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

‘Buckle Up’

We’ve entered the mean season for the dark arts: foreign influence, computer hacks, and disinformation.

The question is whether we’re any better prepared to withstand them than we were in 2016. The outlook isn’t promising.

Let me pull together and try to bring into focus what’s happened in recent weeks, and especially over the past few days, that harkens back to the Russian influence scheme of 2016 but with the focus this time on Iran:

June 2024: “Mint Sandstorm—a group run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence unit—sent a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor,” Microsoft would later reveal in a report on Iran’s malign activities.

July 9: In a briefing with reporters, U.S. intel officials declare Russia the “preeminent threat” to U.S. election security in 2024 and characterize Iran as a “chaos agent” without a specific preference in this election.

July 22: Politico begins receiving emails from an anonymous AOL account that a user, identified only as “Robert,” uses over the following weeks to provide “internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official.”

July 29: In second briefing with reporters, U.S. intel officials change their tune and declare that Iran now prefers that Trump lose and is engaged in covert online influence operations toward that end.

Aug. 8: The WaPo also receives material from an anonymous AOL user going by the name “Robert,” but the newspaper doesn’t immediately report on it.

Aug. 9: Microsoft issues a new warning that Iran has ramped up its cyber-enabled influence campaign to include fakes news sites and hacking attempts. For the first time, Microsoft publicly reveals the June phishing incident targeting a high-ranking official in a U.S. presidential campaign.

Aug 10: Politico reports on internal Trump campaign documents, revealing for the first time the communications with “Robert” that began July 22. Among the hacked materials was a 271-page research dossier used in the vetting of vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The Trump campaign confirms that some of its internal communications were hacked and blames Iran, pointing to the Microsoft report.

Aug. 11: While neither the U.S. government nor Microsoft have confirmed that the documents sent to news outlets were the product of an Iranian hack or identified which U.S. presidential campaign was the target of the Iranian phishing incident, the WaPo reports that “a person familiar with Microsoft’s work confirmed that the report’s reference was to the Trump campaign.” For the first time, the WaPo reveals that it, too, received the 271-page dossier marked as “privileged & confidential.”

Aug 12: The NYT reveals that it received “what appears to be a similar if not identical trove of data from an anonymous tipster purporting to be the same person who emailed the documents to Politico,” but the newspaper doesn’t pinpoint when it received the trove.

It’s only August. There’s a long way until November.

“Buckle up,” warned Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who was fired by Trump after the 2020 election for debunking Trump’s Big Lie.

Trump Confuses His Black Politicians

Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles city council member and state senator, came forward Friday to say it was he and not former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown who was aboard a helicopter with Trump that ran into problems mid-flight and had to make an emergency landing:

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”

“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.

Trump had insisted Brown was aboard and threatened to the sue the NYT over the issue.

Trump Calls Harris A ‘Bitch’ In Private

NYT:

Indeed, Mr. Trump has often been in a foul mood the past few weeks. He has ranted about Ms. Harris. He has called her “nasty,” on “Fox & Friends,” and a “bitch,” repeatedly, in private, according to two people who heard the remark on different occasions. (“That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala, and it’s not how the campaign would characterize her,” Mr. Cheung said.)

‘The Nice Men Of The Left’

Rebecca Traister on the stark differences currently on display between how the men of the right and the left define masculinity:

On the one hand is the Republican Party’s view of manhood: its furious resentments toward women and their power, its mean obsession with forcing women to be baby-makers. On the other hand is the emergence of a Democratic man newly confident in his equal-to-subsidiary status: happily deferential, unapologetically supportive of women’s rights, committed to partnership. …

This is not to suggest that these Democratic guys represent some perfect specimen of evolved masculinity. But taken as a whole, as male Democrats fall over one another in an effort to elect a woman to the presidency, they are presenting a different definition of masculine strength tied to women’s liberation and full civic participation and all but declaring it a new norm.

2024 Ephemera

• NYT battleground state polls show Harris shoring up the Blue Wall that had been threatening to crumble on Biden: She now leads Trump among likely voters by the identical 50%-46% margin in each of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
• Crazytown: The weekend insanity on the right, embraced by Donald Trump himself, was that the images of big crowds at Kamala Harris’ rallies are AI-generated fakes.
• NBC News: “False or misleading claims about the U.S. election that Elon Musk has posted to X this year have generated nearly 1.2 billion views, according to an analysis published Thursday by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.”
  

What In The World?

Every time I’m ready to move on from the tedium of NYT headline scrutiny, stuff like this happens:

NYT reaches new level of hyperbolic Trumpian unreality, calling Biden’s America “a nation consumed by war” pic.twitter.com/zfmpUCR1EG

— Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) August 9, 2024

The revised version currently still live is “Biden Promised Peace, but Will Leave His Successor a Nation Entangled in War.”

Judge Chutkan Agrees To Delay Jan. 6 Case

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted Special Counsel Jack Smith’s unopposed motion to delay the Jan. 6 case while the Justice Department sorts out the implications of the Supreme Court’s staggeringly ahistorical ruling on presidential immunity.

Chutkan set new deadlines of Aug. 30 for a joint status report from the parties and Sept. 5 for a status conference.

No Degradation Is Too Great For Vance

JD Vance on Trump dining with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who made racist comments about his wife and Trump has never fully disavowed: "The one thing I like about Donald Trump is he actually will talk to anybody, but just because you talk to somebody doesn't mean you endorse… pic.twitter.com/gB1vr8G2qi

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 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.

Hurry Up And Wait

Today was the deadline set by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for Special Counsel Jack Smith and Donald Trump to propose a schedule for pretrial matters as she resumes the Jan. 6 case following the Supreme Court’s horrendous ruling on presidential immunity.

But Smith, in a bit of a surprise move, asked Chutkan in a filing late yesterday to provide more time for him and other DOJ components to sort out the implications of the Supreme Court decision. Trump, the king of delay, did not oppose Smith’s request for more time.

Smith wants another three weeks – until Aug. 30 – to confer with Trump and submit the proposed scheduling order. Smith also asked Chutkan to delay the status conference originally scheduled for next Friday, Aug. 16, until after Aug. 30.

Typically, you would expect the judge to be amenable to this kind of request, but Chutkan was clearly ready to move when the case was finally returned to her, so it’ll be interesting to see how she reacts. I still doubt she’ll force the issue, but nothing about this case is routine.

What does it all mean?

This case was already not going to trial before the election, so it doesn’t change those odds. It reduces the window available for holding any kind of evidentiary hearing on the immunity issue, making it less likely that that will happen before the election (for what it’s worth, I was having trouble getting excited about that as any kind of real pre-election accountability moment for Trump anyway). Whether the case goes to trial after November depends almost entirely on whether Trump loses the election, so Smith’s desired delay wouldn’t really change that either.

Beyond that, we’re left to speculate about what Smith is grappling with internally. It’s all speculation at this point. But before I get into the more tenuous speculation, the simplest and most obvious answer is that the implications of the Supreme Court immunity decision are in fact difficult to parse and to apply to the facts of this case. The high court didn’t give a clear road map on all of the legal issues involved, as Politico explains extensively this morning. And there are a lot of legal issues involved, as this Just Security project published this week outlines in great detail.

Beyond that, the speculation about the delay ranges from internal disputes at DOJ about how to move forward to more mundane bureaucratic slowness in dotting i’s and crossing t’s to one possibility that I’ve tried to keep in mind all along … but again this is purely speculative: If you’re not going to get to try Trump before the election, does it make sense to change the strategy of a stripped-down indictment of only Trump and broaden the federal case to charge the full conspiracy, including all possible crimes committed by Trump, plus adding co-defendants and co-conspirators?

I mention this possibility because the whole point of the current approach was to keep things narrow and targeted, largely for judicial economy and speed. It didn’t work. Trump succeeded in dragging it out past the election. Given that the goal of the original strategy is no longer achievable, there’s a logic to changing the strategy. And remember: if Trump loses the election, Smith has all the time in the world.

What Can Be Done About The Georgia Election Board?

NBC News’ Lisa Rubin takes a closer look at the recent shenanigans of the MAGA-infused Georgia Election Board on behalf of Donald Trump.

That Crazy Trump Presser

Casual readers of other news outlets probably got the sense that Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday where he proposed more presidential debates, dodged some abortion questions, and made preposterous claims about the size of his crowds. But it truly was the kind of performance that had it been anyone else, or even him eight years ago, would have produced a cacophony of stories asking what is wrong with this guy. If you missed it, perusing the TPM liveblog of the presser might be the best way to get a proper sense of how much we’ve collectively normalized the man.

Harris Campaign Unleashes Its Young And Very Online Staff

I’ve read a million campaign press releases over the years and at this point ignore most of them, so I’m not holding up this Harris campaign press release responding to Trump’s press conference yesterday as some kind of Rosetta stone of the current moment. And yet … if you want to see the difference in tone and tenor between the Biden and Harris campaigns, this is as good of an illustration as any:

Harris campaign with a lengthy response to Trump’s “very good, very normal press conference.” pic.twitter.com/jKBp3Jzij9

— Joey Garrison (@joeygarrison) August 8, 2024

Nancy Pelosi Is Having A Moment

The former speaker is on a roll since President Biden ended his re-election bid.

Here she is, telling the AP about her crusade against Trump: “‘How can I say this in the nicest possible way: My goal in life was that man would never step in the White House again,’ Pelosi said, slapping the table with every word.”

Here she is giving The New Yorker’s David Remnick her assessment of Biden’s campaign: “I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation. They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The President has to make the decision for that to happen.”

Historical Context

Just gonna leave this right here:

Remember when John Kerry was Swiftboated by Chris LaCivita who is doing it to Tim Walz now? Guess who funded it? Harlan Crow, the billionaire who has been lavishing freebies on Clarence Thomas.

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) August 8, 2024

Good Read

TPM’s Josh Kovensky: A Journey Through the Authoritarian New Right – A non-exhaustive look at the influencers behind Republicans’ recent turn toward the bizarre.

Reader Mailbag

TPM Reader AN checking in this week from the Paris Olympics:

Thanks for including that item about Armand Duplantis in the Morning Memo. My husband and I were there last night at the Stade de France, and it was absolute magic. 

We are the biggest nerds in the world, totally un-sporty, never watch any sports, barely know what pole-vaulting is. Some friends gave us their extra tickets to Saturday night’s, and then last night’s, track and field event, so we thought, what the hell, it’s the Olympics, let’s go.

Well. We had a spectacularly good time watching all the events on both evenings: discus, shotput, long jump, high jump, sprints, relays and the men’s 10,000 meter final. But the pole-vault! It was just spectacularly entertaining, in large part thanks to the showmanship of the athletes, especially Sam Kendricks and Mondo himself. They had the crowd clapping in unison, they mugged for the camera, raced around, emoted, hugged each other between attempts.

It was crazy how much higher Mondo vaulted than the other guys–at the beginning, he was clearing the bar by probably half a meter. He seemed to be floating. When he had beat everyone else and won the gold at 6.10 meters, there was a pause. Then came the announcement that Mondo would go for the world record. The crowd went crazy and stayed that way until the very end. What a joy.

I’m not sure this experience has turned us into sports fans, but after this, we certainly get what all the fuss is about.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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