Someone Take This Man’s Phone
Plus: Doug Sosnik on the state of the race.
The post-DNC polling picture is coming into focus, with a brace of new polls out today that show Kamala Harris’s surge continuing. The latest USA Today/Suffolk poll gives Harris a five-point edge over Trump, 48 percent to 43 percent, while Reuters/Ipsos has Harris four points up, 45 percent to 41 percent.
Swing-state polling, however, remains extremely tight: Emerson’s latest batch has Trump up in Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin; Harris leading in Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada; and Pennsylvania statistically tied. Fox News’s Sun Belt findings, also out yesterday: Harris ahead in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, and Trump up in North Carolina—all within the margin of error. Happy Thursday.
What Trump Really Cares About
—Andrew Egger
Never before have Donald Trump’s top campaign advisers so fervently yearned for him to stick to the script.
For two weeks, they’ve been trotting their candidate out for a series of “messaging events” focusing on single issues: immigration, crime, the military, the economy. Trump’s been willing to give these the old college try.
“Now this is a little bit different day. Because this is talking about a thing called the economy. They wanted to do a speech on the economy,” Trump said as he kicked one of these off the other day in Asheville, North Carolina. “So we’re doing this as an intellectual speech. You’re all intellectuals today.”
But all that staying on message is hard work. A guy needs time to loosen up, too—which might explain why, off the stage, Trump’s been picking up his phone to uncork the most psychotic social-media content you’ve ever seen in your life.
Here’s just a random smattering of the crazed MAGA bait Trump’s reposted on Truth Social in just the last 24 hours:
Doctored images depicting Joe and Hunter Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, and Bill Gates in prison jumpsuits. Caption: “HOW TO ACTUALLY ‘FIX THE SYSTEM.’”
“INDICT THE UNSELECT J6 COMMITTEE [for] SEDITION. RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TO LOCK THEM UP.”
“ALL ROADS LEAD TO OBAMA. RETRUTH IF YOU WANT PUBLIC MILITARY TRIBUNALS.”
“NOTHING CAN STOP WHAT IS COMING. NOTHING. WWG1WGA!!! RETRUTH IF YOU AGREE.”
For good measure, Trump threw in a MS-Paint edit of Special Counsel Jack Smith with red eyes and demon horns and a truly disgusting sexist attack against Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton.
Overall, it’s naked, uncut, QAnon-level stuff: Our enemies are demonic forces and we are going to annihilate them with the sword of the state.
There’s been a current of this stuff running through the Trump ticket from the very start, of course. But 2016’s version of “Lock her up!” was at least theoretically connected to bad behavior from Hillary Clinton (that email server!), letting places like National Review gloss Trump’s and his supporters’ thirst for political vengeance as admirable respect for the rule of law.
Now that fig leaf has been ripped away, fed through a wood chipper, lit on fire, and had its ashes scattered over the sea off Palm Beach. Joe and Hunter Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jack Smith, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates, Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Adam Schiff, Anthony Fauci—Trump suggests he’d happily ship them straight to the gulag.
Imagine if someone in your place of work was posting this type of stuff about your other coworkers. Would that person be considered “leadership material”? Or would you be a little worried about the upcoming lunch break?
And are we truly so desensitized to it all that this no longer provokes our indignation? Have we decided it’s simply easier to look away?
Trump’s superfans aren’t looking away. They eat this stuff up with a big ole spoon, their hearts beating faster as they fantasize about the carnage to come.
Meanwhile, those Republican voters who remain outside the MAGA cult just aren’t paying attention to it at all. For the third consecutive election, they’re asleep at the switch, paying attention to nothing but their vague belief that another Trump presidency still represents their preferred “policies.”
To those voters, I’d just say this: Take a hard look at the guy on stage at one of these “policy” events—barely even trying to appear interested as he clanks tonelessly through the content his speechwriters have loaded on the teleprompter. Then flip on one of his freeform rallies, where his eyes light up as he leads a roaring crowd through serial denunciations of all his demonic Democratic foes. Glance once more through the truly deranged, unnerving gobbledegook he sees fit to endorse when the algorithm he controls serves it up to him on the social media site he owns.
And ask yourself: Do I really think Donald Trump shares my enthusiasm for “policy?”
We stare into the abyss so you don’t have to. Join Bulwark+ today:
GO DEEPER: Tim had some thoughts on this brace of Trump brain dumps as well, which he was kind enough to offer the world on YouTube last night. Give it a watch:
Sosnik: ‘She’s Going to Make Mistakes’
—William Kristol
I spoke this week about the state of the presidential race with Doug Sosnik, a top political strategist for Bill Clinton and one of the best political analysts I know. You can watch or listen to the whole conversation here.
Here are some excerpts, lightly edited for clarity and continuity, that give you a sense of how he sees this year’s presidential contest with ten weeks to go.
ON HOW HARRIS HAS DONE SO FAR:
Five weeks ago [when Joe Biden got out of the race], I thought there were three critical fights between Harris and Trump. One was obviously to define who Harris is. The second would be to define Trump. And then the third, which is as important, is to define what this campaign is about.
And I would say Harris is currently winning the fight to define what this campaign is about. So far she is winning the battle about the campaign being about change, and she is the change candidate, and she’s making the campaign about the future and not about the past.
I think she’s also done an excellent job of defining who she is on her terms. The polling reflects the significant uptick in favorable views towards Harris, although it’s not solidified. . . .
So on the one hand, the race is profoundly different now than it was five weeks ago. And on the other hand, it’s really not nearly as different as you might think. Harris has got the momentum. Having said all that, it’s probably a one or two point race. . . . And the seven states that were competitive when we started the campaign are still the seven states that are going to determine the outcome. And the swing voters are still the same swing voters when we started the campaign.
We’re moving into the next phase of the campaign, leading up to the debate on the 10th of September. I would rather be in Harris’s position now than I would have been on the day she announced. But she still has more ground she’s going to need to gain.
ON HOW TRUMP WAS CAUGHT FLAT FOOTED:
I think the Harris campaign has done a really great job of controlling the narrative. . . . She’s been 100-percent in controlled environments and they’re just sailing above everything. Now, they can’t do that for the remainder of the campaign. . . . But because Trump and his campaign were caught so flat-footed, it was easy to not get drawn into the rat-a-tat-tat back and forth, with them landing some serious punches against her that she would have been forced to respond to. It’s been a huge failure on their part. . . . Trump is desperately trying to get into a back and forth with Harris, because the last five weeks she’s been hitting a tennis ball against the wall, and he’s trying to get an engagement and get her to take the bait.
There always are key defining moments that determine the outcome of an election. If Trump loses this election—and we’re a long way from this election being over—I think the most decisive moment in the campaign was how they handled or didn’t handle Harris’s announcement that she was running. . . . Having claimed that they were working on a Plan B for a Harris candidacy since May, they inexplicably had not and have still not settled on what the argument is against her. It’s about eight different arguments they’ve made. It reminds me of John Kerry in 2004, who made eight different arguments about Bush.
ON JD VANCE AS A CANDIDATE:
I think traditionally VPs don’t matter, but one prediction I’m comfortable making is that Vance will have an impact on the outcome of this election.
And the reason I say that is that in politics, a negative works when it reinforces an existing negative perception. I think what is so damaging about Vance—beyond the fact he’s a terrible candidate, has no charisma, and barely got elected to the Senate in a red state—is that his negatives reinforce Trump’s negatives. So you can transfer a negative argument against Vance to Trump, and that’s potent. And that’s why I think it was such a bad selection.
In the past, one of the things I would always say in speeches was there are three things that the press is going to focus on in the general election, and none of them matter. One is who the VP is. Two is how the conventions go. And three is the debates. And I said history showed none of these three matters. But all three of those could well matter this year in this election.
ON THE SHORT 15-WEEK CAMPAIGN:
There’s been a lot of conversation about how big an advantage it’s been for Harris to have a short campaign. I think the biggest advantage is the fact that you’re not forced in a primary to go to the left to get the nomination. But there are disadvantages to a short campaign. One of the advantages of a primary in a campaign is it makes you a better candidate.
There are two tests in running for president. One is, can you articulate a vision for the future that’s compelling and relatable to people so that you can get them to vote for you? That’s the first test, and that’s usually done in the primary. The second test is do you have the temperament to withstand the pressures of a campaign? That first part where you really can articulate your vision for the future, you have to do that in the early stages because you can’t be, in the second 12-to-15-hour-day hazing phase, figuring this stuff out. But Harris doesn’t have that luxury. She’s having to do both at the same time.
Look, I worked for Bill Clinton, who’s one of the greatest politicians of our lifetime. But he made mistakes. They all make mistakes. She’s going to make mistakes. So it’s how she handles it and pops back up that’s going to really be important. And she doesn’t have the benefit of having gone through an extended period of time through a primary.
There’s a lot more, including when we get in the weeds a bit on whether Harris has a better chance to win Georgia or North Carolina. So do watch or listen to the whole thing.
Quick Hits
MORE ON THE CEMETERY SCUFFLE: A few more developments in the latest story that, in a saner world, would be a career-defining scandal for any politician: the New York Times reports that the Arlington National Cemetery employee who tried to enforce federal laws prohibiting campaign photography during President Trump’s visit this week—and who has been demeaned and smeared by multiple top Trump aides since—won’t press charges over the altercation. Why? “Military officials said she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.”
ONE OF OUR FEW REMAINING SACRED SPACES: “Arlington National Cemetery’s Section 60 is in the news,” Will Selber writes for the site today. “I really wish it weren’t. I have friends there.”
Will is always worth reading, but his meditation on grief, America’s veneration of its war dead, and the outrageousness of using a hallowed place for a campaign photo opportunity really shouldn’t be missed.
NOT SENDING THEIR BEST: The Trump/Harris race may still be tight as a tick. But there’s a growing mountain of polling evidence that Democrats are opening up mammoth leads in some of the higher-profile down-ballot races: The Fox poll mentioned above found Rep. Ruben Gallego leading Kari Lake by 15 points in Arizona’s Senate contest, Sen. Jacky Rosen up 14 against Sam Brown in Nevada’s Senate race, and Josh Stein 11 points up on Mark Robinson in North Carolina’s governor’s contest. It’s hard to imagine those being the final margins. Still—wow.
Cheap Shots
I figure the news is going to go through some kind of filter, so I choose the filter of Substack writers with good track records and solid bona fides, as opposed to The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, etc. I still glance at those publications and the reporting is consistently crappy. The latest example is the Arlington incident. The mainstream media indulged in endless grafs of throat-clearing before arriving at the lede, namely that there are rules at Arlington and Trump violated them. You can read between the lines their fear of offending advertisers. Substack is a more straightforward way of delivering information to readers, one of the many strange things about 2024.
Sosnik: “ She’s been 100-percent in controlled environments”.
Kamala hasn’t been sitting down with the MSM but that doesn’t mean every interaction she’s had has been “controlled”. Just because she sat down with influencers who are fans, doesn’t mean she wasn’t asked questions about things that matter vs what the MSM does with their gotcha questions or asking her about the latest Trump or Vance outrage thrown in her direction. Donald has NEVER been pushed on policy, nor has he ever been asked tough follow up questions. He also gets no grief for talking to influencers on podcasts, talking exclusively to friendly media or never giving a straight answer to anything.
Kamala doesn’t owe the media shit. She talks to her press pool every day and I’d assume those are “uncontrolled” environments.
Just please stop with this bullshit. When Kamala sits with an influencer with a million+ followers on social media, she is actually getting her message out to FAR MORE people than she is going to reach with some stupid CNN sit down.