GOP calls Harris ‘weird.’ These 19 moments prove Trump’s the weird one

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has some dazzling guidance for attacking Vice President Kamala Harris now that she is considered the front-runner to face convicted felon Donald Trump this November. According to a memo obtained by Axios, the vice president should be described as a “radical” progressive and an architect of the border crisis. And she’s “weird.”

The memo also includes a "weird" category—mocking Harris's "habit of laughing at inappropriate moments," her self-proclaimed love of Venn diagrams and her call to ban plastic straws, among other things.

Trump’s policy record is garbage, his immigration record is one of human rights violations, and his tendency to be “weird” is off the charts. Here are 19 times Trump was … weird.

1. Praising “the late, great, Hannibal Lecter.” 

Trump has repeatedly conjured up fictional serial murderer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter during rally speeches—he even did so in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Famously played by Anthony Hopkins in the film “The Silence of the Lambs,” it is hard to parse exactly what Trump is getting at when he praises the psychopathic character.

2. His strange preoccupation with the “genius” of realizing that the word “us” appears in the acronym “U.S.A.”

You know, you spell us right? You spell us U-S. I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that? A couple of days [ago] I’m reading and it said us. And I said, you know, if you think about it, us equals U-S.”

3. Remember that photo, alongside the Saudi King, with his tiny hands on the glowing orb?

Trump’s first foreign tour as president began in the Middle East where he met with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, and the two men did this:

Picture of really rich guys putting their hands on a lit up orb depicting the earth. Totally normal. Nothing to see here.

4. When Trump sorta curtsy-bowed before the Saudi King? 

After he had attacked President Barack Obama for leaning over to receive a similar Saudi welcome, Trump did this?

5. “Melania’s son.”

Trump was delivering remarks to the press on vaping, when he referred to Barron Trump—who is his third son—as “Melania’s son.” What is that about?

6. Humping the American Flag on various stages across the country.

Why does he do that so much?

7. Saluting a North Korean general.

We all know that Trump loves him some dictators, but it was strange when he decided to give a military salute to an adversarial country’s general. The strangeness took place during a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Trump when the salutation occurred. 

8. Electric boat versus battery versus shark?

Do you remember where you were when Trump offered up a thought experiment about whether you would prefer to be electrocuted in water or eaten by a shark? And that tangent was in response to Trump explaining the problems with electric vehicles?

So I said, so there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here, do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.” I said, ‘I think it’s a good question.’ I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that.

9. Trump’s toilet claim: Americans need to flush “10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.”

That was Trump rambling about toilets, sinks, and showers. “You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. They take a shower and water comes dripping out. Just dripping out, very quietly dripping out,” was just one of the many odd facts Trump gave out during his attacks on water-saving regulations. The ranting went on well past the White House, as Trump took his mystifying takes on the road to rallies—all the way through his second impeachment.

10. Doctoring a weather map with a black Sharpie.

Trump’s bizarre attempt to frighten Alabama residents by crudely doctoring a map, forecasting the path of a hurricane, will always go down as both ridiculous and insidious.

11. Making Clorox great again.

It was April 2020, and while COVID-19 was ravaging countries around the world, Trump took to the world stage to suggest to the press, and his own officials, that disinfectant might be injected into the human body to kill the virus.

So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting. Right? And then I see the disinfectant, it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.

12. How do magnets work?

It is hard to compete with this Trump statement from January: “All I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets.” 

13. Does Trump not know who Frederick Douglass was, or did he just find out?

“I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things,” Trump said. “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”

14. The time when the Continental Army took over the airports.

Trump blamed his teleprompter, but his retelling of the American Revolution, including the heroic takeover of airports over 100 years before the airplane was invented, was very peculiar.

“Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.”

15. Trump hates windmills and thinks televisions turn off if there isn’t enough wind.

Trump has frequently railed against windmills but he’s also shown a curious understanding of how renewable energy functions in the real world. Here he is in 2019, explaining a theoretical conversation a couple has after installing windmills.

“Let's put up some windmills. When the wind doesn't blow, just turn off the television darling, please. There's no wind, please turn off the television quickly.”

16. When Trump shoved a world leader out of the way in order to be in front for a photo.

Who does that????

17. When Trump asked a 7-year-old if he still believed in Santa.

Real War on Christmas vibes here.

18. Trump seems to believe we have invisible planes.

Trump’s comments in 2017, coupled with comments he’s made since, sure implies he is under the impression that we have Wonder Woman technology.

"With the Air Force, we're ordering a lot of planes, in particular the F-35 fighter jet, which is, you know, almost like an invisible fighter," he said. "I was asking the Air Force guys, I said, 'How good is this plane?' They said, 'Well, sir, you can't see it.' I said, yeah, but in a fight —you know, a fight, like I watch in the movies —they fight, they're fighting. How good is this? They say, 'Well, it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it. Even if it's right next to it, it can't see it.' I said, 'That helps. That's a good thing.'"

19. Robert E. Lee was a pirate shanty singer?

Finally, who could forget Trump’s attempt to give his own wow-filled Gettysburg Address in April. That’s when he recounted American history like … this:

There’s an infinite amount of examples detailing the strangeness of Trump. The GOP going after Harris for laughing sounds like a desperate recipe for failure. Here’s a bonus memory for the QAnon traveler who happens upon this article, because Trump hangs with only the best people:

Pitch in what you can to help Kamala Harris win the White House this November.

Kamala Harris hit with articles of impeachment over border crisis, ‘misleading’ people on Biden

A House Republican lawmaker is filing articles of impeachment against Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday, over both her handling of the border and knowledge, if any, of President Biden's alleged cognitive decline. 

Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., is accusing Harris of breaching public trust and of willfully refusing to uphold U.S. immigration law in two impeachment articles, obtained by Fox News Digital.

The former article on public trust accused Harris of having "knowingly misled the people of the United States and the Congress of the United States, principally to obfuscate the physical and cognitive well-being of the President of the United States, Joe Biden."

It comes as a growing number of Republican lawmakers question what Harris knew and when about Biden's mental state after even allies observed that it had worsened over the course of the 81-year-old's White House term.

HOW WOULD A PRESIDENT HARRIS HANDLE IMMIGRATION, BORDER CRISIS?

The latter article is targeted at Harris's handling of the crisis at the southern border over her role as the Biden administration's "border czar." She was tasked early on in the administration with addressing the root causes of mass migration from Central and South America.

It's now the cornerstone of GOP-led attacks against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, as states across the country continue to struggle with the migrant crisis, though the number of border crossings has somewhat slowed in recent months compared to the record numbers seen last year.

CREATOR OF IMMIGRATION CHART THAT ‘SAVED’ TRUMP'S LIFE FROM WOULD BE ASSASSIN CREDITS ‘PROVIDENCE’ 

"Kamala Devi Harris has demonstrated extraordinary incompetence in the execution of her duties and responsibilities, a stark refusal to uphold the existing immigration law, and a palpable indifference to people of the United States suffering as a result of the ongoing southern border crisis in the United States," the impeachment articles state.

"During her tenure as the designated border czar, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency ‘encountered' nearly 302,000 illegal aliens at the southwest border in December 2023, the highest monthly total ever recorded and representing 4 consecutive months of over 240,000 illegal alien ‘encounters.'"

Ogles' impeachment articles are the latest update in the House GOP's legislative offensive against Harris ever since she took up Biden's mantle on Sunday.

FLASHBACK: KAMALA HARRIS COMPARED ICE TO KKK IN SENATE HEARING 

Biden caught millions of Americans by surprise on Sunday afternoon when he announced he would drop out of the presidential race after mounting pressure to do so by fellow Democrats.

Just as Ogles introduced his legislation on Tuesday, the House Rules Committee advanced a resolution by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., to condemn Harris over the border crisis. That bill is expected to get a House-wide vote sometime this week.

Fox News Digital reached out to Harris' office for comment.

Top five moments from Secret Service director’s hours-long grilling after Trump assassination attempt

U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testified for hours on Capitol Hill Monday, facing a grilling from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over the agency’s lapse in security that enabled the assassination attempt on former President Trump. 

Cheatle testified before the House Oversight Committee, led by Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., after he subpoenaed her to appear.

REP. MACE CALLS 'BULLS---' ON RESPONSE FROM SECRET SERVICE DIRECTOR CHEATLE

Cheatle testified before the House Oversight Committee Monday, just over a week after a would-be assassin Thomas Crooks attempted to take the life of Trump at his rally in Butler, Pa. on July 13. 

Trump, during his rally, ever-so-slightly turned his head—narrowly missing the bullet shot by 20-year-old suspect Crooks’ AR-15-style rifle by just a quarter of an inch. The bullet hit him, instead, in his upper right ear.

The bullet killed firefighter, father and husband Corey Comperatore as he protected his family from the shots, and severely injured two others. 

Cheatle admitted under oath that the Secret Service "on July 13th, we failed." 

Here are the top five moments from the highly-anticipated hearing: 

Cheatle told the House Oversight Committee that "on July 13th, we failed" when it came to her agency's handling of the assassination attempt on the former president and the shooting at his Butler, Pa. rally. 

"As the director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency," she continued.

"We must learn what happened, and I will move heaven and earth to ensure that an incident like July 13th does not happen again," Cheatle also said. "Our agents, officers and support personnel understand that every day we are expected to sacrifice our lives to execute a no fail mission."

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., called on Cheatle to resign, along with other Republican lawmakers. 

But Democrats called for her resignation as well, including Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who said, "If you have an assassination attempt on a president or a former president or a candidate, you need to resign."

Cheatle has maintained that she will not resign, and said she is committed to getting answers on the massive security failure for the American people. 

TIMELINE: TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., says he plans to introduce articles of impeachment against her.

"In light of Kimberly Cheatle’s unacceptable handling of the Trump assassination attempt, her disastrous appearance before the House Oversight committee today, and her refusal to resign, we have no choice but to impeach," Steube said in a post on X. "I will be filing articles of impeachment against Kimberly Cheatle this afternoon."

And Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., accused Cheatle of perjuring herself and stonewalling members of the House Oversight Committee, telling her protectees are "sitting ducks" with her in charge.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., told Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday that her response that she had "no idea" how her opening statement for today’s House Oversight Committee hearing on the Trump rally shooting got leaked to media agencies is "bulls---." 

The fiery remark from the South Carolina lawmaker came after Cheatle was directed by Mace to answer a series of yes or no questions on the Secret Service’s response to the attempted assassination of former President Trump in Pennsylvania, in which Cheatle said "yes" to it being a "colossal failure," and a tragedy that could have been prevented. 

"Would you say leaking your opening statement to Punchbowl News, Politico’s Playbook and Washington Post several hours before you sent it to this committee as being political? Yes or no?" Mace asked Cheatle. 

"I have no idea how my statement got out," Cheatle responded. 

Mace fired back: "Well that’s bulls---." 

Mace started mentioning news articles published between 5 and 7 a.m. ET, about three to four hours before she said the House Oversight Committee received Cheatle's statement.

Mace then asked Cheatle, "Have you provided all audio and video recordings in your possession to this committee, as we asked on July 15? Yes or no?"  

SECRET SERVICE DIRECTOR OPENS TESTIMONY WITH FRANK ADMISSION: ‘WE FAILED’ -- BUT WON’T RESIGN 

"I would have to get back to you," Cheatle said. 

"That is a no. You're full of s-- today. You're just being completely dishonest," Mace told Cheatle, before being interrupted with a call for decorum inside the hearing room at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday said that "for the event in Butler, there were no requests that were denied" from former President Trump's team. 

"They asked for additional help in some form or another. You told them no. How many times did you tell them no? And what'd you tell them no to?" Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked Cheatle, referencing comments made by Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi. 

"What I can tell you is that in generic terms, when people when details make a request, there are times that there are alternate ways to cover off on that threat or that report," Cheatle responded. 

Cheatle testified Monday that she called former President Trump after the shooting to apologize. 

She stressed, though, that the Secret Service and "the people that are in charge of protecting the president on that day would never bring the former president out if there was a threat that had been identified." 

Trump told "Jesse Watters Primetime" in an interview that aired Monday night that Cheatle came to see him in the days following the assassination attempt.

"It went very nicely. She was very nice, I thought. But, you know, somebody should have made sure there was nobody on that roof," he said. 

Fox News' Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.

House GOP sure wasted a lot of America’s time and money on Biden

Republicans have wasted so much: It’s not just the carloads of “Let’s Go Brandon!” merch now on its way to landfills, it’s a huge amount of time and money that is owed directly to Americans. As soon as they gained a small majority—and once they were past the first round of follies in naming a speaker—Republicans got right on their No. 1 priority.

That priority wasn’t passing legislation to help people. They've been one of the least effective Congress in history. Instead, they jumped right into the most important task of all modern Republicans: Showing their loyalty to Donald Trump by launching unfounded attacks on his opponents. 

In the House, that meant not one, not two, but three simultaneous investigations into everything Biden. A car loan, his son's private parts, anything was fodder for a mill meant to crank out a never-ending stream of Biden "scandal."

All of this is completely worthless to the country. Now it’s not even useful to Trump.

The Republican grovel fest, headed up by Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan, was ridiculous from the outset. 

There was the fake FBI document produced by a Russian mole whose repeated claims were originally pushed in 2019 by Rudy Giuliani and were debunked almost as soon as they appeared. That hasn’t stopped Jordan from repeating these easily disproved lies and pretending to seriously investigate Biden’s actions in helping to get rid of a corrupt official. 

Meanwhile, Comer was busy trying to prove that Biden was the recipient of money from China, talking up a witness who could prove everything if Republicans could find him. Comer went after Hunter Biden for paying back a small loan when Biden wasn’t even in office. Then there was a small personal loan to his brother, also while Biden wasn’t in office. In the end, they turned on Attorney General Merrick Garland when they could find no reason to impeach Biden. 

That was the biggest problem for these Republicans: Biden hadn't done anything wrong. But that didn't stop them from crowing over every false claim as if it were proof that Biden was the godfather of the "Biden crime family." A crime family that is somehow so huge and corrupt and has netted Biden a beach home that isn’t even on the beach rather than towers full of golden targets. 

Efforts to generate support for a Biden impeachment ran out of steam last fall, so Republicans were never able to present to Trump that “see, he was impeached too!” present they were so anxious to deliver. By spring, Republicans were looking for some way to escape this whole pointless exercise.

And now ... all of it is a waste. Republicans loved to complain about how much former FBI Director Robert Mueller spent investigating Trump’s connections with Russia, but they haven’t been as quick to post how much they’ve spent investigating Biden to absolutely no purpose. 

Want to see how important it really was? Just watch how quickly Republicans drop these investigations for vital hearings over plastic straws and whether or not Harris was too tough on crime.

But, even before Biden withdrew from the election, this was already a waste. For everything they had done, House Republicans never laid a finger on Biden. Nothing stuck to Biden because it was all malarkey.

But they did show that they were completely under Trump's control so ... job well done.

RELATED STORIES:

Latest GOP conspiracy theory: Biden’s doctor is part of the ‘crime family’

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Biden says he won’t step aside. What happens next?

Despite continuing calls for him to step aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee, President Joe Biden says he’s not going anywhere. A significant contingent of Democratic leaders disagrees with that decision.

So where do things stand now?

This year’s presidential race was already neck-and-neck heading into a June 27 debate that Biden requested, using rules he established. The result was not great, as I wrote at the time. “President Joe Biden had one job Thursday, one job only—prove to America that he still has what’s needed to be president, despite rampant questions about his age. He didn’t do that. Instead, he validated the worst criticisms.”

Three weeks later, the debate rages on inside the Democratic Party: Should Biden stay or should he go?

The problem is, there is no real mechanism to force him out. Some have said that delegates can take it upon themselves to ditch Biden, given the party rule stating that “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” That sounds good on paper, except that it’s not as simple as that.

There are 3,979 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention. To oust Biden, 1,990 would have to not just abandon Biden, but do so for a single other candidate. This means there would have to be an actual campaign, with all the trappings that would entail—public appeals for support, clearing the field, and managing the inherent divisiveness of such a move. (Disclosure: I’m a California delegate to the convention.)

In other words, forcing Biden out of the race against his will would require an organized rebellion and unity in purpose that is well beyond the Democratic Party’s ability. You can see it even in the statements of those demanding that Biden quit—few are clearly advocating for the obvious alternative, Vice President Kamala Harris. They all talk about some truncated primary process because the second an actual Biden alternative is named, it generates opposition from supporters of other potential replacement candidates.

That’s why on Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiff called for Biden to “pass the torch” without explaining how and to whom. The second he named a name, people would disagree with that alternative, starting a debate that does nothing to help us win in November.

Timing is important here, as there are several deadlines approaching. One is the party’s decision to nominate Biden in a virtual roll call, first agreed on to avoid the filing deadline in Ohio. Like Alabama, Ohio’s deadline has since been moved to after the convention, so efforts to continue with the virtual roll call appear to be motivated by the desire to shut down Biden’s intra-party detractors and lock in Biden’s nomination ahead of the late-August Democratic convention.

That doesn’t mean that Biden, even after being nominated, couldn’t drop out and release his delegates by the convention’s start. The bigger timing issue is simple: We’re less than four months away from Election Day, and every single day that the focus isn’t on Donald Trump is a day that he has effectively won the news cycle.

Elections are usually a referendum on the incumbent. This year, we effectively have two incumbents—a sitting and a former president. So in order to win, we have to make this election about Trump and ask voters whether they want to return to the chaos, incompetence, and fascist tendencies of the Trump administration … but supercharged.

538’s polling average has shown a roughly 2-point drop for Biden post debate, a relatively small effect given his disastrous performance and the media’s near-constant coverage of it. But the explanation is simple: It’s about the narrative.

Before the debate, Democrats said Trump was a dangerous liar, and Republicans said Biden was cognitively addled and old. Then the debate happened, and what did voters see? They saw that Trump was a dangerous liar, and Biden was old and suffering from cognitive decline. The narrative had been set, and the debate confirmed it. Biden missed a golden opportunity to reset that narrative, but it wasn’t to be.

Ultimately, voters saw nothing in the debate that they didn’t already assume was true.

And because of that, some Democrats’ efforts to push Biden out of the race have largely proven self-destructive. The news cycle is speeding past at a dizzying pace. An assassination attempt on Trump four days ago is now old news. Had Democrats shrugged off Biden’s performance and quickly moved on, the whole debacle would now be ancient, mostly forgotten news. Instead, Democrats have insisted on replaying the ordeal in the news every single day.

I get it—we have a lot more at stake than Republicans do. Democrats recognize that our rights and our very democracy are on the line. As for Republicans: What do they have to fear from Biden? Just look at Trump’s nickname for Biden—”Sleepy Joe.” We are fearful of losing our rights, they are fearful of what—a president that falls asleep?

We even have data on this. A March AP poll found that around 70% of Democrats were fearful of another Trump presidency, while a significantly fewer 56% of Republicans said the same about a Biden presidency. He’s just not that scary.

That’s why conservative memes often portray Biden as a puppet being manipulated by George Soros or Bernie Sanders (the Jews!), or Barack Obama or Harris (the scary Blacks!). Or maybe all of the above.  

Trump and his MAGA ilk really don’t know how to run against an old white man, someone who looks just like the Republican base. They prefer to run against the “other.” That’s always been the case, and that’s why Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019, to try to manufacture a fake investigation against Hunter Biden. That was the same phone call that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

At that time, Biden was polling in the high 20s or low 30s in the Democratic primary. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were polling high, and had they united the left wing of the party, could’ve posed a serious threat. But Trump wasn’t worried about them: He was worried about Biden, and actively working to kneecap his candidacy early. Turns out, Trump had every reason to fear Biden the most.

For his part, Biden is through listening to his party’s critics. He wanted to run for president in 2016, but party leaders pushed him aside in favor of Hillary Clinton. When he geared up to run in 2019, the same voices claimed he was too old and archaic to defeat Trump. Heck, I was saying those things. Yet Biden proved his critics wrong, and did something that has only been done five times since 1912—he defeated an incumbent president.

Biden is done listening to critics.

So the critics in the Democratic Party are saying he should step aside, and he’s thinking, “They were wrong in 2016, they were wrong again in 2020, and they’re wrong again today.”

Of course, the Biden of four years ago is a different one than today’s Biden. Heck, he even seems different from the Biden who nailed the State of the Union address back on March 7. So yeah, people have reason to be freaked out, but the fundamentals of the race haven’t changed. Swapping out a candidate won’t reset the race for the Democrats; it’ll just create strife and ill feelings at a time when we need to be focused on Trump and his Project 2025 agenda. And much of what I wrote pre-debate about why Biden is not looking as bad as the polls indicate? It still holds up today.

Democrats have been overperforming polling since 2020. That includes 2022, when everyone declared that a red wave was inevitably going to sweep Democrats out of power in Congress, state houses, and state legislatures across the country. That certainly didn’t happen. And in regular and special elections, Democrats continue to overperform. Meanwhile, Trump underperformed his polling during the contested part of the Republican primary season.

Even globally, the far right has underperformed polling and expectations in India, Poland, and most recently, in France. (The right was swept out of office in the United Kingdom, but that was well predicted by the polling.) We’re consistently seeing that when facing right-wing authoritarian fascism, voters turn out in greater numbers than predicted, no matter what the polls say.

None of that means Biden is a shoo-in, but we’re not facing a calamitous situation. Indeed, Biden’s chances of winning in 538’s election model have inched up in recent days, to 54%. That’s a coin flip, within the margin of engagement. That was true before the debate, it’s true after the debate, and it will be true after the Republican convention and even the Democratic one.

The winner of the 2024 presidential election will come down to which side out-hustles the other one on the ground, turning out their vote in just a handful of battleground states. There isn’t a single potential candidate (pie-in-the-sky nominee Michelle Obama doesn’t count) that would significantly change the dynamics of this race. The country is locked into hyperpartisanship so strong that few people’s minds will be changed by anything—not even the attempted assassination of one of the candidates. (It’s true: Trump got zero bump.)

With Biden fully committed to his reelection campaign, it serves little purpose for senior Democrats to continue undermining the sitting president. You don’t have to like it (most don’t), you can think it sucks (and you might be right!), but Biden is holding all the cards. We either get back to focusing on Trump and Project 2025, or we give Trump a big assist in his bid to reoccupy the Oval Office.

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Biden wants to reform the Supreme Court. So do Americans

On Tuesday evening, The Washington Post reported that President Joe Biden is preparing to announce his support for major reforms to the Supreme Court. Rather than call for immediate expansion of the court or for the impeachment of justices clearly violating the court’s toothless ethics guidelines, Biden will seek to establish term limits and an enforceable code of ethics.

Biden is also considering whether to promote a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s recent decision giving presidents broad immunity from prosecution.

While not offering the prospect of immediate relief from the precedent-breaking rulings of this ultraconservative court, Biden’s proposals would bring serious (and overdue) changes to the court—and they’re some of the most consequential ever put forward. The proposals also have the advantage of not being overtly partisan or created to generate a particular end, unlike court expansion. They also have the advantage of being really smart politics.

Republicans would viciously fight any Democratic proposal to expand the court. They would see any attempt by Biden to tack on four or six new justices as explicitly partisan, designed to weaken their iron grip on the court. Not only would such a proposal be immediately squelched in the Republican-controlled House, it also wouldn’t see much consideration in the filibuster-happy Senate.

When polled by Gallup in 2023, Americans were roughly evenly split over the idea of expanding the court, with 51% opposing it and 46% supporting it. But the same poll shows overwhelmingly bipartisan support both for placing an age limit on members of the court (74% support it) and for placing term limits on Congress members (87% percent support it). The reported proposal from Biden would sort of combine those two ideas, using a term limit for justices instead of an age limit. This has advantages over putting an age limit on the court because three of the four youngest justices are Trump appointees, and an age limit would allow them to remain on the court for decades to come.

And while Republicans would assail placing term limits on justices, that proposal would likely garner high enough levels of public support to make Republicans think twice. Even if they don’t, Republican leadership would be on record opposing a popular proposal, while Biden would be on record as offering an innovative solution to a widely-recognized problem.

Smart. Politics.

This is even more true for an enforceable code of ethics. A May survey from Data for Progress shows 77% of likely voters say Supreme Court justices and their spouses should be required to follow a code of ethics. Just 10% of likely voters, including only 18% of Republicans, oppose this idea. Overall, 73% felt that members of the court should be held to the same ethics standards as other federal judges. Only 17% felt that the court should be allowed to set its own ethical standards. 

That’s about as good a mandate as any idea is going to get in a day when the majority of Americans oppose teaching Arabic numbers. People may not know the history of the symbols they use when paying for a burger, but they know that Justice Clarence Thomas is dirty as hell.

Republicans in Congress are sure to view any ethics proposal as a response to the escapades of Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito and their insurrection-loving wives. So would the public. However, not only do a majority of likely voters support impeaching both Thomas and Alito (after voters are informed about those justices’ ethical lapses), but putting Republicans in the position of opposing ethical guidelines is essentially the same as forcing them to stand there and declare themselves the party of corruption.

That’s also very smart politics.

Biden’s proposal for a constitutional amendment to reverse the recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity is also likely to be popular. No one is particularly fond of the “Seal Team 6” scenario in which a president would be immune from having his political rivals assassinated. And it could be seen as a willingness on Biden’s part to surrender power and hold his office to higher standards at the same time that he is proposing such standards for the court.

None of this is to say that expanding the court is a bad idea. It may be the only way that the United States could gain relief from this court’s egregious rulings. Democrats should absolutely be ready to push that idea if this year’s election provides them the presidency and a majority in both chambers of Congress.

But right now, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin should be prepared to pounce on Biden’s court proposals as soon as they are announced.

There are good ideas. These are likely to be popular ideas. This is a very good fight to have in the months leading up to the election. So please, have it. Loudly and enthusiastically.

Now would be better than later. Getting this in public and forcing Republicans to react to it while the RNC is still going on would be just … peachy. Let Donald Trump deliver an acceptance speech in which he bombastically defends corruption. Put Republicans on the defense.

And deliver something the public not only wants but needs.

Morning Digest: Vulnerable Washington Republican plays 3D chess to keep career afloat

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

WA-04: Rep. Dan Newhouse, who is one of the two remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, has launched an ad attacking one of his intraparty foes ahead of Washington’s Aug. 6 top-two primary—but not the one endorsed by Trump.

The congressman's target instead is Tiffany Smiley, who was the GOP’s nominee against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray in 2022. Newhouse's spot, which appears to be his first negative ad of the campaign, does not mention Trump's choice in the conservative 4th District, former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler.

Rather, Newhouse's ad features a cast of voters in central Washington arguing that Smiley "deceived" her donors following her defeat last cycle.

"Tiffany Smiley started a PAC claiming to raise money to support conservative candidates," one declares, "but contributions were funneled to pay off her own multimillion-dollar campaign debt."

Smiley raised $20 million for her Senate race, a contest that, according to several conservative pollsters, had a real chance to succeed in an otherwise blue state. Despite those optimistic numbers, though, she finished on the wrong end of a 57-43 landslide and wound up with $1 million in unpaid bills.

Smiley took to conservative media a few months later to announce the launch of a group called Endeavor PAC to aid "political outsiders," and she pledged that "every dollar amount goes directly towards helping candidates." The Seattle Times' Jim Brunner, however, reported that donations to the group were directed toward paying off Smiley’s remaining debts to a Virginia-based consulting firm.

Brunner noted that Endeavor PAC's website did explain how donations would be prioritized—albeit in the "eighth paragraph of tiny print on the PAC's donation page."

"If you are not familiar with this stuff, it all looks like a bunch of gobbledygook," said Brendan Glavin of the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, who nonetheless agreed that Smiley appeared to be adhering to the law.

Smiley, for her part, recently debuted her own commercial in which she argues that voters can "secure our border and make life affordable again by picking better people to fight for us in Congress." A different ad explicitly attacks Newhouse for his 2021 impeachment vote and calls Sessler a vegan who “wants to tax our beef.” 

Sessler tells The Spokesman-Review that the claim about him wanting to tax beef is “a complete lie.” He also says that, while he’s tried to eat “a lot of raw, fresh, organic food” after being diagnosed with cancer 25 years ago, he still consumes beef. Sessler does not appear to have launched any TV ads of his own yet.

The only poll we’ve seen is a late June internal for Smiley from Newton Heath, a firm we don’t often come across, that the Tri-City Herald first reported about on Friday. The survey places Smiley in first with 30% as Newhouse beats out Sessler 21-11, with Democrats Mary Baechler and Barry Knowles at 9% each. 

While this is just one survey, there was already reason to think the general election could be an all-Republican affair, just as it was in both 2014 and 2016. In more recent cycles, only a single Democrat has appeared on the primary ballot: This time, however, Baechler, Knowles, and another contender named Jane "Birdie" Muchlinski are each campaigning as Democrats. (This doesn't include John Malan, a perennial candidate who will be listed on the ballot as a "MAGA Democrat.")

With such a crowded field, the vote could be badly fractured, but that's likelier to keep Democrats from advancing rather than Republicans: Given that Trump carried the 4th District 57-40 in 2020, there are simply fewer left-leaning votes to go around.

And not only are we almost entirely flying blind in terms of polling, there hasn't been much money to follow either: So far, outside groups have spent just $50,000 to boost Newhouse and around $75,000 on behalf of Smiley. That could, however, change during the final weeks of the contest.

Newhouse is hoping to avoid the fate of his former Evergreen State colleague, Jaime Herrera Beutler, who made history the hard way two years ago in the neighboring 3rd District. Until her race, no incumbent had ever failed to advance out of a top-two primary since Washington adopted the system in 2008.

But like Newhouse, Herrera Beutler supported impeaching Trump, who responded by endorsing her MAGA challenger, Army veteran Joe Kent. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez consolidated the Democratic vote, while Kent narrowly edged past Herrera Beutler, only to lose to Gluesenkamp Perez in an upset in the fall.

Herrera Beutler was one of eight pro-impeachment Republicans who never returned to Congress, with several losing primaries and several others opting to retire. Just two held their seats: Newhouse and California Rep. David Valadao, who is a top Democratic target this fall.

Governors

DE-Gov: An outside group called Citizens for a New Delaware Way released a poll on Thursday arguing that Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long is beatable in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary for governor and said it would seek deprive her of the nomination.

The survey, conducted by Slingshot Strategies, shows Hall-Long deadlocked 27-27 with New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer while National Wildlife Federation leader Collin O'Mara take 7%. A 34% plurality are undecided, while the remaining 5% opt for "someone else."

Citizens for a New Delaware Way said it would spend "upwards of $1 million" in this year's elections, though it hasn't said how much it plans to commit specifically to the primary to succeed termed-out Democratic Gov. John Carney. The organization, which says it "promotes transparency, accountability, diversity, and inclusion in Delaware's state government and court system," said it was targeting Hall-Long because of what it called her "failure to support judicial diversity." It does not appear to have endorsed Meyer or O'Mara.

House

WA-06: State Sen. Emily Randall has publicized an endorsement from former Gov. Christine Gregoire, a fellow Democrat who led Washington from 2005 to 2013, ahead of the Aug. 6 top-two primary for the open 6th District.

Poll Pile

  • WI-Sen: North Star Opinion Research (R) for American Greatness: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 49, Eric Hovde (R): 41 (46-44 Trump in two-way, 38-36 Trump with third-party candidates) (April: 49-40 Baldwin)

  • IL-11: Cygnal (R) for Jerry Evans: Bill Foster (D-inc): 41, Jerry Evans (R): 34 (38-37 Biden with third-party candidates)

Ad Roundup

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Aftermath of a shooting

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

Edward Luce/Financial Times:

America is staring into the abyss

After the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, an already existential election is now even more fraught

It is not just Donald Trump who dodged a bullet. Half an inch to the left and the cartridge that grazed Trump’s ear would have turned him into a martyr. There is no telling what his death would have unleashed.

As it is, the reprehensible attempted assassination of Trump will have profound reverberations for US democracy. Within seconds of being blanketed by secret service agents, Trump was yelling “fight, fight, fight” to the crowd. The instantly ubiquitous photo of him pumping his fist against the backdrop of the stars and stripes will become the emblem of his campaign.

A high-trust society would have awaited the facts of the shooting before leaping to conclusions. By that yardstick, America is close to the edge. Two of the Republicans auditioning to be Trump’s vice-presidential running mate blamed Democrats for inciting hatred of Trump. The favourite, Ohio senator JD Vance, said the Biden campaign’s rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”. Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, said Democrats’ “inflammatory rhetoric puts lives at risk”. Elon Musk, owner of the site, X, on which these statements were posted, was quick to weigh in on a conspiracy about how the shooter could have got so close: “Either extreme incompetence or it was deliberate,” Musk wrote.

The Republican convention starts Monday. That will put an end to the “politics on hold” feeling throughout the country as we assess where we are at and where we are going.

Two years ago, Congress considered banning 18-20 year-olds from buying AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles after the Uvalde massacre, and some Republicans were briefly open to doing so but ultimately blocked including a ban in the bipartisan gun bill signed by Biden. https://t.co/0tG5WmzUDH

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) July 14, 2024

David Frum/The Atlantic:

The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator

Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others.

Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.

Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well. The attempted murder of Trump—and the killing of a person nearby—is a horror and an outrage. More will be learned about the man who committed this appalling act, and who was killed by the Secret Service. Whatever his mania or motive, the only important thing about him is the law-enforcement mistake that allowed him to bring a deadly weapon so close to a campaign event and gain a sight line of the presidential candidate. His name should otherwise be erased and forgotten.

Washington Post:

Misinformation spreads swiftly in hours after Trump rally shooting

Conspiracy theories swell around false flags, Deep State, Biden and the Secret Service, filling the information vacuum as consumers choose their own reality.

Even after investigators identified the shooter and confirmed some details of the attack, conspiracies that were born Saturday evening hardened into narratives that further politicized the violence.

Some accounts from the left of the political spectrum immediately claimed that the shooting was a “false flag” operation perpetrated by Trump’s own supporters. Some on the far right accused President Biden of ordering a hit on a political rival.

“Incidents of political violence spawn conspiracy theories and false narratives when people try to spin the event to suit their various agendas,” Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told The Washington Post. “This incident is no different, with people concocting ‘false flag’ conspiracies and even blaming innocent people for either committing this crime or inspiring it.”

New polls from Fox, CBS, & NBC this AM find Trump up by 1-2 pts, well within the margin of error, nationally and in the swing states. This is a close race where anything (assassination attempts, health concerns, policy salience, ground game, poll bias) could make the difference.

— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) July 14, 2024

New York Times:

Some Political Figures Who Condemned Saturday’s Violence Spoke From Experience

Judges, members of Congress and local elections officials have all been besieged with threats of political violence in recent years.

In a striking sign of how deep violence has become embedded in American politics, several of the political figures who condemned the shooting at Saturday night’s rally for former President Donald J. Trump had experienced political violence themselves.

“Political violence is terrifying. I know,” Gabrielle Giffords said in a statement. Ms. Giffords, a former Democratic representative from Arizona, was shot in the head at a political event in 2011, where six people were killed. “I’m holding former President Trump, and all those affected by today’s indefensible act of violence in my heart.”

Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by @Moreincommon_ The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing. pic.twitter.com/534QW3osjy

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) July 15, 2024

Phillips P O’Brien/”Phillips’s Newsletter” on Substack:

An Even Worse Letter About Ukraine

Which Did Not Seem Possible After the Realists Stepped In.

Its open season for terrible open letters by academics and retired civil servants and other assorted Russian apologists telling Ukraine what Ukraine must do, and other countries who want to support Ukraine what they must do (or more accurately what they must not do). There was the open letter by the “Realists” last week, which I talked about in Sunday’s weekend update. This letter was covered with unsupported (and unsupportable) statements and had some weird logical inconsistencies. What is interesting is that on Twitter one of the authors came to say I was wrong—but when I asked him about one of those inconsistencies (why should the Baltic states be treated any differently on this than Ukraine), there was no response.

Phillips P O’Brien/The Atlantic:

The Final Six Months of U.S. Aid for Ukraine

If Trump wins, Kyiv’s cause is in danger. Biden must prepare for that possibility.

The Ukrainian people may be six months away from losing military aid from the United States—again. President Joe Biden, however, seems not to recognize any urgency. When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked him how he’d feel if Donald Trump defeated him in November, Biden responded, “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” Biden’s personal feelings will be small consolation to the Ukrainian people, for whom Trump’s return could prove deadly.

Last year, the former president helped engineer what turned out to be an approximately four-month interruption in U.S. assistance to Ukraine, which Russia invaded in 2022. Trump has vowed to end the war quickly, which would likely mean letting Russia keep territory it seized in 2022 and giving Russian President Vladimir Putin an advantageous position for future invasions. Trump is leading in the polls. Biden’s administration—which has supported Ukraine steadfastly, albeit overcautiously in many respects—should be taking aggressive steps now to bolster that beleaguered country’s self-defense while it still can.

Matt McNeill and Cliff Schecter discuss Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the impeachment articles against Justices Thomas and Alito: