A Phone Call from Mar-a-Lago

Plus: Israel braces for war on a second front.

Remember when this presidential race was among the most stable of our lifetimes? The favorability/unfavorability movement in yesterday’s ABC News/Ipsos poll is insane:

The poll found Kamala Harris at +1 approval, with 43 percent of voters having a favorable impression and 42 percent unfavorable. That’s a twelve-point positive swing from the same poll last week, which found her 35 percent favorable/46 percent unfavorable.

In the same period, Trump’s favorability slipped five points—from 40/51 down to 36-52—while the much less well-known JD Vance dived nine points, from 25/31 to 24/39.

Not exactly the post-convention bounce Republicans were hoping for. Happy Monday.

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What happened? (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

A Phone Call From Mar-a-Lago

—Bill Kristol

Call placed at 6:11 a.m., Monday, July 29. Answered on the fourth ring.

Caller One: Goddammit, pick up the goddamn phone on the first ring when I call!

Caller Two: Uh . . . uh . . .sorry . . . hello. Dad! Geez, it’s barely six o’clock. Is everything okay?

Caller One: Everything is not goddamn okay. We got a problem, and you’re going to solve it.

Caller Two: Dad, I know Harris is off to a good start, but we can go after her on crime and—

Caller One (interrupting): I’m not talking about Harris. I’m talking about Vance. I can’t believe I actually listened to you and that bullshitter Tucker.

Caller Two: Dad, JD will be fine. I talked with him yesterday. He’s a little rattled but he was going to go on Fox last night with Trey Gowdy and put things right. I didn’t see it, but—

Caller One (interrupting): Well, I DID see it. Everyone here saw it. And you know what everyone’s saying? They’re saying, “Sir, with all due respect, that guy’s a disaster.” They’re saying, “Sir, my daughter says she’s not voting for you anymore.” They’re saying, “Sir, you were conned.” Me, conned! You know what I don’t like? People thinking I’ve been conned. Me!

Caller Two: Yup, Dad, I know that. I’ll get with JD and we’ll work on—

Caller One (interrupting): Junior, you’ll get with JD and make him withdraw.

Caller Two: What? No. Dad. We can’t do that!

Caller One: Goddamn right we can. Susie had the lawyers check it out.

Caller Two: What?!

Caller One: Yeah. I didn’t tell you because you’d tell Guilfoyle and then it would be all over the place. The lawyers say, ‘No problem.’ All your buddy has to do is withdraw in the next ten days. There’s no issue with state ballots or any of that crap. The easiest thing you’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe how easy. They say Eagleton withdrew after eighteen days, and they replaced him. I wonder if McGovern had some idiot son who told him a young, unvetted senator was a good pick.

Caller Two: But Dad, what do I tell JD?

Caller One: Tell him he’s fired. Tell him he failed. Tell him what Pelosi said to Biden—that we can do this the hard way, or the easy way. The hard way is, I fire him. The easy way is, he withdraws for the cause of Making America Great Again. Why don’t we have tough people like Nervous Nancy in our idiot party?

Caller Two: Aren’t you overreacting here, Dad?

Caller One: Are you kidding me? I’m under-reacting. We were doing great. That assassination attempt—people finally felt sympathy for me! The convention was good, my numbers were going up more than anyone had ever seen before. Then Biden gets out—he should have hung in there!—but then it’s Harris, who’s not their best.

That guy Sosnik—Clinton always had smart people, strong people, and he didn’t have an idiot son to give him terrible political advice—and Sosnik said, “He who defines first defines last.” Chris was ready to drop $100 million to define her. But then we couldn’t break through because all the goddamn news has been about Vance.

Tony gave me the numbers from ABC yesterday morning. Vance started underwater and he’s only cratered since. And he’s dragging me down. I didn’t do anything bad last week, and my numbers fell too! Vance is killing me. Killing me.

Caller Two: But Dad, if you dump him you’d have to say you’d made a mistake, which—

Caller One (interrupting): Screw that. I’m good at firing people. People like it when I fire people. I did it with all those guys in the first term, Priebus and Tillerson and McMaster and Bolton. No problem. I just blame someone else for recommending them, and I say they undermined me, and all my followers turn on them too.

Caller Two: But Dad, who’s going to take the hit on this one?

Caller One: [Silence]

Caller Two: Dad?

Call abruptly terminated by Caller One at 6:18 am.

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Do you feel the change in the air? Don’t be shy—come partake of the vibe shift with us:

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Israel Braces for War on a Second Front

—Will Selber

During my recent week-long trip to Israel, many Israelis in the security sector I spoke with felt confident about Israel’s war with Hamas. From retired general officers to commandos, most believed that the IDF would eventually crush Hamas, though it would likely take years to grind them down until they were no longer an effective terrorist organization.

“We’ve figured out most of the tunnels,” a young commando told me. “It took us a while, but we learned how to fight in them.”

But while Israel has been slowly learning how best to fight Hamas, Iran and its proxy groups have been busy feeling out the chinks in Israel’s own armor.

Back in April, Israel’s successful neutralization of Iran’s drone-and-missile barrage was hailed as an unquestionable victory by many analysts in the West. But Iran learned a lot from the attack, too. A subsequent drone attack launched earlier this month from Yemen landed near the American consulate in Tel Aviv, resulting in one Israeli killed and ten wounded.

That attack paled in comparison to the salvo launched by Hezbollah Saturday, which killed 12 people, including 10 children, in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. (The Druze, an offshoot of Shia Islam, are a sect of people who reside in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. There are approximately 150,000 Druze in Israel.)

Hezbollah has not taken credit for the attack, but that doesn’t tell us much: They have a history of denying involvement in attacks even when evidence strongly implicates them.

This weekend’s gruesome attack greeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon his return from the United States. With his domestic opponents keeping the pressure on, he will have to decide soon what his response to the Golan attack will be.

Although the Biden administration is probably trying to shape Bibi’s response, they might not be as successful after they were following April’s Iranian salvo—that barrage didn’t kill any Israelis.

However, Hezbollah will be a tougher opponent than Hamas. During my recent tour, I spent over an hour with a crack team of analysts from the Alma Research Institute. What I learned there should give everyone pause. Although Israel could probably defeat Hezbollah militarily, it would come at a gruesome cost. Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal could rain down death as far south as Tel Aviv. The Iron Dome provides a powerful defense, but could it swat away a constant stream of attacks from Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Iraq, Yemen, and perhaps even Iran continuously for days on end?

Hezbollah’s special forces unit, the Radwan Force, is filled with battle-hardened operatives from the Syrian civil war. These operatives are better equipped and better led than their Hamas counterparts.

The IDF isn’t sitting still. According to an IDF soldier granted anonymity to speak freely, northern IDF units have been given multiple orders from the Ministry of Defense to prepare for offensive operations against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

According to the State Department’s own documents, 86,000 American citizens currently reside in Lebanon. In 2006, President Bush ordered the evacuation of some 15,000 American citizens. Undoubtedly, the intelligence community and United States Central Command are currently bracing for such an event. That’s one lesson the State Department said they learned after Afghanistan: They cannot wait too long before calling for noncombatant evacuation operations (NEO—military jargon for an emergency withdrawal).

As of now, it seems unlikely that Israel will launch another invasion in retaliation. But a full-blown war is becoming more and more likely. 

It appears the Biden administration has been preparing for such an event.  According to a senior Department of Defense official, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the subject, the Department of Defense has been planning for an NEO since October 8.

However, if President Biden orders the NEO too late like he did in Afghanistan, he will have another debacle on his hands. Bibi’s short-term and long-term decisions about Lebanon will not only have global security implications but also could force Biden’s hand.

Decision time is approaching fast for the Israeli and American leaders.

CORRECTION (3:30 p.m. EDT July 29 2024): An earlier version of this segment claimed 25,000 Druze live in Israel. The correct figure is around 150,000.

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Quick Hits

1. The vibe shift is real

Did Donald Trump just have his worst campaign week ever? Up at the site today, A.B. Stoddard thinks so:

Trump had been riding high. He had a consistent lead over President Joe Biden both nationally and in all the swing state polling, in some places beyond the margin of error. Following his catastrophic debate on June 27, Biden refused to step aside, keeping the national debate focused on questions about his age and fitness. And after Trump was nearly killed at a July 13 rally in Pennsylvania, the image on every TV screen and newspaper front page showed him rising bloodied but defiant. He was, literally, the picture of strength . . .

But one historic tweet from Rehoboth, Delaware changed everything. “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down,” wrote President Biden. Suddenly, a weak vs. strong campaign became one of future vs. past, young vs. old, positive vs. negative, possibility vs. fear. Trump’s candidacy is old and stale, and the third time is not charming. Harris may be the sitting vice president, but her candidacy is sparkling and new.

Trump lost altitude so quickly he forgot he was supposed to have been transformed by the attempt on his life. Suddenly he can no longer fake serenity and humility, and that crap about unity his supporters attested to after the attempted assassination.

A noticeably grouchy Trump admitted Saturday that was all BS. “No, I haven’t changed,” he said. “Maybe I’ve gotten worse. Because I get angry at the incompetence that I witness every single day.”

Enraged by Harris’s surge, Trump is flailing about for any attack to use on her. He has accused her of “committing crimes,” said she doesn’t like Jewish people (despite being married to one), and called her “sick,” “a bum,” and “evil.”

Read the whole thing.

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2. Rise of the ‘Scam PACs’

A massive new burst of political enthusiasm is excellent for parties and their candidates. It’s also manna from heaven for the self-dealing scam artists who make up the seedy underbelly of the political fundraising game. Up at the site, Sam Stein reports on the “constellation of seemingly innocuous political action committees” taking advantage of Harrismania:

Kamala Harris’s team is warning donors not to fall prey to “financial scams” from groups sending email and text messages that suggest they’re raising money for the vice president . . .

“Everyone in politics knows this whole operation is a scam designed to trick people who think they are donating to help a candidate they care about,” said one prominent Democratic digital operative. “They point to the fact they give a small percentage of the money they raise directly to campaigns, but that is just the cost of doing business for moments of scrutiny while siphoning the lion’s share into organizations they control.”

Read the whole thing—and stay safe out there!

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