Outlaws On The Verge Of Power

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

One way of thinking about the time since Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator into American political life is to conceptualize it as a spree. Trump has been gambling since 2015; he entered the GOP primary that year as a demagogic wildcard. People laughed at first, and thought his immediate surge in the polls was a fluke, but they were wrong: his support stayed high, as he both reflected and shaped the party’s base by humiliating GOP leaders to establish dominance over them.

Throughout, the draw of the spectacle that Trump created was the dominance that he exerted over his opponents. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) became “little Marco;” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had his personal cell phone number read out; Jeb Bush walked away almost completely emasculated. For many on the left, there was a deeply pleasing quality to this: politicians that had long been seen as hypocrites and shills for various nexes of moneyed interests were finally getting their comeuppance, upstaged by an obvious con artist who had no chance of victory.

That feeling obscured the truth. Trump was taking big risks, yes, but his appeal to segments of the American public was real and durable. The first significant instance in which he bullied his way to power was his first GOP primary, where he abused, intimidated, and scapegoated his opponents to beat them.

From there, Trump kept gambling. He took a risk in asking the Russians for help in unlocking Hillary Clinton’s emails; he took a risk in paying off Stormy Daniels; he took a risk in refusing to commit to accepting the results. They all mostly paid off: Trump won the 2016 election. Accountability, to the extent it came at all, has appeared in meager and late helpings.

His term was a shambles of day-to-day incompetence and impulsivity. But on longer-term issues that concern himself, Trump has shown a real capacity for learning and focus. As early as 2019, with his attempt to strong-arm the Ukrainian government into smearing Joe Biden to win re-election, Trump began to twist the policies and resources of the federal government towards staying power. Ukraine led to an impeachment, but he pushed through: as COVID swept across the country, he began to implement the blueprint for a potential second term. He chipped away at protections for federal workers that keep them nonpartisan, and stacked top positions at DOJ and defense agencies with political cronies.

After he lost the 2020 election, Trump stayed the same — denying that he lost, he gambled on a series of outlandish plots that came dangerously close to success. He tried to bully state election officials. Courage at the top of the DOJ prevented him from enlisting it in his fight to stay in power; Mike Pence stopped the certification of Trump’s defeat from foundering in Congress.

That gamble failed, but only partly. Through a strategy of delay, some fecklessness by those empowered to hold him accountable, and a major assist from the conservative-stacked Supreme Court, Trump has managed to survive the legal peril in which January 6 placed him long enough to election day.

For Trump personally, the stakes in 2024 have never been higher. The risks he’s taken to get here have crossed so many legal boundaries (forget about ethical lines, come on) as to make this quite existential for him. One thing that struck me, watching him in the courtroom for his Manhattan hush money trial earlier this year, was how much time he’ll have spent in court in the year leading up to a potential victory. The sexual assault defamation cases, his New York Attorney General case, the hush money criminal case — it’s a lot of time spent stewing quietly in dingy rooms, as people recount horrible things you’ve done.

And yet, it’s not nearly enough to say that Trump’s gambles over the past decade of American life have failed. Next week’s election is the big one, where all of it may come due; for him, or for the country.

— Josh Kovensky

Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend

• Hunter Walker does a wellness check on Mike Lindell ahead of the election, as he and Steve Bannon preemptively declare a Trump victory the only acceptable outcome.
• Khaya Himmelman reports on a group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania who are suing to invalidate hundreds of thousands of mailed-in ballots, based on false evidence.
• Emine Yücel has the latest on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) disastrous (for the Trump campaign) admission that Republicans will, in fact, gut Obamacare if Trump wins and Republicans get both chambers of Congress.

— Nicole Lafond

Mike Lindell Is Preemptively Denying Next Week’s Election 

As you may know, Steve Bannon, the on-again-off-again adviser to former President Trump was released from prison on Tuesday after serving a nearly four month sentence for defying a subpoena in conjunction with the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Bannon quickly returned to his “War Room” podcast where he had a very special guest for Wednesday’s episode, MyPillow entrepreneur and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. 

Lindell, who is a major financial backer of various groups, digital platforms, and far right broadcasts that have spread false narratives about Trump’s last loss, took the time to preemptively insist next week’s election is already a clear victory for his dear leader. Referring to “early voting” without citing any actual numbers, Lindell said it was now clear that any Trump defeat would be illegitimate. 

“Everyone sees now. Republicans have overtaken Democrats in this early voting in a lot of places. That’s like a poll coming out. It’s going to be very hard for them to hide that from the people,” Lindell said, adding, “In order to steal an election, you’ve got to make it somewhat believable. No one’s going to believe this now.”

Of course, Lindell tends to not believe elections. It’s kind of his whole thing. And everything he cited to justify this latest version of his conspira schtick is nonsense. Early voting is not, in fact, “like a poll coming out.” While it can be an interesting indicator, neither early voting or polls are exact definitive depictions of a final vote. And despite Lindell’s claim, the early voting data is overwhelmingly favoring Republicans, the actual figures we have so far are mixed. 

Obviously reality has never exactly stopped Lindell. He went on to suggest the past two election cycles were rigged by unspecified “deviations” before sort of saying the quiet part out loud. 

Lindell is one of many Trump allies who have recently made confident declarations that the former president cannot possibly lose next week’s election. The boasts seem like a clear attempt to issue a prebuttal and get Trump supporters ready to fight as they have been in the past. Lindell essentially admitted this. After insisting any Trump loss would be unbelievable, Lindell went on to tell Bannon that his goal is spreading these false narratives on far right platforms in order to amp up the Trump base. 

“Our voice has gotten so much bigger like your great show. … They’re not going to have more votes than voters again and get away with that,” Lindell said. “We’re getting our news from all the different podcasts all the different platforms that have opened up.”

For Lindell, advancing these false narratives is going to be the way to win in a race that he somewhat contradictorily characterized as already won by Trump and deviously rigged against him. 

“This is going to be what we need to open things up when they try and do — they’re already trying it,” Lindell said. “We’ve just got to make people aware so everybody is on fire for this election.”

Getting Trump supporters prepped to fight any potential defeat isn’t Lindell’s only goal. He also has pillows to sell and Bannon was happy to help.  

“Mike, I want to talk to you … I’ll call you after the show about doing a prison line of pillows. Pillows in federal prison are a rare commodity,” Bannon said as they wrapped up their chat. “Mike … before you turned your life over to God … you were both a degenerate gambler and a drug addict. And so, you know about getting on the wrong side of the law.”

Bannon then asked Lindell to “tell me about the pillows.” Lindell noted he was offering a specially designed “Free Steve Pillow” to the “War Room Posse.” He also touted the rest of his wares including his standard pillow, which happens to be on sale for a price that is a commonly used Neo Nazi code, a fact Lindell has insisted is just a coincidence. 

“There’s all the classic pillows that I got attacked for for me being a Nazi because they’re on special for $14.88,” Lindell said, later adding, “I don’t know if you know this Steve, but while you were in just a week ago it’s been a celebration of our great leader, you getting out. MyPillow has made it through the storm.”

— Hunter Walker

Citizen Activists Sue To Invalidate Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballots Before They’ve Even Been Counted

A group of activists are challenging mail-in ballots based in parts of southeast Pennsylvania, alleging that these ballots are coming from voters who have moved out of state permanently and are therefore ineligible, according to reporting from Votebeat. 

These challenges rely on the cross-checking of data from the state’s mail-ballot request database with information from the U.S. Postal Service, with the activists claiming that the voters in question are not residents of Pennsylvania anymore and should be ineligible to vote in the state. It’s worth noting, as Votebeat does, that according to Pennsylvania law, a voter does not need to receive their mail-in ballot at a Pennsylvania address. 

This is an unreliable way to determine whether someone is actually eligible to vote or not, however — it’s impossible to know from that data alone if a voter has moved permanently or not. 

On Tuesday, a group known as Citizen AG filed a federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt over what they claim are more than 270,000 possible ineligible voters, according to the Lebanon Daily News. According to the lawsuit these 270,000 voters have been marked as inactive, having not responded to notices since before the 2020 election, and should therefore be purged from the voter rolls. 

Andrew Garber, a counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, in an interview with Lebanon Daily News said: “These lawsuits alleging states need to kick people off the voter rolls, these are laying the groundwork for people to challenge election results they might not like this fall.”

For months now, Republicans have been alleging issues with the voter rolls and mounting baseless lawsuits against voter list maintenance practices to set themselves up to cry voter fraud if Trump loses next week. Experts have previously explained to TPM that these voter roll maintenance challenges are simply a way to sow seeds of distrust in the election system. 

“The ultimate goal of these lawsuits is to lay the foundation for later claims that the election results can’t be trusted because the voter registration rolls can’t be trusted,” director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center Jonathan Diaz previously told TPM. 

— Khaya Himmelman

Johnson Tries To Claim ‘No Obamacare’ Just Means An Improved Obamacare

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) went on Fox News on Thursday to try to do some clean up following his remarks indicating that Republicans will tackle “massive reform” of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — AKA gutting Obamacare — should Donald Trump win his third bid for the Oval Office and the GOP keep the House. 

Johnson claimed his words were twisted, saying he just meant that the ACA needs “improvements.”

“We need to expand quality of care, access to care, and, obviously, lower the cost of healthcare,” Johnson said. 

“They took a clip out of context,” he added.

The House Speaker’s backtracking comes shortly after Trump and his campaign attempted to do damage control after Johnson indicated that Republicans are planning to either get rid of the popular ACA or substantially gut it during a campaign event in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania the Republican speaker attended for House candidate Ryan Mackenzie (R).

“Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,” Johnson said on Monday, according to a video obtained by NBC News.

“No Obamacare?” an event attendee asked Johnson.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson responded, reportedly rolling his eyes. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

In reaction to Johnson’s remarks the Trump campaign said, “This is not President Trump’s policy position.”

“As President Trump has said, he will make our healthcare system better by increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition, and expanding access to new affordable healthcare and insurance options,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday night. 

Trump has a long history of wanting to do away with the ACA — including when Congress unsuccessfully tried to repeal it during his presidency — but has avoided saying anything specific about his health care position this cycle, knowing it’s a political liability.

— Emine Yücel