So, you’re a devoted TPM reader, but maybe you let your membership lapse. I’ve been there myself. But I want to tell you why I decided to come back.

I started my journalism career at TPM back in 2010, just as the tea party-tinged midterm elections were heating up. Carly Fiorina featured “demon sheep” in a campaign ad. Christine O’Donnell tried to salvage her Senate campaign by assuring voters, “I’m not a witch. I’m you.”

Ahh, simpler times.

By my last count, I subscribe to around 50 podcasts — more than enough captivating chatter to occupy my New York City commutes and jogs around the neighborhood. So when I came to TPM in the winter of 2017, I jumped at the opportunity to help bring yet another podcast into the world.

TPM’s own audio efforts have evolved over the years, from an interview show where Josh talked one-on-one with interesting guests to a weekly discussion between editors and writers on the stories we’re obsessed with at the time. What began as a passion project recorded on a couch in our New York City office’s break room has grown into a legitimate audio production operation. We’ve built out part of our office into a studio — with soundproofing panels, professional software and cozy over-ear headphones.

This is where you come in. Without TPM’s community of members, we could not invest in these new ways of bringing you the news. If you enjoy the podcast, you can support our efforts by joining TPM as a member.

So please take the time to join today, if you’re not already a member. And if you have any ideas about what you want to hear on the podcast, please drop us a line.

President Trump won’t let it go.

After touting a seemingly doctored map on Wednesday of Hurricane Dorian’s forecast path that erroneously showed the storm possibly headed for Alabama, the President dug in his heels on Thursday.

There are no heroes in this cable news conflict.

On the one hand, there’s a sycophantic anchor bending over backward to defend President Trump’s truthfulness. On the other, a former Tea-Party-congressman-turned-Trump-critic trying to stake out the moral high ground.

President Trump’s claim that surgeons abandoned their operating tables during the President’s visits to hospitals in the wake of two recent mass shootings is just not true, according to one of the hospitals.

During an unhinged appearance before reporters on Wednesday, in which Trump claimed, among other things, that he is “the chosen one,” the President weighed in on his recent visits to El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. More than 30 people were killed in shooting massacres in those two cities earlier this month.

The President boasted on Wednesday that the people he visited in the hospital “love their President,” adding that “doctors were coming out of the operating rooms.”

“There were hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor. You couldn’t even walk on it,” he continued.

That’s not what happened, according to the hospital Trump visited in El Paso.

“At no time did, or would, physicians or staff leave active operating rooms during the presidential visit. Our priority is always patient care,” Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for the University Medical Center, told a local ABC affiliate on Thursday.

Reporters were not allowed to accompany Trump on his visit to the hospital in El Paso, perhaps because eight victims of the shooting massacre there did not wish to meet with the President.

“Some of them said they didn’t want to meet with the president. Some of them didn’t want any visitors,” Mielke told the Washington Post at the time. According to the Post, two victims who were already discharged did come back to the hospital to greet Trump.

h/t Raw Story.

At around 10 p.m. Tuesday night, panic gripped the Times Square area of Manhattan after a backfiring motorcycle was mistaken for gunshots.

I happened to be caught up in the chaos with my family. Upon leaving a Broadway show on West 45th Street, a sea of people rushed toward the theater, shouting and scared.

CNN’s Democratic debate kicked off Tuesday evening by focusing on health care, with a question to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) about his response to former Rep. John Delaney calling Medicare for All bad policy and political suicide.

“You’re wrong!” Sanders said, marking the first big applause line of the debate.

“Health care is a human right, not a privilege. I believe that. I will fight for that,” Sanders said. 

Delaney countered that he’s “right about this.”

“We don’t have to go around and be the party of subtraction and telling half the country with private health insurance their health insurance is illegal,” Delaney said. 

Watch:

Sanders gets first applause line of the night by telling Delaney "you're wrong" that Medicare for All is political suicide pic.twitter.com/7C6fdNZ72M

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 31, 2019

It appears President Trump was searching for an Obama-era scandal — and came up short.

After weighing in on congressional Democrats’ ramped-up oversight efforts Friday, Trump turned his attention to his predecessor.

“We want to find out what happened with the last Democrat president,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, for no apparent reason. “Let’s look into Obama the way they have looked at me from day one. They looked into everything that we’ve done. They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records.”

Trump floats investigating Obama's book deal pic.twitter.com/N1ILGaqmjg

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 26, 2019

What prompted the book deal reference is anyone’s guess. But it could be that Trump, a man obsessed with setting records, is stung that former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama received an unprecedented $65 million advance for their post-presidency tell-alls.

Trump later turned his attention to a new French tax law that could impact American tech companies, vowing retaliatory action.

The President said he’s considering taxing French wine, which he claimed is far inferior to its American counterparts, despite his teetotalling tendencies.

Trump says he's considering taxing French wine. Even though he doesn't drink, he thinks American wines look better than French ones pic.twitter.com/7kvikce8Hb

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 26, 2019

“I’ve always liked American wines better than French wines. Even though I don’t drink wine. I just like the way they look, OK? But the American wines are great. American wines are great. … So France did that. I told them don’t do it. I told them, don’t do it, if you do it, I’m going to tax your wines. … So yeah, we’re working on that right now.”

Former special counsel Robert Mueller is scheduled to begin his highly anticipated testimony before Congress at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Watch live below:

It was a typical Twitter morning Friday for President Trump: He boosted a book on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and went after the media for its coverage of his silence during the “send her back” chants at his reelection rally.