The Big Lie Is A Long Con, A Grift, And A Trump Family Biz Opportunity

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

All In The Family

When RNC co-chair and Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump blasted out a robocall last week claiming “massive fraud” in the 2020 election, it was a continuation of one of the great long cons in history. Four years and counting …

The origin of the Big Lie can be traced back to four years ago this week, when then-President Trump first started freaking out over COVID-era rule changes that would make voting easier and safer. Better access to voting has long been anathema to Republicans, and Trump’s own antipathy towards the pandemic accommodations quickly morphed into allegations that Democrats were cheating.

From there, the Big Lie metastasized into a sweeping, far-reaching conspiracy to first delegitimize and then overturn the results of the 2020 election. We often say the conspiracy culminated with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, but in truth it never ended so it’s hard to say when it culminated or if it even has yet. If that sounds ominous, it should.

The Big Lie continued to evolve and now it serves a different set of purposes, first and foremost to keep Trump out of jail. There’s a straight line from the Big Lie through Trump’s decision to declare his candidacy early so that he could label any prosecution of him as “election interference” to the millions of dollars being raised from hapless marks to pay Trump’s legal bills.

In that way, the Big Lie is a criminal conspiracy, a long con, a grift, and essentially a Trump family business opportunity. Installing his conspiracy-minded daughter-in-law at the RNC opens another spigot of cash for his legal defense, and her robocall tapped it. As an arch Philip Bump notes: “A Trump raising money off election lies? Now we’ve seen everything.”

Cowed Republican elected officials continue to pay homage to the Big Lie. It cannot be disavowed without putting their political careers on the line. With the Big Lie now serving as a litmus test for RNC hires, Joyce Vance writes: “The corruption of the Republican Party is virtually complete … This is about the un-democratization of the Republican Party and its conversion into a political tool whose job is to fuel the cult of personality.”

So rather than seeing the Big Lie merely as a historical artifact, a ripe target of derision and ridicule, or a sign of cultishness, it’s best seen as an ongoing threat to democracy and the rule of law with its denouement yet to be written.

Speaker Makes Pilgrimage To Mar-A-Lago

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is prostrating himself before Donald Trump in an expected joint appearance at Mar-a-Lago where they will reportedly tout a bogus initiative to prevent non-citizens from voting. Narrator: It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote.

Trump Criminal Trial Starts Monday!

Barring any last many surprises, the first criminal trial of a former president will begin Monday with jury selection in Manhattan. Security measures are in place. Trump’s pre-trial wrangling to delay the case has either been dismissed or is expected to be. A reminder that TPM’s Josh Kovensky will be covering the trial for us in person, so long as access is available.

Good Read

Politico: How Donald Trump Gets Special Treatment in the Legal System

Here We Go Again, Wisconsin

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will not run for re-election in 2025, setting up another barnburner of a judicial race next April. Bradley is a member of the court’s new-as-of-2023 liberal majority, meaning her departure puts control of the court in play.

2024 Ephemera

  • AZ-Sen: Likely GOP nominee Kari Lake is practically begging Arizona lawmakers to repeal the state’s Civil War-era abortion ban that she herself has long supported.
  • Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Arizona Friday for an already-scheduled event that she has converted into a showcase for the GOP’s new self-own on abortion politics. In prepared remarks, Harris says: “We all must understand who is to blame. It is the former president, Donald Trump.”
  • NC-Gov: Bankruptcy documents detail how GOP nominee Mark Robinson failed to file federal income taxes for 5 years.

FISA Reauthorization Salvaged With Trump Compromise

What looked 24 hours ago like a complete roadblock to renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was resolved when Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) shortened the renewal period from five to two years, giving Trump a chance to reshape the law if he’s re-elected and muzzling his “Kill FISA” opposition for now.

Iran Retaliation Against Israel Is Imminent

The top U.S. general in the region arrived in Israel Thursday ahead of what is widely expected to be a direct attack from Iran on southern or northern Israel as soon as Friday or Saturday, in retaliation for an April 1 strike in Syria that killed several senior Iranian commanders.

Orenthal James Simpson, 1947-2024

When word came yesterday of O.J. Simpson’s death, I realized most of our staff is too young to remember his trial for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, let alone recall his football-playing heyday in the 1970s or his highly successful transition into actor, commercial pitchman, and sports announcer in the 1980s.

Without that lead-in to the ghastly murders and subsequent trial of the last century, it’s quite difficult hard to capture the mix of fame, celebrity, cable TV obsessiveness, and sheer madness that created the spectacle of 1994-95.

Other contributing factors have become harder to explain over time: why it wasn’t widely covered as essentially a domestic violence case, how it came at the peak of the “tough on crime” era and fed into the already deep antagonism Black Americans felt toward the criminal justice system, and how the hell it gave us the Kardashians.

TPM’s Josh Marshall pulls it all together.

TPM On TV

This was a pleasant surprise yesterday. Entering the zeitgeist via Jeopardy!:

Thanks Again!

As we close out the week, one last expression of appreciation for the Morning Memo readers who became TPM members during the annual membership drive.

On Monday, we passed our goal of 1,000 new members way ahead of schedule. We’ve kept on trucking, with almost 200 more new members since then. A hugely successful drive that strengthened TPM’s financial position and expanded the core of the community that we’re building.

Even after 17 odd years of doing this, it remains a delight that people read us at all. We’re not screaming into the void? Awesome! You’re willingness to support us financially on top of that feels like a gift. So thanks again for that and for all the other ways you show your support for TPM.

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In Barnburner Wisconsin Supreme Court Race, Democrats Will Look To Flex Recent Off-Year Strength

Posted on by Kate Riga

In the post-Dobbs era, we’ve witnessed an old political truism be turned on its head: that Republicans dominate special elections.

Continue reading “In Barnburner Wisconsin Supreme Court Race, Democrats Will Look To Flex Recent Off-Year Strength” →

McConnell’s New Bill Reveals Unrelenting Pressure To Curb Judge-Shopping

Posted on by Kate Riga

Just a few weeks ago, it seemed that the energy around addressing the increasingly common practice of plaintiffs handpicking their judges had unexpectedly flared, and more expectedly died down.

Continue reading “McConnell’s New Bill Reveals Unrelenting Pressure To Curb Judge-Shopping” →

OJ, Dead at 76—Some Thoughts on the Man, the Fantasy and the Universal Text

Posted on by Josh Marshall

OJ Simpson’s death today at 76 seems and by all rights should be a smallish blip on the news horizon. He hasn’t been a public figure of any consequences in more than 26 years and he hasn’t been a truly public one in the sense of being successful or beloved in 30. But it’s still some milestone because of what a seismic event his killing of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, and his subsequent trial truly were.

There are so many dimensions of this event you could write whole books about — a good half a dozen meta-topics spring to mind without even giving the matter much thought. Though it was essentially a pre-internet story, it was unique to the early cable news era, a kind of progenitor of today — CNN, national tabloid culture, the birth of commentator culture. In a way it created each. The story had this criss-crossed relationship with racism and the country’s racial politics and the state of the criminal justice system, one which was upended, hopelessly upside down and yet somehow deeply true. It was at heart of horribly ordinary story about chronic spousal violence which finally escalated to murder. There was the DNA, the glove, the perjurious racist cop. The whole thing was like a universal text.

Continue reading “OJ, Dead at 76—Some Thoughts on the Man, the Fantasy and the Universal Text” →

Trump GOP Reaps The Whirlwind On Its Anti-Abortion Absolutism

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

When Us v. Them Collapses On Itself

Republicans spent the day tying themselves in knots over the Arizona Supreme Court ruling that reinstated a Civil War-era territorial law banning nearly all abortions.

Shouts of “Shame! Shame!” erupted as Arizona Republican legislators thwarted attempts to repeal the state’s newly revived 1864 abortion ban. That made it comically more difficult for Donald Trump and other national Republicans to maintain the pretension that the Arizona mess would be quickly cleaned up.

But that pretension was itself a Russian nesting doll of bad faith and disingenuousness. Mess? What mess? This was precisely what Republicans set out to create in the half century since Roe legalized abortions nationwide. Even in Arizona itself, the GOP molded the state’s high court with this kind of outcome in mind, as the NYT reports.

It’s almost too obvious to say, but: It’s much easier maintaining a deeply unpopular political position when there’s no chance of it becoming law.

It goes beyond that, though.

A critical element of the GOP’s anti-abortion fanaticism was always a classic “us versus them” sorting exercise. On one side were God-fearing, chaste, proper, and upstanding women alongside their men and on the other side … oh my. Usually implicit but sometimes quite explicit was a fictional picture of a pro-abortion world populated by slutty liberal woman, Black women with no self respect or self control, serial baby-makers living out of wedlock, and a vile array of similarly atrocious caricatures.

Layer on top of that mean-spiritedness the MAGA Republican impulse to target, punish, and hurt its foes, and you could anticipate how this might go. Before Dobbs, it was easy for Trump et al. to use anti-abortion invective as a weapon. After Dobbs, the weaponization of abortion suddenly resulted in lots and lots of friendly fire. It wasn’t just those women who were affected, it was all women. The line between us and them blurred. What were easy cheap shots became self-inflicted wounds.

And Trump in his lizard brain knows this.

Trump Flails Hard On Abortion

Donald Trump has hung abortion politics around his own neck and now he’s drowning.

In remarks Wednesday trying to put out the fire he re-ignited earlier this week when his official non-position became “leave it up to the states,” Trump further backed himself into a corner:

  • In a significant but not altogether believable about-face from his previous campaigns, Trump said he would not sign a national ban on abortions if it came to his desk.
  • At the same time, Trump doubled down on punishing doctors who provide abortions.
  • As TPM’s Josh Marshall wrote: “It is a very clear sign of just how much Trump and his campaign feel like they’re on the run and on the ropes on this issue, partly because the Monday announcement was generally ineffective and even more after the bombshell news yesterday out of Arizona.”

Return With Us Now To Those Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear

  • Monica Hesse: Meet the ‘pursuer of nubile young females’ who helped pass Arizona’s 1864 abortion law
  • Good one:

Sean Hannity Needs Help

I’ve never seen the Fox News luminary so utterly adrift:

Keep trying, Sean:

Feel Trump’s Desperation As Criminal Trial Looms

It’s looking increasingly likely that the hush money trial will begin on schedule Monday in Manhattan:

  • Trump fails for a third time this week to delay the hush money trial.
  • TPM’s Hunter Walker: Trump Falsely Claims He ‘Just Found’ New Info Exonerating Him In Stormy Daniels Affair Case

Weisselberg Sentenced To Five Months … Again

Former Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in Rikers for perjuring himself in the Trump civil fraud trial in New York.

It was the second consecutive year that Weisselberg was given a five-month Rikers sentence. The previous sentence was for tax fraud for his role in the Trump Org.

In each instance, he’ll end up serving about 100 days behind bars.

Quote Of The Day

I can’t in good conscience stay on the board of an organization representing Gerald R. Ford that doesn’t manifest his kind of guts. It’s now a place whose leadership is cowed by a demagogue creating and promulgating the greatest crisis our country has faced since the Civil War.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Hume Kennerly, in his letter resigning as a trustee of Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation for what he claims was its timidity in not giving its Distinguished Public Service medal to former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY)

Important

The House GOP melted down again after Trump ordered it to “Kill FISA.” It would be funny to watch if the national security implications weren’t so serious:

  • WSJ: Speaker Johnson’s Woes Grow After GOP Holdouts Block Spying Bill
  • Politico: Surveillance bill implodes amid GOP infighting in latest blow to Johnson
  • WaPo: House Republicans revolt against spy agency bill, signaling trouble for Johnson

It’s hard to overstate how rare it is for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to be enduring these kinds of internal procedural setbacks. Here’s a glimpse though:

2024 Ephemera

  • Politico: Trump, GOP scramble to contain abortion ‘earthquake’
  • Politico: How Biden’s campaign plans to pummel Trump on abortion
  • Semafor’s David Weigel: “Republican Secretaries of State in Ohio and Alabama have told Democrats that their presidential ticket might not qualify for their ballots, warning that the party’s nominating convention in Chicago will come too late to make their deadlines.”

So Very Afraid

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Signs That Johnson’s About To Give Up The Act

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

When House Republicans handed a 2020 election denier the gavel after ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), there were strong indications the speakership might function as nothing more than a Donald Trump plaything for the foreseeable future.

Continue reading “Signs That Johnson’s About To Give Up The Act” →

Trump Falsely Claims He ‘Just Found’  New Info Exonerating Him In Stormy Daniels Affair Case

Posted on by Hunter Walker

In a post on his Truth Social account on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump seemed to suggest he was going through his infamous piles of documents when he found something that cleared him in the Stormy Daniels hush money scandal. However, the document Trump claimed to have “just found” is a widely discussed statement from Daniels that has been extensively, publicly discussed for over six years. 

“LOOK WHAT WAS JUST FOUND! WILL THE FAKE NEWS REPORT IT?” Trump asked on Truth Social, just above a photo of the document. 

The news media has already reported on the statement, which appears to be signed by Daniels. In it, the former adult film star denied her “alleged sexual relationship” with Trump. Daniels also declared, “I am not denying the affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids.” 

Of course, it would later emerge that Daniels’ attorney received a $130,000 payment from Trump’s lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, in conjunction with a non-disclosure agreement as she considered going public with affair allegations before the 2016 election. Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges including campaign finance violations that stemmed from the payments. The alleged hush money payment is now at the center of one of the ongoing criminal cases against Trump, set to go to trial next week.

Daniels disavowed her statement in late January 2018 on the very same night it was released. In an interview with “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Daniels suggested the signature didn’t look like hers. During a subsequent March 2018 interview on “60 Minutes,” Daniels admitted she had agreed to sign the statement and claimed she did so because people involved ““made it sound like I had no choice.”  

Despite how much the statement has already been publicized and litigated, Trump supporters have recently begun re-circulating it and suggesting it is new. The strategy prompted a fact check from the Associated Press last month, which noted, “Trump allies and others on social media are attempting to cast the old statement denying the affair as new information.” Now, Trump himself is getting in on the action.

Trump, who has consistently denied having an affair with Daniels, was charged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with falsifying business records related to the payment. The case made Trump the first president in American history to be charged with a crime as he is running to return to the White House. Since then, Trump has faced other charges, but Bragg’s case is the only one, at least so far, that’s headed to trial before the election in November. In recent days, Trump’s lawyers have filed three legal challenges to the case. As of now, the trial is set to start on Monday. 

Daniels did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story. She is set to spend the coming weekend at the EXXXOTICA Expo in Chicago, which is billed as “the largest adult event in the USA dedicated to love and sex.” 

Trump Feels on the Run on Abortion

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Today in Atlanta a reporter asked Trump whether he would sign a national abortion ban if Congress sent one to him as President. He said he would not. A clear “no.” He got asked again, and again said no. It should go without saying that there’s zero reason to believe him. If Congress passed such a law he would almost certainly sign it. But that’s not what’s interesting here. He very conspicuously did not say this in his abortion mini-speech on Monday. It’s not like he didn’t know that was an option. He and his campaign very strategically did not say this. Now he has. It is a very clear sign of just how much Trump and his campaign feel like they’re on the run and on the ropes on this issue, partly because the Monday announcement was generally ineffective and even more after the bombshell news yesterday out of Arizona. Just two days later and they’re already having to do repair work on his big announcement that was supposed to sidestep the issue for the campaign.

Biden’s campaign has settled on a very clear message they’re using in response to every new restriction and horror story. “Donald Trump did this.” It works because it’s true. Indeed, Trump himself has shown he’s unwilling and unable not to keep taking the same credit. Donald Trump did this. And he’s feeling the heat in a way his own campaign did not expect and so far is showing itself unable to deal with.