ICYMI: Trump attorney goes low, House GOP goes bonkers

House Oversight Committee explodes as Hunter Biden crashes their party

The president’s son called their bluff, and Republicans folded like a cheap suit.

Watch Rep. Jared Moskowitz call GOP’s bluff on Hunter Biden

This Florida Democrat is developing a habit of embarrassing Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.

Judge rescinds permission for Trump to give his own closing argument at his civil fraud trial

Judge Arthur Engoron’s patience is running thin with a defendant who refuses to play by the rules.

Watch AOC slam Rep. Nancy Mace's rant on white privilege

Oh my goodness, bless Nancy’s heart.

Rep. Raskin tells Marjorie Taylor Greene she's the 'porn expert' on the committee

The thin-skinned “gentlelady” from Georgia brought her “I want to speak with the manager” energy.

Cartoon: Clay Bennett on the NRA

A look at Wayne LaPierre’s resignation letter to the NRA.

More top stories:

Trump attorney defends the right to assassinate political opponents

If this sounds like Trump’s attorney is saying a president could order a hit on a political opponent and never face prosecution unless his own party supported his impeachment, that’s exactly what he’s saying.

Maine renews effort to elect president by national popular vote

Democrats are making a new push for a huge change to presidential elections.

2023 was the hottest year in human history. 2024 is already setting records

Even the cold weather the United States is experiencing at the moment could be directly related to the way the climate crisis is warming the Arctic.

GOP gerrymandering targeted two Black women. Now they're facing off in a primary

This shouldn't be happening in the first place, but the GOP played dirty and here we are.

Senate inches closer to border deal. Will House GOP and Trump kill it?

Republicans need to decide whether they stand with Ukraine or with Donald Trump.

Click here to see more cartoons.

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3 fake electors want Georgia election subversion charges against them to be moved to federal court

Lawyers for three Georgia Republicans, who falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the state and they were “duly elected and qualified” electors, are set to argue Wednesday that criminal charges against them should be moved from state to federal court.

David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham were among the 18 people indicted last month along with Trump on charges they participated in a wide-ranging scheme to keep the Republican president in power after his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. All 19 defendants have pleaded not guilty.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones is set to hear arguments Wednesday on why Shafer, Still and Latham believe the case against them should be tried in federal court rather than in Fulton County Superior Court. Jones already rejected a similar effort from Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who has appealed that ruling. He held a hearing Monday on a similar bid by former U.S. Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and has yet to rule.

Shafer, Still and Latham have all indicated in court filings that they will not be present in court for the hearing.

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If their cases are moved to federal court, a jury would be drawn from a broader and potentially less Democratic pool than in Fulton County alone. And any trial would not be photographed or televised, as cameras are not allowed inside federal courtrooms. But it would not open the door for Trump, if he’s elected again in 2024, or another president to issue pardons because any conviction would still happen under state law.

Part of the overarching illegal scheme, the indictment alleges, was the casting of false Electoral College votes at the Georgia Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, and the transfer of documentation of those votes to the president of the U.S. Senate, the National Archives, the Georgia secretary of state and the chief judge of the federal court in Atlanta. Those documents were meant to “disrupt and delay” the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, in order to “unlawfully change the outcome” of the election, the indictment says.

Prosecutors allege that Shafer, Still, Latham — and the other Georgia Republicans who participated in that plan — “falsely impersonated” electors. The related charges against them include impersonating a public officer, forgery, false statements and writings, and attempting to file false documents.

Republicans in six other battleground states that Trump lost also met and signed fake elector certificates. Michigan's attorney general in July brought criminal charges against the fake electors there.

Lawyers for the three contend that a legal challenge to the state's election results was pending and that lawyers told them it was necessary to have an alternate slate of Republican electors in case the challenge was successful.

They cite the example of the 1960 presidential election when Republican Richard Nixon was initially certified as the winner in Hawaii. Supporters of Democrat John F. Kennedy filed a legal challenge that was still pending on the day the state's presidential electors were to meet. That day, the certified electors for Nixon and uncertified elector nominees for Kennedy met at the state Capitol to cast votes for their candidates and sent them to Congress as required by the Electoral Count Act. Kennedy ultimately won the election challenge and was certified the winner, and Congress counted the votes of the Kennedy electors.

At the time of the actions alleged in the indictment, Shafer was the chair of the Georgia Republican Party, Latham was the chair of the Coffee County Republican Party and Still was the finance chair for the state Republican Party. Still was elected to the state Senate last year and represents a district in Atlanta’s suburbs.

Their lawyers say their clients were acting as contingent U.S. presidential electors and in that role were or were acting at the direction of federal officers. Their actions outlined in the indictment stem directly from that service, and they were performing duties laid out in the U.S. Constitution and the Electoral Count Act, their lawyers argue. As a result, they assert defenses under several different federal laws.

The prosecution team led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argues that they were not federal officers and were not acting at the direction of a federal official carrying out a federal function. Instead, they were impersonating genuine electors at the direction of Trump's campaign with the goal of illegally keeping him in power, they said.

They argued in court filings that “contingent electors” are not presidential electors — either the contingency is met and they become presidential electors or it is not met and the losing candidate's electors have no role. Even if the Trump campaign's legal challenge to the election results had been successful, they wrote, the only solution a court could impose is a new election, not a substitution by the Republican slate of electors.

In addition to the charges related to the fake elector plan, Shafer is also accused of lying to investigators for the Fulton County district attorney's office. Latham is accused of participating in a breach of election equipment in Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is making Kevin McCarthy look really, really pathetic

Confronted by the abundant evidence of former President Donald Trump’s widespread criminality, Republicans have demonstrated consistent outrage … at law enforcement. When they’re not trying to defund the FBI or get rid of the Department of Justice, they’re going after more specific targets.

That has included (but is far from limited to): Rep. Jim Jordan subpoenaing a former member of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a browbeating, repeated efforts to defund special counsel Jack Smith, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggesting a no-evidence-required impeachment of Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Trump supporter threatening to kill federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, and Georgia Republicans trying to defund Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Rep. Andy Biggs even tried to defund the Manhattan DA’s office, which is made only slightly more ridiculous by the fact that Congress provides only a fraction of funds for local prosecutors in the first place.

Really, Republicans have vividly demonstrated that no law, no judge, and no agency means anything to them when it comes to protecting Trump. But when Republicans in both Washington, D.C., and Georgia began planning a means to impeach Willis, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp did something completely unexpected—he defended the Fulton County prosecutor and denounced his fellow Republicans.

As PBS reports, Kemp pulled no punches in saying that efforts to oust Willis for having the gall to indict Trump are just “political theater that only inflames the emotions of the moment.”

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Kemp is no liberal. When he ran for governor in 2018, he had Trump’s ”full and total endorsement,” and Trump praised Kemp for his anti-immigrant, pro-gun positions. But Kemp earned Trump’s ire after the 2020 election when Kemp refused to intervene to prevent certification of Georgia’s election results, despite a call from Trump. Trump went on to attack Kemp on social media, which didn’t stop the governor from easily winning the 2022 Republican primary and being reelected. In the latest elections in the state, candidates endorsed by Kemp easily outperformed those endorsed by Trump.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that much of the Georgia GOP isn’t in Trump’s pocket. Because it is.

As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, the state party has broken into factions, but Trump still enjoys great support among party officials and state legislators, even as a new poll shows high levels of concern among the state’s Republican voters about Trump’s actions following the 2020 election. In short, Georgia may be the one state where Republican leadership is seriously struggling with the question of whether to free themselves from Trump … though even Kemp has inexplicably suggested he would still vote for Trump in 2024.

Kemp’s willingness to stand up to the members of his party who want to rip up the legal system to defend Trump stands in stark contrast to America’s most spineless man, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Kemp appears to recognize that going after district attorneys just because they are prosecuting someone you support is more than a little problematic. On the other hand, McCarthy is not just failing to stand up to nonsensical demands in the House, but also he’s adding his own.

When Republicans started to worry that a no-investigation impeachment of President Joe Biden might not come off as planned, McCarthy offered up an impeachment of Garland for … whatever.

“I don’t know of a chargeable crime,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Hill.

Neither does anyone else. Including McCarthy. The suggestion is just another in a long line of examples of how the barely-speaker is willing to toady to his party’s extremists to keep his fingernail-thin grip on his big office. As Vanity Fair notes, caving to threats from the same extremists who tried to keep him from being elected to begin with is what McCarthy is all about.

As MSNBC puts it, McCarthy might be expected to ignore “oddball bills” and calls to impeach members of the Biden administration. Instead, he has “expressed tacit support” for all these actions, no matter how off the rails. In MSNBC’s words, McCarthy is “taking orders from Mar-a-Lago” and “going along with absurd talking points about … ‘weaponization’ of agencies that haven’t actually been weaponized.”

Kemp is no hero. On many points, his positions are reprehensible. But at least he has enough self-respect to refuse to be the lapdog of extremists willing to sacrifice everything to save Trump. He shows the path that McCarthy might have taken if he actually wanted to lead the House, rather than just follow the worst actions of its worst members.

The far-right justices on Wisconsin's Supreme Court just can't handle the fact that liberals now have the majority for the first time in 15 years, so they're in the throes of an ongoing meltdown—and their tears are delicious. On this week's episode of "The Downballot," co-hosts David Nir and David Beard drink up all the schadenfreude they can handle as they puncture conservative claims that their progressive colleagues are "partisan hacks" (try looking in the mirror) or are breaking the law (try reading the state constitution). Elections do indeed have consequences!

Why an accused Trump co-conspirator could get suspended from the Georgia Senate

Republican state Sen. Shawn Still, a fake elector who was indicted last week alongside Donald Trump for his alleged role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, could get suspended from the Senate as a result of his legal woes, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's David Wickert.

Under the state constitution, a three-person panel to be convened by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp must decide whether Still's indictment both "relates to and adversely affects the administration" of his office and “that the rights and interests of the public are adversely affected thereby." If the panel concludes the answer to both questions is yes, then Still would be suspended until "the final disposition of the case" or his term expires, whichever happens first.

It's unclear when the matter will be resolved, though legal experts believe the case is unlikely to go to trial in March, as requested by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. As a result, Still could find himself contemplating whether to seek reelection next year while he's under suspension. Undoubtedly, party leaders would prefer he not do so, particularly because his district in the Atlanta suburbs is vulnerable despite extensive GOP gerrymandering.

Incidentally, Still can thank former state Labor Commissioner Sam Caldwell for his latest predicament. In 1983, Caldwell was indicted by Fulton County prosecutors on a variety of charges, including allegations that he'd defrauded the state by demanding his employees perform extensive repairs on boats he owned. He resisted calls to resign and was only removed from office under threat of impeachment following his conviction the next year.

To avoid a similar spectacle in the future, Georgia lawmakers placed an amendment on the ballot in 1984 that would allow for the suspension of indicted public officials. It passed with 93% support. Shortly thereafter, Caldwell was also found guilty in federal court of deliberately sinking his yacht in order to collect insurance proceeds. Ironically, Caldwell's earlier conviction in state court centered around RICO charges—the very same statute Fulton County's current district attorney, Fani Willis, is relying on to prosecute Trump, Still, and their alleged co-conspirators.

Three House members could soon make their exits—and more will join them

Politico relays that Georgia Rep. David Scott's colleagues in the Democratic caucus "widely expect him not to run" again in his dark blue seat; Scott, who has a history of siding with Republicans, has not commented publicly, though. Two House Republicans who identify with the declining institutionalist wing of the GOP, Arkansas' Steve Womack and Idaho's Mike Simpson, tell the Washington Post in a separate report that they're considering retiring from their safely red seats.

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We’ll start with Scott, whose performance as the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee has been the subject of much intra-party frustration. His lack of a response to Republican efforts to cut food assistance programs—in a new report, Politico says that he hasn't held a single press conference on the topic this year—apparently prompted Democrats to form a special task force, led by Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, to take point on the issue.

The unusual move seems to have been prompted by concerns about Scott's health. Last year, Politico reported that people close to Scott "acknowledged he’s noticeably slowed in the last few years, citing his increasingly halting speech and trouble at times focusing on a topic."

Politico's article this week says that Scott "no longer speaks with reporters in the halls of the Capitol"; in June, when one reporter was actually able to ask the congressman how a hearing had gone, the congressman replied, "I don't know." "There are real questions about whether he’s with it," an unnamed House colleague told Politico of the 78-year-old Georgian.

Scott, who was first elected in 2002 with support from his late brother-in-law, the legendary Atlanta Braves Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, has long been one of the more conservative members of his caucus. The Democrat crossed party lines in 2016 to back Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson’s bid for reelection, declaring, "He's my friend. He's my partner. And I always look out for my partners." Scott, who donated to Utah GOP Rep. Mia Love's campaign that year, has also sided with Republicans to undermine regulations aimed at reining in predatory payday lenders and preventing auto dealers from charging higher interest rates to people of color.

If the congressman does surprise his colleagues and run again, though, his renomination in this safely blue suburban Atlanta seat is hardly assured. Scott unexpectedly earned just 53% of the vote in a crowded 2020 primary against several underfunded foes—just a few points more than the majority he needed to avert a runoff against former state Rep. Keisha Waites. (Waites, who is now a member of the Atlanta City Council, took 25%.) The incumbent did better last cycle when he turned back South Fulton City Councilor Mark Baker 66-13, though that performance wasn't emphatic for a longtime incumbent.

Meanwhile there’s Womack, a self-described "institution guy" who told the Post's Paul Kane that the far-right's antics have made serving in D.C. "so unpleasant" that he's weighing retirement and would decide whether he's had enough around Labor Day. After the article was published, though, the seven-term congressman backtracked somewhat.

"To be clear, I am frustrated with the state of play in Congress," he tweeted. "[H]owever I have every intention of running for reelection and using my work to fix the institution I love." He still left the door open to leaving, though. "I have always used Labor Day as the time frame for these decisions," he continued. "I take nothing for granted and I’m honored every day to serve my constituents in Arkansas’ Third District."

But while Womack, in Kane's words, is tired of seeing "his party’s leadership kowtowing to a small band of hard-right lawmakers," the story notes that his friends fear one of those hardliners would simply replace him in this northeast Arkansas seat. Womack himself has never had trouble winning renomination, though that hardly means he'd be in for another easy campaign if he ran again: Last year, Rep. French Hill, another member of the GOP minority that recognized Biden's victory, only won his primary for the neighboring 2nd District by a relatively soft 59-41 margin against a foe who was happy to spread the Big Lie.

Simpson, finally, made it clear he shares Womack's grievances. "I think there’s a lot of people like that, to tell you the truth," he told Kane." It’s just people considering: Is this really worth it?" And the answer for the Idaho Republican may be no: "Right now, I’m running again," he said before, as Kane puts it, "pausing for effect" and finishing, "Right now." Unlike Womack, though, Simpson did not provide a timeline for when he expects to make up his mind.

The 72-year-old Simpson is only six years older than his likeminded colleague from the South, but unlike Womack, Simpson just had to fend off an organized attempt to beat him in last year's primary. In that matchup, the incumbent fended off attorney Bryan Smith 55-33 after an expensive fight for an eastern Idaho constituency Simpson first won in 1998. The congressman, who had also turned back Smith 62-38 in 2014, didn't come close to losing, but his declining vote share could foreshadow more tough races to come―if he tries to stick around, that is.

No matter what Womack, Simpson, or Scott do in 2024, however, there's almost certainly plenty of other House members from both parties who are thinking about whether they want to remain in office. Currently just two representatives―California Democrat Grace Napolitano and Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz—have announced they're leaving the chamber and not campaigning for another office. And while just two outright retirements might seem like very few so far, that's in keeping with patterns over the last two decades.

According to data compiled by Daily Kos Elections since the 2005-06 election cycle, an average of about three House incumbents have decided to say goodbye to elective politics altogether before Aug. 1 of each odd-numbered year. That means we can expect many more to call it a career ahead of the 2024 elections, though we'll likely be waiting well into the new year for some decisions.

White House picks fight with Greene over funding

The White House is picking a fight with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after her hometown newspaper in Floyd County touted federal public safety grants the area was set to receive through the American Rescue Plan.

Greene, along with every other House Republican, voted against the American Rescue Plan in March 2021.

The White House took a shot at Greene over that vote after the Rome News-Tribune in Greene’s district ran an article on the front page Tuesday that highlighted a more than $1 million federal public safety grant the Floyd County Commission is set to accept.

“President Biden is proud of the resources he’s provided to stand up for the rule of law, crack down on gun crimes, and keep cops on the beat in Floyd County – and across the country,” White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said in a statement first provided to The Hill.

“Unlike Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who voted against this funding, as well as to defund federal law enforcement and fire thousands of Border Patrol agents, President Biden is committed to ensuring law enforcement has the resources they need to keep Northwest Georgians safe,” she added.

The money is appropriated through the Public Safety and Community Violence Reduction grant program, which is funded by the American Rescue Plan and meant to address violent gun crime and community violence that increased as a result of COVID-19.

Greene on Wednesday called the White House’s comment “ignorant” and railed against Biden’s handling of the situation at the border.

“Since taking office, Joe Biden’s blatant violation of our border laws has caused a flood of over 5,000,000 illegal aliens into our country, allowed 85,000 trafficked children to go missing, and murdered hundreds of Americans each day with Mexican cartel-smuggled Chinese-made fentanyl. Our district doesn’t face a crime epidemic, but we are feeling the real effects of Biden’s border crisis. My constituents are dying due to the drugs he allows into our country,” Greene said in a statement to The Hill.

“The flippant comment from the White House would be laughable if it wasn’t so ignorant of what Northwest Georgia faces due to border invasion created by Joe Biden,” she added.

Tuesday is not the first time that the White House has gone after Greene, a firebrand Republican congresswoman who has emerged as one of Biden’s top critics on Capitol Hill.

Greene has introduced impeachment articles against Biden. Last week, she voted with Republicans to refer a resolution to impeach Biden over the situation at the southern border to two congressional committees.

In March, during the House Democratic retreat in Baltimore, Biden mocked Greene while delivering remarks to lawmakers, asking the crowd of the Georgia Republican “isn’t she amazing?”

And last month, White House spokesperson Ian Sams circulated a memo that criticized House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Greene for their “bizarre focus” on Biden and his family members.

More generally, the White House has accused House Republicans of opposing funding for law enforcement with their votes against the American Rescue Plan and of cutting funding for border security when they supported the debt limit plan the conference approved in April.

Last August, the White House wrote on Twitter, “Every single Republican in Congress voted against funding for law enforcement in President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.” And last month, the White House circulated a memo arguing Republicans were gutting border security with their debt limit bill.

The accusation that Republicans are defunding the police through their vote against the American Rescue Plan, however, has been contested. The Washington Post’s fact checker awarded the claim three pinocchios in 2021.

Alex Gangitano and Brett Samuels contributed. Updated on June 28 at 12:16 p.m.

Trump’s big mouth is finally getting him in (legal) trouble

Donald Trump's charmed stretch defying legal gravity in spite of his penchant for self-incrimination finally came to an end last month, when he sunk himself in the E. Jean Carroll rape case deposition.

He claimed he had never seen Carroll before in his life and even if he had, she most certainly wasn't his type. Those twin defenses were hilariously blown apart when he was shown a picture of himself interacting with Carroll—and mistook her for his ex-wife Marla Maples.

Ultimately, the jury found Trump had sexually abused and defamed Carroll and awarded her $5 million.

Although the case was civil, not criminal, it marked the beginning of the end of Trump's luck evading the law. During his tenure at the White House, Trump successfully used his chief bulldog at the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, to run interference on pesky inquiries ranging from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election to the impeachment probe of Trump's efforts to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, not to mention Carroll’s rape case.

But without his White House shield, Trump's publicly incessant blathering, blustering, and bullying is poised to cost him dearly.

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In special counsel Jack Smith's federal probe of Trump's classified document scandal, the emergence of a 2021 recording revealing that Trump clearly knew he had classified information and was contemplating sharing it has provided prosecutors with a rare legal gem: proof of Trump's state of mind.

"The import of the new Trump audio is not that it eviscerates his defense that he declassified everything,” tweeted Justice Department veteran Andrew Weissmann, who served as a prosecutor during the Mueller special counsel investigation. “That was never a legal defense (nor factually plausible). The import is that he is caught lying to the public to gain support when he’s indicted."

Weissmann added that such a recording would be an "admission” that Trump "intentionally and knowingly" possessed a classified document, which is a crime if the document actually exists and Trump wasn't simply bragging to people about a document that didn’t exist.

Given the damning nature of that recording, Weissmann predicted an indictment is "days, not months" away. But either way, he firmly believes it's a matter of when, not if.

As if that weren't enough, now there appears to be a mad hunt for the document in question, which no one seems able to locate. Its apparent disappearance raises the specter that Trump might have followed through on his stated desire (in the recording) to share the classified information. Good thing Trump’s blathering gave the game away!

This week also brought news that the Georgia election fraud probe—built around Trump's recorded demand that the Republican secretary of state "find" the votes to beat Joe Biden—is reportedly expanding into examining Trump's activities in other states and the District of Columbia.

The Washington Post calls the news a "fresh sign" that Fulton County prosecutors and District Attorney Fani Willis could be building an expansive racketeering case against Trump.

[Georgia’s] RICO statute is among the most expansive in the nation, allowing prosecutors to build racketeering cases around violations of both state and federal laws — and even activities in other states. If Willis does allege a multistate racketeering scheme with Trump at its center, the case could test the bounds of the controversial law and make history in the process.

Trump is already facing more than 30 criminal counts of falsifying business records in the hush-money-scheme case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.

And Smith's probe of Trump's role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection is ongoing. Fortunately, there's no shortage of taped material there either, including Trump's post-insurrection assertion that he didn't want to admit the election was over.

“I don’t want to say the election’s over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election’s over, okay?” Trump insisted on Jan. 7, 2021, while filming outtakes for a video intended to help calm a roiled nation.

Trump remains the undeniable frontrunner for the Republican nomination. The initial Bragg indictment arguably gave him a small bump with Republican voters, but a gusher of criminal scandals awaits him in the coming months—or days, depending on who you ask.

We have Rural Organizing’s Aftyn Behn. Markos and Aftyn talk about what has been happening in rural communities across the country and progressives’ efforts to engage those voters. Behn also gives the podcast a breakdown of which issues will make the difference in the coming elections.

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McConnell launches mad hunt for whoever whiffed Trump’s impeachment then backed his loser candidates

GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knows who's to blame for Senate Republicans' midterm drubbing, and he is definitely not it.

“Look at Arizona, look at New Hampshire, and the challenging situation in Georgia as well,” McConnell said Tuesday, ticking through a list of once-promising GOP losses at his weekly press conference. “You have to have quality candidates to win competitive Senate races.”

McConnell stopped short of calling out Donald Trump by name, because god forbid he show some actual leadership. But every GOP candidate in those states—Blake Masters in Arizona, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, and Herschel Walker in Georgia—had Trump's endorsement. In fact, Trump's heavy-handed backing was instrumental to the candidacies of both Masters and Walker.

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McConnell did, however, admit that he was basically powerless in the face of Trump.

“Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in ‘22 because of the support of the former president proved to be very decisive in these primaries,” McConnell lamented.

Of course, McConnell bears as much responsibility as Trump for the Senate GOP’s pathetic cycle. In New Hampshire, McConnell tried desperately to recruit the state's highly popular GOP governor, Chris Sununu, to take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. But after speaking with several members of the Senate GOP caucus, Sununu took a hard pass on jumping on that sorry do-nothing bandwagon. Instead, he ran for and secured a fourth term as governor.

The Senate GOP's Sununu misadventure highlighted the fact that Trump obviously wasn't the only hurdle to recruiting quality candidates. McConnell also tried to convince term-limited GOP Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to run for Senate to no avail. So let’s just be honest that the Senate GOP's lack of appeal to reasonably capable people certainly isn't on Trump—it's on McConnell.

Beyond his recruiting failures, McConnell also gave Walker his full-throated endorsement in the Georgia race.

"Herschel is the only one who can unite the party, defeat Senator Warnock, and help us take back the Senate," McConnell said in an October statement to Politico. "I look forward to working with Herschel in Washington to get the job done."

Walker not only failed to help Republicans take back the Senate, he didn’t exactly deliver as a uniter either.

Back at the post-election press conference, McConnell reflected on similar losses by fatally flawed Republican candidates in 2010 and 2012, saying the GOP had “unfortunately revisited that situation in 2022.”

Gee, Senator, if only there had been a way to avoid "that situation" again. If only Trump had, for instance, orchestrated a wildly unpopular insurrection against the U.S. government, leaving himself open to a career-ending impeachment.

The truth is, if McConnell hadn't miscalculated every step of this midterm cycle, perhaps he'd be poised right now to become the longest-serving Senate Majority Leader in U.S. history. Instead, he's devoting press conferences to excuse peddling for the GOP's anemic election showing.

If McConnell's still looking around for culprits, might be time to take a look in the mirror.

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John Eastman’s attorneys advised him not to testify in Georgia’s presidential election probe

The Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney’s office is demanding that John Eastman answer questions for the special grand jury investigating election tampering in the state in 2020. The former attorney for Donald Trump is pleading the Fifth.

According to USA TODAY, Eastman’s lawyers issued a statement stating that they had advised him to “assert attorney-client privilege and the constitutional right to remain silent where appropriate.”

“By all indications, the District Attorney’s Office has set itself on an unprecedented path of criminalizing controversial or disfavored legal theories, possibly in hopes that the federal government will follow its lead,” the statement reads. “Criminalization of unpopular legal theories is against every American tradition and would have ended the careers of John Adams, Ruth Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall and many other now-celebrated American lawyers."

RELATED STORY: Lindsey Graham believes he’s above the law, tells judge that Georgia DA must explain her questioning

The attorney, infamously known for creating the bogus falsehood that Joe Biden didn’t actually win the election, is among such MAGA notables as former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and whiny Trump lapdog Sen. Lindsey Graham. All were called to testify in front of the Georgia grand jury and all have put up a fight—mostly to no avail.  

Eastman was behind the idea of sending a group of fake electors out into swing states in hopes of blocking the congressional certification of the 2020 election.

The New York Times reports that Eastman continued looking for election irregularities long after Trump was out of office. In one of a slew of previously uncovered emails, Eastman wrote, “A lot of us have now staked our reputations on the claims of election fraud, and this would be a way to gather proof… If we get proof of fraud on Jan. 5, it will likely also demonstrate the fraud on Nov. 3, thereby vindicating President Trump’s claims and serving as a strong bulwark against Senate impeachment trial.”

Kemp’s attorneys tried everything to save the incumbent governor from giving a sworn statement. But according to reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney refused to allow the governor to skirt his testimony but did allow him to push it off until after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

Giuliani tried to play the “too sick to testify” card but was staunchly shut down by McBurney and appeared in Atlanta on Aug. 17 to give testimony.

Graham is doing everything he can to avoid testifying to the special grand jury in Georgia, including filing a brief on Aug. 24 that reasons that the subpoena to testify is invalid based on a rarely used section of the U.S. Constitution.

“The Constitution guarantees that a Senator ‘shall not be questioned’ about his protected ‘Speech or Debate’—and yet the District Attorney insists that Senator Graham must submit to questioning to ascertain whether he can be questioned or is immune from questioning. That makes no sense,” Graham’s motion reads.

Eastman also pleaded the Fifth in refusing to answer questions from the House committee investigating the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, per USA TODAY.

The Downballot: Effective political ads + speaking to Black voters, with Terrance Green (transcript)

Black voters are the most stalwart constituency in the Democratic Party, but candidates cannot take them for granted. Media consultant Terrance Green joins us on this week's edition of The Downballot to discuss his career in politics communicating with voters, including leading the largest-ever paid media operation to turn out the Black vote on behalf of the Biden-Harris campaign. Immediately after that historic victory, he found himself targeting white voters on behalf of a Black Senate hopeful, Raphael Warnock, in Georgia's epic runoffs. Terrance also tells us how he's helped African American candidates turn back racist attacks and what he thinks the impact of having so many high-profile Black Senate contenders this year will be.  

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard, meanwhile, recap this week's races, including a special election in a conservative Minnesota House district that saw the Republican badly underperform Donald Trump; a surprisingly close call for one of the most vocal progressives on Capitol Hill, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar; and the Democratic primary for Vermont's open House seat, which means that, at long last, the state will almost certainly end its status as the only one never to send a woman to Congress come next year.

Please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

David Beard:

Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

David Nir:

And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. You can subscribe to The Downballot wherever you listen to podcasts, and please leave us a five-star rating and review.

David Beard:

We had another exciting primary night this week. So what are we going to be covering on today's show?

David Nir:

We had a special election in Minnesota where Republicans dramatically underperformed the top of the ticket. We also saw the final conclusion to last week's primaries in Washington state, where yet another pro-impeachment Republican has lost. We have some primaries in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Vermont that we want to catch up on. And then we are going to be talking with political consultant Terrance Green, who among other things was responsible for running the Biden-Harris campaign's paid media outreach to black voters in 2020. Plenty to talk about on this week's show, so let's get rolling.

David Beard:

We had a number of primary elections this past Tuesday. But most importantly, we actually had a special election in Minnesota for the 1st district. So what happened there, Nir?

David Nir:

So this was a special election for the vacancy in Minnesota's 1st congressional district that was held by Republican Jim Hagedorn, who died earlier this year. And Republican Brad Finstad defeated Democrat Jeff Ettinger by a 51-47 margin. And you might ask, why do we think it's so important to talk about a race where a Republican held a Republican seat? The answer is that this is rather conservative turf in southern Minnesota. It includes the city of Rochester and also a lot of rural areas as well. Donald Trump won this district by a 54 to 44 margin in 2020. So he won it by 10 points. Finstad only carried it by four points, which means he ran six points behind Donald Trump. And simply put, that kind of underperformance is not the sort of thing that you would expect to see if the GOP supposedly is facing a favorable political environment for them, if they are on the verge of benefiting from typical midterm patterns, which invariably almost always harm the party that is in control of the White House.

David Nir:

That really isn't what should have happened. Finstad should have won by at least Donald Trump's margin, if not by a bigger margin. Now, this is a district that has been home to very close House races for the last three election cycles. So even though this district has moved sharply away from Democrats at the presidential level, it still often is likelier to vote for Democrats further down ticket. However, this is not the only recent data point we have that is confounding our expectations of what the 2022 election will look like. At the end of June, just four days after the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, Nebraska held a special election in the similarly conservative 1st district, and the results were almost exactly the same. The Republican there ran six points behind Donald Trump. And then of course, last week, we saw the incredible 18-point victory in Kansas to defeat an amendment that would've stripped the right to an abortion from the state constitution.

David Nir:

So now we have three data points suggesting that maybe there really has been quite a shift in the political environment since the Supreme Court's ruling in the Dobbs case, overturning the right to an abortion. I don't want to draw too many conclusions as a result of such a small sample size, but we are about to have a whole bunch more data come in. In fact, there are three more special elections coming up in just the next two weeks. Next week, we have Alaska's at-large special election. And two weeks from now, we have two special elections in New York in the 19th district and the 23rd district. The 19th district is really going to be one to watch here. This is a seat that the Democrats hold, it's quite a divided swing seat. But the Democrat who's running in this race, Pat Ryan, has really made abortion a central issue in this race. He's run ads on it. He's really called it a referendum on abortion rights. And I think we're going to get a really good window into just how the Dobbs decision is affecting the electorate in a couple of weeks.

David Nir:

I don't want to revise my predictions for November yet. I am still relatively bearish on Democrats' chances for holding the House, but it's going to be really important to pay attention to what happens over the next two weeks. And if the results continue to indicate that abortion is a massive motivating issue for democratic voters, then democratic candidates have to lead and they have to lean into this one, because it could really change the trajectory of the midterm elections.

David Beard:

And special elections are important data points because there have been so many issues with polling over the past years, particularly favoring Democrats and leading to these bad surprises in 2016 and 2020, and in Florida year after year after year. And so special elections are like polls, except they're real live experiments basically in these individual districts of exactly how the elections will happen in November. And so they are better data points. Because they're so rare, you then struggle with the fact that like, “Oh, is there a weird situation here or an unusual candidate there?” But taken as a whole and the more data points, as you said, we can get here, the more representative it is of what we might expect to happen in November.

David Beard:

The other point I wanted to make was that last year in Virginia is another example of an actual election we can look to. And that election didn't go very well for Democrats and sort of was more along the lines of what you'd expect for a good Republican year, but that potentially has changed with these special elections. And again, we'll get to more data points, we'll see if that continues to happen. And the one that I think I would look at most closely is New York 19, as you mentioned. If Democrats have any potential shot to hang onto the House in November, given these special election results, they should be able to win and hold this seat. And so if that happens, that would really make me think twice about what sort of chances do Democrats have in November in the House.

David Beard:

Another really important result that we wanted to highlight is actually from last week's primary races in Washington, where votes continued to come in and resulted in a really significant change in one of the congressional races. In Washington's 3rd district, as we mentioned last week, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler was in a tough race. She was one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump last year. She was facing off both against a Democrat, a Republican endorsed by Trump, and a number of other candidates who were also in the ballot.

David Beard:

The Democrat Marie Perez leads the vote with 31% and Herrera Beutler led the Trumpist candidate, Joe Kent, by a small but noticeable margin right after election night. But the votes that were counted later ended up being much more favorable to Kent than Herrera Beutler. And he ended up edging her out, 22.8% to 22.3% for the second general election spot. Of course, Washington state has a top-two primary. So Perez and Kent will be the two candidates advancing to November. That means that only likely two of the Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump will advance to the general election. Dan Newhouse in Washington's 4th district: He did survive as we talked about last week. And David Valadao in California. Liz Cheney still has her primary coming up, but she's a big, big underdog in that race. So it's most likely that only Newhouse and Valadao will make it to the general election.

David Beard:

The other notable thing about this race is that Herrera Beutler lost despite significant Democratic support. Democrats got 42% in the 2020 congressional primary, but only got 34% of the vote in this year's congressional primary. Republicans got 64% of the vote, which is much higher than they would've normally gotten. That leads to the fact that a number of Democrats crossed over and voted for Herrera Beutler in hopes that she would advance to the general instead of the Trumpist candidate. So the fact that she nearly lost… without those Democrats, she would've lost to Kent by a much, much larger margin.

David Beard:

I'll also point that potentially this race could be on the fringes of competitiveness. Obviously, Perez should pick up a lot of those Democrats who voted for her and Beutler. Is that enough to put it on the board? Still to be seen, but certainly at least worth keeping an eye on.

David Nir:

It also just goes to show that for all the handwringing about Democratic meddling in GOP primaries, this is truly what Republicans want. As you said, without Democratic help, Herrera Beutler would've gotten completely destroyed. So how is it that Democrats can or even should be responsible for the outcome of GOP primaries? These trends, these patterns are just far, far too strong, even when you have tens of thousands of Democrats switching sides.

David Nir:

Tuesday night, of course, we also saw a bunch of primaries. The most surprising results almost certainly happened in Minnesota's 5th district. This is a dark blue seat based in Minneapolis. And here, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar fended off former Minneapolis city council member Don Samuels by just a 50 to 48 margin. Omar's win was the weakest primary showing by a Democratic incumbent in the House since the Democratic Party merged with the Farmer-Labor Party in 1944 to create the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, best known as the DFL in Minnesota.

David Nir:

Omar reportedly did not run any television ads at all in this race, apparently due to a belief that her base constituted younger voters who would not be receptive to such a message. It seems like that was a huge mistake, and she got very, very lucky to win renomination. Samuels himself was a flawed candidate who wasn't necessarily the right fit for this sort of district, but winning just 50% in party primary, especially when you have the official DFL endorsement is a terribly weak showing and it suggests that a stronger candidate could unseat Omar in a future election cycle. Though I would certainly expect her to campaign differently in a future year, given how close a call this was.

David Beard:

And I think you can compare it to the other Squad members who have faced primaries and dispatched them very easily. The fact that Omar struggled so much in this race really points to a poorly run campaign. Hopefully, she learns from that, runs a stronger campaign in the future if she's facing the primary challenger so that this sort of near miss doesn't come out anywhere like that.

David Beard:

Another competitive race on Tuesday night was in the Wisconsin governor's race for the Republicans where a self-funding businessman, Tim Michels, defeated former Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, 47% to 42%. Michels will be taking on incumbent Democratic Governor Tony Evers. Michels had Trump's endorsement, which of course goes a long way in these Republican primaries. He was also on the ballot previously, way back in 2004, when he lost the Senate race to Democrat Russ Feingold, 55% to 44%.

David Beard:

Michels jumped into this race very late in April, but of course he had a ton of money to spend to reintroduce himself to voters after not being on the ballot for almost two decades. And he decisively outspent Kleefisch after investing $12 million of his own money into his comeback. Kleefisch, of course, was Scott Walker's running mate in each of his campaigns and had his backing for the top job and seemed to be the clear front runner, but the amount of money that was spent and, of course, Donald Trump's endorsement of Michels went a long way into turning the race around and ended up causing Kleefisch's loss.

David Nir:

This of course is going to be one of the very, very top gubernatorial races in November. Evers only defeated Scott Walker by a very small margin in 2018. It really was one of the biggest Democratic upsets of the night in that big wave year. Democrats are also desperately trying to hold on to their current set of seats in the legislature. They want to avoid giving Republicans a supermajority. That's super important because even if Evers wins a second term, if Republicans can win two-thirds majorities in both chambers of the legislature, they will be able to override any of his vetoes.

David Nir:

And given Wisconsin's undoubted importance to the 2024 presidential election, just as it's been so important in all of these past presidential elections in our lifetimes, for Democrats to hang on to power in the Badger State is incredibly important.

David Beard:

And lastly, we wanted to highlight Vermont who will be likely sending a woman to Congress for the first time and will be the 50th and final state to do so. State Senate President Pro Tem Becca Balint beat Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray, 61% to 37% in the primary to replace Peter Welch, who is of course running for Senate to replace Pat Leahy, so the winner will likely become Vermont's only House member. She had endorsements from Bernie Sanders as well as the LGBTQ Victory Fund. She would also be the Green Mountain State's first gay representative.

David Nir:

Well, that does it for our weekly hits. Coming up, we are going to be talking with political consultant, Terrance Green, who among many other things was responsible for the Biden-Harris campaign's media outreach to Black voters in the 2020 election. He also worked on the famous Georgia Senate runoff for Raphael Warnock, following the 2020 elections. We have a lot to talk about with him. So please stay with us after the break.

David Nir:

Joining us today is Terrance Green, who is managing partner at the political consulting group 4C Partners. Among many campaigns, he notably led the largest ever paid media operation to turn out the black vote by a presidential campaign in history on behalf of the Biden and Harris ticket in 2020. Terrence, thank you so much for joining us today.

Terrance Green:

Hey, thanks for having me on, appreciate it.

David Nir:

So we always like to start with hearing a little bit about our guest backstory. So we would love to have you tell us about how you got involved in politics, and how you became a leading democratic political consultant.

Terrance Green:

My journey here is probably similar to some other folks. A lot of people were just looking for a job that paid consistently. Sometime in late 1999 or in 2000, I was on the road as a trainer for bartenders at TGI Fridays. I gave up an illustrious career, serving food to the masses, to join politics where I now serve messages to the masses. But I was on the road, I received a call from a gentleman, whose name is Adam Ferrari, at a firm called GMMB. And they wanted someone to just help them out for a three-month period, in what was the fall of 2000, in the heat of Bush V. Gore? I didn't know much about politics or about political media. I didn't know this existed at all, but I knew that there was a job that was going to pay me, I don't know, I think a hundred bucks a day, and I jumped at it, because it wouldn't have to come home and smell like French fries. That three month gig turned into 13 years, and a lot of amazing things that happened along the way. So shout out to Fridays and I'm glad not to be there now.

David Nir:

So you mentioned that was a 13 year gig, but if we add that to 1999, that puts us in the early 2000's, early 2010s rather. So what happened next?

Terrance Green:

Well, after that... Look, my time at GMMB was really amazing. I was able to work on numerous presidential campaigns. I was able to use my degree. I went to American University, and I studied film and politics, and that's what I do today and that's what I've done for the last 20-plus years, which is pretty amazing. I have a lot of friends who went to school who do something way different than what they studied. And that's great, college is the time to learn about yourself, and what you might want to do.

Terrance Green:

But I was able to find and start training for what I was doing without knowing I was getting ready for that moment. So after my time at GMMB I was able to be a part of John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004, Barack Obama's campaign in 2008, and the reelection in 2012. And to have a real front seat in all these things and I was able to go to the White House and film the president, that's pretty amazing, able to go on the road with the President of the United States and film him and making history. Able to meet then-candidate Barack Obama in a hot sweaty office in downtown D.C. to get him to say his radio disclaimer, ‘I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message,’ way before the caucuses in Iowa and when people were still trying to figure out who was going to win at that point. Probably Hillary was the odds-on favorite.

Terrance Green:

So being a part of those pieces of history was a pretty amazing thing for a kid from Long Island, New York, who he grew up trying to figure out his own path in the world, and finding it later on doing these amazing things that I'm still, sometimes, you can't quite digest it. But being there for the moment Barack Obama was nominated for the Democratic ticket in Denver, something I'll never forget as a person, as an individual, or professional, just seeing the history happen, the looks in people's eyes, the energy. And the state of things that we're in right now, it's kind of hard to believe that actually happened not too long ago. But my time at GMMB and the people there, who are really groundbreakers and trailblazers in this field of political advertising, taught me everything that I know about what I do.

Terrance Green:

In 2012 after the Obama campaign ended, I started thinking about what my future looked like and wanted to forge my own path as my own person. And that's when I decided to leave the firm in 2013 and start my own company called Truxton Creative. And that led to opportunities down the line, which put me together with the 4C team. So now as a few consultants in this world , we have multiple brands, Truxton Creative is around, 4C is something I'm also an owner and partner of. And these are vehicles of our own making that allow us to do the same work, but to do it our own way, and to write the next chapter of how this type of work happens and who does it. And it's exciting to be a part of that.

David Nir:

One thing we love to do here on The Downballot is get into the nitty gritty of campaign operations and sort of pull back the curtain because everyone listening to this program has of course seen political ads on TV or heard them on radio, but how does one actually get made? Can you walk us through the steps from beginning to end, from conception, to actually getting the ad placed on the air? What is that whole process? What needs to happen before viewers at home can actually see an ad?

Terrance Green:

That's a great question and sometimes for us, we do this on autopilot. We do it so much that sometimes you don't think about the process, per se, you just are doing it. But I'll say the genesis of ads, look, no candidate runs a campaign so they can run political ads. Political ads are a means to an end, to get people to know who you are, and to help win an election. It's one of the tools that you use, same as direct mail, online video, yard signs. The thing with political ads is that a lot of people see them, and people love video, and people want to see and hear from candidates.

Terrance Green:

So this is a very niche and unique platform to do that with. Making an ad depends on your priorities, it depends on do we need to get people to know the candidate? Do we need to speak about an issue specifically? Do we need to attack somebody? So we have to make that determination before we start. But assuming that we've already made that determination and we have our direction and marching orders, it might involve getting a camera on a candidate. So I'll say, "Hey, you know what? I've got to have John Smith film a 30 second ad about this issue," abortion rights, gun control, you name it. And that may take a couple of days, or we may have a few weeks to organize that type of a filming. And we'll get that captured. That will be a high end camera, type that you might use for a movie, that will involve lights, that will involve an audio team, and sometimes a makeup artist, and a location which may be a candidate's house or something that we source a different way.

Terrance Green:

So those things need to happen. The candidates need to look and sound right, that is priority number one. The next piece will be post-production. We take these ads to video editors and skilled folks, sometimes at larger creative shops where they've got several editors, sometimes they're individual editors that we will use. And they're using the latest materials, the same stuff that people put together the TV shows with, and online videos and everything that you see, they're using the same materials and the same tools to put together these political ads that are 30 seconds of joy that we deliver into everyone's TVs and timelines from there.

Terrance Green:

Then we move to getting the ad distributed. The ad will go out very quickly, usually within a few minutes if it's for digital, or it could be within 18 hours or so if it's going to be for television. And the workflow for that has changed immensely over the years, used to be a lot more analog, but now it's almost instantaneous. And we're able to get our ads on broadcast television, cable, you name it, and get the message out.

Terrance Green:

Yeah, for independent expenditure [IE] ads, the process is a little different. There's a higher legal threshold you've got to meet. So there usually are a lot of lawyers involved as you're writing the script for it. There are certain things you can say or not say; you got to be able to substantiate whatever the claims are. Usually with third party sources like news clips, research documents, the statements of those candidates themselves, whatever words they use out of their own mouths, can be used against them in campaign ads or the court of law.

Terrance Green:

So those are the types of things that we will use to substantiate those types of ads. And we also have to be credible if you're out there swinging wildly and saying crazy things about folks, and you are an independent expenditure [IE], you could do more harm to the cause than good.

Terrance Green:

The first rule of independent expenditures is do no harm. So you don't want to undercut the candidate that you're supporting, if it's, say, that a Democrat running for House seat or a Senate seat, by making a third party ad that gets everyone in trouble, because you said something that wasn't true or it was too inflammatory. So there's certainly a code that must be followed when it comes to independent expenditures. And you want to be as helpful as possible with the cause overall. We make a ton of those types of ads, as we've seen in the recent years, those types of ads are in some ways the majority of the ads that are out there. And there's a reason why, the money allows people to do more of these types of expenditures.

Terrance Green:

So there's two different tracks of the types of ads that you can do. Depends if you're working on a candidate directly or independent expenditure. And there's two different approaches that we typically take to get those done.

David Nir:

I find that difference so interesting between candidate ads and third party ads, and if you're wondering why these standards are so different, it's because TV and radio stations are obligated by law, to run any ads from candidates that they receive. And so these stations said in response, "Well, if we're obligated to run these ads, then we shouldn't be able to be held liable for any defamatory content as a publisher of these ads." And the courts have agreed, whereas stations are not obligated to run ads from third party groups like Super PACs, so they can be held liable for any defamatory content and therefore, stations are more likely to take ads down from third party groups, something they'll never really do in fact, they really can't do with, candidate ads. So it's a huge gulf, and every so often you will see a third party group ad get taken down for making false statements. And like you said, it totally violates the do no harm principle, because then you have a whole new cycle about some false ad from some third-party group and no candidate ever wants stuff to deal with that.

Terrance Green:

Yep, a candidate ad, you can lie in your candidate ads, because it's the First Amendment, and it's covered by free speech and candidates have... We've seen many candidates from the president on down, say whatever they want in their campaign ads, and sometimes it's not true. And not to say that Democrats won't do it either because we can bend the truth with the candidate ads. On the independent expenditure ads, the Super PAC ads, there are lawyers involved on both sides, and people are looking with a fine-toothed comb, for you to mess up, and they want to get that ad taken down. And when an ad gets taken down, it becomes a news story, and it becomes a news story and it hurts.

The collateral damage is that it would hurt also the candidate that you're trying to support. So, we don't want to be a part of that. Someone's going to give you the stink eye and bad mouth you later. So, you don't want to be a part of those types of stories if you can avoid it.

David Beard:

As we mentioned at the beginning, you were working on the Biden campaign. You led their paid media effort targeting African American voters in that election. So, what were the biggest challenges that you faced during that election in terms of both persuading African American voters and focusing on them out?

Terrance Green:

Yeah, I mean, look, the Biden team called up to run a program that was evolving in real time to get Black voters engaged. I will give them so much credit for realizing that they had to have a separate program and also fund it. Those are two different things. Having a program is one thing because every presidential campaign has a program to get Black voters, but to really fund it the way that they did was something that I was really happy about and proud to be a part of. And alluding to my prior experience, I've been around several presidential campaigns, which even for the work that we do, not everyone has been a part of those types of campaigns. They're large, they're unwieldy, they are a whole different animal from Senate campaigns and from House campaigns. There's different things that happen in these races at scale that are tough to deal with.

Terrance Green:

But if you've been around it, you can at least not get overwhelmed with the prospect of running multiple ad tracks in multiple states. So, the challenges with running the ad campaign in 2020 were numerous. We were in the middle of a pandemic. We had a contentious primary where we had Biden come out of a crowded field, but didn't have the internal operation built up as maybe some other candidates would've in the past as they were coming out of a primary win. We were also dealing with a country in the state of great unrest with the killing of George Floyd. We saw riots and civil disobedience and demonstrations in a way we hadn't seen in a really long time in this country. So, in the midst of all that, and we had a President, who didn't seem to care much about doing much to solve the problems that we were facing.

Terrance Green:

There were a lot of things that we had to overcome in terms of putting a program together and then talking to Black voters and meeting them where they were. We had to meet that moment in time and it was an unprecedented moment. There was a lot of uncertainty, but there was a great desire to get President Trump out of the office. He was still the best turnout tool that you could ever ask for. Black voters, generally speaking, are done with the drama, they're done with the disrespect, and the chaos that defined the Trump years. We wanted something new. But we had to also realize that people weren't going to go vote just because they loved Joe Biden. Voting for Black folks has a different approach to it historically, we wanted to choose someone who is the best choice for us, who will be someone who can help move us forward or which candidate would hurt us the least.

Terrance Green:

That's also sort of the inverse question that had to be answered in some ways, as you're trying to frame the arguments. The messaging that we were going at this with was understanding that the choice for Black voters wasn't going to be Biden versus Trump. We're already done with Trump. It was Biden versus sitting this one out. Biden versus staying home. We had to make sure that people didn't see staying home or sitting out as a viable option for them. What's happening right now in the country, what was happening in 2020 was way too important for people to set it out. So, the very first ads in messaging that we had even before we had all of the research and polling was really about empowering Black voters and letting them know that they were going to be the ones that decided this election, and giving them that power, reminding them of the power that has been used in the past to make change in this country and calling on voters to do that once again.

David Beard:

And then right after the 2020 election happened, obviously we found ourselves in the situation of having these double-barreled Georgia runoffs would potentially control of the Senate. And we have seen over the past year and a half, how incredibly consequential those races ended up being with all of the legislation. Most recently, of course, the Inflation Reduction Act, as it's now called, that just passed the Senate. You moved very quickly to do work in these races. You did paid media on behalf of Raphael Warnock, but through Senate Majority PAC. So, through that IE campaign that we mentioned previously, and this was for general audiences, not just African American voters. What was the strategic plan in that race? How did it come about? What was the turnaround time when we only had 60 days to go from zero to sixty here?

Terrance Green:

That was such very trying time in life. I was very personally exhausted from the prior 150 days of running the Biden effort for Black voters. And the very next day had to find some more energy and some more gas in the tank to be a part of this next race. Because Biden's win wouldn't mean as much if we couldn't flip those two seats in Georgia. So, we were obviously up for the task and got into it. One thing that we like to say over here, and one thing that makes us stand out from some of the other folks who do this work is that on one day, this firm, this team is called on to get Black voters for Biden. And the very next day we're getting white voters for Warnock. That involves a lot of cultural competency, being nimble, and also being able to understand whatever assignment that is given to you.

Terrance Green:

The key for the Georgia runoff working with Senate Majority PAC was to understand the playing field. There was a lot of spending already going on. A lot of money being spent already in the state of Georgia and a lot more to come. We weren't planning on being the biggest fish in the pond when it came to advertising in the Atlanta media market and in some of the other major markets. But we wanted to understand which audience that we could impact on the margins. It was going to be a close race no matter what. We understood that from the jump. So, what we saw in the research, and this program relied heavily on a lot of research and ad testing, that we wanted to make sure that the current Senator, Kelly Loeffler, could be disqualified because of her actions as Senator, with a particular set of white voters who are not in the Atlanta media market.

Terrance Green:

So, we were working in all the other corners of the state from your Savannahs, your Macons, those little tiny markets on the Tennessee border and the Florida border, that's where we were playing. We wanted to get that half a percent, that 1%, which might end up making the difference. Let the other folks do the work with turning out folks in Atlanta Metro and having the battle there. So, the ads that we ran, we ran maybe a half a dozen but we made, I would say at least 15 or 20 that didn't see the light of day. Were tested with this particular set of voters, they were white voters, they were seemingly had a profile that they could be... I wouldn't say they were going to vote for Warnock, but they could be turned away from Loeffler. If these folks didn't turn out, that would be a win for us.

Terrance Green:

If they turned out to vote for Warnock, even better. But we wanted to make sure they didn't vote for Kelly Loeffler. Her stock scandal was the number one thing that popped the people's heads that happened earlier on that year, with her insider trading scandal was top of mind for a lot of voters. So, we used that against her and we also tried to see if we pivot to also pin the tail on the donkey with some other issues that were going on economically, with the pandemic, you name it. So, we did a lot of different variations to see which ones really stuck with voters. Most of our arguments centered around how small businesses were suffering while Kelly Loeffler was making a profit. In the end, everything that happened in that race mattered. Every group that spent money and was active because we won by the hair of our chins. And we were able to make a big difference and be a part of that. So, around January 5th or so, we were able to take a nap finally from the 2020 elections. Unfortunately the very next day, the world kind of went to hell.

David Beard:

That was such a jarring time to have this extraordinary success on January 5th and to feel on top of the world. And then all of a sudden, the very next day, we're still talking about that day.

Terrance Green:

We had no time to celebrate. That was the one thing with the 2020, there was no time to celebrate anything. Biden didn't really win on election night. So, there was no popping of champagne until a week later, but even that was muted. We flipped the Senate two seats in Georgia, history made, and the very next day chaos in the Capital. So, in some ways we haven't had time to really celebrate what we did here because the work was extraordinary. But with so many people, we just had one little piece of the story, but I'm still waiting for that celebration, maybe one day.

David Nir:

Well, I sort of feel as Beard alluded, every time a bill passes the Senate by a 50/50 margin with Harris breaking ties, I kind of feel like that's a moment to pop the bubbly.

Terrance Green:

Look, that feels good every time they call her into the chamber to break the tie because that doesn't happen without Warnock and Ossoff being in the Senate. And those were two wins that people didn't think were possible. But when you think about the prior cycles and the work that was done in Georgia to mobilize, especially the Black vote, even what Biden was able to do to enhance that, and we had some part of that story too in terms of keeping folks engaged, to keep voting and to make change. And we saw that, we won Georgia. Who would've thought: Democrats haven't won Georgia since the nineties. And we were able to do that three times in 60 days. I wouldn't have put a bet in Vegas on that likely, but we're not here to play the odds in that way. We still have to work just as hard and try to achieve that result that we're hired to do.

David Beard:

Turning to 2022 and the midterms of course, Joe Biden's approval is down across the board and Black voters are no exception. What is the general feeling, the sense you are getting from African American voters in terms of their feelings about Joe Biden and about voting in the midterms?

Terrance Green:

That's a great question. This is a real time thing that we are trying to figure out right now in a lot of different places. So, we're consulting on a bunch of different races in different corners of the country, from House races to statewides. And there have been a lot of focus groups that have already happened in other research tools. So, what I can share from that is sort of an amalgamation of those sentiments. Some of that research has involved focus groups with African Americans who can hear from people's own mouths what's going on? How do you feel about things? Generally speaking, Black folks are still with Joe Biden. They're not excited about Joe Biden necessarily, but they're generally with him. They're not with him with the intensity level that you'd need to really be successful in a midterm. So, that's something that we have to keep a really close eye on.

Terrance Green:

There's certainly a lot of discontent that not enough has been done as we were explaining earlier, the Herculean effort that it took in 2020 to get folks to the polls in the midst of the pandemic in all this uncertainty and unrest. I think people wanted more of a return on that investment and they're not feeling that. The prices of things are too high. We wanted some change with policing to get more justice and also safer communities, more action, tangible action on guns, better jobs, better wages, things like that. And those are things that people aren't really seeing or feeling in a tangible way. So, there's certainly some hesitancy about voting and if I come out, what's going to change? You said last time we were going to get somewhere and we are not there yet. We're also realizing though that the Supreme Court has really put a spotlight on our rights and our rights are under attack, and we're seeing how we can position ourselves when it comes to abortion rights, when it comes to some of the other rights that are seemingly also in the cross hairs of this conservative court, and putting Democrats on the right side of protecting those rights.

Who you can marry, what you can do with your body, your right to vote, all these things, having the chance to codify that. We've already moved to put some of those votes there. I think that it'll be important for Democrats to tell people what they've done when it comes to rights when it comes to economic issues, and also what they want to protect. Fear is always a healthy additive to this argument, too. If we tell people what the other guy's going to do is really bad, that will be very helpful as well.

Terrance Green:

When we're talking about getting black folks out, I think we have to also understand that we just can't take black folks for granted. Candidates have to pursue those votes, and invest in black votes. Those are still democratic votes to lose for now, but they must be earned. When you're thinking about your media plans. When you're thinking about your community investments, you've got to put the time in to make sure that African American voters are engaged early and often. Then they will come out to support. If you wait till too late, then those are voters that may choose to sit home and not come out.

David Nir:

Democrats have nominated or will soon nominate four African American Senate candidates in some of the most competitive Senate races this year, including of course, Rafael Warnock, as we've mentioned, Cheri Beasley in North Carolina, Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin and Val Demings in Florida. How does having an African American nominee in these races, in these states affect those races, both among the African American voters and their turnout and their enthusiasm for that and the general electorate?

Terrance Green:

I'm personally excited about all four of these candidates. To reelect Senator Warnock would be obviously a big deal in Georgia, but Barnes, Beasley and Demings are also extremely strong and exciting candidates. I think that the Black candidates in these statewide races have unique opportunity to shed the labeling of typical liberal that happens I think with some other types of candidates.

Terrance Green:

They can carve their own path about what type of Senator that they would be. I'll take one case in point of a candidate who's done that successfully. One of our clients is Antonio Delgado. He's now the Lieutenant governor of New York, but he got his start in 2018 running in a House district in upstate New York, which is 90% white.

Terrance Green:

Nobody thought he could win. A lot of people said that he should not even run. I will leave those names out of this podcast, but they're names that you know. We ignored their terrible advice and went to run a campaign the way that we wanted to run it. Delgado had an opportunity to tell people exactly who he was. He was from that area. He was grounded in the region. He was from upstate Schenectady, New York, which is a little bit out of the district. You don't say you're from Schenectady, unless you're from Schenectady. It's the kind of place that lets people know that you didn't grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth and you probably had to work pretty hard to get wherever you are in life today.

Terrance Green:

A lot of these candidates successful in their own rights, but they're from these states and they can make their own story as to why they understand the people from their respective states and would be a good representative for those states. Delgado ended up winning a competitive seven-way primary, and then went on to beat the incumbent by five points. He got reelected by double digits in the following race in 2020. He did that because he outworked everyone. He is super smart, he's disciplined. That built a lot of good will with a lot of people that didn't look like him.

Terrance Green:

Part of the reason is that his positions, well, he voted very much as a progressive. He was able to talk about it in very reasonable way as to why this is the way that he thought about things in one to approach policy and was able to get a receptive audience from a lot of these voters. Again, most of them white, a lot of them independent, and a whole bunch of them had voted for Donald Trump just a few short months before the 2018 election.

Terrance Green:

There is an opportunity to build that goodwill and look like a very reasonable candidate while not conceding your principles as a liberal, as a Democrat. Each state's going to be a little bit different. Each race is a little bit different, but if you can avoid being painted as a liberal or typical Democratic, liberal socialist, Marxist, and all those things, those labels don't stick as well to black candidates as we've seen recently, and I think that each of these candidates has a chance to run their own race and be their own person and connect with voters in a different way. I'm looking forward to seeing how they do.

Terrance Green:

Full disclosure on this. We are working with some Super PACs in support of Val Demings and Cheri Beasley in this cycle. We will be hopefully a part of the story of their success in their individual states.

David Nir:

Now, I'm glad you mentioned Delgado. We followed his 2018 campaign very closely. In my opinion, the ads that Republicans ran against him in that election were the most racist of any they ran that cycle. That is really saying something. In particular, they focused on his early career as a rapper. We thought that made him look incredibly awesome, but obviously it was designed to inspire fear in racist, white voters. How is that something that you combated, because he obviously did go on to some impressive wins in this district.

Terrance Green:

With the Republicans and race, when it comes to these types of ads, I would say that it's like a moth to a flame. We knew exactly what they were going to go for. There were probably some other things that Antonio's bio would've yielded a little bit more potency with the attack ads, but they couldn't help themselves to go ahead and run things that darkened his features, made him look like a tough gangster rapper.

Terrance Green:

Don't forget this man's a Rhodes Scholar. This man was an NCAA basketball player, went to an Ivy League school. He is the best of what folks have to offer. He's from upstate New York and he wasn't afraid to say that. The thing that we wanted to do was to disarm all of that racism in a subtle, yet head on way. We wanted to show that Antonio was a smart dude and that people liked him, people from that area. Most of the folks up there are white. We're going to make sure that we go and campaign with white voters.

Terrance Green:

The ad campaign that we ran in the primary, which also extended to the general election was called doors. We wanted to bring the campaign experience of door knocking to the doorstep of everyone who was watching these ads. We had simply Antonio walking up driveways and going through the various towns of upstate New York, talking to people about the stuff that mattered to them, healthcare jobs, the environment, women's health, all the things that were on the minds of voters and having a very reasonable and sensible smart guy to do that was something that helped turn the tide.

Terrance Green:

Now, when we looked at the outcome of that election and the types of voters that we were able to get, his numbers with white voters, particularly white women voters, were through the roof. They're the types of numbers that you don't normally see. The reason is that we disarmed voters from the normal way of thinking and were able to show Antonio as a human being who wanted to do something good for the community that he's from.

Terrance Green:

The more people saw those other ads play against that the less inclined they were to absorb that negative messaging, because he looked like someone who didn't deserve this type of nastiness. He's just a nice guy. It ended up having a negative effect on John Faso's election chances. Going back to the earlier comment about, do no harm from the IE's, at the end of the day, those racist nasty attack ads on Delgado did more harm than good for the Republican side.

Terrance Green:

It put more people in our camp because they didn't think they were fair. We were able to scoop them up with a positive message.

David Nir:

Well, I love hearing that there was a price for Republicans to pay for their racist ads. This is a fantastic conversation. We have been talking with Terrance Green, political media consultant and managing partner at 4C partners. Terrance, where can people find you online?

Terrance Green:

For those in the Twitter verse, I am @twgreen27. You can follow me for political news as well as sports updates. I'm a big baseball and football fan. Happy to have you join and I'll follow back. Promise.

David Nir:

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Terrance Green:

Thank you both.

David Nir:

That's all from us this week. Thanks to Terrance screen for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts, you can reach us by email at The Downballot, DailyKos.com. If you haven't already please like and subscribe to The Downballot and leave us a five-star rating review. Thanks to our producer, Cara Zelaya, and editor Tim Einenkel we'll be back next week with a new episode.