Axios reports on a new private GOP poll conducted in the aftermath of Vivek Ramaswamy’s decision to run his ad questioning his opponent’s having been raped by her stepfather when she was 12. It shows Ramaswamy falling to 8 points behind Amy Acton compared to 2 points behind in a poll conducted by the same pollster a month ago. The poll found that 86% of respondents had heard of the ad and by a 2 to 1 margin those said the ad made them more likely to vote for Acton.
Ramaswamy has always been an especially Trumpy character in the sense of leaning — both in his actions and how he describes his actions — into transgressive verging on sociopathic behavior as a signifier of Republicanness or Trumpiness. Indeed, when he released this ad he said explicitly that he was sending a message that he was ready to break rules and conventions in the context of Ohio politics just as Trump had at the federal level. All of this comes under the headline of being, as the phrase goes, “extremely online” and shaped by the aesthetics, mores and instincts of online trolling.
That’s a remarkable and a remarkably frank expression of MAGA politics and aesthetics. The problem, however, is that Ramaswamy is not Donald Trump. What’s most notable about this episode is that lots of fellow Republicans appear to have warned him not to do this — not because of some subjective sense of decency but because it seemed so obviously self-destructive. I’ve thought from the beginning that this ad might not only backfire on Ramaswamy but possibly pull down the whole ticket. Ohio has very Trumpy demographics. It’s the kind of state where, if there’s going to be a GOP-underestimating polling error, you’d expect it to be particularly pronounced. Sherrod Brown — who, remember, is a semi-incumbent — has had a very steady if modest lead for months. He’s currently about three points ahead on average. So this ad, a performance of bad personhood, could end up making a difference in that race too.
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Here’s a brief follow up on yesterday’s Israeli election now that the actual vote count and results are coming into view. We began with exit polls suggesting that the “change” bloc had secured slightly more seats than the Netanyahu bloc — 52 to 50 seats — with the two Arab parties getting a historically high 18 or 19 seats. Then the exits started to shift to the Netanyahu bloc and Likud officials were claiming he had been dramatically underestimated and would get upwards of 60 seat and perhaps even a majority. The actual results were lopsided in Netanyahu’s direction but as they’ve been counted they’ve trended down. Now with 86% of the vote counted it’s down to 53 seats Netanyahu bloc, 48 for the “change” bloc and 19 for the two Arab parties. If the trend continues, the Netanyahu bloc might fall one or two seats lower but I have no insight whether the votes that remain will continue that downward trend.
There are three major exit polls in Israel. Two of those three have now revised their estimates to a tie between the two blocs with 51 seats each. The third still has it at 52 for the change bloc and 50 for the Netanyahu bloc. That’s only a single seat difference from the earlier estimates which all had a change lead. But it’s a pretty significant single-seat difference since it gives the two blocs an equal number of seats. It remains mostly symbolic since neither side is anywhere close to 61 seats. But for the narrative, vibes, claims to the legitimacy, it shifts things at least somewhat.
Late Update – 8:33 p.m.: Likud and the Netanyahu bloc continue to improve over the initial exit polls. Of the three main exit polls, two show a 51-51 tie and the third shows a 52-49 lead for Netanyahu’s bloc. These still leave both blocs far from the minimum of 61 seats to form a government. But as I noted above, it gives Netanyahu more of an argument for a “win.” Interestingly, the exit poll that shows the 52-49 Netanyahu bloc lead shows the “change” bloc losing one of those seats to the Joint List, which in that exit poll gets 12 seats. Likud officials are reportedly telling journalists they’re expecting their bloc total to rise to 55 or 57 votes. Obviously, talk is cheap. You can spin as much as you want. But I don’t have a good feeling about this trajectory.
A D.C. grand jury has refused to vote for an indictment of Cassidy Hutchinson, the one-time first-term Trump aide who became a star witness for the House January 6th subcommittee that investigated the attack. Obviously it’s good that illegitimate attempt failed since Hutchinson is guilty of nothing more than acting honorably. It’s embarrassing for the administration since it’s hard to fail at the grand jury level where the government is literally in charge of everything. But there’s something deeper and more important here: the un-strategic, increasingly impulsive and ultimately self-defeating nature of the Trump legal retribution campaign.
As you know, I take a pretty dim view of prediction markets, especially for capturing anything more than conventional wisdom when it comes to election outcomes. There’s also a whole controversy about how much prediction markets are vulnerable to insider trading. But the truth is that insider trading is actually an intentional feature of prediction markets. Perhaps not literal insider trading — as in an officer of a public company placing bets on non-public information — but people trading on non-public information. Indeed, many don’t remember this, but one of the seemingly harebrained ideas to come out of George W. Bush’s first term Pentagon was the idea of creating a terrorism prediction market. I’m not kidding about this. It would have basically been a Kalshi or Polymarket about future terror attacks, with the idea being that you’d get people with knowledge of future of attacks to place wagers, and thus, give U.S. policy planners and counterterrorism officers leads on future attacks.
In any case, I note this because again, the real logic of prediction markets is you get the people with the inside dope to place money making bets on future outcomes. You thus use the incentive of winnings to work to pull information out of the realm of secrecy into the open.
Earlier today I discussed how the initial exit polls show an inconclusive result of today’s Israeli election. Roughly 52 seats for the change bloc, 50 for the Netanyahu bloc and perhaps 18 for the two predominantly Arab/Palestinian parties. So what’s the story with those 18 additional seats, which could, in theory, provide either bloc with a comfortable majority?
This is a complicated question, but I’ll try to give as simple an overview as I can.
There is a big taboo in the Jewish Israeli body politic on governments relying on the votes of the non-Zionist or anti-Zionist/predominantly Arab parties. Depending on how you want to look at it, this is either the ingrained nationalism/racism of Israeli society or the fact that these parties don’t accept the foundational idea of the state. I think the best answer is that there are strong dimensions of both. It’s fair to note that the Arab Druze population of Israel serves in the IDF, is integrated into society and votes overwhelmingly for the various predominantly Zionist parties. Other Zionist parties, especially on the left have, or have had, Arab Knesset members and Arab voters. But the simple reality is that Jewish and Arab/Palestinian voters in Israel vote overwhelmingly for predominantly Jewish and predominantly Arab parties.
I have a lengthy post which will be up momentarily about the role of the two predominantly Arab parties in the Israeli election: Ra’am and the Joint List. For now, the best way to see this is that Netanyahu lost but it’s not clear that the change bloc or anyone else won. I doubt there’s any way for Netanyahu to form a government – too many implacable foes in the change camp. Depending on how close the actual results are to these early exits there’s a chance Eizenkot could form one. But it’s tough. I think the most likely result is a new election. But relatively small shifts in the final result versus the initial exit polls could make a big difference.
In our final episode of The Polltober Show, Kate and Josh talk Democratic ceiling, a potential polling error in Democrats’ favor and the wins they’d be most jazzed about.
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As I noted in the previous post, we now have the initial exit polls from today’s election which show the “change” bloc bigger than the Netanyahu bloc but likely only by two or three seats. You have 17 or 18 seats for the two predominantly Arab parties, a historic high, based on historically high turnout today among Israel’s Arab/Palestinian citizens. Voting is only stage one of an Israeli election. Now you have to see who if anyone can form a government. It’s not at all clear that anyone will be able to. But with this mixed result you now begin a public battle over the meaning of the results. The opposition is out quickly with a pretty strong argument. The current government has gone from 68 years to apparently 50. That’s a very big drop and as they put it a massive repudiation.
It’s hard to argue with that.
On the other hand, the “change” bloc seems to have 52 or 53 seats. Again, according to the initial exit polls. So they “won” in some sense but judged in these terms it’s not like they crushed the Netanyahu bloc.
Israel polls are now closed and we have the first initial exit polls. Note that those exit polls are not necessarily correct, just like in the US. They project the anti-Netanyahu bloc ahead but with Likud (Netanyahu’s party) the largest single party. (That can matter for who gets first shot at forming a government; but the decision is solely that of the President.) Critically, neither side has a clear path to a 61 seat majority.
The specifics are 53 seats for the change bloc; 50 seats for the Netanyahu bloc; 17 seats for the two predominantly Arab parties (Joint List and Ra’am).
Note there are several different exit polls out from different TV channels. The exact numbers differ. But as far as I can tell they all agree on change bloc bigger, Likud single largest party. 17 or 18 seats for the two Arab parties, a historic high.
In other words, this is more or less what polls have projected: an inconclusive result that makes it very unclear how either bloc can form a government. If neither can it means another election in the relatively near future.
Again, though, final results can differ significantly from initial exit polls.
Donald Trump Jr. on Saturday said that his father did speak to fired FBI Director James Comey about his preferred outcome for the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, though President Donald Trump flatly denied doing so.
“When I hear the Flynn comments, you and I know both know my father for a long time. When he tells you to do something, guess what? There’s no ambiguity in it,” Trump Jr. told Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro. “There’s no ‘Hey, I’m hoping. You and I are friends. Hey, I hope this happens, but you’ve got to do your job.’ That’s what he told Comey.”
On Friday, however, the President flatly denied making those remarks to Comey or pressuring him to drop the investigation into Flynn, implicitly or otherwise.
“You said you hoped the Flynn investigation he could let go,” ABC News’ Jon Karl asked Trump during a press conference.
“I didn’t say that,” Trump interrupted.
“So he lied about that?” Karl asked, referring to Comey.
“Well, I didn’t say that,” Trump said. “And I mean I will you tell you I didn’t say that.”
But, he added, “There would be nothing wrong if I did say it, according to everybody that I’ve read today, but I did not say that.”
Trump Jr. on Saturday claimed that “everything that went on in the Comey testimony was basically ridiculous.”
“For this guy as a politician to then go back and write a memo, ‘oh, I felt,’ he felt so threatened, he felt that — but he didn’t do anything!” Trump Jr. said.
Comey’s blockbuster testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, however, prompted Trump to offer to do the same.
Off message here for Trump Jr. Says his father did tell Comey he hoped he let the Flynn investigation go. His dad says that's a lie. pic.twitter.com/oOhaFgZY4a
President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested that there are more revelations to come from fired FBI Director James Comey, and questioned their legality.
“I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible,” Trump tweeted early Sunday morning. “Totally illegal? Very ‘cowardly!'”
I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very 'cowardly!'
Trump made similar remarks on Friday in another early morning tweet where he labeled Comey a “leaker,” referring to Comey’s decision to share the contents of memos about his conversations with Trump to the press via a friend.
Comey revealed that decision during his testimony on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he painted Trump as a liar and testified that Trump tried to obtain a loyalty pledge from the former FBI head and pushed him to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Trump on Friday said he was “100 percent” willing to match Comey and testify under oath to contradict Comey’s testimony.
A spokesman for Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Thursday pushed back on several aspects of James Comey’s Senate testimony after the former FBI director raised new questions about Sessions’ actions before and after he recused himself from the federal investigation of Russia’s interference in the U.S. election.
Comey’s testimony touched on Sessions at several points. He hinted that the FBI was aware of information that led the bureau to believe Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia probe weeks before he actually did so, and reportedly told senators in a subsequent closed session that Sessions may have met with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. on a third occasion that the attorney general had not disclosed.
The morning after former FBI Director James Comey delivered blockbuster testimony in the Senate in which he painted President Donald Trump as a liar and said that the President pressured him to quash a probe into Michael Flynn, Trump published a tweet declaring “vindication.”
Trump published his tweet shortly after 6 a.m. on Friday morning, during the time frame when he typically shares his thoughts on Twitter.
He referenced “false statements and lies,” appearing to accuse Comey of lying under oath.
Trump also labeled Comey a “leaker,” referencing Comey’s decision to get a friend to share the contents of memos about his conversations with Trump to the press, a revelation the former FBI director shared on Thursday during with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!
James Comey testified Thursday that he was “stunned” by requests President Donald Trump made to curtail federal investigations related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and thought the President’s remarks were of investigative interest— and it seems other senior FBI officials agree.
Though the ousted FBI director did not go as far as accusing Trump of attempting to obstruct justice, Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee offered the clearest indication yet that the President may already be under scrutiny for exactly that.
Part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s job is to “sort that out,” Comey said, dismissing questions from the assembled senators on whether he personally believed Trump obstructed justice. His testimony made the case for why he felt “sure” that Mueller would look into the multiple one-on-one conversations that Trump requested of his then-FBI director.
Comey says Trump asked him to quash the FBI’s investigation into ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn in one Feb. 14 exchange in the Oval Office. In a March 30 phone call, Comey says Trump requested that he lift the “cloud” that the Russia probe was casting over his administration.
“I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the President was an effort to obstruct,” Comey said of the Feb. 14 meeting. “I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that’s an offense.”
Importantly, Comey noted that Trump asked other senior officials, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, to clear the room before initiating the conversation about the Flynn probe. He noted those officials hesitated before complying.
“Why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office?” Comey said. “That, to me as an investigator, is a very significant fact.”
Senior FBI officials briefed on that conversation said it was “of investigative interest” to determine the intent of Trump’s statements about Flynn, Comey testified.
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe made similar remarks in separate testimony before the committee on Wednesday, telling Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) that it was “accurate” to assume that Comey’s private conversations with Trump either already are or are “likely to become part of a criminal investigation.”
These loaded comments apparently did not trouble Trump’s legal team or his defenders on Capitol Hill, who insisted that Comey’s testimony actually vindicated the President. They noted that, as Trump previously said, Comey confirmed that he informed Trump on three separate occasions that the President was not the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.
Republican lawmakers, the White House and Trump’s own family members also argued that the President was merely looking out for the interest of Flynn, a longtime adviser, and never explicitly ordered Comey to end any investigation. Those defenders neglected to mention that Comey testified that a senior FBI official cautioned him against telling Trump he was not a part of the federal investigation, because that person believed that “inevitably his behavior, his conduct will fall within the scope.”
Whether Trump requested or ordered that Comey drop the investigation into Flynn is an irrelevant semantic distinction. As Comey testified, Trump asked him to swear “loyalty” and repeatedly brought up the status of his job in their conversations, leaving the former FBI director with the impression that his continued tenure at the bureau was “contingent upon how he felt I conducted myself and whether I demonstrated loyalty.”
He did not comply with Trump’s requests and was fired only four months into Trump’s term. By the President’s own admission, Comey was dismissed because of the “Russia thing.”
“I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted,” Comey testified. “That is a very big deal.”
The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that it was “hard to overstate the significance” of fired FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), whose committee is leading its own investigation into Russian election meddling, wrote in a statement responding to Comey’s testimony that it “constitutes evidence of an intention to interfere or potentially obstruct at least a portion of the Russia investigation, if not more.”
Read Schiff’s full statement below:
“Today, former FBI Director James Comey testified that the President of the United States demanded his loyalty, and directed him to drop a criminal investigation into his former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. Director Comey further testified that he believes President Trump ultimately fired him in order to alter the course of the FBI’s Russia investigation. It is difficult to overstate the significance of this testimony.
“These discussions and others took place in one-on-one telephone conversions and meetings initiated by the President, or after the President cleared the room of other people. Director Comey wrote memoranda about his conversations with President Trump because he was worried that the President and his Administration would misrepresent them.
“In my view, this testimony constitutes evidence of an intention to interfere or potentially obstruct at least a portion of the Russia investigation, if not more. It will be important for Congress to obtain evidence to corroborate this testimony — the memoranda, certainly, as well as any tapes, if they exist. We should also interview those around Director Comey at the time of these contacts, to get their contemporaneous impressions of his conversations with the President and to supplement his testimony. Finally, we cannot accept the refusal of Directors Rogers and Coats to answer questions about whether they were asked to intervene with Comey on the Flynn case or any related matter. Similarly, we will need to ask Director Pompeo the same questions. These additional steps are vital to determining the ultimate significance of the President’s actions.”
A routine budget hearing in the Senate next week featuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions took on heightened importance following ousted FBI Director James Comey’s explosive Thursday testimony, which raised questions about what Sessions did both before and after he recused himself from the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
At least one member of the Appropriations Committee, Vice Chair Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), plans to use next week’s budget hearing as an opportunity to grill Sessions about Russia, Comey and President Donald Trump. “I have many important questions for him to answer,” he said in a statement.
During his feverishly-anticipated testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, ousted FBI Director James Comey made a host of major revelations about his handling of President Donald Trump and the federal investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. election in the months before he was abruptly fired in May.
Importantly, Comey disclosed new information about actions he took when he became concerned about the Trump administration’s attempts to establish a “patronage” relationship with him and persuade him to drop the FBI investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn. Here’s an overview of some of the most significant moments from the hearing, where Comey revealed exactly what steps he took and why he took them.
Throughout his testimony Thursday, former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly stressed the serious implications of Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. He argued that the issue of Russian meddling it not about politics, but about the credibility of the American government.
Toward the beginning of the hearing, Comey said that he has no doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election and that Russian government officials were aware of the meddling.
He later stressed that Russian interference is very real, countering President Donald Trump’s constant dismissals of the Russia probe.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) asked Comey about the way Trump has discussed Russia’s election meddling, noting that the President has described Russian interference “as a hoax and as fake news.” In response, Comey stressed that there’s no doubt that the Russian government tried to interfere in the 2016 election and that the conclusion on Russia’s actions is “about as unfake as you can possibly get.”
“There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. And it was an active measures campaign driven from the top of the government. There is no fuzz on that,” Comey said.
“It is a high confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community — and the members of this committee have seen the intelligence — it’s not a close call,” he continued. “That happened. That’s about as unfake as you can possibly get and is very, very serious, which is why it’s so refreshing to see a bipartisan focus on that. Because this is about America, not about any particular party.”
Asked if it was a “hostile act by the Russian government,” Comey replied, “Yes.”
Later in his testimony, Comey emphasized that Russia’s attempt to meddle in the election is a threat to the United States and should rise above politics. He delivered a passionate monologue about just how grave a threat Russia’s meddling is to America.
“The reason this is such a big deal is we have this big, messy, wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time but nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for, except other Americans. And that’s wonderful and often painful,” Comey said. “But we’re talking about a foreign government that — using technical intrusion, lots of other methods — tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act.”
“That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it. It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally,” he continued. “They want to undermine our credibility in the face of the world. They think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them. And so they’re going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible. That’s what this is about. And they will be back, because we remain — as difficult as we can be with each other — we remain that shining city on the hill and they don’t like it.”
The former FBI director also noted that Russia’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election was part of an ongoing effort targeted at the U.S.
“It’s a long-term practice of theirs. It stepped up a notch in a significant way in ’16. They’ll be back,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He stressed that the probe into Russian election meddling is also about prevention of future attacks, saying that Russia is not a threat to any one political party, but to the country as a whole.
Comey also addressed some of the details of the the FBI’s investigation into Russian hacking attempts. He said there was a “massive” effort to target government agencies and non-governmental groups, estimating that hundreds, possibly around 1,000, entities were targeted. He also said that the FBI never examined the hardware that was hacked at the Democratic National Committee’s, but that the FBI got the information they needed from a third party.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Thursday reflected ruefully on his questions to fired FBI Director James Comey during an open session of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I get the sense from Twitter that my line of questioning today went over people’s heads,” McCain said in a statement. “Maybe going forward I shouldn’t stay up late watching the Diamondbacks night games.”
McCain said he wanted to find out whether Comey believed “that any of his interactions with the President rise to the level of obstruction of justice.”
“While I missed an opportunity in today’s hearing, I still believe this question is important, and I intend to submit it in writing to Mr. Comey for the record,” he said.
