A Press Statement From The Master Of Projection

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

Reporters often complain about how our inboxes get clogged with press releases, but every now and then, you scan your email and see one that’s actually good for a story.

My favorite press release of all time came from Newt Gingrich’s doomed presidential bid in 2011. It was the most overwritten, overwrought, and frankly unhinged piece of campaign communications in history. If you haven’t heard it before, you simply must watch John Lithgow’s dramatic reading of the Gingrich press release. It’s incredible.

But I digress, this weekend’s newsletter is not actually about that classic press release. It’s about one I received on Tuesday night from former President Trump’s reelection campaign.

As you may know, the GOP presidential primary is getting crowded with hopefuls who, despite seemingly obvious math, apparently don’t realize that the Republican Party is currently Trump’s. This week alone we saw Chris Christie, who flamed out in 2016 when he was in a far better position, and Mike Pence, who the MAGA base wanted to hang less than thirty months ago, enter the fray.

In a flashback to 2016, Trump seems to be dealing with the traffic problems in the primary by picking his opponents off one by one with vicious and juvenile attacks. So far, he’s mainly focused on the only one who has anything resembling real traction in the polls, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. On Tuesday night, six days after DeSantis officially launched his campaign, Trump’s team fired off a press release accusing the governor of “blatantly” plagiarizing a line from the 2020 State of the Union. The accusation hinged on three words used by Trump in that speech: “great American comeback.”

The moment I got this message, I knew it would make for a fun story. Trump’s accusation was ridiculous on its face. Trying to claim a trademark on a phrase so short and so banal is just absurd. I also suspected that, given how unoriginal the concept is, Trump had already stolen the line from someone else. After all, Trump has a long history of plagiarism from Melania Trump’s RNC speech, to the “Make America Great Again” slogan stolen from Ronald Reagan, and the “America First” catchphrase taken from, well, Nazis. Trump also has a habit of projection. If he’s accusing someone of doing something, there’s a pretty good chance Trump himself has been guilty of it.

My hunch proved accurate. A quick search showed that “great American comeback” was also lifted from Reagan. Since then, the phrase has become a cliche used to describe sports, rebounding reptile populations, and by politicians at every level.

Trump’s attempt to attack DeSantis for plagiarizing text he himself basically stole is just funny. Is this really the best his expensive campaign team can do?

It’s also a reminder of how much all of these guys steal from Reagan and his era. We tend to think of Trump and his MAGA movement as a wholly new phenomenon, but there are so many ways it all traces back to the old school religious right and GOP figures like Reagan and Pat Buchanan. These culture warring authoritarian conservatives have been part of our country since its inception.

You might even say today’s far right is part of a great American comeback. 
 

More next week and more on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Hunter Walker

Igor Of Washington

Most people who speak at length with the FBI don’t have much of an incentive to write a tell-all about their experience. But after Steele Dossier subsource and analyst Igor Danchenko’s experience being victimized by the Durham Investigation, he doesn’t feel that way.

I wrote this week about an announcement that went out this week on a private list for ghostwriters, describing a client who matched Danchenko almost exactly: a Russian-born U.S. citizen prosecuted, and then acquitted on a false statements charge brought by a corrupt, deeply politicized federal criminal investigation. That’s Danchenko, and he aims to have his story out for when it will hit hardest and sell most: just before the 2024 election.

— Josh Kovensky

Texas (When I Get Disenfranchised) 

The Texas state legislature moved last week to remove the state from an anti-voter fraud system called ERIC, which allows state governments to share data between themselves to ensure that voter rolls stay clean and without duplicates. ERIC has become a lightning rod, however, over the past year among MAGA election deniers, who assert that it’s not an innocuous interstate data-sharing system, but is in fact a plot to corrupt the country’s voter rolls and steal elections for Democrats, controlled (perhaps inevitably) by the dreaded George Soros.

Texas’ new law mandates the state to find a new vendor that would replace ERIC. I wrote this week about how many of the same people who cast the above aspersions regarding ERIC are, now, hawking various systems which, in their telling, Texas could use to replace or even exceed the service that ERIC provided. It won’t work: the system relies on data provided by the states, including DMV and social security information, which is illegal to transfer into private hands for commercial purposes. But for MAGA diehards intent on removing safeguards that keep elections clean and accurate, the chaos is the point.

— Josh Kovensky

False Dichotomy 

Every once in a while, you read something that completely changes how you understand the world and what it means to be human. I had that experience in 2009 when I read this piece in the New Yorker by Ariel Levy. It tells the story (up to that point) of Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic gold winning middle-distance runner and intersex woman who has faced accusations of being a biological man. Her story brings into high relief how biologically incorrect the “common sense” idea is that there are clear and easy divisions between men and women. 

Fast forward to 2023 and Semenya is still dealing with anti-trans legislation that may inhibit her ability to compete. The macro takeaway, for me, was that we humans are very bad at categorizing humans. As we celebrate PRIDE Month, I think this is important to keep in mind. There’s a dark irony that is highlighted by the folks Levy interviews in South Africa who compare the way Semenya was being treated to apartheid-era South Africa in which outsiders came into South Africa and arbitrarily decided who was white and who was Black. Obviously, we recognize this as junk science today but we’re still combating over-simplified and incorrect notions about gender and biological sex. I can’t do the piece justice here, so I simply ask that you give it a read.

— Joe Ragazzo

“Washington is broken. Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants. I’m voting NO on the debt ceiling debacle because playing the DC game isn’t worth selling out our kids and grandkids.”

That’s Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) attempting to burn … herself? Her colleagues? President Biden? All of the above?

Mace was one of a bunch of right-wingers this week who not only ferociously came out against the debt ceiling deal struck between the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for not being entitlement slashy enough — but who also threatened to oust McCarthy from the speakership over the whole ordeal. 

The legislation to avoid allowing the nation to run out of money and, in so doing, tank the national and perhaps global economy passed the House without Mace’s support on Wednesday. It cleared the Senate Thursday and now heads to the President’s desk, where he will wear pants and sign it. 

— Nicole Lafond