The Complex Election Threat Matrix Runs Through One Man
INSIDE: Jeff Bezos ... Elon Musk ... Will Ferrell
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Donald Trump Is To Blame
As we careen toward Election Day in a week, the day’s news is replete with reminders that Donald Trump continues to be a singular threat to free and fair elections. The complexity of the threat matrix – political violence, foreign interference, conspiracy theories, the Big Lie – can obscure that Trump plays a critical role in all of them as instigator, inciter, conspiracist, accelerant, and useful idiot.
For nearly a decade now, Trump has radicalized American politics and personally served as a catalyst for the worst impulses, extremism, and violence that have afflicted the public square. He has created, sustained, and nourished a crazed political atmosphere which pushes lone wolf actors over the edge. He has summoned and rallied a crowd of insurrectionists and turned them loose against the legislative branch in order to remain in power. He has dipped into Nazi rhetoric, dehumanized entire peoples and nationalities, trafficked in the most racist tropes, and treated women like trash. He has taken a sledgehammer to democratic institutions and the principles upon which they are based.
You know this already. None of this is new.
But as you survey today’s news, don’t forget that Trump plays a role in every single item, usually a major, active role. There is nothing subtle about him or the threat he poses, but the sheer volume of threats and the different flavors they come in make it hard to keep a clear and steady focus on how they all emanate from one man.
Trump’s Big Lie Redux Already Well Underway
NBC News: “As Election Day approaches, former President Donald Trump has increasingly been warning that if he loses, it will be because of cheating. … [B]y pre-emptively raising doubts about the results, Trump is setting the stage to possibly challenge the outcome and throw the electoral system into chaos again.”
NYT: How Trump Is Using Truth Social to Concoct and Spread Conspiracy Theories
Ballot Box Fires In PDX Metro Area
A fire in a ballot box in Portland, Oregon, caused minor damage, but a similar fire across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, that police believe is related damaged or destroyed hundreds of ballots. A suspect vehicle has been identified by law enforcement.
Election Threats Watch
NBC News: “U.S. intelligence agencies have identified domestic extremists with grievances rooted in election-related conspiracy theories, including beliefs in widespread voter fraud and animosity toward perceived political opponents, as the most likely threat of violence in the coming election.”
TPM’s Hunter Walker: Intelligence expert who aired early intel about Jan. 6 warns of “lone wolf” attacks targeting lower-level candidates and election infrastructure.
NYT: How Russia, China and Iran Are Interfering in the Presidential Election
Sign Of The Times
Donald Trump, last night in Atlanta: “I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi.”
Quote Of The Day
Doug Emhoff, on Donald Trump:
He demeans immigrants with the same hateful slurs hurled at our ancestors: vermin, animals who poison the blood of our country. He scapegoats Jewish voters right to our faces, saying that if he loses, it will be the fault of Jews. He looks at Adolf Hitler’s generals and sees something to admire. Just let that sink in. You do not reward someone like that with a platform or with power, and never again with the presidency.
Steve Bannon Released From Prison
The former Trump adviser and right-wing provocateur was released from federal prison Tuesday after serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee.
A Notable Jan. 6 Sentence
Ryan Reilly: “A Hollywood actor who had supporting roles in ‘Anchorman,’ ‘Mr. Show,’ ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘Bob’s Burgers’ was sentenced to 12 months and a day in federal prison on Monday for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
Court Docs Unsealed In Jan. 6 Grand Jury Probe
Politico: Unsealed court documents show judges have long worried about Trump ‘delay tactics’
NYT: Secret Files in Election Case Show How Judges Limited Trump’s Privilege
Bezos Backlash Continues
NPR: More than 200,000 people had cancelled their WaPo digital subscriptions by midday Monday over Jeff Bezos’ decision to block the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.
After the media company initially sought to make it seem like the decision wasn’t Bezos’, Bezos himself penned an op-ed in which he took ownership of the decision and conceded that the timing was bad: “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.” Who could have anticipated a presidential election in November 2024?
Two more opinion writers resigned Monday from the WaPo editorial board.
Oligarchs On The Loose
With his various business interests and foreign entanglements, Trump II would break Trump I’s record for the most conflicted presidency in U.S. history, the NYT reports.
Elon Musk’s America PAC is running an ad that slyly calls Kamala Harris a “cunt.”
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner sued to block Elon Musk’s $1 million cash giveaways to voters.
Fiona Hill on oligarchy:
Musk is something that we’ve never really seen before. People refer back to the Rockefellers and Andrew Carnegie and the robber barons of the Gilded Age, or the billionaires that emerged in Russia in the 1990s and 2000s. Musk is beyond that in his wealth and influence. He’s on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. His personal wealth is about the same as a medium-sized country. His bonuses are on the scale of the defense budgets of a whole host of countries.
So not only is Musk trying to bankroll Trump’s reelection, but he’s talking to Putin. He’s talking to people in China and elsewhere. Musk has global business interests. He’s part of a rich and powerful class of people who see themselves as global peers.
‘Put Them In Trauma’
ProPublica and Documented have obtained videos of two private speeches by former Trump OMB Director Russ Vought at events for his pro-Trump think tank Center for Renewing America that build on work TPM has done to reveal the ambitions for a Trump II presidency.
Among the most alarming of Vought’s comments was the threat to federal government workers:
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.
“We want to put them in trauma.”
2024 Ephemera
Kamala Harris is scheduled to give her closing national address from The Ellipse tonight, a powerful callback to Trump’s “Stop The Steal” rally on Jan. 6.
Harris launched a new ad seizing on Tony Hinchcliffe’s racist joke about Puerto Ricans at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. In related news: Hinchcliffe was originally planning to call Harris a “cunt” during his bit but the Trump campaign nixed that line.
Brian Stelter: How social media video clippers have become some of the most powerful outlets of the 2024 campaign
CNN Blowup
CNN banned conservative panelist Ryan Girdusky from the network after he implied that former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan was a terrorist. In a live panel, Girdusky told Hasan he hoped his beeper did not explode, prompting CNN host Abby Phillip to scold, “Ryan, that is completely out of pocket.”
‘Holy Shit, I Just Remembered The Coup!’
On the 40th anniversary of Lee Greenwood’s paean to American exceptionalism, finally the alternative we’ve always needed:
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Thank you David for your
opening essay.
I've said it before and will
continue to say it: Elon Musk
is a dangerous man. There
better be some way he can
controlled with his gov't
contracts! He's not the
brains, he's the money man
behind all his projects.
I have voted BLUE up and
down ballot in my deep red
state.
Even when - not if! - he loses the election we are a long way from ridding ourselves of the orange cancer, as we all expect more wrangling, law suits, countless TV appearances, social-media exhortations to his supporters to "Fight! Fight! Fight!", and other trauma-inducing acts all the way to Inauguration Day, and probably beyond.
And there is the matter of tRump's pending, oft-delayed trials, which would engender more outbreaks of outrage from the man, probably through 2026, assuming even more indictments don't come his way.
Honestly, only death itself will at last shut him up and remove his galling, vexatious presence from our lives, an occurrence I've longed for since he road down the trashy, gold-plated escalator nearly ten years ago.
One lives in hope.