So I was very interested to see what seemed yesterday to be a promised vivisection of, well, me, after my post last week about the collapse of programmatic advertising and how it’s affected the news business. That is the post that included the chart of rapidly declining programmatic ad revenues. Gawker alum Foster Kamer linked to a promised takedown from Ben Smith in which Kamer is quoted and calls on everyone to stop “losing their minds at the death of media” because it’s a “very dumb chart.” (That’s yours truly’s chart: cue to Josh rending his garments.) But when I looked at the Ben Smith column it basically just repeated the points I made in the original post. So having been promised that I would be flayed alive, it turned out that wasn’t the case at all. Total low-energy move basically. But the comments did raise a few other issues that I thought worth mentioning.
Continue reading “Josh Replies to the Slings and Arrows of Those Claiming Digital News Advertising Is Going Great!”Everybody Tries To Circumvent House Republicans And Get Aid To Ukraine
The White House and House Democrats both made moves Tuesday to get aid to Ukraine, a burning priority for Democrats that Republicans are blocking in the House.
Continue reading “Everybody Tries To Circumvent House Republicans And Get Aid To Ukraine”Feast Upon The Outfits At This Year’s Oscars
The Oscars come only once a year, so we might as well take this opportunity to feast upon the fashion that was served this past Sunday night on the red carpet.
Emma Stone In Louis Vuitton
Lilly Gladstone In Gucci
Colman Domingo In Louis Vuitton
Robert Downey Jr. And Susan Downey In Saint Laurent
Margot Robbie In Versace
Cynthia Erivo In Louis Vuitton
Greta Gerwig In Gucci
Jon Batiste In Zegna
Yancey Red Corn
Emily Blunt In Schiaparelli And John Krasinski
Da’Vine Joy Randolph In Louis Vuitton
Sterling K. Brown In Dior
Nicolas Cage And Riko Shibata
Carey Mulligan In Balenciaga
Charlize Theron In Dior
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai In Dolce & Gabbana And Quannah Chasinghorse In Red Berry Woman
Bradley Cooper In Louis Vuitton
Florence Pugh In Del Core
Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves In Versace
Ryan Gosling In Gucci
Issa Rae In AMI Paris
Cillian Murphy In Versace
Zendaya In Armani
Anya Taylor-Joy In Dior
Odile Corso and Bill Corso
Melissa McCarthy In Christian Siriano
Billie Eilish In Chanel
Ron Klain Thinks The Biden ‘Alliance’ Is Strong Enough To Withstand Gaza And Trump
There were two hours to go before Ron Klain would officially become President Biden’s White House chief of staff, and he was locked out. Klain was about to become arguably the second most powerful person in the West Wing, but he ended up standing alone in a hallway outside the office he was set to occupy after an unsettling and odd saga that unfolded as former President Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, attempted to hold on to power during their final weeks in office.
Continue reading “Ron Klain Thinks The Biden ‘Alliance’ Is Strong Enough To Withstand Gaza And Trump”Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch?
I just noticed a write up on Trump stumbling into saying there’s lots you can do in terms of cutting Social Security and Medicare. The Biden campaign and other Democrats were promptly all over those comments, as you’d expect. But it raises a point that is too little discussed in the campaign dialog. Trump has two big advantages right now. The first is simply that he’s not Joe Biden and Biden’s approval has been low since the fall of 2021. The other is a general sense that things were better before the pandemic. You might say, wait, the pandemic happened on his watch and the worst of it took place during his presidency. But that’s not really the public memory. In any case, those are his two big advantages. And they could get him elected.
What this has tended to obscure, however, is that politically he is very, very rusty. Even in Trumpian terms his speeches these days are disjointed, weird, discordant. And again — not by the standard of who you might want within a mile of the Oval Office. I mean even in terms of Trumpian politics. He’s not the same.
Continue reading “Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch?”Experts Place New Secret Society Squarely In The Christian Nationalist Revival
A men-only, Christian-only, right-wing secret society with the aim of installing certain kinds of Christians in a future U.S. government does not want to be called Christian nationalist.
Continue reading “Experts Place New Secret Society Squarely In The Christian Nationalist Revival”Aileen Cannon Continues To Make A Mess Of The MAL Case
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
What Cannon Hath Wrought
Two developments yesterday that show what an absolute mess U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is making of the Mar-a-Lago case.
First, Donald Trump asked for a 10-day extension for him to file his replies on his motions to dismiss the case. It was a lame ask, a totally foreseeable deadline that had been in place for some time, and in a case with increasingly pressing time constraints, a clear effort to game the proceedings for more time. Despite that, Cannon quickly granted the request!
Second, in another troubling development, a key witness in the Mar-a-Lago case went public with CNN. Brian Butler, a former 20-year employee at Mar-a-Lago, is identified as “Trump Employee 5” in the indictment. Butler essentially confirmed what the indictment says about what he witnessed in the case. But for our purposes, it was most telling that Butler decided he’d rather come forward on his own terms than wait for Cannon to release prematurely the names of the witnesses in the case, as she keeps threatening to do.
Butler was primarily a witness to the coverup. It’s a good get by CNN. But it’s driven at least in part by Cannon’s mismanagement of the case. The only possible silver lining here is that some of the testimony that might otherwise not come out before Election Day due to Cannon’s slow-rolling of the case is getting to see the light of day.
Trump Is All About Delay, Delay, Delay
On the same day Trump won a deadline extension in the Mar-a-Lago case on the basis that he needed to prep for the New York hush money trial, we learned he was seeking to delay that trial, too. It’s a contradiction that Special Counsel Jack Smith pointed out to Judge Cannon, to no avail.
Trump, who didn’t raise a presidential immunity defense in a timely fashion in the New York case (and to the extent he did he lost), now wants the trial delayed until the Supreme Court rules later this year on his immunity argument.
The trial judge in New York was not amused by the last-minute filing, and while he didn’t rule yet he imposed new restrictions on pre-trial filings in the final days before trial is scheduled to begin on March 25.
Correction: This item has been updated to reflect that Trump sought the delay in the New York case in a March 7 filing, but we didn’t learn about it until yesterday.
Trump Launches Purge At RNC
Your recurring reminder that Trump is doing to the Republican Party what he wants to do to America. Any schadenfreude you may feel should be tempered by the knowledge that Trump would leave the country a husk of its former self, hollowed out by nepotism, cronyism, and graft.
Trump has promised a purge of the federal government if he is re-elected, and he’s practicing on the RNC:
- Politico: Bloodbath at RNC
- The Guardian: ‘Absolute bloodbath’ at RNC as new leadership loyal to Trump purges staff
- NYT: Trump Aides, Taking Over R.N.C., Order Mass Layoffs
Can E. Jean Carroll Sue Trump Again?
Donald Trump repeated his defamatory comments toward E. Jean Carroll over the weekend in Georgia and again on CNBC Monday, teeing up the possibility that she could sue him again. The CNBC comments were particularly problematic for Trump, as George Conway noted.
Meanwhile, Carroll did not oppose the Trump appeal bond that received so much attention over the weekend.
Navarro Ordered To Report To Prison
Trump White House official Peter Navarro is ordered to report to federal prison in Miami on March 19 to serve his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. His request to the appeals court to delay his sentence while he appeals his conviction remains pending.
Republicans Know Journalists Are Easy Marks
Another instance yesterday of the journalistic craving for “new” sometimes overwhelming good sense and judgment.
In the first example, House Republicans released a transcript of an interview the Jan. 6 committee did with a Secret Service agent who was driving then-President Trump from the Ellipse speech back to the White House.
The release was intended to show that he contradicted the account relayed by Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump lunged for the steering wheel. But the importance of the account was not the narrow question of whether Trump “lunged” but whether he wanted to accompany the mob to the Capitol. The transcript confirmed that!
The transcript also revealed that Trump said he wasn’t worried about his own security because the mob consisted of his own supporters, even though an hour later he was claiming it was antifa.
This is a product of the House GOP’s “investigate the Jan. 6 investigators” muddy-the-water exercise, and it’s working.
Biden Special Counsel Testifies On The Hill Today
Special Counsel Robert Hur is due to testify on the Hill today at the request of House Republicans. His last day at the Justice Department was yesterday. In advance of Hur’s testimony, the transcript of Hur’s interview with President Biden (Part I and Part II) was provided early to some new outlets. Anticipation is high for this appearance on both sides of the aisle. Stay tuned.
More On That Right-Wing Secret Society
The Guardian has its own version of the story TPM published over the weekend on the Society for American Civic Renewal and its ties to the Claremont Institute.
Ooof …
AP: “A Kansas judge ruled Monday that the state isn’t violating transgender residents’ rights under the state constitution by refusing to change their driver’s licenses to reflect their gender identities.”
2024 Ephemera
- Trump called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare during an interview on CNBC.
- President Biden seized on Trump’s remarks, telling an audience in New Hampshire: “Bottom line is, he’s still at it. I’m never going to allow that to happen.”
- The Senate Majority PAC has reserved a total of $239 million in TV ad time to defend Democratic Senate seats in seven states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, and Montana.
How Much Longer Until Election Day?
A GOP event in Kansas, as first reported by the Kansas Reflector, got weird:
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Kari Lake Hopes You’ve Had Your Fingers In Your Ears The Last Four Years
After earning an endorsement from the National Republican Senatorial Committee at the beginning of the year, Kari Lake is trying to appear less insane to Arizonans who have had the unfortunate experience of being exposed to her politics since 2020.
Continue reading “Kari Lake Hopes You’ve Had Your Fingers In Your Ears The Last Four Years”Election Departments Partner With Local Police To Get Out Ahead Of Expected 2024 Threats
Back in 2012, an elections official in California witnessed an Election Day skirmish between two candidates at a polling place.
Continue reading “Election Departments Partner With Local Police To Get Out Ahead Of Expected 2024 Threats”Biden and Netanyahu Rush to a Breach
I find it very hard to make sense of what the likely outcomes are. But I wanted to point your attention to a series of developments in the Biden-Netanyahu relationship and the U.S.-Israel relationship that could escalate dramatically very soon. First there’s this article in Haartez which says the U.S. might suspend the sale of offensive weaponry to Israel by later this month. (Unfortunately the piece is paywalled.) The tripwire is a national security memorandum Biden signed last month which gives Israel until March 25th to provide the U.S. with written assurances that weapons sales from the U.S. will only be used in accord with international law and that it will pledge to facilitate and not obstruct aid deliveries into Gaza.
That’s the calendar tripwire.
Continue reading “Biden and Netanyahu Rush to a Breach”