Former President Trump loves his beautiful boaters, apparently even when they are publicly expressing support for the extreme QAnon conspiracy theory. Photos posted to Facebook purportedly show Trump standing by the lawn at his private Florida beach club, Mar-a-Lago on Sunday and waving over two boats, one of which was prominently decorated with a massive flag bearing his face and the well-known QAnon slogans “TRUST THE PLAN” and “WWG1WGA,” which is an acronym for “Where We Go One, We Go All.”
Continue reading “Trump Invited Boat With Massive QAnon Flag To Dock At Mar-a-Lago For ‘Refreshments’ “Folks, Let’s Do This!!!
Folks, let me cut to the chase. Today kicks off our annual TPM membership drive. It is, as always, critical. Our team works all year producing the coverage, commentary and, we hope, insight that makes TPM a valued and trusted news source and our publishing team works just as hard fine-tuning our membership model, trying to add to our subscription numbers. But we rely on a key bump in the numbers during the annual drive. That’s what kicks off today. So if you’re a reader but not a member, please consider joining us. Or maybe you’re a former member. Can we coax you back? Think of it as fake it til you make it. Sign up for a year or even a month. See how it goes. We think you’ll want to stay.
What kind of work will you be supporting? We pride ourselves on punching way above our weight. We always have. Our membership page says, “Small Team, Big Results.” We work hard to make that true every day. But just consider some of our big exclusives since our last drive: There was our big series on The Meadows Texts. More recently we brought you our exclusive series on The Chesebro Docs and our big exclusive on the SACR Document Trove, our exposé on the secret society of White Christian men prepping a Christian nationalist government to take over after the fall of the American “regime.” Of course, everyone was on the Santos story. But TPM was the first to report the most substantial of the *alleged* (ahem) crimes that got him indicted and finally led to his expulsion from Congress. Sometimes, of course, we just love us some good old fashioned sleaze, with some sports adjacency thrown in — like our look at just who paid for Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders epic six figure Super Bowl Extravaganza. (She sleazed it up bigly but good lord that was a good game!) Of course, as has always been the case at TPM, most of our best work doesn’t come in one-off big exclusives. It comes with a close, incremental, informed coverage of critical topics that often fall just below the national news radar. An ongoing example of that has been Kate Riga’s coverage of SCOTUS, the federal judiciary and particularly the tentacles the right-wing legal project has driven down into it in recent years, creating pipelines from the country’s most radical Trumpite judges right up to the high court. I even chip in myself with a few pieces.
That’s the work you’re supporting with your membership dollar. That’s the club we want you to become part of by subscribing. Some fun stats: Over 90% of our revenue comes directly from members. And the overwhelming majority of that revenue goes directly to the people who do the work. Salaries and benefits make up 74% of our expenses. It’s not going to some derivatives or debt service or into a corporate vortex that’s impossible to understand. This is a fully independent outfit. All the strategy emerges from inside the organization and that’s where all the final decisions are made too.
This is where you come in. If you’re not currently a member, please take a moment and join today. Just click right here. We want to sign up 1,000 new members during our drive. A huge number, but we think we can do it. If you’re already a member and are just really jazzed up about TPM after reading this you can always contribute to the TPM Journalism Fund. That’s really for another day and our other big annual drive. Today is about bringing more of you into the club. So what do you say? Join us!
What New Madness Has Aileen Cannon Visited Upon Us?!
Morning Memo comes to you this week from Knoxville, Tennessee, where I’m checking in on my folks. Sign up for the email version.
Buckle Up!
A rapid-fire series of developments in the various Trump legal entanglements Monday demonstrate anew what a precarious position Trump is in. Precarious probably doesn’t do it justice. There is simply no precedent for a major party nominee for the presidency to be under criminal indictment in four different jurisdictions while also burdened by half a billion dollars in civil judgments against him.
Let’s get to it.
The Newest Cannon Craziness
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has unlocked new achievements in weirdness and incompetence.
On Monday, she issued an order directing Special Counsel Jack Smith and Donald Trump to each come up with a set of proposed jury instructions based on two hypothetical interpretations of the Presidential Records Act. Both of her interpretations are wrong as a matter of law and favorable to Trump, putting Smith in an extraordinary bind.
If this is confusing, trust me, it’s not you. This is a strange and unusual place to be at this stage in a criminal case. Cannon clearly doesn’t understand her role or the law at issue. She is casting about for help, but doing so in a way that is not going to be helpful to her or to the case.
This is where I would usually insert a brief (and incisive!) explanation of the legal issues, but that’s impossible to do here. It makes no sense.
It’s an utter mess and left legal observers flabbergasted.
A Sampling Of The Reaction To Cannon
- George Conway: “In the decades that I have been a lawyer, this is the most bizarre order I’ve ever seen issued by a federal judge. What makes that all the more amazing is that the second and third most bizarre orders I’ve ever seen in federal court were also issued by Judge Cannon in this case.”
- Joyce Vance: “[I]t’s two pages of crazy stemming from the Judge’s apparent inability to tell Trump no when it comes to his argument that he turned the nation’s secrets into his personal records by designating them as such under the Presidential Records Act.”
- Much more here …
Trump Fails To Get James’ Bond
Donald Trump came up short, he told an appeals court, in obtaining a bond to secure payment of the $454 million judgment against him obtained by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Some 30 companies rebuffed Trump, most refusing to accept real estate as collateral for the bond. The deadline to obtain a bond is March 25, after which James can begin collecting on her judgment against him – unless the appeals court gives Trump some relief.
Good Catch
NBC News dug into UCC filings in Florida to find evidence of the collateral that Trump used to secure the $91.63 million appeal bond he posted in the E. Jean Carroll case: It’s a brokerage account at Charles Schwab held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust.
Trump: I Didn’t Rape Her! I Sexually Assaulted Her!
Donald Trump has sued George Stephanopoulos and ABC News for defamation, claiming that it was libelous for Stephanopoulos to say on his March 10 Sunday show that Trump had been found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll when he had only been found liable for sexually assaulting her. Good luck with that one!
Keep An Eye On Georgia RICO Case
Trump and his co-defendants having formally asked the trial judge to allow them to immediately appeal his decision not to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis. If granted, it could add significant delay to a case that is already going to drag deep into 2025.
Key Pre-Trial Rulings In The Hush Money Case
The trial judge in the now-delayed Stormy Daniels hush money case issued several important pre-trial evidentiary rulings Monday:
- Prosecutors may not play the Access Hollywood tape but they can ask witnesses about it.
- Prosecutors may call Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and Karen McDougal to the stand.
- Prosecutors may argue that Trump was seeking to influence the 2016 election.
- Prosecutors may present evidence of the National Enquirer using “catch and kill” to protect Trump from unflattering stories.
Peter Navarro Reports To Prison Today
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rebuffed Trump White House official Peter Navarro’s last-ditch effort to avoid serving four months for his contempt of Congress conviction. He is to report to federal prison in Miami today.
Paul Manafort Is Back At The Worst Possible Time
With Trump under financial pressure and angling to avoid jail, the possible reemergence of Russia-oligarch-whisperer Paul Manafort – himself convicted in the Mueller probe and later pardoned by Trump – as an adviser to the Trump campaign is a development that I would find implausible in a fictional political thriller, but here we are:
- Brian Beutler: Desperate Trump Turns Once Again To Paul Manafort
- David Corn: Trump Considers Adding Paul Manafort—a “Grave Counterintelligence Threat”—to His Campaign
- Marcy Wheeler: “Donald Trump is considering hiring the former business partner of two alleged Russian spies, admitted money launderer Paul Manafort, to help with fundraising.”
Notable
The Supreme Court was cool to the argument from red states that the Biden administration had illegally coerced social media platforms into removing misinformation.
Centering Christian Nationalism
TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on a little-noticed speech last fall given by former Trump OMB Director Russ Vought that puts Christian nationalism at the center of the Trump II agenda.
Lovely …
Donald Trump: Any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” and “everything about Israel.”
What An Intern Program!
A conservative “influencer” and former intern for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has been charged in the Jan. 6 attack. Isabella Deluca interned with Gosar for three months starting the fall of 2022, after she had already been contacted by the FBI and while she was under investigation.
Gosar interns should ring a bell for you.
One of the them popped up in this May 2023 TPM story about the ties between a Gosar staffer and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.
Then in January 2024, the Arizona Mirror published a story on two other Gosar interns who had “expressed deeply racist, homophobic and antisemitic beliefs.”
Smart Move!
With a bench warrant outstanding against her back in Michigan, pro-Trump lawyer Stefanie Lambert showed up anyway for a hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., where she was representing former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in a defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. She was arrested after the hearing by U.S. marshals. The bench warrant was issued after she failed to appear to face four felony counts in a voting machine tampering case that grew out of bogus 2020 election conspiracies.
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Trump II Architect Russ Vought Embraces A Christian Nationalist Vision For America
One of the key architects of Donald Trump’s plans for a second administration has been quite public about the driving force animating that radical agenda: a “cold civil war” to be won by those willing to use “biblical principles” to “instruct government” to do what the MAGA right wants.
Continue reading “Trump II Architect Russ Vought Embraces A Christian Nationalist Vision For America”How Not To Fall For Yet More Trumper Textualism About His Latest Threat of Violence
If you’ve followed the uproar over ex-President Trump’s promise of a “bloodbath” if he’s not elected you’ll see it’s partly been diverted into a kind of textualist grudge match over whether he meant apocalyptic and blood-drenched civil violence or simply stiff competition for the U.S. auto industry. If you look at the actual words it seems clear he initially riffs on his claims about the auto industry but then doubles down on the promise of a bloodbath, suggesting that problems with the economy will be the least of the country’s problems. You can interpret it either way in large part because Trump always expresses himself in the kind of disjointed word salad which always require the words to be reconstructed after the fact, thus giving a fair amount of leeway to whoever wants to do the interpreting and reconstructing.
But that’s a feature, not a bug.
Continue reading “How Not To Fall For Yet More Trumper Textualism About His Latest Threat of Violence”Trump Will ‘Soon’ Decide Who He’s Willing To Piss Off On Abortion
Tucked into that exceptionally grim, softball Trump interview with Fox News’ Howard Kurtz over the weekend, there was a little chunk of news: the former president plans to make a decision “pretty soon” on whether he’ll back a national abortion ban if he wins the White House again in the fall.
Continue reading “Trump Will ‘Soon’ Decide Who He’s Willing To Piss Off On Abortion”Supreme Court Justices Balk At Red States’ Free Speech Absolutism In Social Media Case
Even some of the right-wing justices hitched up an eyebrow Monday when a couple of red states argued against nearly any government intervention in social media content moderation.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Justices Balk At Red States’ Free Speech Absolutism In Social Media Case”Developments Under the Headlines in the Israel-Hamas War
Here is a small bundle of updates on significant events unfolding in Israel and Gaza which are mostly out of the US headlines.
Continue reading “Developments Under the Headlines in the Israel-Hamas War”A Wild Weekend Of A Deranged Trump Telling You Exactly What He Will Do
Morning Memo comes to you this week from Knoxville, Tennessee, where I’m checking in on my folks. Sign up for the email version.
The Descent Into Madness
In a wild rally in Ohio and Fox News sit-down interview, Donald Trump continued to demonstrate this weekend how utterly unfit for any public office he is, how disastrous a second term would be, and how much pain and suffering he would inflict on actual people.
Trump casually engaged in dehumanizing rhetoric, threats of violence, vows of retribution, and unhinged commentary. Nothing new, you say? Perhaps. But at this point if you can no longer register alarm for the country or for yourself, muster it for those who are and will be direct targets of Trump’s fantasies of revenge and systemic violence. In the meantime, what are we left to do if not document day by day, step by step the rapid descent into madness that Trump promises in a second term?
The “J6 anthem” is now routine at Trump events, coupled with Trump assurances that he will immediately pardon what he calls the Jan. 6 “hostages”:
"Please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages" pic.twitter.com/YLVTrOg1hQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 16, 2024
Trump is now calling for the members of the House Jan. 6 committee to be jailed.
In a fawning interview with Howard Kurtz (no relation), Trump did not recoil at the comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini:
Trump on criticism that he's using the same rhetoric as Hitler when he calls migrants "vermin": "I didn't know that, but that's what they say."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 17, 2024
He then doubles down on the Nazi rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/oBnlFEFA2m
I’ve only picked a few of the most egregious examples from this weekend. There was more. So much more.
Credit Where Due
Mainstream news outlets aren’t completely deaf to the Trump threat:
Dark Humor
Essential Reading
Yale historian Timothy Snyder:
Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won’t. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.
What Pence’s Refusal To Endorse Trump Means
Trump’s own vice president has joined the dozens of former Trump officials who are not supporting his re-election but instead are warning of the dire consequences of him reattaining the Oval Office:
Former Obama White House official Dan Pfeiffer notes: “I can’t believe I am writing this, but Donald Trump’s Vice President refusing to endorse him is a big deal, and overly cynical Democrats like myself shouldn’t dismiss it outright.”
BREAKING …
Just out this morning from the WaPo: Trump is eyeing Paul Manafort for 2024 campaign role
SCOTUS Oral Arguments Today In Major Case
The Supreme Court oral arguments today in the Biden administration social media case is as important for how the case arrived at the high court as it is for the underlying interests at stake.
If you read just one thing in advance of oral arguments, make it this JustSecurity piece by Justin Hendrix and Ryan Goodman titled “A Conspiracy Theory Goes to the Supreme Court: How Did Murthy v. Missouri Get This Far?”
Other reading material as you prep for oral arguments:
- Mary B. McCord: The Supreme Court Cannot Ignore the National Security Implications of the So-Called ‘Jawboning’ Case
- NYT: How Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation
Justice Breyer: SCOTUS Has Taken A Wrong Turn
Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has a new book coming out and sat for an interview with the NYT where he warns: “Something important is going on. The court has taken a wrong turn, he said, and it is not too late to turn back.”
Keep An Eye On This
Judd Legum: Will Senate Democrats cave to an Islamophobic smear campaign against Adeel Mangi, a Biden nominee to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals?
MUST READ
TPM’s Hunter Walker: House GOPers Teamed With Conspiracist Who Called Migrants ‘Apes’ And ‘Congo-Cannibals’
What’s Next In the Georgia RICO Case?
With the judge’s order Friday excoriating District Attorney Fani Willis and Nathan Wade’s subsequent withdrawal as special prosecutor in the case, the big question is whether the judge’s ruling can be appealed immediately – and the delays that will inevitably result.
The Mess That Is Now The Hush Money Case
The state judge overseeing Trump’s hush money trial in New York delayed the trial at least 30 days, did not set a new trial date, and (angrily) ordered Trump and District Attorney Alvin Bragg to submit detailed timelines of their efforts to obtain relevant materials from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York ahead of a new hearing set for March 25 in which he will try to get to the bottom of what happened that caused the trial delay and who, if anyone, is to blame for it.
Keeping It In Perspective
Morning Memo feels a constant tension between the imminent threat of Donald Trump and the only threat that dwarfs him: climate change. I usually feebly resolve the tension with a reminder to self that nothing will do more to set back the transition to a carbon-free economy than Trump’s re-election. But in the meantime, warming is not slowing and the knock-on effects of climate change slowly come into clearer focus. But the unknowns remain staggering, such as the last year of record-smashing sea surface temperatures:
[F]or the last twelve months, the seas have been so feverish that scientists are starting to worry about not just the physical impacts of all that heat but the theoretical implications. Can the past year be explained by what’s already known about climate change, or are there forces at work that haven’t been accounted for? And, if it’s the latter, does this mean that projections of warming, already decidedly grim, are underestimating the dangers?
For ongoing insights on sea surface temperatures, you can follow Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.
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Employees Have A Right To Show BLM Support On The Job After Historic Labor Board Decision
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
A Home Depot store violated labor law when it disciplined Antonio Morales, the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Feb. 21, 2024.
Continue reading “Employees Have A Right To Show BLM Support On The Job After Historic Labor Board Decision”