Ominous: GOPers are now saying Trump is picking Kash Patel to "clean out" FBI and restore its "integrity." This will be their cover to go along w/Trump's scheme to unleash FBI on enemies. Media already credulously echoing this claim. Awful.
New piece: newrepublic.com/article/189406…
Nobody is required to pretend GOPers actually believe it when they say Trump is picking Kash Patel to "reform" the FBI in any meaningful sense. It's a lie. Rs know Trump is only picking him to target enemies and they should be hounded on this point.
Trump's win confirmed once again that our information ecosystem is a total dumpster fire, and that Dems need a real answer to it.
I asked three leading candidates for DNC chair how they'd fix this.
Here's what they said. 1/
(new piece from me) newrepublic.com/article/189147…
First note that Elon Musk spent $20 million on the RBG PAC, which sought to deceive people into thinking Trump's abortion stance is similar to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's.
This and X becoming a right wing disinfo machine show the depths of the problem. 2/
Striking: In numerous cases, Republicans or GOP-aligned industries are now admitting that mass deportations and rolling back Biden's climate agenda could prove disastrous in their parts of the country.
In my new piece, I've compiled many examples of this: newrepublic.com/article/189054…
In Georgia, some local Republicans are openly saying that repealing green energy investments will result in shuttered factories and job loss.
This shows what a scam Trump pulled by claiming the green transition existentially threatens the working class.
This is a good discussion but on immigration in particular this is not an intellectually adequate frame for understanding what happened. The groups did not dictate the Biden/Harris immigration agenda. If anything they were sidelined/ignored more aggressively than under Obama 1/
At this point someone will note that Harris took left wing positions on immigration in 2019. True, but the vast bulk of GOP attacks concerned the Biden/Harris handling of immigration *while in office,* and there Biden was mostly at odds with the groups all throughout 2/
Nov 27 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
This is getting overlooked, but the whole premise of Trump's threat of tariffs is based on a lie. He's claiming Mexico must be bullied into stopping migrants. But Mexico is *already* doing this. That's a big reason crossings have dropped. 1/
(new piece) newrepublic.com/article/188854…
Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum's harsh response to Trump went viral for its claim about US guns trafficked to Mexico. But she also noted that Mexico has a comprehensive policy in place for stopping migrants traveling north to the border. That's important. 2/
A Trump-appointed judge just struck down a Biden rule expanding overtime pay to 4 million working people.
It's really surprising how little media coverage this has received. Trump faced no real questions about this issue during the campaign. 1/
(link) newrepublic.com/article/188663…
Remember the media frenzy about "Rich Men North of Richmond," the song MAGA claimed as their anthem? The media spent weeks obsessing over it as a cry of anguish from the blue collar heartland aimed at elites.
Awful: Senate investigations into Trump's solicitation of $1 billion from Big Oil and Jared Kushner's financial dealings with Saudis will now hit a wall with GOP control, Dems tell me. We're headed for unchecked elite corruption under Trump.
New piece: newrepublic.com/article/188467…
For many reasons, conditions are ripe for right wing elites to loot the place from top to bottom. Remember when Trump vowed to give Big Oil execs what they want in exchange for $1 billion in campaign funds? Now we'll likely never get to the bottom of it.
Disturbing: A big reason Trump won was undecideds couldn't be persuaded that millions of jobs lost in 2020 and death of Roe were Trump's fault, internal Harris campaign polling showed. Biden/Ds let Trump rehab himself to disastrous effect.
New piece: newrepublic.com/article/188238…
Internal testing in the battlegrounds over many months showed that Dems were having a very difficult time persuading undecided voters that Trump was a bad president, per sources. They didn't hold him responsible for things they disliked about his presidency.
How did Harris close the gap w/Trump on the economy?
Here's how: Harris campaign and Dem groups have spent a whopping $225 million on ads about the economy, per data provided to me by AdImpact. GOP caught napping, outspent by $70 million.
New piece: newrepublic.com/article/187950…
Harris campaign/Dem groups spent $225 million on econ ads from 7/21, when Biden bowed out, to the present, per AdImpact data. Trump/GOP: $155 million.
This challenges idea that Ds are so obsessed w/Trump hatred that they took eye off the ball on econ.
I'm not sure what Biden meant w/the "garbage" comment. But even the harshest interpretation of it can only be that he meant Trump supporters *who openly make virulently racist displays* are "garbage."
That's news, I guess. Cover it, sure.
But what made it *front page* news? 2/
Oct 28 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
People keep saying Trump's rally was originally intended as his closing argument, but devolved into a hate rally instead.
But the rally we all saw IS his closing argument. He is running explicitly on much of what we witnessed on that stage.
New piece: newrepublic.com/article/187616…
Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden is best seen as an explicit, very public declaration that if he wins, well, he told you exactly what you were going to get, so you’d better bend the knee and get ready to swallow all of it.
Utterly repulsive: Trump is now attacking Haitians in a small PA town with truly vile smears.
But the town manager tells me all Trump's claims are lies:
*Haitians not taking Americans' jobs
*No 2000% population increase
*No uptick in crime
New piece: newrepublic.com/article/186331…
At a rally this week, Trump claimed Charleroi PA has seen a 2000% population boost due to Haitians.
But as town manager Joe Manning told me, if this were true, its pop would have gone from 4K to nearly 100K. He literally burst out laughing at the idea.
It's good that GOP Gov Mike DeWine urged Trump and Vance to stop smearing Haitians. But DeWine misses something big here: Trump *wants* the Springfield debate to be as charged with hate and rage as possible. He thinks that's a winner for him. 1/
New piece newrepublic.com/article/186224…
When GOP Gov Mike DeWine called out Trump and Vance for lying about Haitians, he suggested it will alienate swing voters.
But this misses how Trump sees things. Trump thinks all the rage and hate will activate swing voters' latent MAGA tendencies. 2/
Big news out of Springfield: The Mayor has now confirmed that the emailed bomb threat did contain hateful language about immigrants.
Trump and Vance can no longer pretend not to know exactly what their vile demagoguery is accomplishing.
New piece from me newrepublic.com/article/185953…
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, says the bomb threat email contained "hateful" language about immigrants and specifically "Haitian folks."
Trump/Vance valorize these places, but have no real concern for the impact their demagoguery has on them.
This is hair-raising stuff. I talked to numerous people who are prepping for what might happen if Trump wins. They are bracing for years of legal harassment and the deep corruption of govt info into rank propaganda.
Lots of reporting in my new essay: newrepublic.com/article/185487…
We keep hearing about scary second-term horrors like troops in cities: But in this piece, I argue for another, more insidious scenario: A slow-burn authoritarianism of grinding legal harassment of Trump critics and profound corruption of the bureaucracy.
It's a big deal that veteran journalist Mike Barnicle has now called out his media colleagues for failing to adequately cover Trump's visibly worsening mental state. It should spur a real discussion about how to do this, before it's too late. 1/
New piece newrepublic.com/article/185622…
“We have a damaged, delusional, old man who might get reelected to the presidency," Mike Barnicle said on @Morning_Joe. He said the media doesn't really cover Trump's daily insanity as a window into his mental fitness for the presidency. This is right. 2/
News --> Dems are pushing the Army to clarify why they think Trump's Arlington fiasco broke the law, and demanding a clearer account of what his campaign aides did to that woman. One source says Dems are frustrated at the lack of detail.
My new piece: newrepublic.com/article/185517…
At his Michigan rally, Trump offered a highly distorted account of the Arlington mess. He omits that his own aides recorded a campaign video there and that officials told his campaign in advance that political activity was banned.
New pod: James Carville explains in detail why he's now bullish on Kamala beating Trump.
"He knows Harris has become what he's always wanted to be—the hot item. It's driving him crazy."
Carville also says Florida and NC are in play, and much more: newrepublic.com/article/185316…
James Carville also says a hidden dynamic is educated white males backing Kamala because of the impact that Dobbs is having on their wives and daughters.
"Attitudes on a lot of things are vastly different among white males, based on education," he says: newrepublic.com/article/185316…
Aug 24 • 11 tweets • 8 min read
I think something big is happening here: Kamala Harris appears to be running precisely the kind of inspired, aggressive campaign that combatting the forces of rising authoritarianism requires.
She's running on the promise of a post-MAGA future. 1/
Link: newrepublic.com/article/185258…
There's been lots of talk about Harris reaching out to groups beyond the core Dem coalition, including GOP and Trump voters. But note what she is *not* doing: She is not making any serious concessions to Trumpism or the MAGA worldview of any kind. 2/
This is an interesting exchange between @EricLevitz and @karpmj. Central Q is: Why is the progressive left that brought us the Bernie movement much less critical of the Dem establishment (and successful Ds like Harris, Whitmer et al) these days? I have a few answers to this. 1/
One is that during the Biden years, the left (at least in Congress) genuinely was brought into the tent to negotiate over the biggest priorities, such as during the talks over Build Back Better, the biggest econ rebalancing effort proposed in decades. 2/
Aug 20 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
Biden's emotional speech was fantastic, but people aren't talking enough about what he said about Kamala in particular. Biden subtly rebutted some of Trump's sleazy, racist attacks on her in a very artful way, and that's essential to winning.
My take: newrepublic.com/article/185070…
It was a beautiful thing when Biden said he was proud he'd picked a cabinet that is diverse as America itself, and talked about Kamala Harris's role in making that history -- and what's coming next:
