Major News Media Fall For Fake GOP Outrage Yet Again
INSIDE: Donald Trump ... Elon Musk ... John Roberts
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
It’s An Editorial Choice
In the final week of the presidential campaign, the country’s two most prominent newspapers extended into a second day their credulous coverage of Republicans’ fake outrage over President Biden’s “garbage” comment.
The NYT and WaPo each made it a front-page story in Thursday’s editions, with above-the-fold, prime-real-estate treatment:
Compare that to where the NYT ran its own exclusive interview with Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly calling Trump a “fascist.” The original “island of garbage” comment, which kicked off this whole things, didn’t get as prominent a placement either.
It wasn’t as if the Trump campaign was subtle about the performative umbrage. On the campaign trail in Wisconsin, Trump donned a orange safety vest (see photo above) and climbed into the cab of a garbage truck bedecked in Trump-Vance livery. It’s in Trump’s political interest to ignore the fact that the “garbage” theme started at his Madison Square Garden rally Sunday as a reference to Puerto Rico, but it shouldn’t be so easy for major newspapers to set aside that fact, too.
As a corrective, CNN ran a mashup of Trump calling Harris supporters things like “scum” and “absolute garbage”:
The satirical New York Times Pitchbot came through in the moment:
MUST READ
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: Some Trump Electors In Swing States Are Primed To ‘Stop The Steal’ Again In 2024
Election Threat Watch
WaPo: “GOP leaders in some states move to block Justice Dept. election monitors
“The Justice Department’s ability to monitor local jurisdictions for voting rights irregularities on Election Day, already curtailed by the Supreme Court, is facing a new hurdle: opposition from Republicans who are seeking to block federal authorities from polling sites.”Politico: A”s Election Day nears, police chiefs and sheriffs around the country are bracing themselves for violent threats against election workers, turmoil at voting sites and intimidation of voters.”
AP: According to authorities, the suspect in the Portland Metro ballot box fires (i) is a balding or short-haired white man age 30 to 40; (ii) was driving a black or dark-colored 2001 to 2004 Volvo S-60; and (iii) is an experienced metalworker.
NBC News: “Police arrested an 18-year-old wielding a machete with an 18-inch blade outside a polling station in Florida on Tuesday, saying he was part of a group of teenagers accused of intimidating Democratic supporters.”
Pennsylvania: Ground Zero For Stop The Steal II
WaPo: “Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday lodged claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania, a state critical to his election prospects. But Democratic officials and voting rights advocates said that Trump’s allegations are wildly exaggerated and that the problems he and Republicans are focused on are not only common, but also proof that election safeguards are working as intended.”
WSJ: “Across Pennsylvania, local and state officials are warning that efforts by Trump and his supporters to call into question the integrity of the presidential election in the crucial swing state are ramping up—before a single ballot has been counted.”
Supreme Court Is At It Again
Without explanation, the Robert Supreme Court reversed two lower courts and allowed Virginia’s purge of purported non-citizen voters to proceed despite a federal law banning such last-minute election changes and its own (shaky) doctrine against late-in-the-game federal court intervention. The risk is that actual citizens will be caught up in the purge and disenfranchised without enough time to rectify the mistake:
The Disinformation Environment
The Bulwark: Breaking: Sources Say the Story You’re Reading Isn’t Real
NYT: Why the Right Thinks Trump Is Running Away With the Race
WaPo: Elon Musk says X users fight falsehoods. The falsehoods are winning.
CNN reporter spent 24 hours consuming MAGA media:
Tea-Leaf Reading
I trust Morning Memo readers can gather data points without drawing conclusions yet:
Politico: “Across battlegrounds, there is a 10-point gender gap in early voting so far: Women account for roughly 55 percent of the early vote, while men are around 45 percent, according to a POLITICO analysis of early vote data in several key states. The implications for next week’s election results are unclear; among registered Republicans, women are voting early more than men, too. But the high female turnout is encouraging to Democratic strategists, who expected that a surge in Republican turnout would result in more gender parity among early voters.”
NBC News: “[Swing] state polls are showing not just an astonishingly tight race, but also an improbably tight race. Even in a truly tied election, the randomness inherent in polling would generate more varied and less clustered results — unless the state polls and the polling averages are artificially close because of decisions pollsters are making.”
Politico: “As of Wednesday, Black voters make up 18 percent of the electorate in [North Carolina] early voting, and some Democratic operatives said they must bump that up to about 20 percent for Harris to be competitive statewide. In 2020, Black voters were 19 percent of the electorate, when Donald Trump narrowly won the state. And Democrats acknowledge that without a swing in their favor in the last days of early voting or on Election Day, it may not be good enough.”
Trump: ‘I’m Gonna Do It Whether The Women Like It Or Not’
2024 Ephemera
Ratfuckery: “A Republican-aligned super PAC is sending texts in Georgia telling voters to “Join The Movement For Equality” and vote for Jill Stein — a sign someRepublicans believe her candidacy could harm Kamala Harris’ chances in the battleground.”–Politico
Trickery: “In Michigan, canvassers and paid door knockers for the former president, contracted by a firm associated with America PAC, have been subjected to poor working conditions: A number of them have been driven around in the back of a seatless U-Haul van, according to video obtained by WIRED, and threatened that their lodging at a local motel wouldn’t be paid for if they didn’t meet canvassing quotas.”–Wired
Monkey business: “After Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 election, Congress moved to fend off a repeat of the 20 days of chaos that had obstructed the executive branch handover to Joe Biden. But the first test of one little-known change to the presidential transition process is now causing anxiety among government officials as Trump is potentially poised to return to power.”–WaPo
Important
Grist surveys the latest scholarship on whether man-made climate change and the rise of authoritarianism are connected.
Hello!
I sat down recently with Joe Ragazzo for an installment of his Inside TPM series. We talked about Morning Memo, my role at TPM, the current political environment, and a bunch of other stuff. I hope it feels transparent and brings you a little closer to what we do here:
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And there’s this: Katie Phang watched him try to get into the truck and noted: “Trump stumbles, drags his right leg, almost falls over, and tries at least three times to open the door…. Some transparency with Trump’s medical records would be nice.” From HC Richardson
Thank you, David. I appreciate your hard work each weekday pulling the MM together for us.