Freakier Friday

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. His tariffs are hurting the economy.  Predictable and predicted.  Scandals and erratic behavior also continue.

Brian Evans and Pia Singh at CNBC:

The July jobs report showed nonfarm payrolls expanded by 73,000 last month, well beneath the consensus estimate from economists polled by Dow Jones that called for a 100,000 increase to payrolls. Prior months were significantly revised down. June job growth totaled just 14,000, down from 147,000. The May count came down to 19,000 from 125,000, signaling the labor market has been weakening for a while now.
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Not helping sentiment overnight were Trump’s updated duties ranging from 10% to 41% overnight at the Aug. 1 deadline. Goods that have been transshipped in a bid to avoid the tariffs will face another 40% levy, according to the White House.

Probably most shocking to markets was that for Canada, one of the U.S.′ biggest trading partners, goods imported into the country will now have a 35% levy, up from 25%.

Trump spent every day for 4 years saying that Biden was about to start World War 3 and if he got elected he would end the war in Ukraine and we would have peace with Russia because he has a great relationship with Putin. Here is today’s update on all that. pic.twitter.com/YDCUCgWPpK

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 1, 2025

Ghislaine Maxwell quietly moved to cushy new Texas prison as she pushes for deal to tell-all on Epstein, his associates https://t.co/ldvrFhSVTM pic.twitter.com/W4xceQKtPA

— New York Post (@nypost) August 1, 2025

The Community Note. pic.twitter.com/11B3zQOPLz

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 1, 2025

Iran Aftermath

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

A brief op-ed that originally appeared (in Spanish) at La Tercera:

 The American airstrikes on Iran may have caused severe damage to the country’s nuclear program.  But they will probably have little impact on domestic politics in the United States.

 American voters seldom care about international issues except when American lives or economic interests are at stake.  Events in the Middle East capture public attention only if they involve hostages, terror attacks, or oil shortages.  Fortunately, the bombing has not had any serious material consequences for the United States – at least, not yet.

Even when Americans do think about events in other countries, their opinions increasingly fall along party lines, with Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other.  According to a recent poll from CBS News, 85 percent of Republicans approve of the Iran attacks, while 87 percent of Democrats disapprove.

        

This partisan entrenchment means that presidents cannot move public opinion very much, even when they achieve major successes.  For a decade after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden eluded American efforts to bring him to justice.  In 2011, under President Obama’s leadership, U.S. commandos finally killed him.  But in public opinion polls, Obama’s approval rating rose only a few percentage points for a few weeks.  The following year, he became the first president to win reelection while losing the popular vote share.

So far, the extent of the bombing damage in Iran remains uncertain, which means that each side will have its own interpretation of what happened.  Republicans will echo President Trump’s claim that he obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.  Democrats will say that Trump dishonestly exaggerated his success.  What is clear is that the 2026 congressional elections in the United States are very likely to hinge on other issues, such as the state of the economy.

The Day After

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it deals with the domestic politics of foreign policy. Last night, the US bombed Iran.

 

Five things to remember about war:

1. Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true

2. Whatever they say, the people who start wars are often thinking chiefly about domestic politics

3. The rationale given for a war will change…

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) June 22, 2025

Tulsi Under the Bus

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

Politico Playbook:

This is a president who campaigned for years on ending American involvement in overseas wars; a man who, in 2011 and 2012, mockingly claimed then-President Barack Obama was about to start a war with Iran just to distract from his own failings. Only a couple of months ago, his own director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said Iran is “not building a nuclear weapon.” And this is the self-styled “dealmaker-in-chief.” Is he really going to flip it all around with a Middle East bombing campaign

Q: "Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon."

President Trump: "I don't care what she said. I think they were very close to having one." pic.twitter.com/6KTye52xP9

— CSPAN (@cspan) June 17, 2025

Nuclear Secrets at Mar-a-Lago

Our most recent book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and Trump's disregard for law.

Destruction of government documents is a crime.  So is the retaining classified material.

Devlin Barrett and Carol D. Leonnig at WP:

A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.

Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.

Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location.

But such documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago, with uncertain security, more than 18 months after Trump left the White House.

After months of trying, according to government court filings, the FBI has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago this year: 184 in a set of 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in January, 38 more handed over by a Trump lawyer to investigators in June, and more than 100 additional documents unearthed in a court-approved search on Aug. 8.

It was in this last batch of government secrets, the people familiar with the matter said, that the information about a foreign government’s nuclear-defense readiness was found. These people did not identify the foreign government in question, say where at Mar-a-Lago the document was found or offer additional details about one of the Justice Department’s most sensitive national security investigations.

J6 Danger

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.   We now know that Trump fired up the mob against Pence after learning about the violence at the Capitol.  Was he trying to get them to kill Pence, or did he just not care one way or the other?  There was danger all around.

 Frank Figliuzzi at MSNBC:

Speaking about the threats to Pence on Jan. 6 and the shouts by rioters to hang him, Raskin said, “The vice president's Secret Service agents – including one who was carrying the nuclear football – ran down to an undisclosed place in the Capitol." Those agents, who Raskin said he suspects were reporting to Trump’s Secret Service agents, were trying to whisk Pence away from the Capitol. At that point, Raskin said, Pence "uttered what I think are the six most chilling words of this entire thing I've seen so far: 'I'm not getting in that car.'" According to Raskin, Pence "knew exactly what this inside coup they had planned for was going to do.”

The nation needs to know whether its vice president did or did not trust the Secret Service to do the right thing for democracy and uphold the oath taken by its agents to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution

Last year, Fred Kaplan wrote at Slate:

What about the mob? What could they do, had they grabbed the Football? First, it’s very unlikely that they could have grabbed it. The Secret Service agents around Pence would almost certainly meet any such attempt with deadly force. There would have been a dozen or more dead rioters scattered on the bloodied floor near the staircase where Pence, his family, and his entourage had gathered. If the mob’s survivors kept mauling and overpowering Pence and the others, they might not have thought to grab the Football, which is locked in a metal case tucked inside an ordinary-looking satchel. Even if they had grabbed the satchel, bashed the lock, and opened the case, they wouldn’t have known what to do with the stuff inside. Had they figured it out, the officers in the Pentagon would have known the signals were coming from an unauthorized source.

Could the mob have taken the Football and sold it to the Russians or some other adversary? It would be worth millions of dollars. Despite the militias’ self-image as “patriots,” it’s not out of the question. According to a U.S. District Court affidavit, Riley June Williams, the Pennsylvania woman accused of breaching the Capitol and stealing Pelosi’s laptop on Jan. 6, intended to give the computer “to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.”

Whatever might have happened if the mob had caught up with Pence, we all escaped a disaster scene, almost certainly a bloodbath, and possibly a national security compromise by a much closer margin than we have known.

 

Korea: Secrets and Lies

In Defying the Odds, we discuss foreign policy issues in the 2016 campaign.

Courtney Kube, Ken Dilanian and Carol E. Lee at NBC:

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News.

The intelligence assessment, which has not previously been reported, seems to counter the sentiments expressed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted after his historic June 12 summit with Kim that "there was no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."
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In recent months, even as the two sides engaged in diplomacy, North Korea was stepping up its production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, five U.S. officials say, citing the latest intelligence assessment. North Korea and the U.S. agreed at the summit to "work toward" denuclearization, but there is no specific deal. On Trump's order, the U.S. military canceled training exercises on the Korean peninsula, a major concession to Kim.

While the North Koreans have stopped missile and nuclear tests, "there's no evidence that they are decreasing stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production," said one U.S. official briefed on the latest intelligence. "There is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the U.S."

S.V. Date at Huffington Post:

Having already invented “thousands” of parents who begged him to bring home the bodies of their Korean War veteran children, President Donald Trump is now inventing hundreds of such repatriations that haven’t actually happened.

The return of the remains of American service members who were killed in that war has become a major “victory” Trump likes to claim from his June 12 meeting in Singapore with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“It was the last thing I asked,” he told a gathering of Nevada Republicans on Saturday. “I said, ‘Do you mind, would I be able to get the remains back of all those great heroes from so many years ago?’ And he said, ‘I will do that.’ And you probably read, they have already done 200 people. Which is so great.”

On Monday, Trump told a rally audience in South Carolina: “We’re getting the remains of our great heroes back.”

The only problem: No remains have yet been returned, and it is unclear when that might happen. “We have not yet physically received them,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, but said that he is “optimistic” it would take place “in the not-too-distant future.”

Going Nuclear

Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer report at Politico:

NEW CLINTON AD -- “DAISY” -- Clinton is airing a new ad riffing on the 1964 “Daisy” ad about the danger of nuclear weapons. Monique Luiz, the actress from the 1964 spot, uses the same line as she did in the original ad: “the stakes are too high for you to stay home.” The spot will run during nightly newscasts in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

A few weeks ago wrote at The Atlantic:

Hillary Clinton is paying homage to one of the most famous presidential ads in history with a new spot that raises the possibility of nuclear war if Donald Trump wins the White House.

The 30-second ad called “Silo” features testimony from a former nuclear missile launch officer named Bruce Blair, who describes how he “prayed” that he would never receive a launch order he would be sworn to obey from a president. “If the president gave the order we had to launch the missiles, that would be it,” Blair says in the ad. “I prayed that call would never come. Self-control may be all that keeps these missiles from firing.”

Mark Halperin and Steven Yaccino write at The Atlantic:

Bill Bradley, the former Democratic senator from New Jersey and a long-time vociferous critic of super-PACs, has formed just such a group to go after Donald Trump in the final weeks before Election Day with a TV ad that invokes one of the most powerful political attacks in American history.

In September 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential campaign released “Daisy,” a 60-second television advertisement that juxtaposed a petal-picking child with images of nuclear obliteration to caution against a Barry Goldwater presidency. It aired only once, but is widely remembered as perhaps the most powerfully negative TV ad ever created.

HRC Channels LBJ on Nukes

At The Daily Beast, P.J. O'Rourke writes: "Like a toddler in a home with a loaded handgun, sooner or later Donald will find the briefcase with the nuclear launch codes."

Evelyn Rupert reports at The Hill:

Hillary Clinton took aim at GOP rival Donald Trump while campaigning in Kentucky on Sunday, reviving her characterization of him as a "loose cannon."

"I’ve never heard such reckless, risky talk from somebody about to be a nominee for president that I’ve heard from Donald Trump when it comes to nuclear weapons. For 70 years Democrats and Republicans alike, we’ve done everything we could to prevent more countries from having nuclear weapons," Clinton said at an event in Louisville. "And along comes Donald Trump and says, well, he doesn’t really care, let them all have nuclear weapons. He says he would use nuclear weapons."

Trump has come under fire for suggesting that he would allow Japan and South Korea to have nuclear weapons.

"This is scary, dangerous talk. This is the talk of a loose cannon who is making statements and creating confusion. We can’t afford that. We need to keep the country on the right track and we have to keep the world as stable as possible," Clinton said.

Clinton is channeling the attacks the LBJ used against Goldwater (below).  The trouble is that the 1964 ads aired just two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.  But 52 more years have elapsed, and memories of that crisis have faded.

A Good Night for Rubio

Mike Allen reports:

Marco Rubio is the Barack Obama of 2008: He rises to big moments, lives up to the hype, and is a gifted communicator and performer. There’s a reason Hillary Clinton allies fear Rubio, and are suddenly publicly pushing the idea that the GOP nominee will be Cruz, an opponent they would much prefer.

Rubio is better than Obama was at this point in ’08, and way more consistent. Tangling with Cruz, Rubio was much more detailed and convincing.

A Rubio adviser said his candidate “is restrained and self controlled -- he does not get in every fight. … When Cruz dodged the question on his support for the path to citizenship, Marco let it go because he knew the Twitterverse and the commentators would handle it.”

At The Washington Free Beacon, Daniel Bassali reports that Trump didn't understand a question about the nuclear triad:

In his original answer, Trump said it was important to have a strong leader with sound judgment during perilous times. He then trailed off to talking about opposing the Iraq War and how important limiting nuclear proliferation is. The response did not touch on Hewitt’s question, so he asked again.

“I think for me nuclear – the power, the devastation is very important to me,” Trump said in his second attempt.

Hewitt then offered the question to Rubio. The young senator elected to explain what the nuclear triad is to “people at home,” although it appeared to be a veiled swipe at Trump for not knowing what it was.

Filling Gaps in the White House Website, Part 40

The Media Research Center offers the full transcript of the president's recent interview with Harry Smith. Apparently, the complete text is available nowhere else on the free Internet. The full Lauer interview text still remains unavailable on the free Internet.

The New York Times has published excerpts of its interview with the president on nuclear weapons. The president was understandably cautious:

• "Rather than speculate, let’s say what we know."
• "I’m not going to parse that right now."
• "I’m not going to speculate on Israeli decision-making."
• "I’m not going to parse these, parse words here."
• "I’m not going to — - I’m not going to talk about the details of Pakistan’s nuclear ——"
• "I’ll leave it up to my team to brief you in terms of some of those commitments, some of which may not be announced until next week when the summit actually takes place."