McConnell called Trump a stupid narcissist but will vote for him anyway

Proving that a broken clock is right twice a day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell trashed former President Donald Trump in private following the 2020 election, calling Trump “stupid,” a “narcissist,” and a “despicable human being,” according to a soon-to-be-released biography of the Kentucky Republican.

McConnell’s frank assessments of the leader of the GOP were made in recorded diaries given to Michael Tackett, the Associated Press deputy Washington bureau chief, for his new McConnell biography titled “The Price of Power.” According to publisher Simon & Schuster, it’s based on “thousands of pages of archival materials, letters, and more than 100 interviews with associates, colleagues, and McConnell himself.”

In those diaries, McConnell said “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump was out of the White House, adding that Trump’s 2020 loss “only underscores the good judgment of the American people.”

"They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him," McConnell said.

Yet despite McConnell’s disdain for Trump, he gave up on the best opportunity to rid his party and the country of the man he called a liar when he voted against convicting Trump for inciting the violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Had McConnell worked to rally the Republican senators he leads to vote to convict Trump on the single impeachment charge of inciting insurrection, Trump could have been barred from running for office again in the future. McConnell’s decision to let Trump slide helped pave the way for Trump to wage his current comeback bid. Trump has vowed to destabilize American democracy by threatening to jail his political enemies and using the military to go after American citizens whom he described as “the enemy from within.” 

What’s more, even though McConnell thinks Trump is “stupid” and a “despicable human being,” he endorsed Trump in his 2024 comeback bid, saying in March: “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell endorsed Trump because he is trying to prevent what he called his “worst nightmare” which he described as a Democratic sweep of the White House, the House, and the Senate. 

While McConnell has stuck by Trump, a number of other Republicans have said they won’t be voting for him and instead endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, declaring that they are putting “country over party.”

Those Republicans include: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming Rep Liz Cheney; former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general in former President George W. Bush’s administration; and former Trump White House aides Cassidy Hutchinson, Stephanie Grisham, and Olivia Troye, among others.

Harris and her campaign have been reaching out to Republicans, hoping that their defections from Trump could be decisive in what’s currently predicted to be a toss-up election in November.

She held a rally on Wednesday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with over 100 Republicans who are supporting her campaign. Two of those Republicans, Bob and Kristina Lange, spoke at the event, describing themselves as lifelong Republicans who voted for Trump. 

“Never in a million years did either of us think that we'd be standing here supporting a Democrat. But we've had enough. We've had enough,” Kristina Lange said at the event.

If only McConnell had as much courage as the Langes. 

Looking to volunteer to help get out the vote? Click here to view multiple ways you can help reach voters—textbanking, phonebanking, letters, postcards, parties, canvassing. We’ve got you covered!

Outside of his bubble, Trump flails at Univision town hall

Donald Trump participated in a town hall with voters hosted by Univision on Wednesday night, and the event was a showcase of the headwinds Trump faces when he ventures outside of his right-wing bubble.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump has rarely faced questions from those who aren’t already supporters, and he has largely avoided media outlets that do not have a conservative bias. The voters who spoke to Trump at the Univision event respectfully questioned Trump on important issues, but he often veered off into unrelated ranting or avoiding the subject.

Ramiro González, a former registered Republican, told Trump he was disillusioned by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and Trump’s role in inciting the attack. He asked Trump to win back his vote by explaining his behavior during the attack and his mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump restated his claim that he did nothing wrong on the day of the attack, despite his speech that day telling supporters to “fight like hell.” Trump also lied and said there were no guns at the attack, but there were.

“That was a day of love,” Trump said, as González looked on skeptically.

Another voter asked Trump why he pressured Republicans to kill a bipartisan border-security bill. Instead of answering, Trump filibustered and discussed his support for “strong” borders and complained about crime in cities run by Democratic officials.

Trump also continued to promote the debunked racist conspiracy theory that he and running mate JD Vance have advanced. Trump told voters he claimed Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating domestic animals because “I was just saying what was reported,” adding that migrants “are eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be.”

Trump’s poor showing on Wednesday comes after Vice President Kamala Harris was the guest of a Univision town hall last week. At that event, Harris expressed sympathy for a woman whose mother died after her immigration status held up medical care.

The troubled outing for Trump also stands in contrast to his appearance at an all-woman town hall event on Fox News, which the network aired Wednesday morning. That audience was more receptive to Trump, but the network failed to disclose that the crowd was packed with supporters picked out by the Georgia Federation of Republican Women.

At around the same time as Trump’s Univision event, Harris sat for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. Despite his hostile questioning, Harris deftly handled the inquiry and even called out the network for deceptively editing comments from Trump.

Earlier on the day of Trump’s Univision town hall, which took place in Doral, Florida, the Harris campaign hosted a nearby press conference with families who had been impacted by Trump’s policy of separating families at the border.

“I had no bed sheets, no bed, no nothing,” a young man identified as Billy told reporters, recounting his experience in detention. He said he was held in a room where the temperature was set to around 54 to 55 degrees.

Trump’s family-separation policy was widely condemned across the world, and the Biden-Harris administration has since devoted resources to reunifying affected families.

 

We need your help if we’re going to defeat Trump, Vance, Project 2025, and Republicans up and down the ballot. Click here to volunteer to write letters so we can increase voter turnout.

Campaign Action

Prosecutors: Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ in failed bid to cling to power

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors that offers new evidence from the landmark criminal case against the former president.

The filing from special counsel Jack Smith's team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Though a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump's efforts to undo the election, the filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump's closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who while losing his grip on the White House “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”

“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to try to halt the counting of electoral votes.

“The details don't matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.

The brief was made public over the Trump legal team’s objections in the final month of a closely contested presidential race in which Democrats have sought to make Trump’s refusal to accept the election results four years ago central to their claims that he is unfit for office. The issue surfaced as recently as Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate when Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, recounted the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, while Republican opponent, Sen. JD Vance, refused to directly answer when asked whether Trump had lost the 2020 race.

The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, a decision that narrowed the scope of the prosecution and eliminated the possibility of a trial before next month's election.

The purpose of the brief is to persuade U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, rather than official, acts and can therefore remain part of the case as it moves forward. Chutkan permitted a redacted version to be made public even though Trump's lawyers argued that it was unfair to unseal it so close to the election.

 

Though the prospects of a trial are uncertain, particularly in the event that Trump wins the presidency and a new attorney general dismisses the case, the brief nonetheless functions as a roadmap for the testimony prosecutors would elicit before a jury.

“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding, “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office."

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power." Trump, in a separate post on his Truth Social platform, said the case would end with his “complete victory.”

The filing alleges that Trump “laid the groundwork” for rejecting the election results before the contest was over, telling advisers that in the event he held an early lead he would “declare victory before the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.”

Immediately after the election, prosecutors say, his advisers sought to sow chaos in the counting of votes. In one instance, a campaign employee, who is also described as a Trump co-conspirator, was told that results favoring Democrat Joe Biden at a Michigan polling center appeared accurate. The person is alleged to have replied: “find a reason it isnt” and “give me options to file litigation.”

The filing also includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on Nov. 12, 2020, in which Pence “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him, “don’t concede but recognize the process is over,” according to prosecutors.

In another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024.

“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, according to the filing.

But Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states — including those in his own party — who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote.

The filing says by Dec. 5, the defendant was starting to think about Congress’ role in the process.

“For the first time, he mentioned to Pence the possibility of challenging the election results in the House of Representatives,” it says, citing a phone call.

Pence chronicled some of his interactions with Trump, and his eventual split with him, in a 2022 book he wrote called “So Help Me God.” He also was ordered to appear before the grand jury investigating Trump after courts rejected claims of executive privilege, giving prosecutors a first-hand account.

Prosecutors also argue Trump used his Twitter account to further his illegal scheme by spreading false claims of election fraud, attacking “those speaking the truth” about his election loss and exhorting his supporters to travel to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, certification. They intend to use "forensic evidence” from Trump’s iPhone to provide insight into Trump’s actions after the mob of his supporters began to attack the Capitol.

Of the more than 1,200 Tweets Trump sent during the weeks detailed in the indictment, the vast majority were about the 2020 election, prosecutors say. They cite a slew of Trump tweets throughout the filing, including those falsely claiming Pence could reject electors even though the vice president had told Trump that he had no such power.

That “steady stream of disinformation” in the weeks after the election culminated in his speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump “used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding,” prosecutors wrote.

His “personal desperation was at its zenith” that morning as he was “only hours from the certification proceeding that spelled the end,” prosecutors wrote.

Trump makes meeting with Ukrainian president all about Trump

 Donald Trump met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday and used the occasion to tout his poll numbers, complain at length about his first impeachment, and praise Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“We’re leading in the polls,” Trump told reporters at Trump Tower in New York, as Zelenskyy looked on. This is false. Trump is behind Vice President Kamala Harris in most national polls and averages of those polls, and is also trailing in many swing state polls.

After acknowledging that the war in Ukraine is a “terrible situation,” Trump claimed he has had a “great relationship” with Zelenskyy and brought up his first impeachment.

Donald Trump: When they did the impeachment hoax, it was a hoax, just a Democrat hoax, which we won, one of the reasons we won it so easily is that when the president was asked—it was over a phone call—with the president, and he said, he could have grandstanded and played cute, but he didn’t do that. He said, “President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong.” He said it loud and clear. And the impeachment hoax died right there.

Trump was impeached in 2019 on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The charges stemmed from Trump’s decision to initially withhold military aid to Ukraine while attempting to solicit political dirt on his rivals, like President Joe Biden. A key piece of evidence against Trump was a phone call in which he repeatedly pressured Zelenskyy to instigate an investigation into the Biden family, which Trump has repeatedly falsely categorized as a “perfect” call.

The articles of impeachment ultimately passed in the House and Trump was later acquitted on a party-line vote in the Republican-held Senate. Trump was also later impeached for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, becoming the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice.

In addition to relegating domestic political battles, Trump also used the occasion of his discussion with the Ukrainian leader to reiterate his long-standing habit of saying good things about Putin—who launched an invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“[Putin] wants it to end, and he wants it to end as quickly as possible,” Trump said, adding, “I’m sure President Putin wants it to stop.”

According to the United Nations, over 11,520 civilians in Ukraine have been killed since the war began, with an additional 23,640 who have been wounded. The U.S. government has estimated a death toll of 500,000 for military troops of both nations.

Putin has not ceased his aggression despite global condemnation of his actions, including from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other NATO allies.

Trump has threatened to cut U.S. aid to Ukraine if he wins the election and attacked Zelenskyy at a June rally as “the greatest salesman of all time” for securing financial support from the U.S.

“It never ends,” Trump complained.

By contrast, during her meeting on Thursday with Zelenskyy, Harris reiterated her support for Ukraine.

“The United States supports Ukraine not out of charity, but because it’s in our strategic interest,” she said.

Campaign Action

 

GOP held a hearing to bash Biden. Watch this Democrat turn the tables

GOP Rep. James Comer held a House Accountability and Oversight Committee hearing on Thursday titled, “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures.” The laughably biased display is the latest Republican attempt to bash President Joe Biden, tarnish Vice President Kamala Harris’ record, and bolster Donald Trump's flailing presidential campaign.

Not unlike the committee’s abject failure to find a single shred of evidence to impeach Biden, this new attempt did not go the Republican Party’s way. Instead of creating angry and aggrieved sound bites for MAGA minions to salivate over, the hearing was mostly a boring stream of conservative lies. 

Enter Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who used his time to detail the Biden administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people. Connolly enlisted Skye Perryman, CEO of public policy organization Democracy Forward and the only witness the Democrats were allowed to call during the hearing, as his willing accomplice in this brief history lesson.

He began by countering the GOP claims that the Biden administration’s environmental regulations preventing energy industries from drilling for oil willy-nilly are “impeding energy production.”

Not only are Trump and Republicans lying about how superior they are when it comes to American energy production, they are lying about the Biden administration’s historic success in reaching new levels of energy independence.

Connolly moved on from there, asking Perryman about the Trump administration’s attempts to pass an infrastructure bill.

Connolly: Did they ever pass an infrastructure bill?

Perryman: They did not.

Connolly: Did President Biden pass an infrastructure bill?

Perryman: He did.

Connolly: Is it also the largest infrastructure bill in American history?

Perryman: The Biden-Harris infrastructure bill is the largest in American history.

Connolly: And pretty comprehensive, covers lots of different kinds of infrastructure. Is that correct?

Perryman: Many infrastructure and lots of investment.

The Biden administration did indeed pass an infrastructure bill with nearly zero support from the Republican Party. 

Connolly then detailed the Trump administration's failures in Afghanistan, including the rushed withdrawal timeline that Republicans now decry and blame on Biden. Trump tried to make his already terrible plan catastrophic by ordering a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan after he lost the election in 2020. Thankfully, senior military staff did not follow through.

The GOP and Trump have also blamed Biden for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. So Connolly walked down memory lane to recall why, unlike Biden, Trump was first impeached in 2019. We all remember how Trump tried to extort Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election by withholding weapons for the country’s defense.

“Would it be fair to say that that development, that threat and that withholding of weapons, might be construed—if you were Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin—as a sign of weakness on the part of Ukraine and a sign that maybe the United States wasn't going to be there should something bad happen between Russia and Ukraine?” Connolly asked.

“It seems plausible,” Perryman agreed.

Finally, in light of the right wing’s frequent fearmongering over nuclear war and Iran, Connolly gave everyone watching the hearing a quick history lesson.

Connolly: Iran and nuclear weapons: Was there not an agreement that the United States actually led that involved Russia and China, Europe and Iran, to limit nuclear weapon production in Iran?

Perryman: There was a historic agreement.

Connolly: And was it working?

Perryman: Yes.

Connolly: In all respects?

Perryman: I believe so.

Connolly: Inspected by IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] and the Trump administration, and certified by both.

Perryman: Yes.

Connolly: Is that correct? And what happened to that treaty?

Perryman: President Trump pulled out.

Connolly:  And has Iran been less active in producing nuclear weapons, or more?

Perryman: Iran is now a greater threat because of that failure.

Connolly: So much for efficacy. Just thought I'd revisit that revisionist history.

Comer seems to have found a novel way to waste taxpayer money: using his position as chairman of the Accountability and Oversight Committee to nakedly campaign against the Biden-Harris administration and prop up Trump’s dogged quest to return to the White House.

If Thursday’s display was any indication, this latest effort will be about as effective as Comer’s last set of bogus hearings.

Volunteer to help get out the vote.

‘I was stunned. Sickened’: Hillary Clinton shares her Jan. 6 story

In an interview on Thursday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed her family’s shock and anguish as they watched the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters.

Clinton appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” as part of a promotional tour for her new memoir, “Something Lost, Something Gained.”

“Bill [Clinton] told me that there were rioters who were doing what they thought to be Trump’s bidding, trying to interrupt the certification of the election in the Congress and were in full riot mode,” Clinton said. “Bill had his—literally—head in his hands, he just could not believe it. I was looking at a place I’d gone to work in for eight years, I was stunned. Sickened.”

Clinton also noted that her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who grew up in the public eye and has had cordial relationships with members of both parties, joined her and her husband “in a state of deep, deep worry and despair” watching the events unfold.

Clinton said her family questioned Trump’s failure to call off his supporters as they ransacked the building.

“[Trump] was enjoying what he was watching on television, that’s the only conclusion one can draw,” Clinton said. She cited Trump’s support of “raw power, intimidation, domination” and praise for authoritarian leaders like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to explain the motivation for his inaction on “one of the worst days in American history.”

Seven people died as a result of the attack and at least 174 police officers were assaulted. Trump was impeached—for a historic second time—for inciting the attack, and has been charged with federal crimes for attempting to interfere in the election process.

During his current presidential campaign, Trump has said if elected he would grant pardons to Jan. 6 rioters that have been convicted.

At the Sept. 10 presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris said the Jan. 6 events were the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” and a key element of Trump’s presidential legacy.

Harris also said, “I was at the Capitol on January 6th. I was the vice president elect. I was also an acting senator. I was there. And on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation's capital to desecrate our nation's capital on that day.”

Campaign Action

GOP doubles down on voter suppression as swing-state races tighten

As Donald Trump’s campaign collapses into nothing but abject racism, the GOP has a predicament: how can they make whipping up a pogrom against Haitians in Ohio and running around with C-list racist influencers like Laura Loomer drive voter turnout in crucial swing states? The answer, of course, is they can’t. 

Anyone who thinks this behavior is perfectly fine was already aboard the Trump Train. So, Republicans are doing what they do best: trying to manipulate the ballot and suppress the vote. 

Consider North Carolina, which went for Trump in 2020 by only about 75,000 votes. The state is in play this year, with Vice President Kamala Harris currently leading Trump 49% to 46%, though that is within the poll’s margin of error. Harris had two rallies in the state last week, Gov. JD Vance showed up there over the weekend, and both Trump and Vance are going there this week.

But there’s more action behind the scenes, with GOP lawyers using the judicial process to create the most favorable conditions for a candidate who is not interested in appealing to voters and is instead just ranting about mass deportation

Early last week, the GOP got the North Carolina Supreme Court to remove former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the ballot. Kennedy admitted he is only attempting to remove his name in states where it helps Trump. This victory didn’t just give Trump the edge he was seeking—he polls better in a two-candidate race than with Kennedy on the ballot—it also forced the state to reprint millions of ballots and blow through a Sept. 6 state deadline to begin mailing out absentee ballots. Now, absentee ballots won’t start going out until Sept. 20

Not content with delaying absentee ballots for everyone in the state, the GOP then waited just two days to file another lawsuit. This one is targeted at college students, a demographic that Republicans frequently try to stop from voting. Three weeks ago, the North Carolina Board of Elections voted to allow students and faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to use their digital ID for voting. Switching to digital IDs isn’t some far-fetched thing that only woke schools are doing—beginning in 2025, North Carolina residents can choose a digital driver’s license stored on a smartphone. 

The GOP complaint alleges, without any detail, that the mere approval of the use of the digital ID, well before any actual voting, has forced the state Republican party to “divert significant attention and resources into combatting election fraud.” Additionally, it alleges that the state party’s “organizational and voter outreach efforts” are frustrated by the approval of the use of a digital ID, and that it would result in hundreds or thousands of ineligible people voting.  

Republicans love attacking the use of student IDs, digital and otherwise. North Dakota, Idaho, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas all require voters to show identification but do not allow any form of student ID. Student voter turnout jumped 14% from 2016 to 2020, and young voters are overwhelmingly Democratic. Making it harder for them to vote is just sound strategy when you otherwise have nothing to offer them. 

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024, in Greensboro, N.C.

North Carolina isn’t the only swing state where Republicans are using the courts to gain an advantage they can’t obtain by getting voters to agree with their unhinged ideas. Look at Pennsylvania, where Harris visited six times in seven days, a stretch during which Trump, confusingly, went to California, a state he lost by millions of votes in 2020. Not a terribly sound campaign strategy on his part, but the GOP just prevailed in their lawsuit to block the state from counting any absentee ballots where voters fail to write a date or put the wrong date on their absentee ballot envelopes. 

It’s a dumb technicality, and the best course of action, the one that maximizes the franchise of voting, would be to count all those ballots that are otherwise correct. This is an error on the envelope, not the ballot, and it’s one that doesn’t in any way affect determining who someone meant to vote for. 

The failure to date or mis-dating is common, with over 4,000 ballots being rejected for dating issues during the April 2024 primary. Given that the 2024 primary turnout in Pennsylvania was less than half of the general election turnout in 2020, it’s inevitable the number of ballots rejected for this reason in the upcoming general election will well exceed 4,000. Biden only won the state by 80,000 votes in 2020, and Trump only won by 44,000 in 2016. 

The GOP is trying the same thing in Michigan, where last week it sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over guidance her office issued about verification of absentee ballots. The RNC says Benson’s guidance doesn’t adequately inform clerks that every absentee voter ballot return envelope must contain “a statement by the city or township clerk that the absent voter ballot is approved for tabulation.” 

As with North Carolina, this isn’t an error on the ballot itself. This is about rejecting ballots because a state worker neglects to stamp an outside envelope on an otherwise valid absentee ballot.  

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a news conference.

In Nevada, where Biden prevailed by roughly 34,000 votes in 2020, the state Supreme Court removed perennial spoiler candidate Jill Stein from the ballot because the Green Party used the wrong petition to get signatures. Minor party ballot access petitions require “the attestation that each signatory was a registered voter in the county of his or her residence,” but petitions for ballot referendums, which is what the Green Party used, do not contain that language. 

Fresh off insisting the best thing for democracy in North Carolina was to remove a spoiler candidate from the ballot, the GOP ran to the United States Supreme Court to insist the best thing for democracy in Nevada is to keep a spoiler candidate on the ballot. Where in North Carolina, the concern was that Kennedy. would pull votes from Trump, in Nevada the GOP hope is that Stein would pull votes from Harris. 

That’s why the lawyer petitioning the Supreme Court isn’t one who has been affiliated with the Green Party or who shares any of Stein’s views. Rather, it’s Jay Sekulow, who coordinated Trump’s personal legal team while Trump was in office and served as defense counsel for Trump’s first impeachment trial. 

Normally, deciding who goes on the ballot would belong exclusively to the state. Indeed, that’s why each state has a different way of making that determination and it’s a core principle of federalism. Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court ignored that principle earlier this year when it ordered Colorado to keep Trump on the ballot even though he no longer qualified under state law due to his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection. There’s no reason to believe the conservatives on this court won’t decide to throw Trump a helping hand in Nevada. 

The GOP has outsourced its ground game and let Trump drain campaign coffers to cover his legal bills. They’re not presenting any appealing ideas to swing voters, instead leaning hard into their rabid, bloodthirsty base. But those voters aren’t enough, which means this path—the one that actively disenfranchises voters—is all they’ve got.

Campaign Action

New Harris ad shows GOP officials shunning ‘wannabe dictator’ Trump

 The Harris-Walz campaign on Monday released a new ad highlighting major Republican figures who have worked with Donald Trump that have now shunned him and oppose his presidential campaign.

The ad, titled “The Best People,” is set to run on Fox News Channel and in West Palm Beach, Florida (where Trump’s home/resort Mar-A-Lago is located) ahead of the upcoming presidential debate.

Included in the ad are quotes from many who were part of Trump’s first administration: former Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, national security adviser John Bolton, and General Mark Milley. 

“Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence said. 

When asked if the nation’s secrets are safe with Trump, Esper answered, “No, I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk.”

Bolton states that “Trump will cause a lot of damage. The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump.”

The ad follows recent announcements from former Rep. Liz Cheney and former Vice President Dick Cheney—both prominent Republicans—that they would be voting for Harris in the election, citing the threat that Trump represents to democracy.

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again,” Cheney said in a statement.

Trump infamously called on Pence to subvert the U.S. Constitution following their joint loss to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2020 presidential election. On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump posted on X, formerly Twitter, “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

Pence declined to follow Trump’s demand and instead followed federal law by voting to certify the election results. Trump then encouraged his supporters to attack the Capitol, for which he was later impeached (for a second time).

The new ad also highlights the rupture in the relationship between Trump and Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump. Milley and the other heads of America’s military branches (Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, and Coast Guard) sent out a statement in January 2021 condemning the Jan. 6 attack.

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley

In a 2023 speech excerpted in the commercial, Milley warned of “wannabe dictators” in what was widely seen as a condemnation of Trump.

“We are unique among the world’s militaries. We don’t take an oath to a country, we don’t take an oath to a tribe, we don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator,” Milley said. “And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America—and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

As part of his campaign, Trump has said he would use the power of the presidency in a second term to round up and mass deport undocumented immigrants. Trump has also said he would seek retribution against his political enemies.

Since being sworn into office in 2021, Biden has used the presidency to advocate for freedom and has warned about the autocratic threat from Trump and the Republican Party. In his July address from the Oval Office announcing his decision to step down from the presidential race, Biden said the move was motivated by his support for democracy.

“The great thing about America is, here, kings and dictators do not rule. The people do. History is in your hands, the idea of America lies in your hands,” Biden said.

“Freedom” has been the central theme of Harris’ campaign since she took over from Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. She has taken Trump to task for his decisions that directly led to Roe v. Wade being overturned and abortion rights being upended, as well as his actions to subvert democracy.

Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in August, at the same site where Trump accepted the Republican nomination a few weeks before, Harris summarized the campaign’s theme.

“We are witnessing across our nation a full-on attack on hard-fought, hard-won, fundamental freedoms and rights across our nation, like the freedom to vote, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride,” Harris said.

Sign here: Harris taps Tim Walz. Now let’s defeat Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot. 

Judge delays Trump’s sentencing in hush money case till after election

A judge agreed Friday to postpone Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case until after the November election, granting him a hard-won reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the homestretch of his presidential campaign.

Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is also weighing a defense request to overturn the verdict on immunity grounds, delayed Trump’s sentencing until Nov. 26, several weeks after the final votes are cast in the presidential election.

It had been scheduled for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day.

Merchan wrote that he was postponing the sentencing “to avoid any appearance—however unwarranted—that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.”

“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” he added.

Trump’s lawyers pushed for the delay on multiple fronts, petitioning the judge and asking a federal court to intervene. They argued that punishing the former president and current Republican nominee in the thick of his campaign to retake the White House would amount to election interference.

Trump’s lawyers argued that delaying his sentencing until after the election would also allow him time to weigh next steps after Merchan rules on the defense’s request to reverse his conviction and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling.

Judge Juan M. Merchan

In his order Friday, Merchan delayed a decision on that until Nov. 12.

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Trump’s request to have the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize the case from Merchan’s state court. Had they been successful, Trump’s lawyers said they would have then sought to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.

Trump is appealing the federal court ruling.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, deferred to Merchan and did not take a position on the defense’s delay request.

Messages seeking comment were left for Trump's lawyers and the district attorney's office.

Election Day is Nov. 5, but many states allow voters to cast ballots early, with some set to start the process just a few days before or after Sept. 18.

Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she and Trump had a sexual encounter a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.

Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first presidential campaign. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.

Trump maintains that the stories were false, that reimbursements were for legal work and logged correctly, and that the case—brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat—was part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at damaging his current campaign.

Democrats backing their party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made his conviction a focus of their messaging.

In speeches at the party’s conviction in Chicago last month, President Joe Biden called Trump a “convicted felon” running against a former prosecutor. Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas labeled Trump a “career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments, and one porn star to prove it.”

Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, inspired chants of “lock him up” from the convention crowd when she quipped that Trump “fell asleep at his own trial, and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”

Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge, which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.

Trump has pledged to appeal, but that cannot happen until he is sentenced.

In seeking the delay, Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that the short time between the scheduled immunity ruling on Sept. 16 and sentencing, which was to have taken place two days later, was unfair to Trump.

To prepare for a Sept. 18 sentencing, the lawyers said, prosecutors would be submitting their punishment recommendation while Merchan is still weighing whether to dismiss the case. If Merchan rules against Trump, he would need “adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options,” they said.

The Supreme Court’s immunity decision reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.

Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.

Campaign Action

Trump’s refusal to change up his campaign only helps Harris

A very limited number of people like Donald Trump, and his handlers have finally come to terms with that. Yet their answer—to drag Vice President Kamala Harris into the muck with him—only works if he focuses his attention on her. 

Instead, he can’t get past me, me, me. 

This is hardly an original thought. Our own Mark Sumner wrote about it Tuesday, saying, “[Trump is] caught in a trap of reacting to Harris, and when he tries to struggle out, he and his arrogant campaign staff make things all the worse.” But the notion is certainly worth exploring even more. 

There is an old political adage, “When you’re explaining, you’re losing.” No one wants to hear excuses, and by responding to an attack, it inherently both restates it once again, and validates it.” A smart politician knows when to ignore an attack and when to engage it. 

BASH: Trump suggested that you happened to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity. HARRIS: Same old tired playbook. Next question, please. BASH: That's it? HARRIS: That's it. pic.twitter.com/RTNin7siVL

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 30, 2024

By ignoring the question about race and asking CNN’s Dana Bash to move on, she not only starved Trump’s sad attempt at an attack line of oxygen, but she made Bash look the fool for even asking it. 

There was no way for the media to even talk about it without being utterly scorched, as Politico found out to its chagrin, when it changed the headline to a corresponding story three times to avoid being dragged by commenters. Here is White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre giving Fox News’ Steve Doocy the same treatment

For all the legitimate attacks Trump faces such as on his illegal Arlington National Cemetery campaign video stunt, his flailing on abortion rights, his pledge to be a dictator on Day One, or his claims that this is the last election anyone has to vote, he also faces a ton of stupid, niggling ones. A smart politician would ignore all that noise and focus on salient attack lines. The old Trump was able to do that. 

But today’s Trump, haunted by his litany of grievances, cannot escape the gravitational pull of even the slightest criticism. Rather than entertain his base with his old formula of crass bigotry and childish schoolyard taunts, he now bores people to tears responding to slights they have no clue even existed. 

For example, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump is incapable of holding a coherent thought in his brain, and more and more people are discussing whether he is suffering from cognitive decline. Trump could ignore those attacks. Instead …  “I do the weave,” Trump responded at a rally, likely confusing attendees and leaving them wondering what he was prattling about. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together ... and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say it's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.”

Democrats have been getting a lot of traction calling the Republican ticket weird. "[Gov. Tim Walz] is weird, right? He's weird. I'm not weird. No, he's a weird guy, a weird dude, you know?” Trump said at a Wisconsin town hall. “They always come up with sound bites, and one of the things they say is that JD [Vance] and I are weird. But wouldn't that guy, who's so straight, say that? JD is doing a great job—he's smart, a top student, a great guy, and he's not weird. And I'm not weird either. I mean, we're a lot of things, but we're not weird, I will tell you. But that guy is weird. Don't you think?"

Trump can’t handle Michelle and Barack Obama criticizing him at the Democratic National Convention, complaining about it here, here, and here. The former president’s joke about Trump’s manhood broke him. 

He can’t even get over President Joe Biden passing the baton over to Harris. As recently as last week, on Aug. 26, he whined about Biden while visiting a campaign office in Michigan.

"It's so disappointing" -- Trump is currently at his Michigan campaign office whining that he's no longer running against Biden pic.twitter.com/2pCZovIjmI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 26, 2024

“They basically take away his nomination,” he said. “No one has ever seen anything like that before.”

You can feel the lack of energy in the room. 

No one cares about his thoughts on Biden’s campaign exit or Obama’s convention dick joke, but by repeatedly bringing up those and other items, he gives new life to the attacks. Frankly, it makes them even funnier. 

But his campaign isn’t laughing. “Americans’ views of the Republican nominee have barely budged over the past nine years, spanning three White House bids, two impeachments, an insurrection, four indictments and an assassination attempt. He remains deeply divisive, with enthusiastic support and intense opposition,” The Washington Post reported Monday. “With little chance of improving Trump’s standing, Trump’s advisers see the only option as damaging hers.”

CNN had its own version of that story. “Donald Trump is trying to crush Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ persona as a force of change and to destroy her personal credibility as a potential president as their still-fresh competition careens into the final nine weeks before Election Day,” the network reported. “In recent days, the ex-president has unveiled a broad assault using the insult-driven politics with which he won power in 2016, even as his advisers have been pleading with him to focus his attention on top voter concerns including high prices and immigration.”

There are 61 days until Election Day. These Trump advisers are right—Trump needs to drag Harris down in order to win the race. So far it hasn’t happened. Every single day that Trump is fixated on responding to Democratic attacks, big and small, is one day less that Republicans have to hurt Harris.

And yet Trump can’t focus. Even when he does, screeching about Harris being a “communist” is so patently absurd, it doesn’t land with anyone outside the MAGA bubble. 

The consequences of Trump’s inability to focus speak for themselves. In the 538 polling aggregate, Harris had a favorability rating of 37.8 favorable, 52.4 unfavorable on July 21, when Biden dropped out, or a net negative 14.6 percentage points. 

Today? She’s at 46.3% favorable, 46.8% unfavorable, a net improvement of almost 14 percentage points despite the combined mighty efforts of the entire right-wing noise machine. The last seven polls all have Harris either in net positive territory except one, which has it even. The trend is unmistakable. 

Trump is at 43% favorable, 52.5% unfavorable. That is far better than he deserves, but still well underwater. That disparity in the candidates’ favorabilities will cost Trump the election unless they are reversed.

Yet no one can convince him to focus on Harris. He still has feelings about Biden’s exit he needs to process … and he’s doing so very publicly. 

So it seems they’re doomed to watching their nominee waste valuable days by focusing on the most trivial, irrelevant topics, like arguing how attractive he is in response to jokes about his appearance (especially compared to Harris). “I was sort of like a hot guy,” he said to his confused audience. “I was hot as a pistol. I think I was hotter than I am now and I became president. Okay. I don't know. I said to somebody, was I hotter before or hotter now? I don't know.” 

Trump: I was sort of like a hot guy. I was hot as a pistol. I think I was hotter than I am now and I became president. Okay. I don't know. I said to somebody, was I hotter before or hotter now? I don't know pic.twitter.com/7SA1wWkZ4w

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) May 23, 2024

In any case, tired old Trump isn’t campaigning much these days. His next campaign rally isn’t until Saturday, after having just seven campaign events last month. His people will point to all the media he’s doing, but it’s a combination of Fox News, right-wing podcasts, and other assorted MAGA media hanger-ons. 

Those audiences already hate Harris. He’s not damaging her where Republicans need to kneecap her, among the broader mainstream. 

Let's Kamala Harris keep Trump on the defensive, and put more states in the blue column with a $5 donation to the Harris/Walz campaign.