NPR just reported that one of two staffers involved in the altercation at Arlington National Cemetery is a deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump’s reelection bid. The two staffers, according to a source with knowledge of the incident, are deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team. I thought it was Chris LaCivita or Cory Lewandowski. One of the misogynistic a-holes on Donald Trump’s campaign staff pushed a female employee at Arlington National Cemetery. It’s probably Chris “I’m the a-hole who created Swift Boating” LaCivita, but it might be Cory “I don’t have to be honest with the media” Lewandowski. As of Sept 5th 2024, the DoD and the DOJ aren’t going after them for what happened at Arlington. Why? The FEC isn’t going after the Trump campaign for their use of campaign footage from Arlington in an ad. Why? The outlet that broke the story, NPR, KNOWS exactly who did what, but they aren’t revealing that information. Why?
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Tim Walz on Labor Day The Labor Day clip of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaking in Milwaukee (“very good at this” below) went viral on Monday. After I transcribed and posted the gist of it on several platforms, it went nuts on Mastodon. (Don’t ask me why, but I seem to get more traffic on Mastodon than on X, Blue Sky or Threads.) As a teacher and coach for years, Walz said, “I was a dues-paying member of my union.” When Republican critics accused him of being “in the pocket of organized labor,” he said, “That’s a damn lie. I am the pocket!” Want to attack him for standing up for collective bargaining, for fair wages, safe working conditions, for health care and retirement, have at it. Democrats have to run for something, Walz continued, not just against the other guys. Fair wages and safe working conditions, expanded health care and addressing climate change, etc. are on Democrats’ agenda. Just one vote made the difference in moving Minnesota forward. “That’s our vision for the country,” Walz said in asking the crowd to give Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and President Kamala Harris working majorities.
Pithy turns of phrase for dysfunctional personalities Tim Miller of The Bulwark appearing the other day on MSNBC used the phrase “emotional support cougar” to describe the over-made-up groupies who decorate Donald Trump’s Mar-al-Lago resort. The term seems not to have originated with Miller, but perhaps with comedian Carla Collins. Miller deployed the phrase to reference Trump’s regular need to run home to them in his Florida safe space. But the desperation behind the need is broader than Trump, his sons, and his hangers-on. Over at The Garden of Forking Paths, Brian Klaas explores the epidemic of toxic masculinity embodied by Trump and guys like Elon Musk. The day after Gov. Tim Walz modeled a healthier masculinity in addressing the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a professional purveyor of the destructive kind, Andrew Tate, was placed under house arrest by a Romanian judge for human trafficking in minors.
Aside from the obvious, his actual performance was just terrible. Here a just a couple of data points I ran across this morning: I guess when people say they liked his policies, they meant his policies to deny people health insurance. How about this one? Or how about Trump’s claim that his tax cuts were the largest in history. (“nobody’s ever seen anything like it!”) How about Trump’s new crusade against Joe Biden in which he claims that nobody died on his watch? He lied, of course: 65 military personnel died in war zones during Trump’s administration. It’s common for some gold star families to blame the administration in charge for the deaths of their loved ones. Weirdly, since Benghazi it only seems to be right wing gold star families blaming Democrats. I didn’t see much of this during Trump’s tenure. Maybe all the families of the fallen were Trump fans? Or, more likely, the non-Trump fan families weren’t interested in becoming part of a political campaign.
Trump has primed his cult to believe that Kamala Harris is an illegitimate president. Of course he has. “Obama wasn’t born in the US!” “Clinton shouldn’t be allowed to run!”because of her emails. “Joe Biden didn’t win, they cheated!” Now he’s laying the groundwork to whine that Harris should not have been allowed to run. And his people believe it: Jason Streem, also 46, a dentist from the Cleveland suburbs who supports Trump, objected to the way Harris became the nominee. “She was never part of the running process,” he said in a follow-up interview. “She never received the primary votes.” He called it “the most undemocratic way of picking a nominee.” “It just threw me off,” complained Roger Sierra, 28, of Miami, an independent who supports Trump.
JV Last at the Bulwark published one of those essays this morning that make you both depressed and relieved at the same time. Depressed because it tells a truth that you really wish wasn’t true and relieved because you realize you haven’t been crazy for thinking the same thing. He starts off by quoting one of my favorite analysts, Philip Bump of the Washington Post: The Trump era is about Trump in the way that the War of 1812 was about 1812: a critically important component and a useful touchstone but not all-encompassing. Turning the page on the era requires more than Trump failing to get an electoral vote majority. Perhaps a more accurate time span to consider is something like 15 years. The election of Barack Obama as president in 2008 was hailed as a signal moment in the evolution of American politics and demography, but it also triggered a remarkable backlash. Ostensibly rooted in concerns about government spending, it was largely centered on the disruption of the economic crisis (which triggered an increase in spending) and that overlapping awareness of how America was changing.
Gosh, I wonder? The leader of House Republicans’ biggest super PAC told donors last month he needed $35 million more to compete with Democrats in the fall. Senate GOP campaign chair Steve Daines used his primetime speaking slot at the Republican convention to lament that massive spending from Democrats was keeping him awake at night. And his House GOP counterpart warned that their party’s challengers trailed Democratic incumbents by a collective $37 million at the end of June. Republicans were already worried about a glaring financial gap even before Kamala Harris’ rise. Now, with the election just two months away, they found themselves in an even more dire position: Democrats have seen a flood of enthusiasm in recent weeks, they’re far outspending Republicans on air and their donors are more energized than ever — with campaign finance data showing a surge in grassroots fundraising in late July after President Joe Biden dropped out. Panic is starting to set in.
He tried. Oh how he tried: The long line there was the Special Counsel he had Bill Barr name to “investigate the investigators” — the Durham investigation. Like all the others they came to nothing because there was nothing. He, on the other hand, tried to overturn an election and incited an insurrection and then stole a bunch of classified documents and refused to give them back. Big difference. Yuge.
I remember it well. Sadly it’s just as relevant today as it was then: