Month: September 2024

Stop Privileging Trump-Vance Lies

September 22, 2024

#1

How the news media privileges dangerous and hateful Trump-Vance lies (Jamison Foser, Finding Gravity, Link to Article)

When a news report treats the truthfulness of a lie as an open question, it privileges the lie. When a news report devotes more and more prominent space to recounting the lie and the liar’s defense of it than it does making clear that it’s a lie, the article privileges the lie. When a news report focuses on the target of a lie’s struggle to deal with the impact of the lie, the article privileges the lie. And when a news report focuses on the topic of the lie — even if it does a good job of making clear the lie is a lie — it privileges the lie, because it allows the liar to set the topic of conversation, and thus increases the electoral salience of a topic the liar believes is to his benefit.

That’s what the news media has done over the last week. The news media surely affects what people think, but it has a larger and more powerful effect on what people think about. So even as the media has done a better-than-usual job of debunking the Trump-Vance lies, it has privileged those lies by helping Trump and Vance increase the salience of immigration, an issue the Trump-Vance campaign believes helps it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Avoiding this result is one of the supposed lessons from 2016 that too many members of our media have yet to learn. Instead of holding Trump, Vance, and other Republicans accountable for their lies and misinformation, reporters often fail to highlight who is telling lies while demanding that Democrats respond to them.

Candidates who tell lies are likely to continue to lie once they take office. And, in Trump’s case, we can also point to his horrific record of lies from his first term.

That makes the subject of the lie the story. Foser explains how this dynamic gives the liars the advantage in a campaign. Now, immigration is a top story in this campaign, just as the liars (Trump-Vance) want it. It shouldn’t be this easy for bad-faith actors to get the result they prefer.

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#2

Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk (Andrew Couts, Wired, Link to Article)

Shortly following reports of an apparent second assassination attempt against former US president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Elon Musk decided to speak up.

“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔,” Musk, X’s owner, wrote in a now deleted post, in response to another person asking, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”

After deleting the post—which could be interpreted as a call to murder President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the US presidential election—Musk indicated that it was merely a joke that fell flat given the context. “Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” he wrote, adding, “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

I wonder what context would make a joke about assassinating a sitting president and vice president funny, whether spoken or in text. I wonder if the Secret Service will also want to visit the people in the group who laughed at the idea.

These threats would be troubling enough if Musk only owned a failing social network. Musk’s takeover of Twitter ranks among the worst business deals in our nation’s history as many banks and investors have experienced.

However, Musk’s companies also have billions of dollars in defense, satellite internet, and spaceflight contracts. Musk has already limited the use of his Starlink satellite internet service in active military conflict areas.

Can the United States government continue to rely upon someone who demonstrates daily his support for lies and conspiracy theories? What precautions are NASA and our military taking if Musk withholds services because of a political disagreement?

#3

Trump calls Jan. 6 rioters ‘we’ in discussing insurrection at presidential debate (James Powell, USA Today, Link to Article)

Former President Donald Trump embraced the January 6 insurrection during the presidential debate Tuesday, calling rioters at the capitol, “we.”

“It’s a disgrace. But we (referring to the insurrectionists) didn’t do — this group of people that have been treated so badly,” Trump said.

The Republican nominee said that the death of Ashley Babbit at the front doors of the House of Representatives during the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election was a “disgrace” done by an “out of control police officer.”

The police officer was cleared of wrongdoing in August of 2021.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff made an excellent point on X/Twitter a few days after the Harris-Trump presidential debate.

In the middle of lying about his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump admitted—perhaps inadvertently—who he supported that horrible day.

As this excerpt from the debate transcript demonstrates, Trump used “we” to describe the January 6 insurrectionists. He used the phrase “the other side” to describe everyone else, including law enforcement, Senators, his Vice President, and Members of Congress.

Supporting an insurrection should have been disqualifying. But Senator Mitch McConnell and many Senate Republicans failed in their moral and Constitutional duty to back up their condemnations of Trump’s actions during the insurrection with votes to convict him during his second impeachment trial.

Voters must do the work now to protect our democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. The stakes are high. And that’s one of the reasons I am sharing a video compilation of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the conclusion of every issue of this newsletter through the election.

#4

The Real Reason Trump and Vance Are Spreading Lies About Haitians (Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, Link to Article)

Another reason is Trump and Vance appear not to be interested in helping anyone in Springfield, or anywhere else for that matter. Their actions point to a political theory of the election, which is that fearmongering about immigrants, especially Black immigrants, will scare white people into voting for Trump. They also point to an ideological theory of the nation, which is that America belongs to white people, and that the country would be better if it were poorer and weaker, as long as it were also whiter. Trump and Vance have a specific policy agenda for socially engineering the nation through state force to be whiter than it is now: mass deportation, repealing birthright citizenship, and denaturalization of American citizens. This agenda, in addition to being immoral, would wreck the American economy. Republican elected officials in Ohio are defending the Haitians in Springfield because they understand that removing them would have a terrible effect on their town and state—the same terrible effect that Trump’s agenda would have on the country.

Trump’s and Vance’s statements reveal a belief that it would be better to leave dying towns in the Midwest to wither away than revive them and have to share that prosperity with people who are Black, and they seem to be betting that enough American voters in enough swing states agree that it would be better to be broke than integrated. In exchange for these fearful votes, a second Trump administration would proceed to shower tax cuts on the wealthy, raise them on everyone else, slash regulations on big business, and further undermine unions, while towns like Springfield would be left to tumble further into decline.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-Great Replacement Theory) has continued to lie about the situation in Springfield, Ohio, thereby harming people who are not only in our country legally but also happen to be his constituents.

Why would any elected official do this to the people they have promised to serve? Serwer explains how these smears play to the white nationalists and great replacement theory believers who make up the MAGA base.

Serwer notes that the Haitian community in Springfield is doing what Republican politicians claim they want immigrants to do—come here legally, work hard, and be a benefit to the community. But instead of gratitude, they have been subjected to bomb threats, death threats, and hate.

We should be clear that this is just a preview of what we can expect if Trump and Vance win this election.

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#5

Trump’s Alarming Use Of A Word With A Deep Fascist History (Christopher Mathias, HuffPost, Link to Article)

Last weekend, former President Donald Trump posted another anti-immigrant screed to Truth Social. It would have been unremarkable ― at least, graded on the Trumpian curve of extreme xenophobia ― except for one word.

“[We will] return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration),” he wrote. “I will save our cities and towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and all across America.”

Many people might have glossed over his use of “remigration.” White nationalists did not.

“#Remigration has had a massive conceptual career,” Martin Sellner — leader of the Austrian chapter of Generation Identity, a pan-European white supremacist network — tweeted in his native German. “Born in France, popularized in German-speaking countries and now the term of the hour from Sweden to the USA!”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

It is so easy to normalize the horrible things Trump says and writes. That is why I am glad Mathias is asking us to take note of the former president’s use of a word that describes a concept previously reserved to the French and German parts of the white nationalist internet.

Mathias explains how remigration is championed by those who believe in the great replacement theory. That far-right conspiracy theory inspired terrorist attacks across the globe, including the United States.

How did Trump learn about the concept? As Mathias writes, I am sure it isn’t accidental, given how Trump and his campaign are intensifying their dehumanizing rhetoric about non-white immigrants.

We should not gloss over the fact that the nominee of one of our two major political parties regularly uses neo-fascist policy ideas and talking points. This should be a major story. There is nothing normal about it.

#6

Donald Trump and the “Banality of Crazy” (Brian Klaas, The Garden of Forking Paths, Link to Article)

However, as a certified degree-carrying political scientist, it is my duty to try to explain what is happening to you in formal theories dressed up in jargon and fancy, arcane language, so here is my best shot:

The United States has gone batshit insane.

There are, of course, a variety of serious explanations for why we’ve ended up in this unfortunate position. I’ve explained some of them here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, to name but a few.

But I would like to return to one phenomenon that really disturbs me and which is most easily fixable in American politics. It’s a term I coined in a previous essay and I call it: The Banality of Crazy.

Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil, in which ordinary people grew numb to barbaric acts because they became repetitive and routine. I highlight the banality of crazy, in which the American press—and by extension, the voting public—grows numb to the insane behavior and statements of Donald Trump simply because they have become repetitive and routine.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

My thoughts about the previous story focused on how we avoid normalizing Trump. In this article, Klaas explains why the media—and too many voters—can fall into that trap.

Trump and his MAGA supporters do and say outrageous things nearly every day. It is relentless.

So, it is hard not to let a lot of it filter into the political background. But we still must be outraged when Trump and his supporters use neo-fascist rhetoric. Or when he lies about the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Or when—as he just did—Trump brings a 9/11 truther and white nationalist conspiracy theorist to the 9/11 Memorial event.

It may not seem like news because Trump doing something outrageous isn’t new. It’s been an almost daily fact of our lives since he came down that golden escalator in 2015 to announce his presidential run.

But it is still news. It still matters. Trump is hoping we will grow numb to it all. His most ardent supporters are energized by it. Preserving our democracy requires us not to accept it. Those of us disgusted by it must match that energy.

#7

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable (Kavitha Surana, ProPublica, Link to Article)

In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.

She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.

But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.

Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.

It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.

Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died (Kavitha Surana, ProPublica, Link to Article)

Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her.

“They said it was going to be more painful and her body may not be able to withstand it,” her sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, told ProPublica.

But when the mother of three realized she had unintentionally gotten pregnant in the fall of 2022, Georgia’s new abortion ban gave her no choice. Although it made exceptions for acute, life-threatening emergencies, it didn’t account for chronic conditions, even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy.

At 41, Miller had lupus, diabetes and hypertension and didn’t want to wait until the situation became dire. So she avoided doctors and navigated an abortion on her own — a path many health experts feared would increase risks when women in America lost the constitutional right to obtain legal, medically supervised abortions.

Miller ordered abortion pills online, but she did not expel all the fetal tissue and would need a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. In many states, this care, known as a D&C, is routine for both abortions and miscarriages. In Georgia, performing it had recently been made a felony, with few exceptions.

Her teenage son watched her suffer for days after she took the pills, bedridden and moaning. In the early hours of Nov. 12, 2022, her husband found her unresponsive in bed, her 3-year-old daughter at her side.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

ProPublica this week shared the stories of two preventable deaths caused by the abortion bans Republicans have enacted since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Amber Nicole Thurman. Candi Miller. Their names need to matter.

Both of them would be alive in a sane state where pregnant people could access medically necessary reproductive health care.

Their deaths demonstrate, as Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti has argued for months, how phony these so-called exceptions to abortion bans are. Republican legislators have designed the exceptions to be impossible to implement—and made the penalties for breaking the bans so extreme that medical professionals are unwilling to take the risk.

More women have died since the Supreme Court took away the right to reproductive health care. ProPublica found out about these cases through a medical review process that generally takes more than a year to consider a case. We are only at the beginning of this tragic story.

I understand why Republican leaders want to blame the victims or the doctors for the deaths. I see that some extremists are even trying to blame the safe abortion medications (as with many medications, there can be complications, but both of these women could have been saved with routine follow-up care).

We are not required to accept those excuses. And I hope we voters hold these forced-birth extremists to account at the ballot box.

#8

Taylor Swift Turns the Tables on AI Misinformation with Harris Endorsement (Parker Molloy, The Present Age, Link to Article)

…in an Instagram post, Taylor Swift publicly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz for the 2024 presidential election. After her endorsement of the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, this doesn’t come as a huge surprise. However, the story behind this endorsement is more complex than it might appear at first glance, combining issues of artificial intelligence, misinformation, and the power of celebrity in the digital age.

…

Swift’s endorsement came just minutes after Harris’s debate with former President Donald Trump, but its roots trace back to an incident last month. Trump had shared a collection of images on his Truth Social platform, including AI-generated pictures of “Swifties for Trump” and an image of Swift herself in Uncle Sam attire, declaring, “Taylor wants YOU to vote for Donald Trump.” Trump’s caption? A simple “I accept!”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

I’m sure Trump didn’t think about the ramifications of spreading an AI-produced fake implying Taylor Swift was supporting him. Perhaps he thought it was funny or was trying to trigger the libs.

That was a miscalculation.

I think Swift deserves credit for taking this stand and doing it in such a high-impact way after the debate. It does come with risk, as any public figure who speaks out against Trump understands. She also recently faced terrorist threats during the European leg of her Eras Tour, one of which forced the cancellation in August of three shows in Vienna.

AI has made it so easy to create and distribute fake photos and videos (something I discussed in a newsletter earlier this month). We will inevitably see more fake images and videos during this campaign—but most of the targets won’t have Swift’s public reach to respond or a security team to protect them.

#9

Conservative activist launches $1bn crusade to ‘crush’ liberal America (Alex Rogers, Financial Times, Link to Article)

The conservative activist who led the crusade to overhaul the US legal system is making a $1bn push to “crush liberal dominance” across corporate America and in the country’s news and entertainment sectors.

In a rare interview, Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightward shift on the Supreme Court under Donald Trump, said his non-profit advocacy group, the Marble Freedom Trust, was ready to confront the private sector in addition to the government.

“We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious, so we’ll direct resources to build talent and capital formation pipelines in the areas of news and entertainment, where leftwing extremism is most evident,” Leo told the Financial Times.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Now that Leonard Leo has secured a Supreme Court supermajority, he’s looking to expand his influence. And he has the money to try.

We are fortunate that people like Leo insist on sharing their plans with us. How will we respond when the organizations funded by Leo’s money attack the institutions he targets?

Democrats let Leo reshape the judicial branch for decades without an effective counter until the Supreme Court and other Federalist Society judges did so much damage. We cannot make that mistake again.

We Must Remember What Really Happened During the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Those who believe they’re right are always more dangerous than those who think they are. You can’t argue with faith.” (Greg Olear, Rough Beast)

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Debate Night in America

Craig Cheslog

September 10, 2024

#1

Harris trolls Trump on debate day with criticism from inside his administration (Meridith McGraw, Politico, Link to Article)

Kamala Harris is trying to get into Donald Trump’s head before Tuesday’s debate, rolling out a new ad featuring scathing assessments of the former president from some former top officials in his administration.

The ad, titled “The Best People,” and shared first with POLITICO, features clips of media interviews with officials from the Trump administration — including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, national security adviser John Bolton, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley — talking about their decision not to endorse their former boss or warning about the dangers he would pose in a second term.

The ad will run nationally on Fox News and in West Palm Beach — home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort — and Philadelphia media markets on Tuesday, the day he will debate Harris for the first time. It will continue to play throughout the week, according to the Harris campaign.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

I have been frustrated by the lack of coverage about the Republicans who are not supporting Trump in this election. It’s quite a list. But even former Vice President Dick Cheney’s decision to vote for Kamala Harris did not merit a place in the New York Times print edition.

How. Is. That. Not. News?!?

So, I am glad the Harris campaign will inject these facts into the conversation on the day of the debate. It is wise to ensure it airs in areas where the former president is most likely to see it.

Some ~~headlines~~ people may call it trolling. I think it is brilliant politics—and I wouldn’t mind if this ad causes the former president to lash out on the debate stage.

#2

A new poll finding voters think Donald Trump is a centrist should be a wake-up call for the news media (Jamison Foser, Finding Gravity, Link to Article)

There’s a new New York Times/Siena College poll out and I’m not going to write about it because I generally don’t write about polls because the thing 99.999 percent of Americans should be thinking about is not “who is winning” but rather “who should win.” But I do want to briefly address one of the Trump advantages in the poll highlighted by Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn:“He occupies the center. A near majority of voters say Mr. Trump is “not too far” to the left or right on the issues, while only around one-third say he’s “too far to the right.” Nearly half of voters, in contrast, say Ms. Harris is too far to the left; only 41 percent say she’s “not too far either way.””

Of course, Donald Trump does not actually “occupy the center” — what Cohn meant is that Trump is perceived as occupying the center. (At least according to this measure.) This is not an insignificant difference!

So where does that perception come from? It comes, in part, from news companies like the New York Times.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Wait. What?

One of the media’s jobs is to inform the American public about what is happening in our country. The results of this poll show how dramatically the media is failing in this critical role.

How is a candidate who wants to enact a national abortion ban, violently deport 15-20 million people, eliminate most of the nonpartisan civil service, befriend dictators, cut taxes on the rich and corporations, raise tariffs, and become a dictator on day one end up being perceived by voters as holding the political center?

Foser provides several examples that can explain these dynamics. From sanewashing Trump’s rants to focusing only on Trump’s cross-party endorsements, media outlets are leaving a false impression with voters.

It would be great if editors and reporters were to review the results of that poll and reflect on why they are failing to inform the public. I’m not optimistic.

#3

Take him seriously (Mike Allen, Axios AM, Link to Newsletter)

President Trump is now proposing two of the largest-ever federal arrests of people living in America, including U.S. citizens, if he’s re-elected:Trump, on his Truth Social platform last night, threatened to jail adversaries, including Democratic donors. “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED” in elections of 2020 or 2024, he wrote, “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences … Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.”Trump, asked by TIME magazine in April about his plans for the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in American history, said he has “no choice”: “I don’t believe this is sustainable for a country, what’s happening to us, with probably 15 million and maybe as many as 20 million by the time Biden’s out. Twenty million people, many of them from jails, many of them from prisons, many of them from mental institutions.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

It seems like “proposing two of the largest-ever federal arrests of people” should be a big deal. This plan doesn’t seem like a centrist one to this political observer.

On top of that, Trump went even further about his deportation plans on Saturday, telling a Wisconsin rally that “Getting them out will be a bloody story.”

Not subtle. Also, we must not assume it’s hyperbole.

Trump has been consistent about his retribution agenda. His advisors have discussed how to use the Insurrection Act as part of the deportation plan and to confront the inevitable protests against it.

The debate seems like a great time to talk about these ideas.

#4

Chronology of a Dozen Times Trump Pushed to Prosecute His Perceived Enemies (Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman, Just Security, Link to Article)

The cascade of election coverage, commentary and speculation about how Donald Trump might use the power of the presidency to retaliate against his perceived political enemies has overlooked important context: Trump has done just that, while he was president, at least a dozen times.

What follows is a chronological list of specific instances in which the former president in fact used the Department of Justice and other levers of government power — including by directly, publicly or privately, pressuring officials — to target his chosen political adversaries. The record includes several cases in which he apparently succeeded more than might be imagined or remembered.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

While some reporters obsess about interviews and a lack of certainty about policy details, I have been frustrated because people forget that we can look at what Trump and Harris have done in elected office to see how they might govern.

Klasfeld and Goodman put together a timeline of a dozen times when Trump sought to use the government to retaliate. The list includes:

Trump asks then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “unrecuse” himself to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton. (Date: Sometime after May 17, 2017 and before July 19, 2017)
Trump publicly scolds Justice Department for not investigating Clinton (Date: November 2017)
Sessions directs US Attorney for Utah John W. Huber to investigate Hillary Clinton and Uranium One conspiracy (Date: November 2017 to January 2020)
Criminal investigation of the Clinton Foundation (Date: On or before January 2018 to January 2021)
Criminal investigation and near-prosecution of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe (Date: March 16, 2018-February 14, 2020)
Trump demands investigation into his debunked “Spygate” conspiracy theory (Date: May 20, 2018)
Trump privately told White House Counsel he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute James Comey and Hillary Clinton (Date: Spring 2018)
Trump publicly urges Sessions to investigate a long list of perceived political enemies (Date: Aug. 23, 2018)
The Durham investigation: Directed at law enforcement and intelligence officials, as well as Hillary Clinton (Date: April 18, 2019 to May 2023)
Trump urges Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a criminal investigation of Joe Biden (Date: July 25, 2019)
Criminal investigations of Comey (First Date: uncertain — August 2019. Second Date: From at least January 2020 – December 2020/January 2021)
Trump threatens to prosecute Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger if he doesn’t overturn his election defeat in Georgia (Date: Jan. 2, 2021)

The article includes more detail about each of these 12 situations. These are real attempts to weaponize the Department of Justice.

It is worth taking the time to review the list. For Trump, retribution is not a hypothetical. And Trump has made clear he will appoint people to carry out his orders. There won’t be so-called “adults in the room” to prevent abuses next time.

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public, so feel free to share it with your family and friends.

#5

Harris’ 2020 Campaign Was Not a Failure (Noah Berlatsky, Everything Is Horrible, Link to Article)

It’s conventional wisdom among the jaded political press that Kamala Harris’ 2020 primary bid was an embarrassing disaster. Mark Leibovich at the Atlantic provides a recent example of this supposedly self-evident narrative—in an analysis of Harris’ CNN interview Leibovich refers to Harris’ “short-lived and ill-fated presidential campaign of 2019.”

There are a couple of problems with this formulation. First, it’s false. And second, it’s false in a way that glibly advances racist and sexist talking points which paint Harris as incompetent and unworthy.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Too many Democrats are willing to concede that Vice President Harris’ 2020 campaign for president was a failure.

Berlatsky is correct in urging us to stop doing that. As he argues, “The goal of a presidential nomination contest is not to stay in as long as possible. The goal is to advance your career. That can mean that you come out of the nomination as president, ideally. But that’s not the only way to win.”

Harris didn’t win in 2020. However, I agree with Berlatsky that she demonstrated great political savvy by dropping out after she determined there was no viable path to victory. By not attacking Biden for several more months on debate stages, she placed herself in the best position to become his Vice President.

She took a chance. It worked. And now she’s the Democratic nominee for president.

Why are people so quick to assume that’s a failure?

#6

What Kamala Harris did – and didn’t do – on immigration and the border (Toluse Olorunnipa and Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post, Link to Article)

Two months into his presidency, Joe Biden confronted a political crisis: The number of migrants illegally crossing the southern border into the United States was soaring. So he asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts to reduce problems at the border.

That assignment included working with three Central American countries — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — to improve living conditions and lower the odds that migrants would leave those countries for reasons including poverty, gang violence and corruption.

But Republicans quickly seized on the apparent diplomatic opportunity for Harris, referring to her as the country’s “border czar” responsible for all issues related to the U.S.-Mexico line. Now, more than three years later, her role is a potential political liability as she runs for president as the Democratic nominee and polls show voters broadly disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the border.

Harris, in fact, has never been in charge of the border. The Department of Homeland Security manages migration. Her immigration role for the Biden administration has included boosting U.S. aid to Central America, traveling to the region and discouraging potential migrants from making the dangerous journey to the United States.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

“Harris, in fact, has never been in charge of the border.”

Yeah, I’d like that to be in bold headlines. This fact does not matter how many times Republicans claim otherwise.

It is obvious that Harris is going to need an answer to the GOP’s lies about her border responsibilities. But let’s be clear: Republicans do not get to decide whether she was a border czar.

Moreover, Harris achieved considerable success with the job Biden asked her to do. That’s why we should be aware of what actually happened.

#7

Don’t Fall for the GOP’s Platform Lie (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, Link to Article)

A leaked draft of the new Republican party platform says that fetuses have a constitutional right to personhood, a radical stance in a moment when Americans overwhelmingly oppose bans and want abortion to be legal. And despite headlines to the contrary, the GOP’s abortion plank still supports a national ban.

But because political reporters and mainstream news outlets have fallen for a Republican disinformation campaign, the platform’s new language is being covered as a ‘softening’ on abortion rights.

The stakes are high so I’m not going to mince words: This is about as big of a fuck up as it gets. So let’s get into it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Given how critical reproductive rights are in this campaign, it is maddening to see reporters and editors fall for the Republican attempts to cover up their extreme views.

Valenti details how the Republican platform’s use of the 14th Amendment is radical. She explains how Trump’s regular stories about late-term and post-birth abortions are lies.

Donald Trump nominated the Supreme Court Justices that were decisive in overturning Roe v. Wade. He took three different positions in 24 hours last week about the abortion rights measure on the Florida ballot. Ultimately, Trump decided after facing a backlash that he would vote to keep Florida’s current six-week ban in place.

That’s not moderate!

There are no post-birth abortions. That would be infanticide. It’s already illegal. When Trump claims it, he’s lying.

As Jason Sattler, known online as LOLGOP, explains, voting for Trump would lead to abortion becoming illegal in all 50 states.

I expect Vice President Harris to clarify these facts during the debate to lay the foundation for the run-in to election day.

#8

Analysis: Trump is still telling lies he told eight years ago (Daniel Dale, CNN, Link to Article)

Trump’s lying is most exceptional in its relentlessness, a never-ending avalanche of wrongness that can bury even the most devoted fact-checkers. But it’s also notable for its repetitiveness. He has found his hits, and he’ll keep playing them no matter how many times they are debunked.

As Trump enters the post-Labor Day sprint of his 2024 campaign for the presidency, his commentary is filled with many of the same false claims he made as president from 2017 to 2021. He’s even repeating some of the false claims he used during his 2016 presidential campaign.

…

Still, I try to match Trump’s tirelessness in lying with my own tirelessness in challenging the lies. The separation of fact from fiction is central to journalists’ role in the democratic process, and there are always citizens out there who are hearing even the stalest of deceptions for the first time.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Daniel Dale has been doing amazing work fact-checking Donald Trump for years. Dale does not hold Trump to a different and easier standard, unlike other fact-checkers.

Trump gish galloped a torrent of lies in his debate with President Biden. I suspect he will try the same with Vice President Harris.

That’s why I found it worthwhile before the debate to review Dale’s list of the lies Trump continues to repeat. I anticipate we will hear some of Trump’s greatest hits. We should be ready to refute them. If Dale isn’t surprised, we shouldn’t be either.

I hope CNN gets Dale in their post-debate coverage much faster than they did in the previous debate. People need to be aware of the lies as soon as possible. After all, reporters keep saying policy details matter—and they should while pundits pass judgment on tonight’s performances.

#9

We Must Remember What Really Happened During the January 6, 2021, Insurrection (January 6 Committee Video Exhibit, Via NBC News)

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Fascists have always been well acquainted with this recipe for using democracy’s liberties against itself; Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once declared, “This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.” (Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works)

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Stop Sanewashing Trump

Craig Cheslog

September 8, 2024

#1

The Press Response to Trump’s Word Salad Answer on Childcare is Peak Sanewashing (Parker Malloy, The Present Age, Link to Article)

Earlier this week, I wrote an article for The New Republic (and expanded on it in a post here at TPA) about how the media “sanewashes” Trump. If you missed that, I recommend checking it out.

And then yesterday, we were given a perfect example of this.

Moms First CEO and Founder Reshma Saujani asked Trump: “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”

It’s an extremely straightforward question with an extremely straightforward answer: “Yes, I will commit to that. This is the specific piece of legislation I support that would do that: [insert specific legislation to be talked about].”

But that’s not how Trump answered. Instead, he gave an incoherent, meandering, nearly two-minute response.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Sanewashing is such a perfect word for this dynamic. Just a few weeks ago, we were led to believe that a presidential candidate’s verbal slip-ups were a national security issue. As you may recall, media coverage of President Joe Biden’s minor gaffes was covered relentlessly and seen as proof that he was too old to seek a second term.

Meanwhile, those same media outlets are transforming the jibberish shared by former President Trump into something coherent, covering up a more serious situation.

Take, for example, Trump’s answer to the childcare question Malloy noted above. Here is a transcript of what Trump actually said.

Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care. You have to have it — in this country you have to have it.

But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to — but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take.

I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about.

We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible [country that can] afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.

Read that out loud. That answer makes no sense. Given the demand for policy details, one would think this should be a situation worthy of major coverage. Yet here’s how The New York Times’ Michael Gold described it to his readers:

After his speech, Donald Trump was asked how he might address rising child care costs. In a jumbled answer, he said he would prioritize legislation on the issue but offered no specifics and insisted that his other economic policies, including tariffs, would “take care” of child care. “As much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.”

Gold does not help the reader understand what happened. A “jumbled answer” hardly explains what Trump shared with his audience. Gold then takes that word salad and makes it into something that falsely appears coherent.

Malloy offers many other examples of this sanewashing dynamic in her article. It is illuminating to see how much effort reporters are offering to put a sane filter on the former president’s rants.

Most people do not watch these events live. They are relying on what reporters and editors share. They often do not read anything more than the headlines they see in push alerts on their phones or social media posts.

By sanewashing Trump, the media is sharing a false version of this campaign’s reality. Instead of transmitting information, the media is reducing voters’ knowledge about this election.

Given the intense focus on President Biden’s age and mental acuity just a few weeks ago, how can anyone justify not asking the same questions about Trump now?

Why are media outlets willing to sanewash Trump’s speeches while downplaying news that would have resulted in political earthquakes in previous election cycles? How would it look different if reporters, editors, and publishers had declared they were trying to help Trump win?

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#2

James Fallows (@JamesFallows on X/Twitter, August 31, 2024, link to post)

James Fallows Tweet on 8/31/24: It’s been weeks since Trump promised to release flight records about his (mythical) helo flight with Willie Brown, and threatened to sue NYT for saying it was BS. It’s been days since he promised to release Arlington video. He will never do it. (Imagine this from Harris.)

It’s been weeks since Trump promised to release flight records about his (mythical) helo flight with Willie Brown, and threatened to sue NYT for saying it was BS.

It’s been days since he promised to release Arlington video.

He will never do it. (Imagine this from Harris.)

Jamesetta Williams (@jalexa1218 on X/Twitter, August 31, 2024, link to post)

Jamesetta Williams Tweet on August 31, 2024: There are simply too many Trump related stories the media has been slow on, while griping about Harris’ interviews: what’s the deal with this $10M from Egypt? What really happened at Arlington Cemetery? What’s in the leaked emails? Where is the analysis of Trump’s mental acuity?

There are simply too many Trump related stories the media has been slow on, while griping about Harris’ interviews: what’s the deal with this $10M from Egypt? What really happened at Arlington Cemetery? What’s in the leaked emails? Where is the analysis of Trump’s mental acuity?

David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik on X/Twitter, September 2, 2024, link to post)

David Folkenflik on Twitter: After a week, here's what we're left with: No video, no exoneration on Trump side. Journalists and lawmakers should push for answers and more materials. If either side - the Trump campaign or the US Army - isn't telling the truth, that should be known. And knowable.

After a week, here’s what we’re left with: No video, no exoneration on Trump side. Journalists and lawmakers should push for answers and more materials. If either side – the Trump campaign or the US Army – isn’t telling the truth, that should be known. And knowable.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

The Trump campaign promised to share a video of the incident at the Arlington National Cemetery. Where is it?

The Trump campaign promised to share the flight logs and records of the helicopter flight the former president claimed he had taken with former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Where are they?

We heard about a credible claim that Egypt’s leadership bribed Trump before the 2016 election a few weeks ago. That alleged bribe may have been linked to a loan Trump made to his campaign. (link to Will Bunch article) What media outlets are investigating? Is there new information?

What hit former President Trump during the assassination attempt last month? Trump claims it was a bullet. But that has not been confirmed by independent medical authorities. How do we not know the details of this assassination attempt?

At least three media outlets (Politico, The Washington Post, and The New York Times) have received leaks of emails hacked from the Trump campaign. Given what happened with the emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, why aren’t we seeing daily updates about what is in the Trump emails? If editors have decided they made a mistake in 2016, why aren’t they sharing that with their readers and viewers? (link to Off Message by Brian Beutler story)

All of these stories are major ones. I am one of the people who is baffled that we do not see aggressive coverage of them. We saw what the media can do to amplify a story with their aggressive coverage of President Biden’s age. What is behind their choice not to provide updates on these?

#3

The Election Story Nobody Wants to Talk About (Rick Perlstein, The American Prospect, link to article)

Rick Perlstein: What are the basic outlines of this story no one wants to talk about?

David Neiwert: We’re once again faced with a situation where a substantial bloc of American politics is talking about committing acts of violence and bringing down the government. We saw this before, in 2020, in the run-up to that election and the aftermath. A lot of us held back; obviously, these guys have a long history of blowing off a lot of steam, talking, and wildly exaggerating their actual ability to carry out a threat. But I think we saw on January 6th, that was probably not the wisest view to take. We should have been paying more attention to what these guys were saying amongst themselves online. And what they’re saying amongst themselves right now is probably disturbing. Because they’re talking about shooting their neighbors.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

There have been repeated efforts to downplay the seriousness of the threat of right-wing domestic terrorism since the Obama Administration withdrew a comprehensive FBI study about the issue in 2009 after facing intense backlash from Republican elected officials and right-wing activists (link to Southern Poverty Law Center article).

Of course, that didn’t stop the right-wing domestic terrorism. It didn’t prevent the murder of reproductive health doctor George Tiller, a neo-Nazi’s attack on the Holocaust Museum, election-deniers attacks against poll workers and election clerks, Q-Anon-related attacks, the January 6, 2021, insurrection against the United States government, among others (link to PBS Newshour story).

Neiwart is an expert on right-wing extremism and tried to warn people about the 2021 insurrection based on what he was reading in radical right-wing internet discussions. So, I take it seriously when he expresses concern that the White House, Congress, law enforcement, and the media are not ready for what we are likely to face during and after the election.

#4

No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke (Sarah Jeong, The Verge, link to article)

An explosion from the side of an old brick building. A crashed bicycle in a city intersection. A cockroach in a box of takeout. It took less than 10 seconds to create each of these images with the Reimagine tool in the Pixel 9’s Magic Editor. They are crisp. They are in full color. They are high-fidelity. There is no suspicious background blur, no tell-tale sixth finger. These photographs are extraordinarily convincing, and they are all extremely fucking fake.

Anyone who buys a Pixel 9 — the latest model of Google’s flagship phone, available starting this week — will have access to the easiest, breeziest user interface for top-tier lies, built right into their mobile device. This is all but certain to become the norm, with similar features already available on competing devices and rolling out on others in the near future. When a smartphone “just works,” it’s usually a good thing; here, it’s the entire problem in the first place.

…

This is all about to flip — the default assumption about a photo is about to become that it’s faked, because creating realistic and believable fake photos is now trivial to do. We are not prepared for what happens after.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Oh, I’m not thrilled companies are releasing these A.I. photography tools right before a presidential election. We need to start talking about what it means to our society now that users can fake or modify photos so easily (the article I link to above has some stunning examples).

What does it mean for news coverage, law enforcement, and the justice system now that we must assume a photo is fake until it is proven true? How will we convince people to change an assumption they have been able to hold for their lifetimes?

The technology companies are not going to fix this problem. They will once again release a technology without the safeguards or study something so transformational should have.

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#5

Trump’s Arlington Debacle Shows Us How He Will Govern (Dan Moynihan, Can We Still Govern, link to article)

Former President Trump and his entourage went to Arlington National Cemetery. The purpose of the visit was to score political points, portraying the Biden administration as a weak steward of the military. The actual result was somewhat different; a multi-day media embarrassment amidst reports that Trump’s team ignored clear rules about using Arlington for campaign purposes, and shoved aside an official who tried to enforce those rules.

At one level, Arlington is just one more stumble in a campaign that seems to have lost its way. But its more important than that. I see the incident through the lens of governance. From that perspective, Arlington is a small moment that offers a big insight into what a second Trump administration might look like. And its worth paying attention to it precisely because I don’t think we really has a full sense of how a hyper-politicized administration would operate. Frankly, I study this stuff and even I can’t predict all of the ways that a partisan model of presidential administration would seep into every crevice of government. But specific examples like this one force us to imagine what another, more debased, version of American government would look like.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

I am appalled by what former President Trump and his staff did at Arlington National Cemetery. To take some of the most sacred space in our nation and abuse it for partisan goals is just another example of Trump’s inability to understand how a non-partisan and civilian-controlled military operates.

But that isn’t surprising given everything we’ve learned about how this man, who avoided Vietnam because of bone spurs, attacked the late Senator John McCain for getting captured (link to article) and, according to former Chief of Staff John Kelly, called soldiers who died in war “suckers and losers” (link to article).

In this article, Moynihan explains what this abhorrent behavior demonstrates about how Trump would govern if he wins a second term. We see how Trump treats public servants, celebrates lawbreaking on his behalf, and how the terror his supporters create through their threats protects him from being held accountable.

Like many authoritarians, Trump is not being subtle about what he intends to do and how he intends to do it.

#6

The Horrifying Fascist Manifesto Endorsed By J.D. Vance (Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs, link to article)

The book Unhumans, by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, is a fascist manifesto. It argues that the “Great Men of History” should take their cues from homicidal dictators like Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Franco, reject reason and democracy, and ruthlessly annihilate the gangs of communist “unhumans” who are currently threatening to destroy the United States. It explicitly advocates “eye for an eye” justice, promising a new McCarthyism complete with blacklists, along with the immediate banning of all teachers’ unions. It is perhaps the most paranoid, hateful, and terrifying book I have ever picked up. (I say this as someone who has read Mein Kampf.) And it comes with a warm and supportive blurb from Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who is currently the Republican party’s vice presidential nominee.

Vance had this to say of Unhumans: “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR [Human Resources], college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”

…

Unhumans is both a manifesto and a guide for action. Its central argument, which I will state as dispassionately as possible, is that leftists are not fellow human beings who should be accepted as part of a pluralistic society, but rather “unhumans” bent on destroying the civilized order. Citing the usual parade of 20th century communist dictators (Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot), Posobiec and Lisec argue that even if it may not look like the contemporary United States is under threat from a communist revolution, we are under threat, besieged by furtive, scheming unhumans who must be rooted out before they can consummate their fiendish plot to commit mass murder. Stopping the unhumans will require shedding commitments to democracy, free speech, reasoned debate, and tolerance of alternate points of view. Instead, they argue, the right should find its role models in Caesar, Joseph McCarthy, and various murderous anti-communist dictators of the 20th century.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

Oh yeah, there is nothing weird about this situation. Nope. Nothing at all.

The list of weird and disturbing things JD Vance has said—or has supported—grows with each passing day. It has made more than one person wonder what we are going to learn in October if we are already seeing so much disturbing opposition research about him.

The premise of this book is even more disturbing than Vance’s statements about women and families. As its title suggests, this book seeks to rob anyone who disagrees with this worldview of their humanity. It is one of the first steps in any authoritarian regime’s playbook to eliminate dissent and justify violence.

We are fortunate that they are being so clear about what they intend to do. It gives us a better chance to prevent it.

#7

“To do my job, I had to be there too.” (Melissa Ludtke, Joe Blogs Guest Post, link to article)

I didn’t set out to challenge Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in the late 1970s, when I was the rare woman covering baseball. Still, I ended up as the named plaintiff in the groundbreaking 1978 court case, Ludtke v. Kuhn, which changed the course of sports history by giving women sportswriters the equal access we needed to interview the ballplayers, manager and coaches in the locker room. That was where male reporters had talked with baseball players for decades.

To do my job, I had to be there too.

In Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside, I tell what it was like to be a 26-year-old single woman who was mocked and parodied in print and on TV for taking on what the men claimed was my “silly” fight. Back then, the men held all the microphones on the airwaves and typed all the stories about the games men played. So, their views of me prevailed. It didn’t take long for me to know I’d lost my case in the court of public opinion, but within the year, I won in a court of law, and that made all the difference.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:

I am so glad Joe Posnanski gave Melissa Ludtke the keys to his newsletter to describe her book about a critical moment in journalism.

It may seem remarkable to people today that Commissioner Bowie Kuhn created such a mess by being so awful to Ludtke while she was trying to do her job as a baseball writer. As Posnanski describes in an introduction to Ludtke’s post, though, “It’s truly astonishing how often Bowie Kuhn was on the wrong side of history. But you do have to say this about him: He was never shy about being on the wrong side of history; he was always arrogantly on the wrong side of history.”

I’m glad Ludtke gets this opportunity to tell her story. Her guest post is a great entree into what happened and what it took to win against a bunch of terrible people.

We Must Remember What Really Happened During the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“There can be no hopes, dreams, and ideals where there is no shared reality; and there is no political community where there is only the self-obsessed and endlessly self-referential president.” (Masha Gessen, Surviving Autocracy)

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