald Trump selected him as a vice presidential candidate.
Continue reading “JD Vance To Elegize Own Dignity On Night Three of RNC”
