Following their historical underperformance in last week’s midterms, Republicans need someone to blame. Some factions of the party are loudly pointing the finger at Donald Trump, his conspiracy theories and his slate of far-right candidates for the red wave that never was. Others in the MAGA crowd, now less sold on the electability of the Big Lie, are aiming their ire at other targets.
Continue reading “McConnell Easily Fends Off Scott Challenge To His GOP Leader Election”Jan. 6 Rioter Barred From Holding Office For Life Under Insurrection Clause After His Appeal Is Dismissed
The New Mexico Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal from “Cowboys for Trump” founder Couy Griffin to overturn a decision that barred him from holding public office for life under the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause.
Continue reading “Jan. 6 Rioter Barred From Holding Office For Life Under Insurrection Clause After His Appeal Is Dismissed”This Thing Happened Last Night That We Should Probably Cover
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
America’s Challenge Is Clear
Last Tuesday was a good start, but to well and truly vanquish Trumpism is going to require defeating Trump himself at the polls one more time. History needs a verdict of twice-defeated more that it does twice-impeached.
The fight against Trumpism will proceed in the meantime on multiple fronts. Criminal investigations into his actions to subvert the 2020 election and improperly retain classified information at Mar-a-Lago could yield indictments, prosecutions, and convictions that will vindicate the rule of law. That’s important, but it doesn’t serve the same cathartic cleansing of the body politic as his defeat at the polls.
Republicans can’t be relied upon to do their duty and render their own verdict against him in the GOP primary. And so it will fall to everyone else to end this repugnant realm.
While it’s true that Trump is a product of a long and consistent arc of American history, not the anomaly some claim, his defeat is a necessary precondition to returning to a more progressive, enlightened, optimistic American narrative. Here we go.
The Lowlights In Under 3 Minutes
Lessons Learned?
It seemed like a contest among news outlets to prove who could do the toughest, most contextual headline about Trump’s announcement that he’s running again.
NPR had a good showing: “Donald Trump, who tried to overturn Biden’s legitimate election, launches 2024 bid”
WaPo brought it: Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, says he is running again
For what it’s worth, the broadcast nets and MSNBC did not carry the speech live. Fox and CNN did, but hilariously broke away as Trump droned on.
The American Neofascist Aesthetic In All Its Gilded Ickiness
Oh, Look Who Else Showed Up
And Look Who Did NOT Show UP
Ivanka! Where was Ivanka?
Biden Engages Immediately
What The Trump Campaign Operation Will Look Like
In his first byline since returning to TPM, Hunter Walker breaks some news on the Trump campaign.
Trump Is No Grover Cleveland
Since Grover Cleveland has cornered the market on nonconsecutive terms as POTUS, the comparisons to Trump’s quest for a second term are inevitable. But Cleveland biographer Troy Senik says the comparisons basically stop there. A good thread:
Mike Flynn Ordered To Testify In Georgia 2020 Election Probe
Former Trump National Security Adviser turned conspiracist Mike Flynn lost his fight against a Georgia grand jury subpoena compelling his testimony in its probe of Trump’s 2020 election interference scheme. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, was challenging the out-of-state subpoena in Florida state court. He is due to testify Nov. 22.
Sad Trombone
The Justice Department’s objections to unsealing some of the filings surrounding the federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 higher-ups was filed … under seal. Media outlets are attempting to get the chief judge in DC to unseal the filings related to what looks like a big fight over executive privilege, a fight Trump appears to have mostly lost with a stream of former high-ranking White House officials having now testified. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to learn exactly what’s been happening in these secret proceedings.
Quite A Read
Prosecutors filed their sentencing memo on Rep. Matt Gaetz’s old running buddy Joel Greenberg and it’s a doozy of criming and other bad acts. Gaetz is going to walk away from this. Greenberg won’t.
Tim Miller Not Having Any Of Steve Bannon’s Bullshit
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Trump Is Surrounded By Rivals And Questions As He Preps ‘BIG ANNOUNCEMENT’ At Mar-A-Lago
The fans are already lining up outside of Mar-a-Lago ahead of former President Trump’s “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT” scheduled for Tuesday evening. Trump is reportedly planning to kick off his 2024 White House bid at his private Florida beach club at 9 p.m. ET.
Based on photos posted on Instagram, some of the faithful are already lining up outside the compound’s pink walls including some waving “TRUMP 2024” flags and one of the self-described “Front Row Joes” who spend hours in line for prime placement at the former president’s rallies.
However, as is so often the case with Trump, the big event is bringing plenty of drama and questions to go along with the pomp and circumstance.
Continue reading “Trump Is Surrounded By Rivals And Questions As He Preps ‘BIG ANNOUNCEMENT’ At Mar-A-Lago”Inside the Fetterman Campaign
Yesterday Kate Riga and I held a TPM Newsmaker Briefing with Brendan McPhillips — a lot of very interesting details about how the campaign unfolded from the inside. Did it seem like a jump ball in the last week on the inside? Apparently so. What happened with that NBC interview? What about the debate? We get into all of that. If you’re a member and you weren’t able to join us live yesterday, you can watch the whole thing after the jump.
Continue reading “Inside the Fetterman Campaign”House GOP Selects McCarthy As Nom For Speaker. But His Bid Is Off To A Rocky Start
Can Kevin McCarthy possibly avoid the fate of John Boehner and Paul Ryan?
To the extent things have changed, they’ve changed for the worse.
The Freedom Caucus is more amped on its own supply than ever before; the MAGA-infused GOP conference now has members like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) in addition to the old reliables like Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX); and McCarthy is stuck with a majority so narrow that GOP control of the House isn’t even official yet.
All of those dynamics brought us to today’s scheduled vote on the House GOP leadership for the new Congress.
Continue reading “House GOP Selects McCarthy As Nom For Speaker. But His Bid Is Off To A Rocky Start”Raffensperger Snarks At Warnock Campaign After Reversing Himself On Early Voting
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) shot out a snarky statement Tuesday accusing the Warnock campaign of “muddying the water and pressuring counties to ignore Georgia law” just after the election official reversed himself on a critical day of early voting in the runoff.
Continue reading “Raffensperger Snarks At Warnock Campaign After Reversing Himself On Early Voting”Cough ‘Em Up, Kelli!
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
But What About Her Phone Records?
Kelli Ward will have to cough up her phone records to the House Jan. 6 committee after the Supreme Court turned back her effort to rein in the subpoena against T-Mobile.
Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, was a key figure in the run-up to Jan. 6. She was one of the slate of fake electors the Trump team assembled as part of its election subversion plan. She previously took the Fifth when questioned by the Jan. 6 committee.
Notably, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito broke from the rest of the justices. Not only would they have had the court take up the matter, they would have gone so far as to actually block the subpoena (on what possible grounds is not clear). It should also be mentioned that Thomas did not recuse himself from the case even those his wife Ginni Thomas was in communications with Arizona lawmakers in advance of Jan. 6, urging them to name fake electors.
Ward, who first came to fame as Chemtrail Kelli, was also part of the pressure campaign against Mike Pence ahead of Jan. 6.
Your Daily Mar-a-Lago Update
There were a flurry of news stories yesterday about the Mar-a-Lago investigation after two recent filings in the case by the Justice Department and Trump were unsealed. The filings revealed more about Trump’s inane legal positions on various issues the special master will soon weigh in on.
Here’s the TPM rundown: DOJ Knocks Trump ‘Shell Game’ Over Classified Docs
NYT: Justice Department and Trump Lawyers Clash Over Status of Seized Documents
CNN: Trump tells Mar-a-Lago special master that he got to decide which White House documents were his to keep
Then there was this weird story from the Washington Post, headlined “Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump’s motive on classified papers.” Read it for yourself. Are ego and money really the only two potential motives? What about … power?
Kari Lake Loses In Arizona
The worst of the MAGA candidates (Vance and DeSantis win honorable mention) went down to defeat Tuesday night, as the networks called the Arizona governor’s race for Democrat Katie Hobbs. No concession yet from Kari Lake, true to form.
Liz Cheney was happy to see Lake go:
Election Deniers Take A Beating
With Kari Lake losing, none of the election deniers running for governor or secretary of state in key swing states won their races.
A bipartisan group of secretaries of state met yesterday for an election postmortem, as TPM’s Kaila Philo reported. There was relief, but also awareness that election denialism isn’t over. Here’s Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson:
We are really just at the halfway point of what is a multi-year, multifaceted effort to delegitimize democracy in our country,” said Benson. “We still have a presidential election now under two years away, in which we anticipate a lot of the same challenges that Brad [Raffensperger] and I encountered in 2020, regardless of what candidate is on or off the ballot.
Trump’s Bigly Announcement
The preview pieces for Trump’s expected announcement later today that he’s running again in 2024 largely frame it up in terms of Republican dismay. I remain deeply skeptical of this newfound “anti-Trumpism” among some Republicans, but let’s watch it closely as it plays out.
How Desperate Is Kevin McCarthy?
At one level this is just smart politics. But at another level it’s revealing of how narrow the GOP’s House majority is going to be if, as expected, they take control.
Allies of McCarthy spent the weekend trying to woo Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), the last remaining House Democrat who opposes abortion rights, into switching parties.
Cuellar reportedly rebuffed the party-switch gambit.
McCarthy’s office denied the entreaties were made at his request: “Anyone suggesting this is simply exercising in fan fiction.”
Coming Up
This morning: Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) is set to testify before the Fulton County grand jury investigation into 2020 election interference by Trump. Kemp succeeded in delaying his testimony until after the midterms. Time’s up!
Midday: House GOP to hold leadership elections, where we’ll get our first taste of what a colossally weak and simpering speaker Kevin McCarthy will be.
This evening: Trump makes his bigly announcement from Mar-a-Lago at 9 p.m. ET.
Also today: DOJ has a deadline to object in federal court in DC to the unsealing cases involving the Jan 6 grand jury.
Wednesday, Nov. 16: The first of the procedural votes is expected in the Senate on the Respect for Marriage Act, which would attempt to codify same-sex marriage at the federal level.
Thursday, Nov. 17: Senate GOP holds leadership elections
The FBI Had EIGHT(!) Proud Boy Informants?
NYT:
The F.B.I. had as many as eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys in the months surrounding the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, recent court papers indicate, raising questions about how much federal investigators were able to learn from them about the violent mob attack both before and after it took place.
Too Bad We Don’t Have An Emoluments Clause Or Anything
NPR: Foreign officials spent more than $750,000 at Trump’s D.C. hotel, new documents show
No Charges For Rudes!
Federal prosecutors revealed publicly that they do not intend to bring criminal charges against Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as part of the investigation into foreign lobbying arising from Rudy’s Ukraine misadventures.
Monitor Named To Oversee Trump Org
Former federal judge Barbara Jones has been appointed as a monitor of the Trump Org during the New York attorney general’s civil lawsuit against the company. Jones job will be in part to make sure the Trump Org doesn’t begin to siphon off assets while the lawsuit is pending. Jones had previously served as a special master in cases involving Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani.
Russia Wants GOP Control Of Congress
In another sign that Russia is well aware that a GOP Congress will be more compliant and less supportive of Ukraine (it doesn’t take a genius to figure this out: House Republicans will happily say so publicly), the U.S. has intelligence that Russia waited to announce its withdrawal from Kherson until after the U.S. midterm election, CNN reports.
Shocker Headline Of The Day
Reuters: “U.S. authorities probe FTX collapse, executives’ involvement -sources”
No kidding?
Hide Your Eyes!
A very colorful description of the FTX balance sheet from Bloomberg’s Matt Levine:
[T]he balance sheet that Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto exchange FTX.com sent to potential investors last week before filing for bankruptcy on Friday is very bad. It’s an Excel file full of the howling of ghosts and the shrieking of tortured souls. If you look too long at that spreadsheet, you will go insane.
RIP
Virginia McLaurin of Washington, D.C, who was 106 when she so memorably danced with the Obamas at the White House, has died at 113.
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BREAKING: Hobbs Wins in AZ
NBC News and now all the other networks have called the Arizona Governor’s race for Democrat Katie Hobbs. Hobbs defeats arch-election-denier Republican Kari Lake.
This was a pretty close race, according to the polls. But Lake was expected to win this one. She had been consistently running two or three points ahead of Hobbs. There was also a lot of Democratic backbiting about Hobbs’ decision to refuse to debate. That can make sense to stigmatize and deny legitimacy to an opponent, to say this person is too outside the norm for me to validate them by agreeing to debate.
But that rings kind of hollow if that opponent who lacks legitimacy as a potential governor is actually beating you. Whatever the merits of that, Hobbs won. So either it was a good strategy or if it was a bad one then she got away with it. Democrats now hold the governorships in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, four critical states going into 2024. Republicans hold them in Nevada and Georgia.
How Republicans Tipped The House Scales Long Before Votes Were Cast
The House majority, however you slice the outstanding races, is coming down to the wire.
Continue reading “How Republicans Tipped The House Scales Long Before Votes Were Cast”