Russian Disinformation Op Against Biden Blows Up In GOP’s Face

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.

Run for Them Hills!

What a marvelous day of watching Republicans and their media enablers react in dramatic fashion to the explosive revelation that a key source – their main source, no less – of the bogus Biden bribery allegations underlying their impeachment push made it all up and was in bed with foreign intel services, including the Russians.

The bumbling response from the primary traffickers of the Biden misinformation campaign stretched from morning into late in the evening. The indictment of Alexander Smirnov last week on charges he fabricated the Biden claims was turbocharged by government filings this week that alleged Smirnov had “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intel services, including Russia.

The day started with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) claiming “it doesn’t change the … fundamental facts.” Like hell it doesn’t. By last evening Rep. James Comer (R-KY) was crawfishing hard:

As committee chairs – Oversight and Judiciary, no less! – Comer and Jordan were the dynamic duo who spearheaded dissemination of the Smirnov disinformation, but they were hardly alone. Aaron Blake identifies 10 Republicans who treated the Biden bribery claim like gospel.

Sean Hannity Is A Special Case

After spending months touting the false claims that originated with former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, Fox News’ Sean Hannity was on the air last night complaining about the FBI not having better informants. Poor, Sean. Victimized by the FBI:

On a related side note, Hannity is struggling mightily with the revelation that the government’s claim that Hunter Biden had a photo of lines of cocaine was actually a photo of sawdust.

Can’t Get Enough

More on the Smirnov disinformation operation:

  • Josh Marshall: A Bigger Story Than You Can Possibly Imagine
  • Philip Bump: A new lens into the ongoing folly of Republican ‘Russia hoax’ rhetoric
  • Aaron Blake: Another GOP Biden ‘informant.’ Another indictment and link to Russia.
  • NYT: Who is Alexander Smirnow?

On A More Serious Note …

A federal magistrate judge in Nevada, where Alexander Smirnov was arrested, inexplicably allowed his release from custody this week. The Justice Department Wednesday appealed that decision to a district judge, arguing that Smirnov has the means, resources, and foreign contacts to be a very real flight risk.

Hate To See It

The massive civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump in New York is slowly starting to take a bite:

  • In what looked more like a delay tactic than an actual legal argument, Trump’s lawyers asked for a 30-day pause in enforcing the judgment against him. State Judge Arthur Engoron seemed unmoved by the argument.
  • Trump is racking up $87,502 per day in post-judgment interest until he pays the judgment, ABC News calculated.

Trump Doubles Down On NATO Bashing

Don’t forget that this is fundamentally a pro-Russia position:

How Biden Saved Brazil From Its Own Jan. 6

In a Foreign Policy article titled “How U.S. Pressure Helped Save Brazil’s Democracy,” Oliver Stuenkel argues: “Not only was Brazil’s democracy closer to the brink than initially understood, but targeted U.S. pressure on key Brazilian officials was likely decisive in guaranteeing the eventual outcome: a largely peaceful transition of power in the country after its October 2022 presidential election.”

Trump’s Government In Waiting

The NYT goes deep on the Conservative Partnership Institute: A Nerve Center for the Right Wing Rises in Washington.

CPAC Ain’t What It Used To Be

Dave Weigel on the MAGAfication of CPAC under alleged groper Matt Schlapp

LOLOL

My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell must cough up $5 million to the guy who won the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge by debunking Lindell’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Totally Crazy

A federal judge in California has for a second time dismissed an indictment against violent white supremacists, ruling that they were selectively prosecuted for their ideological beliefs while “far-left extremist groups, such as Antifa, that went to the same protests and rallies and engaged in the same violent acts as alleged against the Defendants in this case” went un-prosecuted.

U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney (appointed by Bush II) ordered Robert Rondo immediately released from custody, which prompted the Justice Department to race to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals with an emergency motion to stay his release and continue to detain him pending a full appeal.

Federal authorities consider Rondo a flight risk. He was extradited from Romania to face the current indictment; he was tracked down in Central America back in 2018 to face the first indictment.

Excellent reporting on this by Meghann Cuniff.

IVF Is In The Right-Wing Crosshairs

The fallout continues over last week’s Alabama Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos are legally children:

  • Politico: Major Alabama hospital stops IVF treatment after court rules embryos are children
  • WaPo: At least two of Alabama’s eight IVF clinics paused some parts of IVF treatment.
  • Mark Joseph Stern: Alabama’s Assault on IVF Is Even Worse Than It Sounds
  • Joyce Vance unpacks the strange origin story of the Alabama ruling: “In Alabama, women can now be forced to have babies they don’t want and can’t have babies that they do.”
  • Alice Ollstein: Alabama’s IVF ruling risks political, legal backlash
  • Media Matters: Alabama Supreme Court chief justice spreads Christian nationalist rhetoric on QAnon conspiracy theorist’s show
  • Charles Blow: Alabama’s IVF Ruling Shows Our Slide Toward Theocracy

The Post-Dobbs World

NYT: Doctors in six states where abortion is legal are using new laws to send abortion pills to tens of thousands of women in states where it is illegal.

2024 Ephemera

He Said It

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Nikki Haley’s Befuddling Pivot

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Nikki Haley had appeared to pick up on the reality of abortion politics that Democrats have been harnessing to win elections since the Dobbs ruling on the campaign trail thus far. She’s maintained a semblance of rhetorical neutrality on the issue since the first Republican primary debate when she argued a national ban on abortion likely would not have the votes to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster and that Republicans must be realistic about finding “consensus” on the procedure if they hoped to run a winning campaign.

Continue reading “Nikki Haley’s Befuddling Pivot” →

What You Might See If You Spent A Year In The NASA Mars Simulator

Posted on by Christine Frapech

Last week NASA announced it is searching for individuals to participate in ongoing Crew Health and Performance Analog (CHAPEA) experiments that are part of the plan to establish human presence on Mars. This phase of experiments includes a year-long stay in a Mars simulator where participants will experience a realistic Martian existence including “resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, and other environmental stressors.”

We don’t know for sure what the experience will be like but we can share some recent images of Mars that will give you a taste of what you might see during your stay on the simulated planet.

HiRISE Catches an avalanche on Mars

The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (Hi-RISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this avalanche plunging down a 1,640-foot-tall (500-meter-tall) cliff on May 29, 2019. The image also reveals layers at Mars’ north pole during spring. As temperatures increase and vaporize ice, the destabilized ice blocks break loose and kick up dust. (NASA/date created: 2020-08-12)

A Greenwich Observatory on Mars

The crater in the center of this HiRISE image defines where zero longitude is on Mars, like the Greenwich Observatory does for the Earth. Originally, the larger crater that this crater sits within, called Airy Crater, defined zero longitude for the Red Planet. But as higher resolution images became available, a smaller feature was needed. This crater, called Airy-0 (zero), was selected because it would require no adjustment of existing maps. (NASA/date created: 2022-01-21)

Jezero Crater as seen by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter

This image shows the remains of an ancient delta in Mars’ Jezero Crater, which NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will explore for signs of fossilized microbial life. The image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera aboard the ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Express orbiter. The European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, operates the ESA mission. The High Resolution Stereo Camera was developed by a group with leadership at the Freie Universitat Berlin. (NASA/date created: 2020-09-21)

Perseverance is roving on Mars

This image was taken during the first drive of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars on March 4, 2021. Perseverance landed on Feb. 18, 2021, and the team has been spending the weeks since landing checking out the rover to prepare for surface operations. This image was taken by the rover’s Navigation Cameras. (NASA/date created: 2021-03-05)

Mars mound from Ingenuity Helicopter’s perspective

This image of an area the Mars Perseverance rover team calls “Faillefeu” was captured by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 13th flight at Mars on Sept. 4, 2021. At the time the image was taken, Ingenuity was at an altitude of 26 feet (8 meters). Images of the geologic feature were taken at the request of the Mars Perseverance rover science team, which was considering visiting the geologic feature during the first science campaign. (NASA/date created: 2021-09-17)

Whirling dust devil

A Martian dust devil was captured winding its way along the Amazonis Planitia region of Northern Mars. (NASA/date created: 2012-04-04)

A mysterious fractured depression on Mars

These depressions, found near the northern edge of the ancient highlands, have fractures that indicate collapse toward their centers. This pattern can be found on glaciers that sit atop volcanoes after a small eruption has melted some of the ice. (NASA/date created: 2022-01-21)

Icy, patterned ground on Mars

Icy, patterned ground on Mars. (NASA/date created: 2008-05-26)

Terra Sirenum

Gullies in Sirenum Terra, Mars (NASA/date created: 2006-10-16)

Mawrth Vallis

Diversity in Mawrth Region, Mars (NASA/date created: 2006-10-16)

Listen To This: The Fraud Father

Posted on by Jackie Wilhelm

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the verdict in Donald Trump’s civil fraud case, the ongoing Fani Willis drama and the latest, Ezra-Klein-sparked round of fretting over Joe Biden’s age.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

A Bigger Story Than You Can Possibly Imagine

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I know that’s a big headline that promises a lot. But I think it’s true. David has a good rundown of the events in the Morning Memo. But I want to do my best to set them out on a larger canvas that goes back to the “Hunter Biden laptop” and really all the way back to 2015, a continuing Russian information operation that has been ongoing for almost a decade.

Let’s review recent events. First came the news that prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’s office had decided that the confidential FBI informant who had been one of Biden’s top accusers had been lying and that they were charging him for lying to the FBI. That next step is critical. Informants lie to prosecutors all the time. They seldom get charged. It’s one standard to decide your informant isn’t telling the truth and/or won’t hold up at trial. It’s an entirely different one to think that you can prove they knowingly lied beyond a reasonable doubt. Clearly investigators felt they had caught Alexander Smirnov dead to rights. Yesterday came news that Smirnov has admitted that he got his false stories from Russian intelligence officers. Smirnov isn’t just at the center of the DOJ investigation, he’s at the center of what we have to generously call James Comer’s House inquiry, the premise for Joe Biden’s increasingly wobbly impeachment.

Continue reading “A Bigger Story Than You Can Possibly Imagine” →

Russia’s Staggering Success In Duping Willing Republicans And Right Wing Media

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.

The Plot Thickens

The former FBI informant charged with fabricating the Burisma bribery story about President Biden and his son Hunter had “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intel services, prosecutors alleged Tuesday in a court filing.

Yes, including Russian intel.

The revelation came in arguments that Special Counsel David Weiss, who is also prosecuting Hunter Biden, made for detaining Alexander Smirnov pending his trial. (Smirnov was ultimately released under conditions yesterday.)

The implications of this Russian operation are staggering, especially for the willing Republicans and right-wing media stooges who were the useful idiots propagating the disinformation for years. The James Comers, Chuck Grassleys, Jim Jordans of the world have been trafficking in this stuff as the purported basis for a Biden impeachment, which is itself tightly yoked to Trump’s campaign for re-election. Right-wing outlets, most notably Fox News, have been amplifying the claims not dozens or hundreds but thousands of times over the past several months.

Everywhere you turn, it’s Russia either helping Trump directly or indirectly by damaging Trump’s foes. The pattern is clear and persistent but also so sweeping and far-reaching that it really requires taking a step back to grasp the full scope of it all. It has dominated right-wing media, become an accepted “fact” among MAGA adherents, and allowed elected Republicans to play mainstream media like a cheap fiddle. All those breathless Biden impeachment process stories? They’re an outgrowth of this disinformation campaign.

Not to get too meta about it, but in some ways today’s Morning Memo is itself an indirect result of Russian disinfo: the effort to unpack it, explain it, draw the lines connecting the dots, and distinguish between what is real and not is an exhaustive, time-consuming, resource-intensive process, which is partly why these efforts are so effective and difficult to counter.

To make it even more meta, we’re reliant on Weiss as a narrator here, which is not a great place to be considering his flawed prosecution of Hunter Biden and the apparent fact that at least for a time he seemed to find Smirnov’s allegations credible. It’s a colossal mess.

We’re nearly a decade into Putin’s sustained, unrelenting attack on American democracy through misinformation and mischief. Among other things, the Republican Party and its standard bearer have been successfully enmeshed in it and thoroughly compromised. When this all began, Putin in his wildest imagination could not have conceived of this level of success.

Yup

A sampling of some of the reactions:

Cocaine? No, Sawdust

Hunter Biden lit into Weiss in the Delaware prosecution on gun charges, accusing Weiss of falsely claiming in a previous filing that what was merely a photo of sawdust depicted lines of cocaine.

“Mistaking sawdust for cocaine sounds more like a storyline from one of the 1980’s Police Academy comedies than what should be expected in a high-profile prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice,” Biden’s attorneys wrote.

The Biden allegation seems to be supported by the surrounding context and documents.

A fun kicker: Biden cites Marcy Wheeler (a.k.a emptywheel) in the filing for being all over the cocaine/sawdust beat.

It’s All Connected

The interplay between Special Counsel David Weiss’ prosecutions of Hunter Biden and Alexander Smirnov is going to take a lot of unpacking. Biden’s attorneys began to do some of that in filings yesterday, claiming that it had been Smirnov’s bogus allegations that undid the plea deal Biden had agreed to last summer.

The suggestion from the Biden camp is that Weiss seized on Smirnov’s claims well after the fact and hoped to use them to prosecute Biden, which is why prosecutors suddenly could no longer promise that the plea deal would extinguish all of Biden’s outstanding criminal liabilities.

Eventually Smirnov’s claims proved false, but Biden is still facing criminal charges on both coasts that would have been resolved but for Weiss being initially duped by Smirnov. At least that’s the argument.

Ukraine War Status Report

  • Bloomberg: War in Ukraine Is Turning in Putin’s Favor After Months of Stalemate
  • NYT: Russian Forces Press On With Attacks in Southern Ukraine
  • A Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine in August was found dead in Spain last week, his body riddled with bullets and run over by a vehicle.

Good Read

WaPo: Trump and allies plotting militarized mass deportations, detention camps

Peter Navarro Threatened With Contempt Of Court

The Trump White House official already convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee is facing the prospect of contempt of court if he doesn’t promptly return government documents he took with him at the end of Trump’s presidency, a federal judge warned him Tuesday.

Flying Under The Radar

The Alabama Supreme Court case giving frozen embryos legal status as children caught nearly everyone by surprise:

  • WaPo: Shock, anger, confusion grip Alabama after court ruling on embryos
  • NYT: Alabama Rules Frozen Embryos Are Children, Raising Questions About Fertility Care
  • WaPo: What to know about the Alabama embryo ruling and its IVF implications

COVID Was Financial Boon For Anti-Vax Groups

WaPo:

Four major nonprofits that rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic by capitalizing on the spread of medical misinformation collectively gained more than $118 million between 2020 and 2022, enabling the organizations to deepen their influence in statehouses, courtrooms and communities across the country, a Washington Post analysis of tax records shows.

2024 Ephemera

  • CA-Sen: The final debate before the March 5 open primary was mostly a clash between Democrats Katie Porter and Adam Schiff. A new Emerson College poll of likely voters shows Schiff at 28%, Republican Steve Garvey at 22%, Porter at 16%, and Rep. Barbara Lee (D) at 9%.
  • SC-Pres: Nikki Haley asserts she will stay in the race against Trump even after her expected loss this weekend in her home state primary.
  • Trump’s leadership PAC spent nearly $3 million on legal bills in January.

Trump: I Am Navalny

What a compromised and complicit buffoon:

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The Latest MAGA Truckers Protest Dud Lasted Mere Hours

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

The New York Post, Breitbart and others in the right-wing media sphere seized on a video that went viral on TikTok over the weekend to eagerly declare that truck drivers across the nation planned to boycott delivering goods to New York City following the verdict in the Donald Trump civil fraud case here last week.

While Alex Jones and Donald Trump himself have since elevated talk of a NYC-focused truckers protest in the days since the original video was posted to Twitter, the man who initially recorded and shared the video has since downplayed the purported “boycott” and distanced himself from the “movement” generally.

Let me unpack.

Continue reading “The Latest MAGA Truckers Protest Dud Lasted Mere Hours” →

Josh’s Local News Mailbag

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Two updates from the Josh regional news mail bag.

First, remember the Central Bucks (County) School Board? This is the school board north of Philadelphia that got caught up in the Moms for Liberty tide in 2021 and then flipped back in 2023 when the locals — good upstanding folks, which I know from personal experience — got sick of the crap and turned out the Moms for Liberty crowd and gave Democrats a 6-to-3 majority on the board. This is the place where there was a very suspicious sweetheart deal cut with the departing superintendent — about which there’s now ongoing litigation. It’s also the stomping ground of our good friend “Cool Mom” Clarice Schillinger.

Well, now it turns out that two of the remaining three right-wingers — Lisa Sciscio and Debra Cannon — are done. Like they’ve resigned. First, they verbally resigned on February 13th. And apparently you can’t do that. So now they’ve resigned in writing, which you can. A special meeting of the board will be held this Friday to officially accept those resignations.

Continue reading “Josh’s Local News Mailbag” →

Trump II Will Feature A Whole Lot Of Christian Nationalism

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.

It Ain’t Gonna Be Pretty

We spend a lot of time here looking backwards toward legal accountability for what Donald Trump has already done: cheat in the presidential elections of 2016 and 2024, hoard classified documents, rape and defame E. Jean Carroll, engage in fraudulent business practices for years. But what is to come in a second Trump term remains more potentially threatening, dangerous, and long-lived than any and all Trump transgressions to date.

To its credit, some solid political reporting has been done on what to expect in a Trump II. I’ll credit some of our own coverage in that regard, too, including our January story on the plan to target the independence of independent agencies and our December story on how Trump is laying the groundwork to co-opt the military.

This morning Politico has a new piece out on the effort to infuse Trump II with the fervor of Christian nationalism. It serves as a good reminder that while Trump himself remains dangerous he also serves in an additional role as a conduit for all sorts of bad actors, conspiracists, grifters, ne’er-do-wells, hangers-on, con artists, extremists, and ideological wackadoodles.

Some of the names coming in to a second Trump administration under the Christian nationalism rubric are familiar: former Trump OMB director Russell Vought, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, and former Trump official William Wolfe.

As Politico notes:

Freedom of religion would remain a protected right, but Vought and his ideological brethren would not shy from using their administration positions to promote Christian doctrine and imbue public policy with it, according to both people familiar with the matter, granted anonymity to avoid retaliation. He makes clear reference to human rights being defined by God, not man.

The range of policy matters implicated by Christian nationalist precepts is as vast as the array of hot button social issues that the GOP draws from to drum up “culture wars” of one kind or another. But for Christian nationalists, it really is warfare.

For his part, Vought has complained about the term “Christian nationalist” being bandied about pejoratively:

“’Christian nationalism’ is actually a rather benign and useful description for those who believe in both preserving our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage and making public policy decisions that are best for this country,” he wrote in Newsweek in 2021. “The term need not be subjected to such intense scorn due to misunderstanding or slander.”

The Politico piece is worth a read.

BOOM!

Brian Beutler: Trump’s Huge Fraud Verdict Is A Watershed Moment for Accountability—And New Corruption

Trump’s Cash Crunch

With several massive judgments against him, including Friday’s $355 million hammer in the NY civil fraud case, Donald Trump is facing the tricky choice of either paying judgments or posting appeal bonds.

Supreme Court Watch

Via Joyce Vance:

 In addition to hearing the cases already scheduled for argument, the Court will release orders on Tuesday and “may” announce opinions on Wednesday. The orders list on Tuesday could involve the Court’s decision on how the presidential immunity appeal will be handled, and, as a bonus, the opinions on Wednesday could include a decision in the 14th Amendment case. Note that the operative word for both is “could.” The Supreme Court does not signal in advance what orders or decisions it is going to hand down, only giving us a heads-up to be prepared for them in any of its pending cases.

The Death Of Alexei Navalny

  • WaPo: In video statement, Navalny’s mother pleads with Putin to release her son’s body
  • CNN: Trump avoids condemning Russia for Navalny’s death
  • Ishaan Tharoor: In Navalny’s death, Putin cements a new era of Russian dictatorship
  • NYT: Navalny’s Widow Pledges to Carry On His Work

GREAT READ

TPM’s Hunter Walker: A Central Figure In The Abramoff Scandal Is Helping MTG Become A ‘Real Player’ On Capitol Hill

Drip, Drip, Drip …

The Daily Beast: Witness Told Feds She Was Paid for Sex Parties With Matt Gaetz

They’re Coming For IVF

WaPo:

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday that frozen embryos are people and someone can be held liable for destroying them, a decision that reproductive rights advocates say could imperil in vitro fertilization (IVF) and affect the hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on treatments like it each year.

2024 Ephemera

  • MI-Pres: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is urging Democrats to register a protest vote against President Joe Biden over his Israel-Gaza policy in the Democratic primary.
  • Abortion rights advocates are struggling to fund their 2024 ballot efforts.
  • CO-04: Rep. Lauren Boebert tries to convince her new district that she’s not all drama.

The Biden Age Stories Are Getting Old

Josh Marshall: No. Ezra Klein is Completely Wrong. Here’s Why.

Biden Slows EVs Roll

NYT:

In a concession to automakers and labor unions, the Biden administration intends to relax elements of one of its most ambitious strategies to combat climate change, limits on tailpipe emissions that are designed to get Americans to switch from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, according to three people familiar with the plan.

Quote Of The Day

Some folks are burned out on outrage.

Rebecca Lee Funk, founder of Outrage, a progressive activism group

FEEDBACK REQUESTED!

Our periodic survey of the TPM readership is underway. We’d love to hear from you!

Wait, This Is A Thing?

Princeton historian Kevin Kruse was riffing about Presidents Day and casually dropped that “in practice most Americans assume the holiday is one meant to honor all presidents.”

This is a thing? President Day has lost in the popular mind its connection to Washington and Lincoln, around whose birthdays the holiday was consolidated? For real?

Daddy Died A MAGA

Jess Piper:

Daddy died in August of 2017…it was a terrible and painful death and he was only 61 years old. His last words to me were absolutely unfathomable and embarrassing: He begged for forgiveness for his behavior and his Facebook posts, since 2015. The MAGA mentality he had displayed since Trump came down that escalator. The point of contention in our formerly close relationship—the reason we had barely spoken in two years.

Always Be Hawking

He will never fail to tell you exactly who he is …

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – FEBRUARY 17: Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump delivers remarks while introducing a new line of signature shoes at Sneaker Con at the Philadelphia Convention Center on February 17, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sneaker Con was founded in 2009 and is one of the oldest events celebrating sneakers, streetwear and urban culture. Trump addressed the event one day after a judge ordered the former president to pay $354 million in his New York civil fraud trial. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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No. Ezra Klein is Completely Wrong. Here’s Why.

Posted on by Josh Marshall

A number of you have written in to ask about Ezra Klein’s audio essay “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden: It’s requires them to embrace an old-fashioned approach to winning a campaign.” Is it a good argument? Does it change the equation? What do I make of it? Just for the purposes of cutting to the chase: my answers are “not really,” “no” and “not much.” But Klein is a smart, articulate guy and sitting at the top of the Times op-ed page he has vast influence. So I wanted to break the argument down into its moving parts.

Klein begins his essay by assuring us that he likes Joe Biden and actually thinks he’s done a good job as President. This is to soften the reader up and dispel any notion that he’s got some anti-Biden axe to grind. I don’t think Klein is disingenuous or cynical about this. I think he believes it. He not only doesn’t think age has hindered Biden in doing the job as President so far; he doesn’t think it would in a second term either. The issue for him, Klein says, isn’t about being President but running for President: Biden has slowed down considerably, even from his last run in 2019–2020, and Biden simply is not up to running a vigorous campaign in which the candidate is an asset, not a liability.

Continue reading “No. Ezra Klein is Completely Wrong. Here’s Why.” →