Iran and Consumer Sentiment

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Matt Grossman at WSJ:

Consumer sentiment fell in April to the lowest level recorded in the 70-plus-year history of the University of Michigan’s survey, evidence of Americans’ concerns that the Iran war will hit the domestic economy.

The survey’s initial April reading came in at 47.6, versus 53.3 in March. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal were expecting a drop to 52. The April reading is below the previous low point of 50 recorded in June 2022, when the economy was facing searing inflation.

The initial April results are based almost entirely on interviews that took place between March 24 and April 6, before a tentative cease-fire took hold. The survey will be updated with a final April reading later this month, based on more recent responses.

The darker economic mood was widespread across people of different ages, income levels and political affiliations, said Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director. “Many consumers blame the Iran conflict for unfavorable changes to the economy,” she said.

Antisemitism on the Right

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.

Nicholas Riccardi at AP:

As Republicans accuse Democrats of tolerating antisemitism in their party, the GOP on Friday was roiled by its own schism after the leader of a powerful right-wing think tank defended prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for his friendly podcast interview with a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views.

The comments from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, sparked outrage from some Heritage staffers, senators and conservative activists. But they also reflect increasing skepticism toward Israel and of Jews among some on the right, complicating the GOP’s efforts to cast the Democratic Party as antisemitic.

The outrage began when Roberts on Thursday posted a video in which he denied his group was “distancing itself” from the former Fox News host, one of the most powerful voices on the right, after Carlson’s podcast hosted Nick Fuentes , whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identify.

“The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” said Roberts, adding that, while antisemitism is wrong, conservatives do not need to always support Israel.

...

Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance dismissed criticism of a Telegram chat among members of a New York Young Republicans group that included racist comments and flippant remarks about gas chambers.

He raised eyebrows again this week for his response to an attendee at a Turning Point USA event who asked why the U.S. was spending foreign aid on the “ethnic cleansing in Gaza” and said Judaism, as a religion, “openly supports the prosecution of ours.”

Vance responded without addressing the premise of the question and instead stressed the administration’s “America First” approach.

“Sometimes they have similar interests to the United States and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes they don’t have similar interests to the United States,” Vance said of Israel.

YR Fallout

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.

EMILY NGO, JEFF COLTIN and NICK REISMAN  at POLITICO:

Nationally, a sharp rift among state groups has emerged, POLITICO’s Jacob Wendler reported. Chapters are divided on how to respond to the chat — with some staying silent and others immediately denouncing the rhetoric.

The Arizona Young Republican Federation, for example, which had endorsed Peter Giunta — the New Yorker who joked “I love Hitler” in the chat — to lead the Young Republican National Federation, lambasted what it called “mob-style condemnation driven by political opportunism or personal agendas.” Giunta, who lost his job as chief of staff to state Assemblymember Mike Reilly, has expressed regret for the remarks but also questioned whether they were altered.

In New York, the state GOP’s leaders voted unanimously Friday to pull the Young Republicans’ authorization to operate statewide, POLITICO reported. Kansas — home to two chat members — disbanded its younger arm earlier last week.

In Vermont, state Sen. Sam Douglass announced he will resign his post effective today at noon, POLITICO’s Jason Beeferman reported. He was the only sitting elected official in the group chat, and his wife was also in the Telegram group.

“I know that this decision will upset many, and delight others, but in this political climate I must keep my family safe,” Douglass said in a statement.

Beeferman also reported that elected Republican leaders outside the chat are split on how they respond.

Rep. Elise Stefanik denounced the incendiary messages when reporters reached out for comment before POLITICO published its initial blockbuster story. But after Vice President JD Vance derided criticisms of the chat as “pearl clutching,” she pivoted to attacking Democrats.

Geroge Packer at The Atlantic:

Having been given permission from the country’s most powerful person, the Young Republicans received forgiveness from its second-most-powerful. Vice President J. D. Vance refused to condemn their words, explaining: “I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive, stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives.” But the authors of the texts have already grown up—they’re men in their 20s and 30s, climbing the rungs of Republican Party ladders in Kansas, Arizona, Vermont, and New York, firm in the belief that the viler their language, the higher they’ll go. One is already an officeholder.

For Vance, ethical judgment has become a pure matter of partisanship, to the point of overcoming his most personal bonds. When a DOGE member was revealed to have posted “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity” and “Normalize Indian hate,” Vance—married to an Indian American—scoffed at the ensuing outrage and demanded that the offender be rehired. But when private citizens anywhere said something ugly about Charlie Kirk, the vice president went after their livelihood. Once morality is rotted out by partisan relativism, the floor gives way and the fall into nihilism is swift.

 

Ominous Week

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration is full of ominous news

. 

Another career trashed for not reaching the conclusions the White House wanted.

Hegseth fires head of Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse https://t.co/pzYhipw7Vs

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) August 22, 2025

Trump and Vance “admitting” the criminal investigation of Bolton is coming from the White House isn’t a mistake. They want critics to understand if they cross Trump, they can be subject to criminal investigation. They want people to know that law enforcement has been politicized. https://t.co/AOeQsqC9io

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 22, 2025

In calling the interview "my" proffer of Maxwell, Blanche gives himself away. A codefendant interview isn't the prosecutor's proffer; it's the witness's. In calling it "my proffer," Blanche is admitting he did this interview so he could proffer Maxwell's testimony to help Trump. https://t.co/iMznjAKVEm

— Elizabeth de la Vega 🇺🇸🦅 (@Delavegalaw) August 23, 2025

Trump, the Struggling Artist

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  The Epstein scandal is causing some difficulty for Trump.

 James Liddell at The Independent:

President Donald Trump has strongly pushed back against the bombshell Wall Street Journal report that alleged he drew a “bawdy” sketch in a birthday message to celebrate convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday.

“I never wrote a picture in my life,” he said in a rebuttal to the newspaper, vehemently denying having anything to do with the card.

In a Truth Social tirade late Thursday, the president declared, “I don’t draw pictures.”

Trump is accused of writing a cryptic note that made mention of a “wonderful secret” in his note to the disgraced financier. The Journal reported that the text was surrounded by a drawing of a naked woman, punctuated by a squiggly “Donald” that mimicked pubic hair.

Analysts were quick to pounce on Trump’s denial, including Media Matters chief Angelo Carusone, who told MSNBC, “I can think of three [Trump sketches] off the top of my head that were auctioned.”

Andrew Egger at The  Bulwark:

He called in every favor to try to stop the article’s publication, making phone calls to the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its editor, Emma Tucker, and swearing he would sue if they published. Vice President JD Vance called the story “complete and utter bullshit,” asking “Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?”

This was flailing, back-to-the-wall damage control. Trump’s claim that “I don’t draw pictures” was disproven within minutes of his making it. In fact, a plethora of comparable black-Sharpie doodles drawn by him around that time are already a matter of public record. Vance’s “Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump” question was, if anything, even funnier: The alleged letter was written in 2003, one year after Trump told a reporter that Epstein was a “terrific guy” who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side” and two years before a hot mic caught Trump telling Billy Bush about his strategy for flirting with women he’d just met: “grab them by the pussy.”

The idea that Murdoch and the Journal would publish a story like this—knowing Trump’s penchant for retributive lawsuits—without being on rock-solid legal footing is laughable; a small army of lawyers no doubt inspected every word of the report. Meanwhile, Trump is the only alleged contributor to deny to the Journal that his letter was real; billionaire Leslie Wexner declined to comment, and attorney Alan Dershowitz simply said that “it’s been a long time and I don’t recall the content of what I may have written.”

The Megabill Aftermath

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Maeve Reston and Theodoric Meyer at WP:

History and dismal public polling suggest President Donald Trump’s $3.3 trillion tax bill, approved by Congress this week, could help Democrats win back the House in the 2026 midterm elections.

The bill is deeply unpopular — with nearly 2-to-1 opposition, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted in June. But Republicans still have an opportunity to shape public perception of the bill because more than a third of Americans had no opinion of it and two-thirds said they had heard either little or nothing about it.

...

While Trump made substantial inroads with low-income voters in the 2024 election, the top 10 percent of earners get about 80 percent of the bill’s benefits, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton budget model. The bill also makes deep cuts to federal support for wind and solar power and other renewable technologies — leading some experts to warn that the legislation could raise energy prices for consumers at a time when demand is soaring

....

Trump has pledged not to cut Medicaid and has falsely claimed that the bill simply targets waste, fraud and abuse in the program. But at least 17 million Americans will lose their health care coverage, according to nonpartisan estimates — the result of the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, the expiration of subsidies for health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, and other Republican changes. That could pose a major liability for vulnerable Republicans such as Rep. David G. Valadao, who represents a district in California’s Central Valley with one of the highest numbers of Medicaid recipients in the country, according to an analysis by KFF.

...

The bill includes a $6,000 deduction for seniors — which stemmed from Trump’s campaign pledge — but the provision will not benefit tens of millions of low-income seniors, who do not have a sufficient tax liability to claim the deduction. Our colleague Jeff Stein has the details on who will benefit here

...

Working-class voters in the swing state of Nevada — many of whom work in the hospitality industry — frequently cited Trump’s promises to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime as a reason they were leaning toward voting for Trump. Partially fulfilling those promises could help Republicans running in three Democratic-held House seats in Nevada that are perennial battlegrounds. (Both provisions will be phased out at the end of 2028.).

 

Don't overlook this. By backloading Medicaid cuts until 2027/2028, Trump and GOP have ensured that the bloodbath will start when JD Vance's 2028 campaign really gets going. "Working class populist" Vance will have to defend that carnage in real time.https://t.co/1gjAxXtLaA pic.twitter.com/HhB1ojuLuu

— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) July 5, 2025

Vance Slimes LA

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Salvador Hernandez, Seema Mehta, and Christopher Buchanan at LAT:

“What happened here was a tragedy,” Vance told reporters. “You had people who were doing the simple job of enforcing the law, and you had rioters, egged on by the governor and the mayor, making it harder for them to do their job.”

Although Newsom and Bass have criticized the immigration raids, which led to protests and sporadic violent attacks against law enforcement officials, both have repeatedly urged demonstrators to remain peaceful.

Bass, who was not invited to meet with Vance, dismissed his description of what has unfolded in Los Angeles over the last two weeks.

“Unfortunately, the vice president did not take time to learn about our city and understand that our city is a city of immigrants from every country and continent on the planet,” Bass said at a news conference Friday evening. “But then again, he did need to justify the hundreds of millions of wasted taxpayer dollars that were wasted in the performance of a stunt.

“How dare you say that city officials encourage violence,” Bass said. “We kept the peace.”

Newsom weighed in repeatedly on the social media platform X, notably about Vance calling Sen. Alex Padilla “Jose” during his remarks.

Padilla was dragged to the ground by federal law enforcement officers and briefly detained when he attempted to ask U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question during a news conference earlier this week.

“I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t a theater, and that’s all it is,” Vance said.

A spokesperson for Padilla responded that Vance, as a former colleague of Padilla in the U.S. Senate, “knows better.”

“He should be more focused on demilitarizing our city than taking cheap shots,” spokesperson Tess Oswald posted on X. “Another unserious comment from an unserious administration.”

Leo XIV on Trump and Vance

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Zach Kessel and Jon Levine at The Washington Free Beacon

Pope Leo XIV, formerly known as Robert Prevost, voted in several Republican primaries before being elevated as successor to Pope Francis, election records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.

Leo XIV, who previously lived in Chicago, voted in Republican primaries during the 2012, 2014, and 2016 election cycles, according to records from conservative polling firm Pulse Decision Science.

Illinois does not allow voters to register with a political party, so the pope’s voting record does not mean he was a registered Republican. The records do, however, indicate that he only voted in primary elections on the GOP side.

Federal Election Commission and Illinois State Board of Elections databases do not list the newly elected pope as having donated to any political campaigns.

Matt Knee, Pulse Decision Science’s chief data officer, told the Free Beacon the pope’s voting history and public pronouncements lead him to believe Leo XIV is a former Republican.

"The fact that he hasn’t voted in a Republican primary since 2016 and, in fact, didn’t vote in the general in ‘16—and his public statements—if I had to guess, he certainly would fit the profile of a former or Never Trump-type ex-Republican," Knee said.

 Isaac Schorr at Mediaite:

Pope Leo XIV’s social media presence is causing quite the stir.

Shortly after news broke that he had been selected as the new pontiff, observers began scouring over his X account for clues as to his leanings.

It wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to decipher them. His last post on the platform was a retweet that read “As Trump & Bukele use Oval to 🤣 Feds’ illicit deportation of a US resident (https://bit.ly/3ROMjnP), once an undoc-ed Salvadorean himself, now-DC Aux +Evelio asks, ‘Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?'”

A few posts down, Leo XIV shared articles about Vice President JD Vance’s explanation of ordo amoris, one of which bore the headline “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

 

JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others https://t.co/hDKPKuMXmu via @NCRonline

— Robert Prevost (@drprevost) February 3, 2025

As a result, President Donald Trump’s most faithful fans online are not taking to the new pope especially well. “THIS IS THE NEW POPE!” wrote Laura Loomer, the self-proclaimed “white nationalist” with considerable influence on the president. “His name is Robert Prevost. He’s the first American Pope. He is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis. Catholics don’t have anything good to look forward to. Just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican”

Betrayal

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Anton Troianovski, Nataliya Vasilyeva and Paul Sonne

President Trump says he wants a quick cease-fire in Ukraine. But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appears to be in no rush, and the blowup on Friday between Mr. Trump and Ukraine’s president may give Russia’s leader the kind of ammunition he needs to prolong the fight.

With the American alliance with Ukraine suffering a dramatic, public rupture, Mr. Putin now seems even more likely to hold out for a deal on his terms — and he could even be tempted to expand his push on the battlefield.

The extraordinary scene in Washington — in which Mr. Trump lambasted President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — was broadcast as the top story on state television in Russia on Saturday morning. It played into three years of Kremlin propaganda casting Mr. Zelensky as a foolhardy ruler who would sooner or later exhaust the patience of his Western backers.

For the Kremlin, perhaps the most important message came in later remarks by Mr. Trump, who suggested that if Ukraine did not agree to a “cease-fire now,” the war-torn country would have to “fight it out” without American help.

Tom Nichols:

The sheer rudeness shown to a foreign guest and friend of the United States was (to use a word) deplorable as a matter of manners and grace, but worse, Trump and Vance acted like a couple of online Kremlin sock puppets instead of American leaders. They pushed talking points that they either knew or should have known were wrong. Even if Zelensky were as fluent and capable in English as Winston Churchill, he would never have been able to rebut the flood of falsehoods. No, the U.S. has not given Ukraine $350 billion; yes, Zelensky has repeatedly expressed his thanks to America and to Trump; no, Zelensky was not attacking the administration. The Ukrainian leader did his best to stand up to the bullying, but Trump and Vance were playing to the cameras and the MAGA gallery at home.

David Frum:

We’re witnessing the self-sabotage of the United States. “America First” always meant America alone, a predatory America whose role in the world is no longer based on democratic belief. America voted at the United Nations earlier this week against Ukraine, siding with Russia and China against almost all of its fellow democracies. Is this who Americans want to be? For this is what America is being turned into.

 

 

tiseme

Trump National Security: Appeasement and Incompetence

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. 

David E. Sanger and Steven Erlanger at NYT:

The top foreign policy official for the European Union had a blunt assessment on Friday of the Trump administration’s apparent willingness to give Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, much of what he wants in Ukraine, even before negotiations to end the three-year war begin.

“It’s appeasement,” the official, Kaja Kallas, declared at the Munich Security Conference. “It has never worked.”

Ms. Kallas, a former prime minister of Estonia, was hardly the only European diplomat uttering the word “appeasement,” with all its historical resonance, though she was one of the few willing to do so on the record.

It was an almost-universal description of the Trump administration’s disorganized and often publicly contradictory approach to the questions seizing the continent: What kind of peace deal does President Trump have in mind? And will it be done with Mr. Putin over the heads of both the Ukrainians and the Europeans, whom Mr. Trump apparently expects to bear the burden of Ukraine’s future security?

Adam Wren at Politico:

Policymakers across the continent are still reeling from VP JD Vance’s blistering speech yesterday, during which he chided Europe and told it to open up to the far right, as NYT’s Jim Tankersley, Steven Erlanger and David Sanger report. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz derided Vance’s comments, citing Germany’s history with Nazis, Bloomberg’s Christoph Rauwald and Stephanie Lai report. (“No one is talking about anything else,” a senior Eastern European official told POLITICO’s Robbie Gramer, Paul McLeary, Jack Detsch and Joe Gould).

Vance’s speech could be remembered as one of the most important speeches a sitting vice president ever delivered. Quick: Recall any speech former VP Mike Pence ever made while in office.

tic:

Day-to-day operations at the Pentagon and other agencies are usually run by a deputy secretary. The previous deputy under Lloyd Austin, Kath Hicks, has a Ph.D. from MIT and years of experience in national defense, including at the Pentagon. Trump’s nominee to succeed her is the billionaire Steve Feinberg, who co-founded Cerberus Capital. He has no military or Pentagon experience. (Likewise, Trump’s pick for secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, is a wealthy businessman and art collector who has never served in the military or any government position.)

Below the secretary, several undersecretaries serve as the senior managers of the institution, and the news here is also worrisome. In 2020, Trump tried to nominate Bradley Hansell, a special assistant to Trump in his first term, as the deputy undersecretary for intelligence (in order to replace someone whose loyalty came into question among Trump’s advisers), a nomination that was returned to Trump without action from the Senate. This time, Trump has nominated Hansell (whose background is in venture capital) for the more senior job of undersecretary, despite his lack of qualifications. Trump has also tapped Emil Michael, a tech investor and executive at Uber and Klout, as undersecretary for research and engineering. Michael is a lawyer; his predecessor in the research and engineering post in the Biden administration, Heidi Shyu, was an actual engineer, with long experience in defense production and acquisition issues.

...

After Hegseth, Trump’s most disturbing DOD nomination—at least so far—is Anthony Tata, the retired one-star general whom Trump has put forward as undersecretary for personnel and readiness. Tata’s views are extreme: He once referred to President Barack Obama as a “terrorist,” claimed that former CIA Director John Brennan was trying to kill Trump, and pushed the conspiracy theory that Bill and Hillary Clinton had murdered several of their political opponents. Trump had to pull Tata’s nomination in 2020 as undersecretary for policy (the position Colby is now slated to get) just 90 minutes before his Senate hearing, after being told that the votes to confirm him were not there. The president is now going to send Tata back and humiliate the Republicans into voting for yet another unacceptable nominee.

Vance, Roberts, and the Constitution

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Charlie Savage and Minho Kim at NYT:

Vice President JD Vance declared on Sunday that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” delivering a warning shot to the federal judiciary in the face of court rulings that have, for now, stymied aspects of President Trump’s agenda.

The statement, issued on social media, came as federal judges have temporarily barred a slew of Trump administration actions from taking effect. They include ending birthright citizenship; giving associates of Elon Musk’s government-slashing effort access to a sensitive Treasury Department system; transferring transgender female inmates to male prisons; and placing thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development employees on leave.

 Chief Justice John Roberts:

It is not in the nature of judicial work to make everyone happy. Most cases have a winner and a loser. Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system—sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics. Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the Nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s. Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.

Russia and Campaign 2024

 Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, Trump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

David Klepper at AP:

Groups in Russia created and helped spread viral disinformation targeting Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday.

The content, which includes baseless accusations about the Minnesota governor’s time as a teacher, contains several indications that it was manipulated, said the official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Analysts identified clues that linked the content to Russian disinformation operations, said the official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the office of the director.

Digital researchers had already linked the video to Russia, but Tuesday’s announcement is the first time federal authorities have confirmed the connection.

The disinformation targeting Walz is consistent with Russian disinformation seeking to undermine the Democratic campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz, her running mate. Russia also has spread disinformation aimed at stoking discord and division ahead of voting, officials said, and may seek to encourage violent protests after Election Day.

 JD Vance goes full moral equivalence on NewsNation:

Both of these parties want this war to end. And I think unfortunately, you’ve got a lot of American leaders who like to beat their chest and say, Well, this is the good guy and that’s the bad guy. Look, yes, Russia should not have invaded Ukraine, but we are where we are, and what’s in the best interest of America, and what I believe is in the best interest of Ukraine and Russia is for the killing to stop. 

Veep Debate

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  And neither is the selection of J.D. Vance as its vice presidential candidate. -- despite a slick performance in his debate with Walz.

Sean Craig at The Daily Beast:

Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy couldn’t help but let his voice slip up a quarter of an octave as he read out the results of a Politico/Focaldata snap poll that showed likely voters were split 50/50 over who won Tuesday’s debate between vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz.

Republican commentators and MAGA spectators alike rejoiced Tuesday evening after Vance submitted a polished performance, seemingly expecting a public groundswell of support would emerge for former president Donald Trump's running mate.

...

“Politico just published a snap poll… people found it a tie, a 50/50 tie,” he said, his voice trending high and befuddled. Even worse for the onetime Jimmy Carter supporter turned Republican Trump voter was that Walz appeared to clean up with independents.

Dead even: POLITICO snap poll shows no decisive winner in VP debate 👉 https://t.co/KnqnCM6UuV pic.twitter.com/ytlNpuwM6S

— POLITICO (@politico) October 2, 2024

Andrew Prokop et al. at Vox:

The vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance on Tuesday was something of a stalemate, though it did feature several striking moments and offered an interesting preview into what presidential politics might look like once Donald Trump is off the stage.

It isn’t clear yet how genuinely undecided voters responded to the debate — a CBS poll afterward showed 42 percent of debate watchers thought Vance won and 41 percent thought Walz did, while 17 percent thought it was a tie. A CNN poll showed 51 percent thought Vance won and 49 percent thought Walz did (CNN didn’t offer the “tie” option).

Scored purely on affect and debating technique — without regard to factual accuracy — Vance did a bit better. He stuck to his two-pronged strategy: first, to blame Kamala Harris for everything voters don’t like that has happened under the Biden administration; and second, to put a reasonable-seeming face on Trumpism.

In doing so, though, Vance said many misleading or totally untrue things, such as that Donald Trump saved Obamacare, that immigrants caused the US housing crisis, and that Trump was merely peacefully discussing “problems” with the 2020 election rather than blatantly trying to steal that election from the rightful winner, Joe Biden.

Walz’s performance was rockier, and while he had his moments — he spoke effectively about health care, abortion, and Trump’s threat to democracy — his answers were less disciplined and more scattershot. He seemed flatfooted by a question regarding his past, reportedly untrue claims to have been in Hong Kong at the time of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 – not exactly the most important and pressing issue of the day, but something he probably should have prepared a better answer for.

So, on points, Vance may have won by a nose. But he did so in a way that is unlikely to matter very much, if at all, for the presidential contest. In general, vice presidential debates very rarely impact the polls. And this particular debate lacked any breakout moment likely to dominate headlines for days in what’s become a very crowded October news environment (Middle East escalation, Hurricane Helene, the port strike).

Media will give Vance the win tonight, which will stir the pot in interesting ways.

First, neurotic Dems will have usual panic. (Actually useful because I fear over-confidence in D world.)

Mega-Question: how Trump reacts to Vance getting far, far better debate review than him.

— Mike Murphy (@murphymike) October 2, 2024

Trump and Vance

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  And neither is the selection of J.D. Vance as its vice presidential candidate.  (Dem oppo folks are doing well.)

Peter Jamison at WP:

Vice-presidential nominee JD Vance has a go-to explanation for his evolution from outspoken critic to impassioned defender of Donald Trump: He says he was converted by Trump’s achievements in the White House.

Vance has said watching the former president enact his populist agenda for left-behind Americans transformed him from a “Never Trump” conservative in 2016 to a Trump supporter in 2020.

But Vance privately expressed a very different verdict on Trump as the former president’s first term was nearing its end, previously unreported messages obtained by The Washington Post show.

In the direct messages — sent during Trump’s final year in office to an acquaintance over the social media platform then known as Twitter — Vance harshly criticized his future running mate’s record of governance and said Trump had not fulfilled his economic agenda.

“Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy),” Vance wrote in February 2020.

Anthony Scaramucci on the Trump-Vance relationship:

Is trouble on the horizon for the Trump-Vance partnership? 🧐 @Scaramucci shares his thoughts. pic.twitter.com/ehTVcVYNU1

— The Rest Is Politics US (@RestPoliticsUS) September 23, 2024

Rumors, Lies, DIsformation

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Our next book will discuss the 2024 election, including the role of lies and disinformation.

 Kris Maher, Valerie Bauerlein, Tawnell D. Hobbs at WSJ:

City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield.

“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”

By then, Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers on X. Yet he kept the post up, and repeated an even more insistent version of the claim the next morning.

That night, former President Donald Trump stood on a Philadelphia debate stage and shot the rumor into the stratosphere. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said to 67 million viewers. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating, the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in this country.”

...

A Vance spokesperson on Tuesday provided The Wall Street Journal with a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors. But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement.

Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.

Clint Watts at Microsoft:

Russia and Iran have both undertaken cyber influence operations headed into the 2024 presidential election. In our last report, published on August 8, we detailed how Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations sought to undermine the Republican campaign through targeted hack-and-leak operations, covert social media personas, and imposter US news sites. In the past two months, Microsoft has observed a notable shift in Russian influence operations tactics reflecting the changing U.S. political environment. Specifically, we have observed Russia pivot towards targeting the Harris-Walz campaign, with actors disseminating fabricated videos designed to sow discord and spread disinformation about the new Democratic nominee Vice President Harris.

We discuss this activity in a new report by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) released today. This update follows other reports we have released around activity by actors advancing the geopolitical goals of Iran and China.

The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates. Initially, Russian influence operations struggled to evolve their efforts following President Biden’s departure from the 2024 US presidential race. However, in late August and September, we observed two Russian actors MTAC tracks closely — previously reported as Storm-1516 and Storm-1679 — using videos designed to discredit Harris and stoke controversy around her campaign. Specifically: Storm-1516, identified by news reports as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm, produced and disseminated two inauthentic videos, each generating millions of views. One video depicted an attack by alleged Harris supporters on a supposed Trump rally attendee, while another used an on-screen actor to fabricate false claims about Harris’s involvement in a hit-and-run accident. This second video was laundered through a website masquerading as a local San Francisco media outlet — which was only created days beforehand. Storm-1679, a newer group reportedly aligned with the Kremlin, pivoted its focus from producing content about the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to publishing false videos discrediting Vice President Harris. One of the videos, which was shared on X shortly after it was published to Telegram, depicted a fake New York City billboard advancing false claims about Harris’ policies. The X post received more than 100,000 views in the four hours after it was published on Telegram
• . 

 

Facts of Life and Death

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  And neither is the selection of J.D. Vance as its vice presidential candidate.  (Dem oppo folks are doing well.)

Rebecca Falconer at Axios:

Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) made clear in comments Thursday they have very different ideas in how to respond to gun violence in the wake of the Apalachee High School shooting that killed four people and injured nine others.

Driving the news: A CNN reporter asked Vance at a Phoenix, Arizona, event what his policies were on ending school shootings after this week's massacre, which saw a 14-year-old student charged with four counts of felony murder and his father facing charges including second-degree murder.Former President Trump's running mate said it was an "awful tragedy" and called for the bolstering of security in schools.

"If these psychos are going to go after our kids, we've got to be prepared for it," Vance said. "We don't have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We've got to deal with it," he added.

"I don't like that this is a fact of life, but if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We've got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they're not able."

Meanwhile, Trump responded to a question from Fox News host Sean Hannity about the Georgia shooting during a Fox News town hall on Wednesday by saying: "It's a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we're going to make it better, and we're going to heal our world."

What they're saying "School shootings are not just a fact of life," Harris wrote on social media Thursday evening. "It doesn't have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children — and we will."

Trump, Vance, Unhinged

 Our books have discussed Trump's low character, which was on display this week. JD Vance is emulating him.

JD Vance: “You’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite.”

Donald Trump: “Here’s the commercial I filmed at a gravesite.”

No notes. Y’all are doing great. pic.twitter.com/xQLu6ligiW https://t.co/EhwlhvBCbF

— Ms. M 🪷 Google Project 2025 (@MsMalarkey24) August 29, 2024

 Maegan Vazquez at WP:

“Kamala Harris is disgraceful. We’re going to talk about a story out of those 13 brave, innocent Americans who lost their lives? It’s that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened,” he asserted, though there have been extensive federal investigations into the Abbey Gate bombing.

Vance accused Harris of criticizing Trump’s visit to the cemetery, saying: “And she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up? She can — she can go to hell.”

Trump Threatens Mark Zuckerberg With Prison For 'The Rest of His Life' If He Uses Facebook to 'Cheat' in 2024: 'We Are Watching Him Closely' https://t.co/V2Tnl5U0ms

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) August 29, 2024

Hafiz Rashid at TNR:

On Wednesday morning, Donald Trump had some kind of meltdown on his Truth Social profile, all before 10 a.m.

His many posts and “ReTruths” were conspiracy laden, crude, and calling for the death or imprisonment of his enemies. One showed Harris, Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and other Democrats wearing orange jumpsuits captioned with: “HOW TO ACTUALLY ‘FIX THE SYSTEM.’” Multiple posts had QAnon themes, particularly the slogan “WWG1WGA.” Other posts called for a military tribunal for former President Barack Obama, and attacked the FBI, the Justice Department, and the House January 6 committee.

When his posts weren’t full on fascist, they were simply vulgar instead. One such post showed an old photograph of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton together, with a comment below reading “Funny how [oral gratification] impacted their careers differently…”

If Trump’s posting binge is a reflection of his state of mind, it’s not a good one. The Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon has experienced many setbacks as of late. On Tuesday, special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment against Trump for his role in trying to overthrow the 2020 federal election.

What Donald Trump's verified account on Truth Social is reposting pic.twitter.com/paMBc6HhIN

— Azi™️ (@Azi) August 28, 2024

 

Vance and Walz

 Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Less than 48 hours after Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee.  She just chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. It is the first time since 1980 that a Democratic nominee has chosen a Midwesterner.

Linley Sanders at AP:

Tim Walz and JD Vance have vaulted themselves out of national obscurity as they hustle to introduce themselves to the country, but the senator from Ohio has had a rockier start than the Minnesota governor.

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that Walz had a smoother launch as a running mate to Vice President Kamala Harris than Vance did for former President Donald Trump. About one-third of U.S. adults (36%) have a favorable view of Walz, who will introduce himself to his party when he speaks at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday. About one-quarter (27%) have a positive opinion of Vance. Significantly more adults also have an unfavorable view of Vance than Walz, 44% to 25%.

Kadia Goba and Benjy Sarlin at Semafor:

But Walz has also faced a non-stop barrage of attacks from Republicans in the same period, led by Vance, that have drawn significant coverage. The Harris campaign had to acknowledge he misspoke years earlier about carrying weapons “in war,” which was part of a broader suite of attacks aimed at his military record, and he’s faced additional scrutiny over his 2006 campaign’s handling of an old DUI arrest. Republicans have also attacked his record as governor, especially his support for LGBTQ protections and handling of the 2020 riots in Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder.

In short, Walz is getting good and bad press simultaneously: The survey found most voters have heard about his 20 years of a teacher, heard about (and admire) his 24 years in the Army National Guard, but also had heard that he retired before his unit deployed to Iraq, a prominent attack from Vance.

Blueprint tested several rebuttals to some of the most common criticisms of Walz and found the most effective response in each case was to quickly pivot to attacking Republicans for trying to distract from other campaign issues.

Margaret Talev at Axios:

Vice President Kamala Harris is getting a bigger boost from picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate than former President Trump has gotten from Ohio Sen. JD Vance, according to two new polls.

Why it matters: Running mates don't usually determine presidential elections, but this race has enough twists to test that norm.Vance and Walz, military veterans from Midwestern states who emphasize their understanding of the working class, both were tapped with an eye for their potential to balance the more coastal, elite reputations of their running mates.

The big picture: Walz outperformed Vance on a range of authenticity and compassion questions — including who better understands small-town Americans' concerns — in a new Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll.A new Syracuse University-Ipsos poll, meanwhile, shows that Americans believe Harris' odds of winning have improved more with her selection of Walz than Trump's have improved with Vance on the ticket.
Two in three voters in the Axios Vibes survey said the vice presidential candidate is important to their vote this year. But there's a partisan gap, with 81% of Democratic voters and just 59% of Republicans saying it's important.

By the numbers: In the Axios Vibes survey, Walz outperformed Vance on four measures:"Has an authentic connection to everyday Americans" (43% to 35% overall ... 36% to 29% with independents).

• "Understands the challenges in your community" (39% to 33% overall ... 32% to 27% with independents).
• "Understands the issues affecting rural and small-town America" (41% to 35% overall ... 35% to 29% with independents).
• "Feels and talks like someone from a small town" (39% to 34% overall ... 35% to 27% with independents).

Vance more than Walz was seen as supporting policies benefiting wealthy people in big cities (41% to 29% overall ... 37% to 22% with independents) and being more worried about himself than constituents (41% to 33% overall ... 37% to 25% with independents).

 

Vance and the Past

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  And neither is the selection of J.D. Vance as its vice presidential candidate.  (Dem oppo folks are doing well.)

Alexander Nazaryan at The Daily Beast:

J.D. Vance has thoughts and opinions—and being a millennial, many of those thoughts and opinions are recorded online, where they live in perpetuity.

That wouldn’t be a problem, normally, except the 39-year-old junior senator from Ohio is the Republican nominee for vice president. He is also turning out to be a gift to Democratic opposition researchers from Santa Monica to Brooklyn.

On both substance and style, Vance is increasingly looking like a debacle. He could be the first vice presidential nominee since Sarah Palin, John McCain’s disastrous running mate in 2008, to actively harm the ticket.

In a 2021 conversation at Pacifica Christian, a private high school, Vance criticized the Sexual Revolution for “making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear,” going so far as to seemingly suggest that women should remain in abusive marriages for the sake of keeping the family intact.

It’s right there online. Has been this whole time. But only now is it making his GOP colleagues squirm. Republicans on Capitol Hill—where the self-important Vance has lost friends (if he ever made them)—are calling him Trump’s “worst choice” possible. There’s even speculation Trump could dump Vance.

Martin Pengelly at The Guardian:

Questions continued to mount about the political transformation of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, after the release of emails from a former friend in which Vance called Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” and said: “I hate the police.”

The messages between Vance and Sofia Nelson, who sent them to the New York Times, were largely dated between 2014 and 2017. In one, Vance sent Nelson a section of Hillbilly Elegy, his bestseller about his Appalachian boyhood.

“Here’s an excerpt from my book. I send this to you not just to brag, but because I’m sure if you read it you’ll notice reference to ‘an extremely progressive lesbian’,” Vance wrote.

NEW: In 2021 Vance sent out fundraising emails that called Democrats “childless sociopaths” and in a podcast in 2020 said childless Americans, especially in leadership, are “more sociopathic” and make the country “less mentally stable.” https://t.co/SeEcAddnDa

— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) July 30, 2024

JD Vance claims his July 2021 comment to Tucker Carlson that "childless cat ladies" like Kamala Harris “don't really have a direct stake” in the country’s future was taken out of context.

I found him making similar comments in three more Fox interviews. https://t.co/1r8IGmUI4H

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 30, 2024

 

 Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men:

 For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost. There is always the clue, the canceled check, the smear of lipstick, the footprint in the canna bed, the condom on the park path, the twitch in the old wound, the baby shoes dipped in bronze, the taint in the blood stream. And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us.

That is what all of us historical researchers believe.

And we love truth.”