Burdened By What Has Been, Dems Enter Election Home Stretch With Typical Anxiety

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

Despite the dependability of election years’ October neurosis for Democrats, this year’s bout has prompted a flurry of stories on the phenomenon (heck, we did a whole podcast episode about it). 

The justified anxiety, though, conflates the current state of the race — close, uncertain — with where we’ll end up. 

We might not know who wins until all the votes are counted because it’s so achingly close in the six or seven states that get to pick the president. But if all of the hotly contested swing states fall into the same column, that’s about as close as we come to a landslide these days. 

So it’s a double-layered anxiety sandwich: The polls stretch amenably to cover everything from an electoral tie to a swing state shellacking — and, of course, they could be wrong. Democrats, already a twitchy breed, have been burned by varying levels of polling error in the past two presidential elections, creating a doom loop of both obsessing over and doubting the numbers in equal measure. A few bold pundits also dare to voice the all-but-ignored possibility that the polls may be overestimating Republican support this time, perhaps an overcorrection from those previous misses.

People in my life often ask me around this time what I think will happen. I’ve been saying honestly that I can’t remember feeling so uncertain on the eve of an election. But, as perhaps a good lesson to remember, certainty doesn’t mean a whole lot — many people’s 2020 certainty rested upon polls showing Joe Biden to have a falsely inflated lead. Nearly every pundit has had to atone for wrongheaded confidence in 2016.

Uncertainty is uncomfortable, particularly when the stakes are so high. But that anxious feeling, in and of itself, isn’t really an indicator of anything beyond that you don’t know who will win, and you care a lot about who does.

— Kate Riga

Here’s What Else TPM Has On Tap This Weekend:

• Josh Kovensky gives an update on Ben Swann, the right-wing media figure who is open about at times taking money from the Kremlin to produce videos that are friendly to Putin and his interests. This week, Swann gave an interview to the AP, claiming that his latest funding stream for a propaganda-like video was in fact wealthy Americans.
• Emine Yücel provides an update on her breaking coverage of the lawsuit filed by supporters of the Amendment 4 abortion ballot measure in Florida this week: A federal judge ordered DeSantis administration officials to stop threatening local TV stations with criminal charges for airing a political ad in support of the measure.
• Hunter Walker outlines the delusional roots of Donald Trump’s latest unhinged, anti-Harris conspiracy theory: They are coming for the cows.
• But he’s your “stupid” “narcissist”: Emine Yücel points out the irony in Mitch McConnell’s latest Trump insults.

Let’s dig in.

— Nicole Lafond

Swann Song

Ben Swann has the distinction of being a right-wing media figure who is open about a fact that others in his position have recently tended to conceal: he takes money from the Russian government in exchange for producing TV shows friendly to the Kremlin.

Swann, as I reported with TPM’s Kate Riga late last year, made a name for himself during the Obama years as a libertarian local news critic of the former President’s before veering into PizzaGate territory around the time of Trump’s election. He worked for RT, Russia’s state-owned western-facing outlet, before producing shows for the network after the invasion of Ukraine.

Federal prosecutors continue to examine RT and the extent to which it’s used as a front for Russian intelligence and propaganda operations. You can look at Tenet Media, the conservative outlet that prosecutors said was a front for a Russian propaganda operation, as an example: per a September indictment, RT funded the company to the tune of $10 million.

So, what makes Swann relatively exceptional is that he’s somewhat open about his work for RT (he’s not been accused of any wrongdoing). He went on the record with the AP this week in a fascinating story about how one documentary-like, anti-Ukraine feature he produced – “Zelensky Unmasked” – was boosted by conservative personalities like Donald Trump Jr., Jenna Ellis, Andrew Giuliani, and others. Per the story, Swann attributed funding for the company that created “Zelensky Unmasked” not to Russia, but to unnamed, wealthy Americans who “own very large companies.”

What’s so striking about Swann (and Tenet Media) is that he doesn’t feel the need to emphasize what virtually every other media proprietor holds dear: they have an audience that, either by subscription or advertising, keeps them funding. They are filling a niche in the market. From the AP piece, and TPM’s own reporting last year, that’s not part of the equation at all here. It’s just investments and returns all the way down.

— Josh Kovensky

They Are Coming For The Cows

As the presidential campaign heads into the home stretch, former President Trump has taken to issuing a series of dire warnings about animals. First, he leaned on extremist far-right conspiracy theories about immigrants eating cats and dogs. Now, Trump says his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, is coming for the cows. 

On Friday, Trump made an appearance in the friendly confines of “Fox and Friends” where the hosts took their usual habit of lobbing softball questions at Republicans even further by outsourcing the work to a six-year-old boy who appeared via video to ask the former president, “What’s your favorite farm animal?”

It was about as tough as any question he’s ever received from the “Fox and Friends” crew and Trump had quite an answer. 

“I’ll tell you what I love. I love cows, but if we go with Kamala you won’t have any cows any more,” Trump said.

As Fox’s talking heads cackled, Trump continued.

“I don’t want to ruin this kid’s day, but I love cows. I think they’re so cute and so beautiful … But according to Kamala, who’s a radical left lunatic, you will not have any cows any more,” Trump said. “So, we have to vote her out … if you like cows you have to vote her out.” 

Trump didn’t explain this horrifying moo-rder scenario and the Fox hosts certainly didn’t press him. However, Trump has actually been milking variations of this wild claim for some time. The outlandish idea Harris or other Democrats want to eliminate cows or red meat has actually been something of a staple in Republican politics in recent years and it essentially comes from imaginary outrage about climate change measures.  

To see if this beef was remotely ground in reality, we reached out to the Trump campaign to ask what actual policies the former president was referring to when he discussed Harris’ alleged war on cows. As of this writing, we received no response. 

The whole thing takes the idea of throwing red meat to your base to a whole other level. We also reached out to the Harris campaign, which has cast the comments as a “delusional rant” and raised questions about his mental stability amid a series of increasingly dire pronouncements and odd moments like his town hall-turned musical extravaganza. Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Harris turned to the immortal words of Bart Simpson.

“Here’s what I’d say to Donald Trump,” Sams wrote in an email to TPM before adding the following image:

— Hunter Walker

Judge Blocks DeSantis Admin’s Anti-Abortion Project Of Intimidation

A federal judge ordered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis administration officials to stop threatening local TV stations with criminal charges for airing a political ad in support of a measure that would codify abortion rights in the state constitution, Amendment 4. Abortion is currently banned at six weeks in Florida.  

In issuing a temporary restraining order, U.S. District Chief Judge Mark Walker sided with supporters of Amendment 4, describing the state’s actions as “unconstitutional coercion” that violates the First Amendment.

“Whether it’s a woman’s right to choose, or the right to talk about it,” Walker wrote, “the First Amendment prohibits the State of Florida from trampling” on the freedom of speech of Amendment 4 supporters.

The order follows a lawsuit filed by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the organizers behind Amendment 4, in response to the DeSantis administration’s pressure campaign against the ballot measure. TPM was one of the first to break the news of the lawsuit this week. 

Organizers celebrated Walker’s order on Thursday. 

“This critical initial victory is a triumph for every Floridian who believes in democracy and the sanctity of the First Amendment,” Lauren Brenzel, Campaign Director of “Yes on 4” said in a statement shared with TPM Thursday. “The court has affirmed what we’ve known all along: the government cannot silence the truth about Florida’s extreme abortion ban. It’s a deadly ban that puts women’s lives at risk. This ruling is a powerful reminder that Floridians will not back down in the face of government intimidation.”

FPF’s lawsuit came as a direct response to the cease-and-desist letters DeSantis administration officials sent out to TV stations earlier this month, seeking to stop them from airing ads that advocate for the passage of Amendment 4.

The abortion rights group alleged that state officials were engaged in an “unconstitutional” campaign to attack the referendum “using public resources and government authority.”

“The state of Florida’s crusade against Amendment 4 is unconstitutional government interference — full stop,” Lauren Brenzel, a campaign director for the group, said in a statement shared with TPM earlier this week. “The State cannot coerce television stations into removing political speech from the airwaves in an attempt to keep their abortion ban in place.”

— Emine Yücel

Words Of Wisdom

Donald Trump is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist.”

That’s what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) privately said after the 2020 election, according to excerpts from a new biography of the Republican leader set to be released this month.

It is well known that former President Donald Trump and McConnell are not the best of buddies. So it might seem unsurprising to hear him badmouthing him. But this is the Senate Republican leader, who, by the way, endorsed Trump’s 2024 run.

Just more evidence that Republican lawmakers have completely lost control, letting Trump — a man they think is “despicable” and a “narcissist” — be the leader of their party.

— Emine Yücel