The Meadows Texts

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

Wow, what a week!

Trump made his major announcement, Kevin McCarthy loyalists made some cool buttons, Kyrsten Sinema showed her independence by hawking designer clothes, Elon Musk continued his commitment to free speech by banning journalists who report on him, and … TPM BROKE A HUGE STORY THAT DOMINATED THE NEWS CYCLE!!!

TPM’s exclusive reporting on the log of 2,319 text messages that Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack was explosive. Reporting on The Meadows Texts has been picked up by many serious news outlets and even a few unserious ones. All week, our reporters have been appearing on TV, radio, and podcasts to make sure our findings reach a large audience and make as big an impact as possible. If you’re not completely up to speed, some of the biggest revelations so far include:

• 34 members of Congress exchanged texts with Meadows about plans to overturn the 2020 election. 
• A number of Trump allies coupled their support for the “stolen election”-narrative with requests for pardons for friends.
• Scott Perry, chair of the Freedom Caucus, was fixated on the idea that the Italian government threw the election by zapping voting machines with satellites.
• Ryan Zinke proposed he take over the Pentagon post-election.
• One member of Congress pushed some of the craziest election conspiracy theories we’ve ever heard, which he discovered in Romanian YouTube videos.

Now normally you would be hearing from one of TPM’s editors or reporters to help put this reporting in context. But they are all busy continuing to report and broadcast this story. So instead you get to hear from me — a person behind the scenes who thinks about things like financial and technical stability so our editorial team can focus on the reporting. And while I might not be the best person to tell you what The Meadows Texts mean for the future of our democracy, I can tell you what a story like this means for the future of TPM. In short: it’s huge!

Over the last week millions of people have been exposed to TPM for the first time, hundreds have become members, and many have contributed to the TPM Journalism Fund. This kind of exposure and support gives us the brand recognition and resources to hire more journalists and pursue ambitious reporting projects like this in the future.

But the goal for reporting like this is to make an impact. And boy have The Meadows Texts made an impact. Beyond getting the attention of nearly every major news organization, local media has begun to hold their representatives accountable and the White House even weighed in. Not bad for a reporting team of just five reporters and three editors.

Perhaps the most inspiring and validating part of this project, however, has been the messages of support our team has received from our readers and members. Your emails, Twitter replies, and other notes of encouragement have kept us going and made us proud to do this work. If you’re a member you might hear this a lot, but we couldn’t do this without you and we mean it. On behalf of the whole team: Thank you, your support means the world to us and we’re excited for what’s next!

— Derick Dirmaier

The Golden Dukes: Meritorious Achievement In The Crazy

The Dukes must go on! It’s time to vote on our third category – Meritorious Achievement in The Crazy. And while this week’s news may have produced an all-time roster of over-achievers in The Crazy, their entries were a little too late to make the cut. That’s not going to make it any easier for you to choose among this year’s excellent nominees:

Peter Thiel Cyborg Blake Masters

I know it’s hard to believe, but Peter Thiel cyborg Blake Masters was actually the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Arizona in 2022. Crazy, I know! Masters tried so hard to do and say anything that would further burnish his MAGA cred, but the coup de grâce was his open embrace of the bogus conspiracy smear that Jan. 6 was a false-flag FBI operation.

“Don’t we suspect that like one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on January 6 were actual FBI agents hanging out?” Masters wondered aloud at a public event. “What did people know and when did they know it? We got to get to the bottom of this.”

— Nominated by: David Kurtz, TPM’s executive editor

Werewolf Wannabe Herschel Walker

I think the video pretty much speaks for itself but basically in a November campaign speech Herschel Walker went on a bizarre rant about a movie he recently watched. “Fright Night, Freak Night, or some type of night,” he said, trying to remember the name of the movie. “I don’t know if you know, but vampires are some cool people, are they not? But let me tell you something that I found out: a werewolf can kill a vampire. Did you know that? I never knew that … So, I don’t want to be a vampire any more. I want to be a werewolf.”

– Nominated by: TPM reporter Emine Yücel

Madison Cawthorn And His Graceful Exit

A lot of people talk about making a graceful exit. But there’s nobody who failed at that quite so gloriously and spectacularly as Madison Cawthorn, the freshman North Carolina member of Congress. Cawthorn managed to enact seven out of seven deadly sins during his departure from the national political scene, becoming embroiled in a MAGA-themed cryptocurrency scam, various sex scandals, and drunk driving and weapons-at-airports allegations. It’s a feast for the connoisseur, a level of corruption and absurdity distinguished not only in its breadth, but in its depth.

But the real crowning moment for Cawthorn, what could earn him the Golden Duke, can only be his professed revulsion at having supposedly been invited to cocaine-fueled, casual D.C. sex soirées by his idols in the conservative movement. “I’ve always paid attention to politics,” Cawthorn said. “Then all of a sudden you get invited — ‘We’re going to have a sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come.’ … What did you just ask me to come to? And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy.”

– Nominated by: TPM investigative reporter Josh Kovensky

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin, for his crazy belief that Ukrainians were just rustic Russians with funny accents who would welcome his undermanned, underequipped, and undertrained army with open arms. It turned out that he really did believe all that delusional garbage he’s been spewing for the last couple decades. Good luck with all that, Vlad.

— Nominated by: TPM reader

Cast your vote here

— Nicole Lafond and Derick Dirmaier