Here’s what I’ve found interesting recently: why it’s important not to accept Donald Trump’s landslide lie, Biden was right to pardon his son under the circumstances (but we need to see more pardons), are we a democracy when one person can spend $200 million to elect a president, how white supremacy politics won the election, MAGA filmmaker admits 2000 Mules is a fraud, what a Harris canvasser learned in Pennsylvania, people are more likely to spread misinformation when they are angry, Pete Hegseth’s Christian nationalist tattoos, and John Grisham tells stories about the wrongfully convicted.
Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.
#1
Donald Trump didn’t win by a historic landslide. It’s time to nip that lie in the bud (Mehdi Hasan, The Guardian, Link to Article)
In 2024, we have a new post-election lie from the Republican party. Trump didn’t just win, they say, but he won big. He won a landslide. He won an historic mandate for his “Maga” agenda.
And it was Trump himself, of course, on election night, who was the first to push this grandiose and self-serving falsehood, calling his win “a political victory that our country has never seen before” and claiming “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate”.
Republican politicians, masters of message discipline, quickly followed suit. The representative Elise Stefanik called his win a “historic landslide” while the senator John Barrasso called Trump’s a “huge landslide”. “On November 5 voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it,” wrote the “Doge” co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Wall Street Journal on 20 November.
None of this is true. Yes, Trump won the popular vote and the electoral college. Yes, Republicans won the Senate and the House. But, contrary to both Republican talking points and breathless headlines and hot takes from leading media outlets (“resounding”, “rout”, “runaway win”), there was really nothing at all historic or huge about the margin of victory.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Donald Trump won 100 percent of the presidency. But this mandate argument still matters. We should not allow Trump to claim that he won a mandate to enact unprecedented MAGA change on our nation.
That is not what happened on election day, and Democrats need to oppose this mandate talking point forcefully and as often as Trump and his supporters push their latest lie.
Hasan goes through the statistics and lays out just how slim the margins Trump won in the popular vote and the Electoral College are in historical terms. Trump also had limited coattails, with Republicans losing four of the five Senate races in the battleground states Trump won. Republicans also only control the House of Representatives because of an extreme partisan gerrymander MAGA courts allowed in North Carolina.
There was nothing unprecedented about Trump’s election. He will try to claim otherwise to justify his Project 2025-proposed increases in Executive Branch powers and cuts to domestic spending. Pushing back against this false mandate may keep Trump from enjoying policy wins if Democrats make the case forcefully enough. This is not the time for a deferential opposition.
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#2
Of Course Joe Biden Was Right to Pardon His Son (Elie Mystal, The Nation, Link to Article)
I do not believe I have read a worse collection of takes in the weeks since Donald Trump’s reelection than the endless array of white columnists and pundits whining about Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden. The idea that the “rule of law” is somehow undermined—in this lunatic country that just elected a convicted felon who has promised to prosecute his political enemies—by this ordinary use of the extraordinary presidential pardon power, is simply nuts.
…
Fundamentally, these pundits are committing the same mistake that has plagued American media for at least a decade: demanding that Democrats play by a set of rules that Republicans have long rejected. And I am tired of it. I will no longer participate in the masturbatory Kabuki theater of pretending there is some objective set of standards and norms that some political actors must play by while others are free to ignore them.
In case you hadn’t noticed, there are no “rules”—certainly not anymore. There is just power. Right now, Biden has it, and he used it. Would that he had used it a little more often during the last four years, instead of spending most of that time trying to “restore” standards and norms that Trump destroyed.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
A person willing to change their mind upon receiving new information is to be celebrated, not condemned. The outpouring of criticism directed toward President Biden for taking the prudent step of pardoning his son, Hunter, after the politically motivated investigations against him is ridiculous.
Shame some of these people don’t have the energy to condemn President-Elect Trump for nominating for FBI Director a person who has vowed to get retribution—and published in his 2022 book an enemies list of targets.
Yes, Hunter Biden committed crimes. But if he had been Hunter Smith, as Marcy Wheeler details, he would not have faced a politicized prosecution where the media refused to write about the abuses and instead focused on the salacious elements of the scandal.
The Hunter Biden investigation was an obvious political prosecution that began during Trump’s first term. It played a key role, you may remember, in Trump’s first impeachment. There was nothing normal about a pulled plea bargain, appointment of a special counsel, and several Congressional investigations that included the public disclosure of nude photos of the target.
The emergence of Kash Patel to take over the FBI should ring all sorts of alarms. It is prudent to react to what the facts are—not what we hoped they would be. President Biden had the right to protect his son.
Norms have been broken. But not by Biden.
That said, as Brian Beutler explains, this better not be the end of Biden’s use of his pardon and commutation powers. There is much more he can do—and should do—now that he’s pardoned his son.
Biden should commute all of the federal death sentences to life without the possibility of parole. According to the Office of the Pardon Attorney, there are 9,378 pending applications for pardons and clemencies, while Biden has granted a historically low 26 pardons and 135 clemencies. The Guardian’s Margaret Sullivan makes a strong case for pardoning Reality Winner, who already served a lengthy prison sentence for her patriotic decision to leak a classified document to a reporter about Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Biden should have pardoned his son. But he’s not the only person facing a politically motivated prosecution or who should have a second chance with a clean record. The question now is whether Biden will continue the awful tradition of reserving these benefits for the friends and family of the president.
I expect better.
#3
Elon Musk Spent Over $200 Million To Help Trump Get Elected (Alison Durkee, Forbes, Link to Article)
Billionaire Elon Musk gave $193 million to his pro-Trump super PAC through Election Day, federal filings released Thursday show—and pumped an additional $20 million into a separate Trump-aligned PAC—solidifying his place as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s biggest billionaire supporters.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Are we really a democracy when one person can donate so much money to a political candidate, including $20 million to a PAC that misled voters using the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Or when a group of technology leaders can donate a combined $394.1 million?
No. We are not.
No person in a democracy should have this much power. It’s one of the reasons I believe that every billionaire is a policy failure.
They won this round. I hope we get another chance.
#4
Identity politics indeed cost Kamala Harris the election — Trump’s supremacist kind (David Neiwert, The Spyhop, Link to Article)
No, Kamala Harris did not lose because of her supposed embrace of “identity politics.” Just the reverse is true: Donald Trump won because of his very real embrace of identity politics. White identity politics.
It’s one of the more popular lines of self-flagellation Democratic Party critics and strategists have taken in the wake of the disastrous 2024 election: Harris and her “identity politics” caused many voters, including minorities, to look elsewhere. But as Tressie McMillan Cottom already observed, Harris in fact tended to deemphasize the racial aspects of her historic candidacy and worked hard to win over Republican voters—to little avail.
…
When discussing immigration issues, Kamala Harris rarely mentioned “comprehensive immigration reform,” or bothered explaining in plain language how they planned to tackle these problems. It’s a subject rich with possibilities for refuting MAGA smears.
The same is true with other forms of identity politics. Rather than minimize Trump’s attacks on transgender people by characterizing it as about a tiny and irrelevant minority, Harris easily could have turned it into a defense of equality under the law and common decency.
Even when it came to her own identity, Harris backed away from taking an explicit stand. It may have been a matter of self-restraint, but it furthered the stereotype of her as a mealy-mouthed and ultimately spineless defender of the causes she ostensibly espoused.
If the lesson Democrats draw from 2024 is that pro-democratic identity politics are toxic because they’re difficult to explain, and thereby abandon the field to white identity politics and rule by supremacists, then it’s not clear what reason the party even has to exist.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
I have to give Republicans grudging credit for pulling off this messaging con. Vice President Kamala Harris did all she could not to emphasize race or gender during this election. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign continued to embrace white supremacy—including through its nurturing of White Christian Nationalist leaders.
By shying away from their beliefs, Democrats have allowed Republicans to frame these issues and given the media an excuse to adopt this lie. By refusing to fight for their beliefs, Democrats have given their voters reason to wonder what other people they will sell out if the situation becomes politically inconvenient.
It’s hard to be excited to vote for someone you can’t trust to have your back.
One of my core beliefs about voters is that they will reject politicians who refuse to fight for their beliefs. Politicians who engage can change minds or at least earn voters’ respect, as Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has in his red state.
Republicans are not going to stop lying about these issues if Democrats continue to retreat. As we just saw, Republicans will claim Democrats are consumed with identity politics regardless of the facts. So, it is better to fight for what is right.
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#5
MAGA Filmmaker Trump Praised Admits 2020 Election Fraud Doc Was B.S. (Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone, Link to Article)
MAGA filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza issued a statement on Sunday admitting that his most notorious project — the 2020 election conspiracy film 2000 Mules — was produced “on the basis of inaccurate information provided to me and my team.”
The statement includes an apology to Mark Andrews, a Georgia man who sued D’Souza, Salem Media Group, and True the Vote (his partners on the film) for defamation in 2022.
Released in May 2022, 2000 Mules claimed that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump in part through the use of “mules” who were paid to stuff drop boxes with ballots favoring Joe Biden. The film’s claims hinged on supposed “data” from True the Vote, a Trump-aligned election monitoring group, tracking cellphone data around drop boxes. 2000 Mules provided no concrete evidence related to their claims of ballot harvesting, paid mules, and stash houses for fraudulent ballots, instead relying on sensationalist accusations and conjecture to stir up conservative rage — and a profit.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
It did not take long for investigators to debunk the claims D’Souza made in this stupid film at the time. Yet he was still celebrated by Trump and the right-wing echo chamber.
And now, in response to a lawsuit, D’Souza has become the latest to see that his movie is a lie. Seems important!
MAGA supporters used 2000 Mules as part of their justifications to spread the big lie about the 2020 election. Trump has championed its lies as part of his lying about the 2020 election results.
This isn’t the first time D’Souza has been taught lying. Reporters should stop booking him on their shows and quoting him in their articles.
It appears that Trump will try to codify the Bie Lie about the 2020 election in our national consciousness as he begins his second term as president (and there are reports that the 2020 election is one of the loyalty test questions prospective Trump Administration staffers must answer). We don’t have to fall for it, and we should protect the people who will continue to be targeted by MAGA over these lies.
#6
A Kamala Harris Canvasser’s Education (Julia Preston, The New Yorker, Link to Article)
Even on that first day, walking around in sultry heat, I began to sense a dissonance between the celebrity-inflected exuberance of the Harris campaign and the bleak mood and raw divisions I encountered in the streets. I canvassed a gritty apartment complex, with brown grass in the green spaces, that surrounded a small pool, where several mothers languished as their children splashed. They all scoffed when I asked if they were Harris supporters. By the end of that afternoon, the warnings about Project 2025’s plans for an “authoritarian, Christian nationalist movement with broad control over American life”—in the words of a flyer I received as part of my “lit pack”—felt too academic for a voter with gray and missing teeth who told me she could not afford dental care. By contrast, just blocks away was a curving street lined with colonial-style homes, with Volvos and S.U.V.s in the driveways, where one smiling Democrat after another opened the doors. Here was the class polarization that would later get so much attention.
As for the Trump voters who turned up on my lists, I quickly understood that we were not operating on a plane of shared facts. A retired police officer shouted me down when I asked him to explain his support for Trump, given that the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, had injured a hundred and forty law enforcement officers. “That’s a lie!” he said, even though I had, at the ready, the latest Justice Department report on the prosecutions of the rioters. Another voter insisted that all Trump had asked for after the 2020 election was “a recount” of the national vote, as if that were a remotely feasible, or legal, proposition. Others echoed Trump’s dark visions of millions of criminal migrants rampaging across the land, though there was little sign of them in northeast Pennsylvania. This is what I was up against: Trump was broadcasting on some direct wavelength with his followers, and he had drawn them into his alternate universe of looming economic disaster, menacing migrants, and outrages perpetrated by Democrats against their children, which only he was visionary enough to see and strong enough to combat.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Julia Preston has been a distinguished reporter who has written about immigration and other subjects for the Washington Post, New York Times, and The Marshall Project. After seeing what Trump said about immigrants during his debate with President Biden, she resigned from the Marshall Project because she didn’t believe she could comply with its rules against partisan political activity.
Preston shares what she learned talking to Pennsylvania voters, especially in Latino neighborhoods near Allentown. She describes the disconnect she experienced between reality and what potential voters were sharing with her. She saw how the Harris-Walz campaign couldn’t break through on vital issues given the short amount of time they had between Biden dropping out of the race and Election Day.
It is a story about why it is important for Democrats to start engaging with voters in their communities and not rely on the media or advertisements. A community is needed to combat misinformation.
And that community needs to be fostered in all 50 states and all 3,007 of their counties. It takes honest conversations to turn back the MAGA tide.
It’s tough work. But Preston explains why it is so vital.
#7
Outraged? You’re more likely to share misinformation, study finds. (Will Oremus, Washington Post, Link to Article)
A report from the nonprofit Issue One, shared with the Tech Brief ahead of its publication Wednesday, finds that foreign governments managed to spread at least 160 false narratives in the United States in 2024 via social media, with Russia the leading purveyor. About half those narratives aimed to divide Americans on foreign policy issues, such as the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, while the other half focused on domestic U.S. politics, often targeting Harris and President Joe Biden.
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A study published last week in the journal Science found that if you want disinformation to go viral online, making people furious might be your best bet.
Combining laboratory experiments on users with data from Facebook and Twitter in the United States in 2017 and 2021, researchers at Northwestern, Princeton, Yale and St. John’s University found that when social media users encounter content that outrages them, they become more likely to share it without reading it, let alone taking steps to verify its accuracy. They further found that content from low-quality information sources, including fake and hyperpartisan news sites, tends to be more outrage-inducing than content from trustworthy sources.
Together, those findings suggest that purveyors of propaganda and disinformation are exploiting people’s outrage to spread lies, a dynamic that social networks’ engagement-based algorithms tend to amplify.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
That finding may seem obvious. I suspect everyone reading this newsletter has received an email or message containing what should be an obvious lie. However, people do not fact-check when they see something on social media or in emails that they perceive to be outrageous—especially when it confirms their beliefs.
Elon Musk has weaponized this dynamic through all of the changes he has made to his X/Twitter social media site. Meta/Facebook has reduced the priority on news and political posts, making it harder for people to engage with them.
We may not be able to change our relatives, but I know that when I have fallen for false information, it is because of this dynamic. So, I am redoubling my efforts to check sources and confirm context before I pass along something outrageous that happens to confirm what I believe.
#8
No matter what Pete Hegseth says, his tattoos are anything but typical symbols of Christianity (Father Nathan Monk, Substack, Link to Article)
You heard that right: after months of Trump bellowing about Democrats, liberals, and leftists being “the enemy within” without any actual evidence to prove such a threat existed, he went and nominated someone for Secretary of Defense who had actually been accused of being an insider threat, an enemy within.
The reason the accusations were brought against Mr. Hegseth was based upon a number of his tattoos being potentially linked to Christian Nationalist and White Nationalist organizations. JD Vance immediately jumped to Hegseth’s defense, saying, “They’re attacking Pete Hegseth for having a Christian motto tattooed on his arm. This is disgusting anti-Christian bigotry from the AP, and the entire organization should be ashamed of itself.”
Hegseth quickly retweeted VD Vance with this response, “Anti-Christian bigotry in the media on full display. They can target me — I don’t give a damn — but this type of targeting of Christians, conservatives, patriots and everyday Americans will stop on DAY ONE at DJT’s DoD.”
So, are these symbols benign markers of the Christian faith, or do they carry a more sinister meaning? Well, thankfully for y’all, I have an immense knowledge of the subject. Let’s break this all down, shall we?
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
Since it appears that there is an effort underway to resuscitate Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Defense Secretary, I think it is important to examine the meaning of his controversial tattoos.
Given his embrace of White Christian Nationalism, Hegseth is clearly lying when he says there are benign explanations for the tattoos in question.
Monk explains the history of the symbols, why Hegseth is lying about what they mean, and why he put them on his body.
Don’t fall for the lies. We need to understand these dynamics to fight back against them.
#9
John Grisham on the wrongfully convicted: “It’s not that difficult to convict an innocent person” (Erin Moriarty, CBS News Sunday Morning, Link to Article)
The story of the Savannah 3 is one of ten cases outlined in Grisham’s new book, “Framed,” co-written with Jim McCloskey, founder of Centurion, one of the country’s first non-profit organizations helping free those wrongfully-convicted. The cases they write about, they say, are not outliers; in fact, Grisham said, they’re “the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of these cases, maybe thousands.”
It’s only the second non-fiction work by Grisham, a former attorney, who sits on Centurion’s board. Asked about the wrenching emotions of these stories, he said, “We can’t begin to believe somebody would last for 20 years on death row, and walk out, and be able to function. And I’ve met so many of these guys over the years. They have endured something that rest of us cannot begin to comprehend.”
With regards to the book’s title, “Framed,” who is doing the framing? “The police and the prosecutors,” McCloskey said. “The police are coercing witnesses into false testimony. Prosecutors are hiding exculpatory evidence from the defendant. It goes on and on.”
The walls of the Centurion office, in Princeton, New Jersey, are lined with some of the faces of those clients, and the numbers, say Grisham and McCloskey, are troubling. Nationwide, 3,600 people have been exonerated since 1989; 68 percent are people of color.
WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING:
This new book from John Grisham and Jim McCloskey explores ten infamous cases of wrongful convictions. Because of police, prosecutor, and lawyer misconduct, innocent people were sent to prison for years.
People don’t believe they would ever admit to a crime they didn’t commit. But then again, most people don’t face more than ten hours of hostile questioning where the police can lie to you about whether they have found evidence, have witnesses, or even if you passed or failed a polygraph test.
It is vital for people to understand these dynamics. We need to make it easier for people to access the courts to appeal their convictions when new evidence or police and prosecutor misconduct is revealed. We need innocent people to understand why it is so dangerous to cooperate with investigators who can lie while they seek a confession for their scorecards rather than the truth.
It would also be great if people didn’t leap to the conclusion that a person is guilty because they listened to their lawyer and invoked their right to remain silent, given all we’ve learned about false confessions and wrongful convictions.
I think it should be illegal for the police to lie to suspects. Some states have carved out such protection for minors, but how are such tactics consistent with the idea that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty?
Quick Hits
- Tesla owners turn against Musk: ‘I’m embarrassed driving this car around’ (Oliver Milman and Marina Dunbar, The Guardian, Link to Article)
Owning a Tesla was once a signal of liberalism and environmental consciousness before Elon Musk went MAGA. Matt Hiller has found an opportunity to help those who feel embarrassed by selling anti-Elon stickers for Tesla owners to attach to their vehicles. - Trump Just Got $18 Million From A Chinese Crypto Scammer, But LOOK, BANANA!! (Marcie Jones, Wonkette, Link to Article)
While everyone was watching Yuchen “Justin” Sun eat a $6 million art-installation banana, he was making a $30 million purchase of Donald Trump’s crypto tokens. That purchase puts money in Trump’s pocket. I’m sure Son’s decision has nothing to do with the pending SEC investigation against him for crypto asset securities fraud. Isn’t it great to see so much of the media focused on what matters? - The Midwestern Roots, and Woods, of N.B.A. Courts (Ken Belson, The New York Times, Link to Article)
As a native Yooper, I am always here to celebrate a story about how the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is home to something having a national impact (and not just with the NBA, but also college sports). - The Really Big One (Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, Link to Article)
Last week’s earthquake reminded a few of us on Bluesky of this article describing the inevitable earthquake that will hit the Cascadia subduction zone bordering Vancouver, Washington state, and Oregon. It will make anything that could hit the San Andreas fault look puny by comparison.
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“One of the best things I’ve heard since the U.S. election, which was a wonderfully democratic process that brought to power a group of people with clearly defined autocratic tendencies, is [this] conversation between the German-American political scientist Yascha Mounk and the Bulgarian intellectual Ivan Krastev.
It’s full of insights, but my favorite bit is when Krastev brings up the famous “I know it when I see it” response of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to the question of how to define pornography.
The problem with authoritarianism, Krastev argues, is “just the opposite. We know how we define it, but we don’t always know when we see it.” (Natalia Antelava, Coda Story, From Seoul to Tbilisi, It’s Coup Season)”
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