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

Way Past Time To Kill Off This Coverage Model

Ronna McDaniel is such a buffoonish and servile character that her presence on NBC News threatens to topple the partisan talking head model around which the news nets build their political coverage.

It’s been a long time coming.

McDaniel, because of her prior role as an enabler of Donald Trump and the Big Lie of 2020, is an order of magnitude worse than the parade of predecessors who took the revolving door from political operative to network news contributor. But they are not fundamentally different from her. Remember Rick Santorum?

The whole fetid paradigm for political coverage – which probably started with the original CNN Crossfire – should be tossed in the garbage. Along with it should go the dubious tradition of the news networks “sponsoring” political debates, which may look on the surface like a civic endeavor but in reality is a ratings and brand enhancer. Multiple reports suggest that the McDaniel fiasco originated in negotiations she conducted as RNC chair with a NBC News political unit desperate to land a GOP presidential primary debate.

The simplistic formula of talking heads from the right and from the left jousting on live TV as a form of “news” or “coverage” is cheap, easy to produce, and positions the news nets as having convening authority. But substantively? They’re vapid. They always have been. They got worse in the reality TV era, where the “jousting” became the entire point. The more provocative, in-your-face, and over-the-top the pundit, the better the spectacle.

The perverse set of institutional and commercial interests that gave rise to cable news’ surfeit of partisan talking heads hasn’t changed. I’m not under any illusion that the news nets will abandon the format anytime soon.

When even the opponents to McDaniel’s hiring concede that it’s “important to have conservative voices on air,” it suggests the format has continued staying power. Before you write in that I’m trying to silence conservatives, consider whether this format truly gives voice to any side in American politics or is merely its own spectacle serving as a poor proxy for genuine public debate.

MSNBC Blows Up Over Ronna McDaniel

The liberal-branded cable news net was left spluttering over the decision by its broadcast network sibling (parent?) to pay former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel $300,000 a year to be political contributor.

The corporate and editorial structure between NBC News and MSNBC has always been a bit Byzantine, and there’s precedent for the two entities to alternatively embrace and distance themselves from each other. But nothing quite like this before.

In her long, 12-minute segment last night on the controversy, Rachel Maddow waded into the internal tensions. “Ronna McDaniel will not be on MSNBC,” Maddow told her audience. “And I say that and give you that level of detail because there has been an effort since by other parts of the company to muddy that up in the press and make it seem like that’s not what happened at MSNBC. I can assure you that is what happened at MSNBC.”

Here’s the full segment:

On A More Serious Note

The corporate interest in mollifying MAGA Republicans in order to maintain their steadfast neutrality is precisely the kind of quiet acquiescence that abets a wannabe strongman like Trump.

Princeton Yale historian Timothy Snyder eloquently spoke of this kind of placation … on MSNBC … yesterday:

Timothy Snyder perfectly explains on #DeadlineWH why NBC News hired Ronna McDaniel, "So this is like a trial run for NBC and everyone else to say okay, we're going to practice appeasing a dictator and then when it comes, we'll be better at it." pic.twitter.com/F3LA6qDqvL

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) March 25, 2024

SCOTUS Hears Abortion Pill Arguments

The Supreme Court hears oral arguments this morning in the mifepristone case out of Texas. TPM will have live coverage with Kate Riga.

To prep you for the arguments, the legal:

• Politico: Supreme Court hears its biggest abortion case since the fall of Roe
• NYT: Abortion Pill Dispute Centers on Central Question Of Who Can Sue?
• CNN: A timeline of how we got here

The lawyering:

• WSJ: She’s the Brilliant Mind Fighting the Abortion Pill in Court. Her Husband Is a Senator.
• NYT: Erin Hawley, The Woman Arguing Against the Abortion Pill

The practical:

• NYT: What’s at Stake and What’s Next

The political:

• Aaron Blake: Why the Supreme Court abortion pill case is so fraught for the right

Trump Gets A New Trial Date

The trial judge in the New York hush money case was unimpressed by the pre-trial dispute Trump attempted to gin up to force a substantial delay in his upcoming trial. He reset the trial for April 15, which means Trump did succeed in delaying it three weeks but failed to push it past the November election.

Trump Gets Some Relief From Mammoth Civil Judgment

A mixed bag for Trump in the civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James when an appeals court gave him 10 extra days to come up with an appeal bond and dramatically reduced the size of the bond to $175 million. Not an inherently unreasonable decision, even though it adds to the general sense that Trump continues to skate. But $175 million ain’t nothing. It’s a lot to cough up and it’s there for James’ taking if Trump through other legal means ultimately loses on appeal, which is easier for her to do than seizing his property to pay the judgement.

I See …

Reuters: Billionaires sought to help fund Trump bond in civil fraud case, sources say

Sign Of The Times

The DOJ announced Monday at as press conference in Arizona that it is investigating dozens of threats against election workers and has charged 20 people so far. Arizona has been an epicenter of the threats.

Black Swan Event

The House GOP majority is now so narrow that the possibility of the lower chamber flipping to Democratic control before the November election can’t be ruled out. To be clear, the House has never changed power from one party to another between elections. But the current narrow GOP majority and disaffection within the House GOP conference are prime ingredients for a mid-Congress flip. Fox News’ Chad Pergram, a longtime Hill reporter, games it out.

2024 Ephemera

• Spoiler alert: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to announce today that his running mate will be Silicon Valley lawyer Nicole Shanahan, a 38-year-old with no prior political experience. Shanahan was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin from 2018-23.
• ‘Too Big To Rig’: The goofy origins of Trump’s latest mantra

Bridge Collapse In Baltimore

Unbelievable video of a container ship knocking over the I-895 I-695 bridge overnight, severing a major East Coast transportation link (especially for truck traffic) and shutting down the busy Baltimore harbor to ship traffic:

Clear Video of Traffic movement on Bridge before hit by a ship

At least 20 vehicles were on the bridge.

#keybridge #baltimore #Ship #FrancisScottKeyBridge #bridgecollapse #USA #BREAKINGNEWS #Baltimore #Maryland #BREAKING pic.twitter.com/NkH36hQ8Qp

— Chaudhary Parvez (@ChaudharyParvez) March 26, 2024

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

Trials And Tribulations

Donald Trump faces a deadline of today to secure an appeal bond or hope for relief from an appeals court to forestall New York Attorney General Letitia James from executing on her $454 million judgment against him.

For obvious reasons, folks are pretty ginned up about seeing some portion of the Trump biz empire dismantled piece by piece, but a few words of caution on what this will look like:

1. It’s going to take time. James may not begin the heavy lifting on collecting on the judgment until after an expected appeals court ruling later this week. But whenever she begins the process, it’s not going to happen in blazing fashion. It will happen at legal speed, which is somewhere between ponderous and bureaucratic.
2. Don’t forget about the debt. Many of Trump’s assets, like many of your assets, are collateral for debt, so when you see talk about the multimillion dollar valuation of this or that Trump property, that’s typically an estimate of the fair market value of the asset. It doesn’t usually account for any debt or other encumbrances against the asset. He may be a billionaire, but he’s leveraged, too.
3. James will be strategic. There’s not much upside for James in going through an extensive legal process to force liquidation of assets that don’t contain much equity. So don’t expect her to willy nilly start going after all the high-profile Trump assets. But that doesn’t mean Trump has skated in some way. Trump may have his name emblazoned on a building but it might be heavily encumbered and provide him with only nominal equity. If he even owns it at all.

Trump In Court Today

We’ll get more insight this morning on the status of the hush money case in Manhattan, which has been delayed in a pre-trial dispute over new documents provided by federal prosecutors from their closed related investigation. The trial judge is trying to get to the bottom of what happened in deciding whether to grant Trump even further delay. We might even get a new trial date. TPM’s Josh Kovensky will be reporting from the courthouse in lower Manhattan.

The Most WSJ Of WSJ Headlines

“Trump Is in a Race Against Time to Protect His Fortune“

On What Planet?

These two paragraphs from the NYT’s inside account of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s effort to prosecute Donald Trump rattled around in my head all weekend:

In trying to avoid even the smallest mistakes, Mr. Garland might have made one big one: not recognizing that he could end up racing the clock. Like much of the political world and official Washington, he and his team did not count on Mr. Trump’s political resurrection after Jan. 6, and his fast victory in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, which has complicated the prosecution and given the former president leverage in court.

In 2021 it was “simply inconceivable,” said one former Justice Department official, that Mr. Trump, rebuked by many in his own party and exiled at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, would regain the power to impose his timetable on the investigation.

I really struggle to buy the assertion that the political world had written Trump off as politically dead in 2021. But I really don’t know how anyone can say with a straight face that his future political viability was “inconceivable” at the time.

Why Jack Smith Can’t Get Aileen Cannon Removed Yet

Former CIA attorney Brian Greer, who posts on X/Twitter as @secretsandlaws, offers a cogent and reasoned explanation for why it is still premature for Special Counsel Jack Smith to try to seek the removal of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon from the Mar-a-Lago case.

The Mystery Of Paul Manafort

TPM’s Josh Kovensky, who has covered Paul Manafort from Kyiv to NYC, on what we still don’t know about his various misdeeds and murky schemes.

Oh …

NYT: “Jeff Yass, the billionaire Wall Street financier and Republican megadonor who is a major investor in the parent company of TikTok, was also the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that recently merged with former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company.”

Budget War Of 2023 Is Finally Over

Nearly six months into the current fiscal year, a budget for 2024 is finally at hand – thanks mostly to House Democrats who helped Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) get the final budget bill of last year through on Friday. “A total of 112 Republicans voted no on the minibus — including eight committee chairs — compared to just 101 supporting the measure,” Punchbowl noted. The Senate passed the bill after midnight early Saturday, nominally after the shutdown deadline but with little real impact.

Sucker Punched

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) surprised party leaders and narrowed the House GOP majority to a single vote with his decision to resign from Congress effective April 19. Gallagher had already announced he wasn’t going to run for re-election. His resignation date is one day after the deadline to call a special election, meaning House Republicans will be hamstrung by his departure all the way through the end of this Congress.

The Joy Of Being Mike Johnson

• CNN: Marjorie Taylor Greene files surprise motion to oust Speaker Johnson, a sign of growing revolt from the right
• WaPo: Weakened House GOP majority reckons with Johnson’s leadership
• WSJ: Why Mike Johnson Can’t Run the House Without Democrats’ Help

Sign Of The Times

TPM’s Khaya Himmelman reports on Maricopa County, Arizona turning its vote tabulation center into a virtual encampment to ward off threats, with measures like:

• permanent fencing;
• a badge requirement to enter the parking lot;
• additional badges to enter the building;
• metal detectors; and
• netting on the temporary fencing in the parking lot so that voters cannot take pictures of election workers or their license plates.

Welcome to 2024.

MSNBC Hires Ronna McDaniel As Paid Contributor

A public revolt is underway over the NBC News decision to bring on recently ousted RNC chair Ronna McDaniel on a paid contributor:

The outcry from MSNBC on-air personalities continued this morning.

2024 Ephemera

• NJ-Sen: New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy has ended her bid for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, clearing the way for Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) to be his party’s nominee for indicted Sen. Bob Menendez’s seat.
• NY-01: Ousted Rep. George Santos, still under federal criminal indictment, announced after the House passed its final 2024 budget bill Friday that he is leaving the Republican Party and will run as an independent in his new district.

It’s Not That Complicated

It really shouldn’t require falling back on foundational issues like the rule of law, democracy, or civic virtue to realize that Donald Trump is an utter buffoon who has no business near the Oval Office:

Congratulations, Donald. Quite the accomplishment. pic.twitter.com/nyDivqPwoI

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 25, 2024

Good Read

Politico: What happens when an AG dares to investigate Leonard Leo’s network

Don’t Get Too Hung Up On The Anthropocene

Erle C. Ellis: The Anthropocene May Not Be An ‘Epoch,’ But The Age Of Humans Is Most Definitely Underway

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