Fox News propaganda about Trump's trial has taken on some serious North Korea vibes: It absurdly portrays him as exerting total mastery over the proceedings and even depicts his dozing off as an act of heroic defiance.

This is MAGA cult stuff. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/181138… Trump has been posting video of Fox personalities gushing about what a huge winner the trial has been for him. But privately, NYT reports, he's raging at his lead lawyer, which suggests he doesn't actually think things are going too well for him. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/181138…

NEWS --> Prominent conservative Michael Luttig excoriates the right wing SCOTUS justices as "radical," predicting that in the 1/6 case, they'll protect Trump entirely.

“I now believe that it is unlikely Trump will ever be tried," Luttig tells me.

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/181059… Also in our interview: Michael Luttig, who has strong conservative credentials, is harshly critical of the lines of questioning from Samuel Alito and the other right wing justices.

Luttig says a grant of immunity would "license all future presidents to commit crimes against the United States while in office with impunity."

newrepublic.com/article/181059…

Liz Cheney just said something deeply troubling: If SCOTUS delays immunity ruling, voters might be denied critical info about Trump's conduct while the mob raged, which Jack Smith has. That would reward Trump allies for their coverup.

New piece from me:
newrepublic.com/article/180896… Jack Smith has testimony from top Trump advisers about how Trump acted *during the attack* that the 1/6 committee could not get. SCOTUS delay could keep that buried.

In this piece, a senior 1/6 committee staffer explains what this means. Deeply sobering:

newrepublic.com/article/180896…

Important but overlooked: Mike Johnson explicitly says he's acting on Ukraine because believes what our intel agencies say about the awful consequences of abandoning it.

That's a striking rebuke to MAGA's lies about the "deep state" and the war. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/180808… “I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Mike Johnson said, noting that Ukraine aid will stop Putin from expanding his conquest later.

Remarkably, he's saying that on these matters, the "deep state" is telling the truth. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/180808…

Remarkable: By my count, at least a dozen GOP incumbents or prominent candidates in competitive House races are election deniers, were involved in 1/6, or voted against Biden electors.

New piece from me on the deep election-denial sickness in the GOP:
newrepublic.com/article/180690… Kevin McCarthy's craven pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago in 2021 was a fateful moment, showing that the GOP would make the construction of a massive historical lie about 1/6 central to its identity. This mostly failed politically, but the GOP is sticking with it.

newrepublic.com/article/180690…

Steve Bannon just wrecked one of Trump's biggest lies about Biden. Bannon said MAGA will poach lefty voters from Biden by highlighting record oil production under him.

But that flatly contradicts Trump's claims about Biden's energy policies. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/180617… Bannon said:

“No Republican knows that oil production under Biden is higher than ever. But Jill Stein’s people do."

This wrecks Trump's lie that Biden’s green policies have destroyed our “energy independence."

This is how MAGA info-wars work. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/180617…

A funny thing: Aileen Cannon is working hard to disguise her unscrupulous advocacy for Trump. But he keeps suggesting right in plain sight that he fully expects her to put a thumb on the scales for him.

Trump is exposing Cannon's game. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/180514… Cannon's latest ruling gave Jack Smith a partial win, but it also reserved for her the ability to kill the case against Trump later with no appeal, as many noted.

But Trump's open attacks Smith make it harder for her to retain a veneer of objectivity. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/180514…

Important from Jamie Raskin: News of Trump's call with Saudi Crown Prince raises big questions about what Trump is promising right now to Saudis that he'd do for them if he wins.

On the pod, Raskin tells me Congress should probe Trump-Saudi relationship👇
newrepublic.com/article/180472… More from our pod w/Jamie Raskin:

Raskin says Senate Ds have been a bit "gun shy" about using subpoenas to probe Trump-Saudi nexus, noting it would require 60 votes to enforce them.

I asked if Ds should make Rs vote on this anyway. It got interesting👇
newrepublic.com/article/180472…

Trump's casual use of "Migrant Crime" to smear large classes of immigrants should be covered as a national scandal. As Trump's rally in Michigan showed, his deranged, malicious, hateful public conduct is *itself* the real story here.

New piece from me:
newrepublic.com/article/180404… Also in this piece, I took a close look at the horrible killing of Ruby Garcia. Trump's effort to use this to indict Biden's immigration policies is utterly absurd and deranged. Here are the facts:

newrepublic.com/article/180404…

Interesting @lionel_trolling piece on the “does Trumpism = fascism” debate. Ganz says fascism-denial is mostly academics protecting their turf from upstart analysts who are basically unserious.

I’d like to suggest something else is also going on here. 1/

unpopularfront.news/p/what-happene…
I think fascism deniers are at least in part motivated by a particular reading of the liberal opposition to Trump. They want to say that liberals who allege fascism are in some sense refusing to own up to liberal elites' culpability in allowing Trumpism to flourish. 2/

One of the ugliest features of Trump-MAGA politics is the use of disasters to spread conspiracy theories, invent new culture-war obsessions, and pit one region of the country against another.

We're seeing that now with the Baltimore horror. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/180286… At the most basic level, what makes this so deranged is that billions of dollars in products pass through the Port of Baltimore, much of it from MAGA-supporting parts of the industrial Midwest and Appalachia.

Here's some federal data detailing this. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/180286…

Don't overlook this: RFK Jr's new running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has lots of money. That could fund his push for ballot access. Senior Dems tell me they worry he really might get on the ballot in many swing states.

Time to get ready for that. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/180135… Before, a Super PAC was trying to get RFK Jr on the ballot, which was vulnerable to serious legal challenge. But now the campaign is doing it, and Nicole Shanahan's money has led senior Dems to fear that this effort could very well succeed. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/180135…

Elon Musk told Don Lemon that he doesn't subscribe to great replacement theory.

Yet Musk has been pushing a vile, toxic video all about great replacement at the top of his X feed.

I looked at his public statements. His clean-up act is nonsense. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/180007… In the interview, Musk offers a mostly fake distinction between saying Dems are *conspiring* to flood the US with "illegals" versus saying they have a mere *incentive* to do so.

But the video Musk is promoting absolutely does allege a vast conspiracy. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/180007…

The Hur hearing was a fiasco for Republicans for a very specific reason: Dems succeeded in shifting much of the focus to the criminal charges against *Trump.*

The lesson is clear: Force Republicans to defend Trump wherever possible. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/179791… The GOP's impeachment push has devolved into a farce. But this isn't just because the case against Biden is so weak. It's also because the parallel case against Trump is so strong. The GOP stance can't withstand any comparisons. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/179791…

It's appalling that this has been normalized, but the casual GOP use of the term "Migrant Crime" to smear large categories of immigrants shouldn't skate by unchallenged any longer.

Trump's unhinged response to Biden's speech underscores the point. 1/

newrepublic.com/article/179682… In his angry barrage of ranting tweets, Trump claimed that Biden is allowing "Migrant Crime" to run rampant. Trump highlighted Sen Katie Britt's bizarro speech on precisely this point as well. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/179682…

This is maddening: New polling conducted by Dems finds that an alarmingly small percentage of voters surveyed are familiar with Trump's most blatant authoritarian threats, such as his "dictator" quote.

This is bad. But it's also an opportunity. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/179548… The poll found that only 31 percent of non-MAGA voters in PA, MI, and AZ have a lot of awareness of Trump's most explicit authoritarian threats. The poll tested 10 of these.

The survey is by veteran pollster @geoffgarin for the group Save My Country. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/179548…

Just absurd: Trump's strategy of getting SCOTUS to delay his 1/6 trial so he can cancel prosecutions of himself has been so normalized that news accounts now observe it in passing, in neutral language suggesting it's thoroughly uncontroversial. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/179438… We need to cut through this fog of euphemism. Liz Cheney nailed the stakes, urging SCOTUS to act promptly so voters can know whether Trump's election subversion was criminal before voting in the next election. Ds should run with this language. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/179438…

News --> Dems are planning a big push to hang the Alabama ruling around the necks of Republicans *in state legislative races.* Dems plan to highlight fetal personhood bills on the state level, an overlooked vulnerability on IVF for the GOP. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/179345… Fetal personhood bills have been introduced in many states, and Dems are planning to highlight them aggressively, making it harder for Republicans to run away from the true implications of their stance for IVF. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/179345…

No Labels' spoiler bid has suddenly entered full meltdown mode. No serious candidates are interested. The group's public justifications are increasingly ludicrous. Time to pull the plug.

We have lots of new reporting and info in this piece. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/179244… Joe Manchin's decision not to run was partly the result of intense lobbying. Richard Gephardt made a strong case to him behind closed doors. Manchin said he didn't want to be responsible for electing Trump, which deals a big blow to No Labels' case. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/179244…

I'm not sure people realize how huge it is that Dems won new legislative maps in Wisconsin. This defeats some of the worst gerrymandering anywhere.

On today's pod, we dig into this with Greta Neubauer, the head of Wisconsin Assembly Dems. 1/

Listen👇
newrepublic.com/article/179152… You need to get to know Greta Neubauer. At 32 (!!), she is the leader of Wisconsin Assembly Dems. The new maps put Dem control of the assembly within reach. She's a big part of the Dem rebound in Wisconsin.

We discussed all this on the pod. 2/

Listen👇
newrepublic.com/article/179152…

As we watch the GOP case for impeaching Biden implode along with their chief "informant," keep this in mind: Trump is going to *demand* that House Republicans go through with the impeachment no matter how ludicrous the case gets. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/179089… You really can't overstate how much Republicans and right wing media had hyped this informant. Imagine being a vulnerable House GOPer, who voted for the impeachment inquiry, and is now watching the bottom drop out from under it. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/179089…