Look What They Did To My Boy

Harris Executes An Impossible Feat Near-Perfectly

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

Two months ago, President Joe Biden turned in the most disastrous debate performance in American political history. One month ago, he dropped out of the race, quickly tapping his vice president to take his place. A day or two later, she was the de facto nominee. 

In those 30 days, Kamala Harris didn’t just ride out the turbulence of an earth-shaking period for her party, but performed like an Olympic surfer. She immediately figured out how to market herself, how to diminish Donald Trump and his movement, how to capture organic enthusiasm and channel it into eye-popping sums and volunteer fervor, how to find a vice president who shares her warmth and joy while also balancing out her biggest political weaknesses. 

And then, she helmed a convention that reflected that exuberance and competence, punctuated by her pitch-perfect keynote speech where she introduced herself to voters and opened her arms wide to all different kinds of Americans. Supporting players, particularly Doug Emhoff and the Obamas, contributed their own excellent performances. 

There are 10 weeks until the election, in which Democrats have to sustain the pro-Harris energy and fend off Republican attacks. One of the biggest reasons for optimism to me is that no part of her operation is taking this lightning in a bottle for granted; multiple speakers warned that complacency may be just as dangerous as the lies and half-truths Trump will inevitably fling, that elections in this country are dog fights and not landslides. Harris is running full-out — check out that Milwaukee rally flex during the DNC — like she’s the underdog. She’s a Black woman in politics; she knows success won’t be handed to her. She’s sprinting through that finish line, buoyed by thousands waving flags and signs bearing her name, screaming as one: “We won’t go back.”

— Kate Riga

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

• Hunter Walker checks in on Mike Lindell and his mustache.
• Khaya Himmelman unpacks a Supreme Court order that handed a partial win to Arizona Republicans trying to disenfranchise voters and spread voter fraud myths in the state ahead of the election. 
• Joe Ragazzo explains what capitalism-loving Ben Shapiro gets wrong about capitalism. 
• Emine Yücel helps us understand Donald Trump’s live tweeting meltdown during Kamala Harris’ headlining DNC speech.

Let’s dig in. 

— Nicole Lafond

Look What They Did To My Boy

Mike Lindell has finally lost it. (His mustache, that is.)

The My Pillow entrepreneur and prominent election conspiracy theorist announced on Tuesday that he would be shaving his mustache in order to sneak into the Democratic National Convention “incognito.” In emails to supporters and posts on the site formerly known as Twitter, Lindell variously declared “the DNC is ‘stealing’ my mustache” and claimed it was the first time he had gone without the “iconic” facial hair in 30 years. 

Look how they massacred my boy.  

Lindell filmed the dramatic shaving session on his social media platform “FrankSpeech,” where he suggested the makeover came at a great psychic cost. 

“We hope it’s all worth it you guys,” Lindell declared somberly. 

Lindell also showed off the “rest of” his “disguise,” which, like some cartoon or children’s movie villain, consisted of nothing more than a straw hat and sunglasses. While Lindell did manage to make it inside the DNC, the Democrats in attendance, shockingly, were able to identify him. It is unclear whether this was a result of his infamy or simply that his comments about missing ballots made it obvious he was a dead-ender for former President Trump. 

“They did realize who I was when I started talking,” Lindell later explained. 

Afterwards, Lindell claimed the ruse was a massive success. While he mainly managed to earn headlines for an incident in which a 12-year-old child he encountered roundly mocked him for making unsourced and inaccurate claims about Trump’s loss, Lindell said his goal was to draw any attention possible towards an event he subsequently held on Thursday near the DNC site in Chicago. 

Lindell’s big event purported to feature voters who had backed President Joe Biden in the 2020 election and were now switching to support former President Trump this time around. The discussion, which was scheduled to last six hours, featured Lindell and another prominent election denier, David Clements, in a room with a group of Chicago residents who discussed their reluctance to back the Democrats. TPM tuned in to some of the marathon summit and was treated to Lindell repeatedly telling the mostly Black group without any prompting that he was “good friends” with Dr. Ben Carson, a Black person who was in Trump’s Cabinet. Lindell also claimed that Democrats have a secret and dastardly plan. 

“There’s a hidden agenda and it’s an evil agenda,” Lindell said. “We’re in a spiritual battle of epic proportions.”

Like a sort of reverse Samson, shaving off his facial hair apparently gave Lindell the power to expose this dark plot by getting more clicks for his election event with the supposed Biden turncoats.

“I shaved my mustache off so they would attack and make worldwide news,” Lindell said. “I want everybody to know why you all are switching.” 

You see, Lindell gave up his ‘stache for freedom. It all makes perfect sense. 

— Hunter Walker

A Partial Win For Arizona Republicans And The Myth Of Non Citizen Voting

In what was at least a partial win for GOP Arizona lawmakers and the Republican National Committee, the Supreme Court on Thursday revived part of an Arizona measure requiring that people show proof of citizenship when registering to vote using a state-created form — an order, which election experts tell TPM, has the potential to disenfranchise thousands of voters who are legally eligible to vote. 

Although the court did not greenlight Arizona’s effort to mandate proof of citizenship requirements for federal elections for voters using federal forms to register, the court’s order will require election officials to reject state voter registration forms if voters using them do not provide documentary proof of citizenship. According to reporting from CNN, over 40,000 “federal-only” voters have already been prohibited from casting ballots in state and local elections due to lack of documentary proof of citizenship. 

The order comes in response to an appeal filed by the RNC and Arizona Republican legislators in May of this year, seeking to revive proof of citizenship laws. In 2022 former GOP Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill into law requiring proof of citizenship in order to vote in federal elections. The three liberal justices and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, dissented from Thursday’s order. The other five conservative justices agreed with it in whole or in part.

“It’s a really disappointing decision because it means that a lot of people in Arizona who are legally eligible to vote will try to register and they will be rejected if they don’t have proof of citizenship on hand,” Brent Ferguson, senior legal counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center said in an interview with TPM, “and it just really hurts democracy in Arizona and just for our country generally.”

Not only will this disenfranchise eligible voters, Ferguson also pointed out that the fact that this change will go into effect very close to an election, and will also create confusion around how to register and how to vote, breading distrust into the election system. 

“This is a really big and confusing change very close to an election,” he said. “County officials throughout Arizona have to change how they’re treating applications that they get in, some of which may have already, they’re in the middle of processing them.”

Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes also said, in a news release, that the Supreme Court’s order will “create confusion for voters.”

“We respect the Court’s decision and will implement these changes while continuing to protect voter access and make a voting simple process,” he added. 

The newly in force law also further perpetuates the false myth of non-citizen voting — a particular area of fixation for Republicans ahead of the 2024 election. As we’ve reported before, there is no evidence of widespread or intentional voting by noncitizens — but the story features prominently in many Trump-boosted conspiracy theories about the election system. 

— Khaya Himmelman

Capitalism-ism

There have been many ignorant reactions to Kamala Harris announcing she wants to target price gouging. Unsurprisingly, a lot of big businesses are whining. Also unsurprising is the fact that conservative economic whiz kid Ben Shapiro has — with his trademark condescending truculence — abased himself most.

“One of the great failures of Wall Street and of big business in general — they are not capitalist by nature,” Shapiro says. “They are profit-seeking.”

This is a common rhetorical strategy to pick and choose what capitalism is and show it in a favorable light, call it capitalism-ism. Now you may be wondering two things. 1. What is he talking about? 2. Why should I care what he’s talking about?

1. Ben is trying and failing to draw a distinction between capitalism and corporatism, which he is defining as when a business “gets in bed with the government.” Now in so far as Ben thinks we should eliminate the power of corporate lobbying, I actually agree with him. But corporatism and capitalism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, corporatism as a concept has a very long history that predates both capitalism and even nation states. We don’t have time to get into that here. Suffice to say, Ben is trying to draw a distinction that does not exist. The reality is this capitalism is profit seeking. When someone has capital, they deploy the capital, and try to make a return on that capital. “Trying to make a return on that capital” encompasses literally any legal attempt to get that return. That is your fiduciary duty. It’s what the shareholder system is all about. There are things that some nations do to put guard rails on how capitalists can use capital to get a return. These are called regulations. And for the last 50 years or so, the American political party that Ben produces propaganda for has been trying to do whatever it can to eliminate regulations so that there is a mythical “free market” that just runs itself and everything is awesome for everyone.

But then reality hits. For example, today The Department of Justice along with eight states sued a company called RealPage which was a company whose explicit objective and value proposition was to allow landlords to coordinate prices with competitors. This is illegal. Here are some of the things landlords had to say about RealPage:

One landlord observed that RealPage’s software “can eliminate the guessing game” for landlords’ pricing decisions. Discussing a different RealPage product, another landlord said: “I always liked this product because your algorithm uses proprietary data from other subscribers to suggest rents and term. That’s classic price fixing . . . .” A third landlord explained, “Our very first goal we came out with immediately out of the gate is that we will not be the reason any particular sub-market takes a rate dive. So for us our strategy was to hold steady and to keep an eye on the communities around us and our competitors.”

If Ben wants to argue, or perhaps is arguing, that we should eliminate corporate lobbying and then just implement regulations without corporations being able to lobby government officials to not implement regulations intended to create healthy markets, wonderful. But what he is actually saying is that any government interference is picking winners and losers. I guess there’s some truth to that. Well instituted regulations weed out those bad at business and retain those who are good at business. 

2. I care what Ben thinks because I think Ben represents a popular strain of conservative thought and is respected by conservatives in a position to shape policy. 

— Joe Ragazzo

Words Of Wisdom

“Too many ‘Thank yous,’ too rapidly said, what’s going on with her?”

“WHERE’S HUNTER?”

“Walz was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH.”

Those are some of former President Donald Trump’s stream-of-conscious Truth Social Posts from the final night of the DNC. These posts came as Vice President Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech in front of a packed arena on Thursday night. The attempt to live commentate the speech turned into posts about a bunch of nonsense from a desperate, detached from reality Trump. 

His obsession with the Biden family seems to also be alive and well, despite not running against him anymore.

We’ve been saying for weeks now that Trump and his MAGA allies have been flailing, struggling to campaign against the new Democratic presidential nominee now that their trusty “Biden is SOOO old” attack is unusable.

Last night’s attempt at live commentating Harris’ speech shows just how down bad Trump really is. Can’t blame him though, the struggle is real when your opponent is not just seizing on the moment but on a movement.

— Emine Yücel