This ↓↓↓ And this: It may not have been Biden’s first campaign ad, but it was well-placed. “The first ad that is part of the campaign is focused on the economy and seeks to contrast Biden’s record with former President Trump and the ‘MAGA agenda.’” The Hill reported Monday. These were placed all around Milwaukee, reports People: “Dark Brandon,” President Joe Biden‘s satirical alter-ego, is making a bold appearance on the day of the first 2024 Republican debate — not only on billboards in Milwaukee, where eight GOP candidates are set to take the stage on Wednesday evening, but in a digital ad on FoxNews.com. From midnight on Wednesday until 11:59 p.m., the internet meme-turned-campaign tool will have prime placement on Fox News’ website with a pro-choice ad touting Biden’s mission to defend abortion rights, one year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. “I think it fits both the president’s ethos of going everywhere and not writing off any voters,” Rob Flaherty, Biden’s 2024 deputy campaign manager, tells People.
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This one’s been off my radar The insurrectionist-in-chief plans to proudly turn himself in today for booking in Atlanta. Donald Trump, the ever-blustery showman and former president, has scheduled the media circus in primetime for maximum television ratings. Receiving less coverage is the multi-state plot to access voting software included in Fulton County District Attorney Fanu Willis’ indictment. Ben Clements and Susan Greenhalgh take up the story for Slate. “There have been multiple accounts of Trump supporters unlawfully accessing voting systems to copy proprietary vote-recording and vote-counting software in Michigan, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. These reports spurred criminal investigations in their respective states, but until Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed charges last week, none of these probes had tied the crimes back to Trump’s coordinated, multipronged plot to stay in power,” the pair explain. Willis includes the software heist in her racketeering indictment.
They are trying to kill their own children.
The great Alexandra Petri on the debate last night. If you said, “Would you like to watch Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie talk to each other for two hours? FYI, the place where they’ll do so is hotter than Beelzebub’s armpit!,” I would have said, “No, thank you.” But if you said, “The alternative is watching Donald Trump talk to Tucker Carlson on the website formerly known as Twitter,” I would say, “I can’t wait to hear what Ron, Vivek, Nikki, Tim, Doug, Mike, Asa and Chris have to say!” Wednesday night’s debate on Fox News raised all kinds of questions. Like: “Why is this happening?” and “Where is Donald Trump?” and “Is it technically a primary debate or more of a secondary debate given the levels where these people are polling?” Here is approximately how it went. Bret Baier: Hello. We have brought a bell just because we enjoy the sound of a bell.
Donald Trump keeps exhorting Republicans in congress, both publicly and privately, to step up and use their power to go after the prosecutors who are indicting him for his many crimes. And like the good little MAGA soldiers they are, they’re following his orders: The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results. The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added.
It’s so awful in so many ways. But since people are taking it seriously as some sort of political manifesto. (They talked about it in the debate last night.) I think it’s worthwhile to point this out: Reminder: The “Rich Men North of Richmond” policy agenda is utterly incoherent. Anthony says government spends too much money, but also isn’t helping people enough. Miners (who earn 20 percent above the average national wage) are somehow in trouble. Skinny people are dying in the streets from drugs and suicide. But fat welfare queens are bringing home the bacon. The entire thing is an evasion of personal responsibility and an exercise in special pleading: The government should spend more money on the people I like and less money on the people I do not like. And also: Everything that’s wrong in my life is someone else’s fault. Finally: Oliver Anthony seems unaware that the places he romanticizes are actually the ones sucking the most off the government teat and contributing the least to our economy. We are indeed a nation of makers and takers. And the takers are Oliver Anthony and his friends. Thank you JV Last.
Here’s an article about how Trump mini-me Vivek Ramaswamy made his fortune. He’s a familiar type: On the campaign trail, as he lays out why he is a different kind of presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy calls himself a Harvard-trained “scientist” from the lifesaving world of biotechnology. “I developed a number of medicines,” Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and conservative writer, told a gathering at a construction firm this month in Davenport, Iowa. “The one I’m most proud of is a therapy for kids, 40 of them a year, born with a genetic condition who, without treatment, die by the age of 3.” The reality of Mr. Ramaswamy’s business career is more complex, the story of a financier more than a scientist, and a prospector who went bargain hunting, hyped his vision, drew investment and then cashed out in two huge payouts — totaling more than $200 million — before his 35th birthday. Mr. Ramaswamy’s enterprise is best known for a spectacular failure.
The “ratings” are a little bit tepid Trump is bragging about his unprecedented numbers on Tucker’s Xitter show last night saying that it got over a hundred million viewers. That’s not true. “Views” on the platform are recorded as anyone who may have scrolled past it , not how many people actually saw it much less watched it. Here are the more pertinent numbers: As of this writing, Carlson’s interview with Trump has been reposted (formerly “retweeted”) 171,800 times, quote-posted (formerly “quote-tweeted”) 14,500 times, liked 578,100 times, bookmarked 46,500 times, and has been replied to around 47,000 times. Not especially low numbers. It’s undeniable that Trump has a lot of supporters, many of whom swarm on Twitter. But these days, Fox averages about 1.7 million viewers during its primetime broadcast. And notice the specificity of the word “viewers.” Because none of the numbers tracking engagement on a X post tell you if someone actually watched the video.
It’s not just a “Once in a Lifetime” question “Huh, I wonder what happened in 1980?” Dissent magazine’s Matthew Sitman snarked on Tuesday. He referred to a chart posted by David Leonhardt. “Reaganland” author Rick Perlstein replied, “Folks stopped getting a free ride. Now only can enjoy long life if they honor the natural order of things as dictated (if religious) by the Almighty; or (if secular) the almighty market. Or else, they had it coming. Order having been restored, conservatives are satisfied now…” But not really. Not until they’ve fully restored the monarchy on these shores. Barring that, reinstated feudalism will suffice. Surely the peasants will rejoice. Leonhardt has been working on “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.” The book that analyzes how over the last half-century “our society has abandoned working-class people – of all races – in crucial ways. Their incomes have stagnated, as has their life expectancy. They no longer trust either political party or other institutions.
This is just sad: When Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee began a push in April to address public safety, his family was grieving the loss of two close friends, both educators killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school. His call for millions of dollars to harden school security was embraced by Republicans in the legislature, who flanked him during a formal announcement. But days later, when Mr. Lee, a Republican, decided to go further and ask for an order of protection law that could temporarily restrict an individual’s access to firearms, he stood alone for the announcement. The legislature would wrap up its work by the end of the month without taking a vote to pass it. Now, Mr. Lee has summoned lawmakers back to Nashville on Monday for a special session on public safety that could include consideration of a limited version of the law. But without the support of most in his own party, that measure appears, once again, destined for failure, underscoring the power dynamics of a Republican supermajority driven by a right-wing base hardened against any potential infringement on gun ownership. They won’t even go for a temporary restriction on firearms.