A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss VP Kamala Harris’ veep pick and the first few weeks of her campaign.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Votes of Confidence
Earlier today we hit the $350,000 milestone in the TPM Journalism Fund drive.
You may wonder how we think about this sort of thing internally. How do we talk about the fact that so many people are willing to contribute (generally speaking) over and above their membership fees to a small journalism outfit doing what it can to not just survive, but thrive in uncertain and unprecedented times?
Well it’s very simple: That’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our work. That’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our reporting, our analysis, and our commentary. That is 350,000 votes of confidence in our business model, which has kept us going even while countless other publications have, in recent years, failed or made significant cuts. It’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our belief that journalism can’t be hierarchical, so publications should offer free memberships to those who need them. In short, it’s 350,000 votes of confidence in us.
Look, let me be clear: We know not everyone can contribute over and above the membership fees. We’re thankful and appreciative of each and every member we have regardless of whether you ever contribute to the Journalism Fund. Memberships are the engine that sustains TPM. We thank you. Period.
One of the guiding principles at TPM is preparedness in the face of unexpected change. Change in the news environment or change in the business climate. We don’t always know what the changes will be or how they’ll affect us, but we know they are coming. They always do. That’s why the theme of this year’s Journalism Fund drive is “to help us prepare for what comes next.”
If you have not yet contributed but are able to, please consider doing so. The revenue will help us grow and expand our journalism. It will help us distribute that journalism to more people. And, just as important, it’s a little confidence boost that all the work we put in day in and day out makes a difference in people’s lives. Because the difference between an organization like TPM and many other companies purporting to do journalism is that we care about more than our profit — we care about our impact on the world, and especially our impact on those who help us do what we love to do.
One last thing: Last year, more than 5,000 people contributed. I’m absolutely positive that if we hit that marker again, we’ll hit $500,000. Any amount you can contribute, no matter how small, makes a difference.
Times and WaPo Jump On Board Trump Camp Swift Boating of Walz
The Post’s and the Times‘ pieces on Tim Walz service record are more egregious and spurious than you’re probably able to imagine. The accusations come from two members of his unit who are clearly MAGA partisans and who floated them during his 2022 reelection campaign for Minnesota governor in coordination with Walz’s Republican opponent. The attacks aren’t just “like” the Swift Boat attacks from 2004. They’re literally the work of the same guy. Chris LaCivita was the strategist who ran the Swift Boat attacks in 2004 and cut the commercials. He’s now the co-manager of the Trump campaign. He started this and then handed it off to Vance. As David noted, even Politico headlined it as a “Swift Boat” attack. Politico!
The accusation, such as it is, is that Walz retired from service just before his unit was deployed to Iraq.
Continue reading “Times and WaPo Jump On Board Trump Camp Swift Boating of Walz”A Journey Through the Authoritarian New Right
There’s a lot of talk about the authoritarian leanings of the modern Republican Party. Donald Trump commits to pardon the January 6 rioters who sought to steal him an election; his rank-and-file supporters cheer him on when he says he’ll be a “dictator on day one.” Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Trump’s Vice Presidential pick, likes to muse that “universities are the enemy” and play with the idea of unleashing the DOJ on political opponents.
Continue reading “A Journey Through the Authoritarian New Right”20 Years Later, Political Press Still Falls Hard For Swift Boat Attacks
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Will They Never Learn?
JD Vance launched a spurious and baseless attack on Tim Walz’s military service reminiscent of the Swift Boat attacks in 2004 that targeted one of John Kerry’s key political strengths: his heroism and valor in Vietnam. But instead of using the last 20 years to reflect and reconsider the familiar coverage patterns, some political editors still get played like a fiddle when it comes to covering GOP attack lines.
The WaPo was probably the worst culprit, with this headline: “Tim Walz’s military record, National Guard departure get new scrutiny.” It happily launders the Vance attack line without self-awareness or historical understanding of the last two decades of American politics. “New scrutiny” – like its weasel-word compadres “raises questions about” and “is said to” – confers a miraculous virgin birth to scurrilous political attacks even if they’re launched right out in the open.
To its credit, Politico is much more direct and puts the attack in the broader context with a story headlined: “Vance runs a Swift Boat attack against Walz’s military service.” You might quibble with Politico’s handling of it, but it’s clearly not the same laundering operation the WaPo ran on this one.
The irony of the Vance attack and the media coverage of it is that the originator of the Swift Boat attack against Kerry back in the day was Chris LaCivita, who is now a senior Trump campaign adviser.
Can’t Memory Hole Project 2025 That Easily!
Further undermining Donald Trump’s bogus claims that he knew nothing about Project 2025, the WaPo has discovered a private flight (photo included) that Donald Trump took with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in April 2022 to a Heritage conference where Trump seemed to reference Project 2025. The work of Project 2025 has been done under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation.
Meanwhile, Roberts has postponed the launch of his new book – with a foreword by none other than JD Vance himself – until after the November election.
On The Trail
- Kamala Harris once again tamps down a “Lock him up” chant, this time at her campaign rally in Michigan:
- At the same Michigan rally, Harris also shut down hecklers (y’all, that look at the 2:12 mark):
- Donald Trump has only one campaign rally this week – and it’s in the deep-red state of Montana.
Quote Of The Day
The Holocaust is taught too often purely as a historical event, an anomaly, a moment in time. Students understood what had happened and that it was terrible and that the people who did this were monsters. The problem is that relieves us of responsibility. Obviously, the mastermind was sociopathic, but on the scale for it to happen, there had to be a lot of people in the country who chose to go down that path. You have to make the intellectual leap to figure out the reasons why.
then-Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN), in a 2008 interview with the NYT, recounting teaching high school students in Nebraska in the 1990s about genocide
2024 Ephemera
- WaPo: Trump complains about campaign as advisers try to focus on attacking Harris
- NYT: Tim Walz’s Sudden Rise in the Democratic Party Was No Accident
- WSJ: Tim Walz’s and JD Vance’s Personal Finances Couldn’t Be More Different
Biden Warns Trump Won’t Lose Peacefully
In his first interview since ending his re-election bid, President Biden says he’s “not confident at all” that there will be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses the November election:
Arizona Grand Jury Wanted To Indict Trump, Too
The Arizona grand jury that handed down indictments in the state’s fake electors probe was interested in indicting Donald Trump, too, but were discouraged from doing so by prosecutors with the state attorney general’s office, according to a new filing this week defending against attacks that the prosecution was politically motivated. Attorney General Kris Mayes has not publicly addressed the thinking behind that strategy since the filing.
Jan. 6 Defendant Taken Into Custody After Threatening Posts
Prosecutors moved to revoke bail for a Jan. 6 defendant who allegedly posted online threats against Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Attorney General Merrick Garland, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Georgia Judge Scott McAfee.
The 2020 Election Still Isn’t Over In Georgia
The Georgia Election Board voted 3-2 to reinvestigate Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 presidential recount. The three Republican members who voted to ask the state attorney general to reexamine the results yet again have been praised publicly by Donald Trump as recently as this past weekend.
For Legal Nerds …
An unusual sequence of events this week in the legal fight over Texas’ installation of buoys in the Rio Grande, a move the federal government is fighting but recently lost on at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is now back to the trial judge. Here’s where things get interesting.
After a status conference two days ago, the Texas attorney general’s office took the unusual step of racing to the appeals court to tattle, basically, on what the trial judge had said in the status conference. That prompted a swift order from the trial judge hauling the parties back into court yesterday for a second status conference in which he lambasted the attorney general’s office.
Politico senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein has some choice excerpts from the transcript of the second status conference.
Astronauts May Be Stranded Until 2025
The two astronauts who departed Earth for a planned eight-day mission aboard Boeing’s Starliner two months ago may not return until 2025 as NASA works on a backup plan to have them hitch a ride on a Space X vehicle. The astronauts have been stuck on the International Space Station because of technical issues with the Boeing craft that have raised safety concerns about using it for the return trip.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
MAGA Group ‘True the Vote’ Is Working With Sheriffs To Monitor Drop Boxes
Ahead of November, the election denying activist group with ties to Donald Trump, “True the Vote,” is asking sheriffs across the country to monitor ballot drop boxes for supposed suspicious or fraudulent activity in swing states — an apparent attempt to revive conspiracy theories leftover from Trump’s campaign to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Continue reading “MAGA Group ‘True the Vote’ Is Working With Sheriffs To Monitor Drop Boxes”Ok I Actually Need Your Help Here
Have you been planning to contribute to our TPM Journalism Fund drive but haven’t had the chance? We’re now in the second half of the drive. It’s always the hardest slog, the part when it seems like we may not reach the goal we need to reach. Can you take a moment and make a contribution today if you’ve been considering it? I would, we would really appreciate it. It’s a key part of what keeps TPM going strong. It keeps us ready for whatever is next. It’s super easy to do. You can just click right here. Any amount truly helps and we absolutely put your dollars of support to good use.
UPDATE 4:55 PM 7:23 PM 8:45 PM 12:18 AM 9:25 AM: We’re now just over $334,000 $340,000 $343,000 $346,000 $348,000 (Almost here! LFG!!!!! – 12:19 AM). If we can get to $350,000 by the end of today we’ll be within shooting distance of the pace we’ll need to get to our goal of $500,000 by the end of the drive.
Inside the Galactically Over-Determined Story of Tim Walz’s Governing Ideology
Right now we’re seeing a parallel race to define Tim Walz, much as we saw and were seeing with Kamala Harris beginning in the last week of July. The stakes of defining the veep nominee are nowhere near as high as they are for the race to define the person at the top of the ticket, where so far it’s gone all in Kamala Harris’s direction. But I wanted to note some of the dimensions of this battle to define. Paradoxically, it’s going on both between the parties and also within the Democratic Party. The Democratic left and the GOP both seem joined in wanting to portray if not Walz than the Walz pick as a sign of rising left-wing power in the Democratic Party or a de facto veto over any VP pick that would validate or express support for Joe Biden’s policies on Israel and Gaza. I don’t think either point is so much wrong as misleading and a simple misreading of the actual political dynamics which are shaping the current moment or politics going back the last six or seven years.
Let me start with a related observation.
Continue reading “Inside the Galactically Over-Determined Story of Tim Walz’s Governing Ideology”The Age Of Array
For years, the Democrats were defined by the bitter battles of the 2016 election where the feud between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders essentially split the party into a sharply defined progressive and moderate wing. Now, with the new leadership of Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, there are signs the party is entering a new era, where the demons of 2016 have been exorcized.
Continue reading “The Age Of Array “Harris-Walz Ticket Debuts With All The Feels
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Dems Bask In It
Day 1 of the Harris-Walz 2024 ticket was all about the visuals.
There was the carefully planned video of both sides of the offer-and-acceptance phone call between Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. There was the Walz intro video narrated by Walz himself. And of course there was the staged rollout in Philadelphia last evening where the ticket made its first public joint appearance.
But there were also the memes. So.many.Tim.Walz.memes. “Turkey’s meat” is probs my personal fave.
I’m not going to attempt to “analyze” all of this. Any effort to do so after a day like yesterday is doomed to be either overdone in finding real meaning in the visuals or to veer toward being a curdled spirit that refuses to get sucked into the enthusiasm. Make no mistake: There was a lot of enthusiasm among progressives.
For now, here’s a taste of the Harris-Walz debut:
The Introduction
Bringing The Dad Jokes
Watch: Tim Walz’s First Speech As Running Mate
For many of us, it was the first Tim Walz speech we ever heard:
When The Headline Says It All
Politico: Tim Walz calls Viktor Orbán a dictator. For JD Vance, he’s a role model.
LOLOL
The trolly right-wing conspiracist Charles Johnson shared with the WaPo the texts he and JD Vance exchanged over the encrypted app Signal.
Quote Of The Day
Dems in disconcerting levels of array
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY
Meanwhile …
Donald Trump is crafting revenge fantasies … for Joe Biden:
2024 Ephemera
- MO-01: Rep. Cori Bush lost to challenger Wesley Bell in a Democratic primary heavily influenced by the $9 million AIPAC poured into the race on Bell’s behalf.
- If Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) wins the vice presidency, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan would become the country’s first Native American woman governor.
- The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is launching its first round TV ads for the fall campaign, targeting GOP Senate candidates Kari Lake in Arizona, Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania and Mike Rogers in Michigan.
Don’t Hold Back
John Ganz: These People are Nazis
First Guilty Plea In Arizona Fake Electors Case
Arizona Republican Lorraine Pellegrino, a fake Trump elector, pleaded guilty to a single charge of filing a false instrument — in this case, the fraudulent Electoral College certificate. She agreed to a sentence of three years of probation but no jail time.
👀
The FBI executed a search warrant Friday on the phone of Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) as part of an ongoing campaign finance investigation.
Great Question
Brian Beutler, on the bombshell WaPo report that Trump DOJ deep-sixed an investigation into the whether Egypt sent Donald Trump $10 million after he won in 2016: “Why wouldn’t Senate Democrats launch an immediate investigation of both the crime and coverup?”
International Murder-For-Hire Plot
A 46-year-old Pakistani man with alleged ties to the Iranian government was arrested in a sting operation last month by the FBI and charged in Brooklyn with allegedly trying to hire hitmen to carry out political assassinations in the United States in late August or early September. The purported hitmen were actually undercover law enforcement officers.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!