One of the small wrinkles of the debate and campaign story is that Trump supporters had leaned into the idea that Trump had delivered a knock out blow that drove Biden from the race. For Trump that was dangerous nonsense. Trump was largely a bystander to what happened in ... 2/ that first and genuinely epochal June debate. Everything that happened was Biden himself. Trump was ragged but largely himself. What we saw last night was in large measure Harris's tour de force. But people were not only reminded who Trump is and has always been. They ...

The "pro gun movement" is the great movement of social degeneracy of our time. We see this again in JD Vance's claim that school shootings are just a "fact of life" we now have to deal with ... apnews.com/article/jd-van… 2/ by continuing the endless increases to school security which makes our schools into war zones. The pro-gun movement created the problem and they now announce that we have to live with it. Saying that regulating the availability of guns isn't at least part of the ...

People who suffer life altering loss and grief deserve our respect. And know a lot about this from multiple angles I never judge how someone expresses their grief. But not judging doesn’t mean accepting Carter Blanche. What Donald Trump is doing with this small number of … 2/ families is exploiting them. Everyone knows that Donald Trumps concern and care last just as long as there’s something in it for him. He’ll toss these people like an old rag whenever it’s good for him. Indeed, in one interview he did just that, blaming them if there …

This 'debate' with Patrick is silly. This isn't some after the fact issue of what he or I think makes sense. The DOD & Arlington have clear rules about military cemetery's and political events. They based on federal law. The rules are clear. They're there for a reason. 2/ Trump ignored them. They even had to assault a cemetery employee to get their way. Don't show me a picture of Obama at Arlington when he was president and pretend that means jack shit. It's not complicated. You shldnt hold campaign events at a military cemetery.

Harris campaign has a memo out tonight addressing the issue of Trumps flip flops we’ve been discussing today. On one level it’s comparing the hyper focus on Harris compared to the general oh that’s just Trump attitude most reporters are taking with a Trump. 2/ But the part that is interesting, other than saying what everyone else is, is this: Trump has a record on abortion, weed, ivf, etc. There’s what he did when he was actually president. Judges he appointed, policies he enacted etc etc. There are the positions he took as …

It is fascinating how most reporters are treating Trumps almost daily change in position on abortion and repro rights. He’s “searching for a position”? In English we usually call that “not having a position” or actually “trying to fool people into believing whatever he … 2/ thinks on a given day will get him elected.” We’ve developed this whole rhetoric about “flip flopping” when in the real word people actually do change their minds about things. People who’ve never shifted their position on anything don’t have some lock …

I’ve seen a number of people say well the article itself is better. And it has a different headline. These points are both true. But this gets at something very basic about the current political news ecosystem. The tweet headline is actually more important than the article …

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1829655859934453850

2/ headline or even the article itself. That may sound like an audacious claim. But it’s true in the sense of the impact of evolving news conversations. This isn’t just an impression. This is based on being a political news publisher for almost 25 years and having watched …

It's really important to note that while the Arlington assault story has gotten some limited pick up in the elite press coverage of the incident in the Times, Post, Journal etc has been limited and servile at best. Assaulting a federal employee in the performance of their ... 2/ duties is a felony (18 USC 111). Who were the two Trump staffers who assaulted this woman? That's a totally knowable detail. What is the justification for two high level Trump campaign officials claiming he is mentally ill and should be fired from her job? Where are the ...

Let's remember that right out of the gate Trump spokesman Stephen Cheung said the campaign had video of the incident and were prepared to release it. "We are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made." Then they went silent about the video. 2/ He also made this bizarre claim. "The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode ...

The basic concept is simple. In an extraordinrary crisis the VP is the logical and expected person to take over from the President. That's literally what they're there for. The constitution obvs doesn't speak to the succession of a nomination. But the principle is deeply ... 2/ embedded in American political culture, at least as the default assumption. What happened after the late June debate was just such an extraordinary crisis for the Democratic political coalition, one in which no legitimate recanvassing of the primary process could take...

The Palestine issue that roiled in the background of the DNC but never broke out on the floor in many ways was centered in Michigan. And this weekend it will go another round because Mich state Democrats are holding their party convention which will reprise the whole ... 2/ topic again. Delegates will decide who to nominate for two slots on the U Michigan board of regents. These are statewide elected offices. And of course the state university system was at the center of the protests earlier this year, specifically on the demand that the ...

Trump just announced a Tuesday "crime and safety" rally in a Michigan town that has been heavily associated with the KKK for decades (Howell, Michigan). Just last month White Supremacists marched through town chanting ‘We love Hitler. We love Trump.’ 2/ announcement of rally freep.com/story/news/pol…

The Times ran an oped by Matthew Schmitz last week that defended JD Vance and placed him more generally among a group of neo-traditionalist Catholic ideologues. It's an interesting cleansing of certain strains currently in American political culture. Schmitz and often Times ... 2/ columnist Ross Douthat often presents this as simply Catholic social doctrine and in fact a vision of neo-traditionalism which holds a large space for the economic well-being of families, even making room for unions. This was basically Schmitz argument.

Elon now literally supplying arms and materiel to Russia

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1824818908500816224

of course given what a ridiculous vehicle this is perhaps it's a secret attempt to help Ukraine. But people forget (apparently including some folks at the Pentagon) that high level executives, let alone owners of major defense contractors actually have to work within ...

I've explained this before. But in addition to a lot of frivolous and biased journalism the real root of a lot of what you see in the elite press isn't bias precisely. Certainly it's not that the reporters are right wingers or Trumpers. It's something different but insidious.

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1824834174919815316

2/ Precisely because the bulk of elite reporters and editors come from the same social and cultural world as Democrats they tend to view and report on Republican policies and campaigns as something like the weather. You can give people heads ups about Hurricanes and tornados ...

This isn’t a federal case. But it’s pretty Trumpy and hilarious. So I thought I’d flag it since it’s got almost no attention. This ad from Trumps “Preserve America” PAC is on constant play in Michigan. It has the testimony of “Julie Willoughby RN”, who tells viewers that … 2/ she’s a nurse whos seen the hospitals in Arizona overrun by “illegals” w real Americans picking up the tab. Willoughby IS a nurse. But the ad leaves out that she’s a member of the AZ state House! Yes, incumbent. She was actually appointed after her predecessor was expelled..

As our fmr colleague Brian notes no major prez campaign has ever had to stand up campaign from scratch in August. The idea that Kamala is 'behind' or playing some kind of hide the ball is absurd. It is just as true that campaign & politics reporters generally show zero ... 2/ interest and little familiarity with policy or competence reporting on it. But as I explain in this piece Harris has actually been pretty clear on the policy directions she wld pursue as President. And this squabble between her campaign and the national political ...

There's been a real hunger from the Post and especially the Times that Harris's momentum needs to end. And you can see that they've been very willing with these articles based on Trump campaign oppo to go after Walz's military service. The folks the Trump campaign gave them to talk are clearly big GOPs and the whole claim is that he retired not long before his unit deployed to Iraq. IOW, basically nothing. 2/ Note that the guy QBing Vance's attacks is Chris LaCivita, the guy who led the Swift Boat attacks on Kerry in 2004. The campaign is using Vance to make the attacks because he is also a veteran and did a stint in Iraq. But note that the Times waits till literally the last ...

So a bit of background on what the Trump campaign is dealing with on the ground. At the end of last week the Harris campaign announced a campaign rally in Detroit for Aug 7th (tomorrow). Over 24 hrs (last Thursday into Friday) they got 47,000 requests for tickets. 47,000. 2/ That spurred a multi-day search for a new venue that could handle the demand. As Trump never seemed to grasp, crowd sizes don't equal votes. But at that scale they signal enthusiasm and energy and a purchase into the broader popular culture that Biden ...

Both the Trump and Biden campaigns had real internal vulnerabilities. Trumps are coming into view now. Two years ago GOP political operatives were leery or Trump and the big money boys were done with him. But over the course of 2023 it became hard to argue that Trump was …. 2/ a sure loser when we was clearly winning. The numbers were the numbers. And everyone fell in line. Now over the space of about two weeks the national horse race has shifted something like five or six points in Harris’s direction. Meanwhile the Trump campaign hasn’t come up…

A quick note on headlines, following on the point in the other exchanges. Headlines are obviously important on a number of levels. The fact that they're individually ephemeral is meaningless. They're particularly important in digital news (which is to say the overwhelming ... 2/ majority of news as we now consume it) because a great deal of news we absorb is headlines only. This was much less the case in old fashioned broadsheet newspaper reading because the article, the content is right there. We page through the paper, seeing the headlines ...