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Tag: 2024 election

  • If The “Lord Almighty” Tells Biden To Step Down, He Will

    If The “Lord Almighty” Tells Biden To Step Down, He Will

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    In a 22-minute interview on Friday night, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos sat down with President Joe Biden, giving him the opportunity to answer some of voters’ most pressing questions: What happened at the debate and, at the age of 81, is Biden cognitively sound enough to lead this country?

    Their conversation, which was filmed in Madison, Wisconsin, comes just over a week after Biden and former president Donald Trump faced off in Atlanta at the first presidential debate of the election season. In the immediate aftermath of the event—which included a hoarse and meandering Biden, a slew of lies from Trump, and a lack of fact-checking from the CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash—Democrats across the country have been agonizing on television, in opinion pages, and in closed-door meetings about whether or not Biden should be on the ticket come November.

    Stephanopoulos didn’t waste any time before asking about Biden’s performance in Atlanta. After a brief thanks shared between the two men, a reunion of their 2020 town hall conversation, he began, “Let’s start with the debate. You and your team said, have said you had a bad night.”

    “Sure did,” Biden said with a smile, noting that he doesn’t think he’s watched it back fully.

    Biden said his bad night was because “I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing.” Throughout the interview, Biden repeatedly said that the debate was “Nobody’s fault but mine,” “nobody’s fault, mine,” “my fault, no one else’s fault, no one else’s fault.”

    “Have you convinced yourself that only you can defeat him?” Stephanopoulos asked, after Biden detailed the Trump campaign’s ambitions for the future—many of which are outlined in the GOP’s playbook Project 2025.

    “I convinced myself of two things. I’m the most qualified person to beat him, and I know how to get things done,” Biden responded.

    “If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?” Stephanopoulos pressed.

    Biden laughed, smiled wide, and said: “If the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that,” later adding, “The Lord Almighty’s not comin’ down. I mean, these hypotheticals, George.”

    “It’s not that hypothetical anymore,” Stephanopoulos responded.

    On Saturday morning, Minnesota Representative Angie Craig became the fifth House Democrat (and the first battleground House Democrat) to call for Biden to withdraw. Craig joins Representatives Mike Quigley from Illinois, Lloyd Doggett from Texas, Raúl Grijalva from Arizona, and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts.

    “I have great respect for President Biden’s decades of service to our nation and his steadfast commitment to making our country a better place,” Craig’s statement reads. “However, given what I saw and heard from the President during last week’s debate in Atlanta, coupled with the lack of a forceful response from the President himself following that debate, I do not believe that the President can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump.”

    “If we truly believe that Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans must be stopped,” she continued, “there is only a small window left to make sure we have a candidate best equipped to make the case and win. This future of our country is bigger than any one of us. It’s up to the President from here.”

    Virginia Senator Mark Warner, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, has also approached Senate Democrats to plan a meeting on Biden’s future as the party’s presidential nominee.

    “Well, Mark is a good man,” Biden said when Stephanopoulos brought up the senator’s plan. “Mark and I have a different perspective. I respect him.”

    When repeatedly asked if Biden would be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation, that includes neurological and cognitive tests, and release the results to the American people, Biden dodged the question, saying, “I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do.” “I’m running the world,” he continued, “sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.”

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    Katie Herchenroeder

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  • President Biden cancels Sunday’s speech at teachers union convention in Philly due to strike

    President Biden cancels Sunday’s speech at teachers union convention in Philly due to strike

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    President Joe Biden will not speak as planned at a teachers union convention Sunday in Philadelphia after staff at the National Education Association went on strike and set up picket lines outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The organization had been scheduled to conclude its annual conference there this weekend before labor negotiations broke down.

    Biden, who has been a champion of unions, said he would not cross the picket line to appear at the event.

    “The president is still planning to travel to Pennsylvania this weekend,” the Biden campaign said, but it didn’t immediately reveal alternative plans.

    The NEA is the nation’s largest labor union and represents public school teachers, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators and college students preparing to become teachers. On Friday, the National Education Association Staff Organization (NEASO) went on strike and filed a pair of complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, which included allegations of wage theft and withholding requested information about NEA’s use of contractors.

    NEA was founded in Philadelphia in 1857 and had anticipated 7,000 delegates would attend this weekend’s conference in the city. The organization said Friday it would continue negotiations with staff to resolve the labor dispute with NEASO, which represents 350 members of NEA’s 3 million member union, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported. 

    Biden’s speech had been planned amid turmoil about his bid for reelection in the aftermath of a poor showing in his first presidential debate against Republican challenger Donald Trump late last month. Democrats have reportedly weighed whether the president should exit the race in favor of another candidate, but the White House so far has insisted Biden is “absolutely not” dropping out of the contest. The Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago from Aug. 19-22.

    On Friday at 8 p.m., ABC News will air Biden’s first TV interview since the debate — a sit down with George Stephanopoulos that will give the president a chance to address the growing concerns about his candidacy.

    Biden last appeared in Philadelphia in May for an event with Vice President Kamala Harris to rally support among Black voters in the city.

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    Michael Tanenbaum

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  • Donald Trump Celebrates American Independence by Trashing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

    Donald Trump Celebrates American Independence by Trashing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

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    Most people celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks, barbecues, parades, and red, white, and blue attire. Then there’s Donald Trump, who could be president of the United States in approximately 6.5 months. He took a different tack this week, choosing to commemorate the United States’ independence from Britain by attacking his rival for office, belittling the accomplishments of the first female vice president, and trashing the justice system.

    Taking to Truth Social, the social media network he founded after being kicked off of Twitter for inciting an insurrection, Trump ranted his followers:

    Happy Fourth of July to all, including to our highly incapable “President,” who uses Prosecutors to go after his Political Opponent, who choked like a dog during the Debate but tried to pretend it was “International Travel” (only 12 days rest!) and, when that gig was up, he blamed it on a “cold.” Therefore, why would anyone say he’s cognitively challenged?

    Also, respects to our potentially new Democrat Challenger, Laffin’ Kamala Harris. She did poorly in the Democrat Nominating process, starting out at Number Two, and ending up defeated and dropping out, even before getting to Iowa, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a “highly talented” politician! Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco. Someone else that I have to compliment is a Deranged Biden Prosecutor named Jack Smith, who has become a Legend in his own mind for all of those cases he has lost. The Corrupt Prosecutors are working hard for Crooked Joe, but it will never be enough — MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

    Trump, of course, is attacking Biden over the president’s debate performance using his favorite line re: people performing “like a dog,” an insult he has used many times over the years. On Harris, he appears to be referring to a favorite smear of the right concerning a relationship the VP was in decades ago. As for the claim that Biden has directed prosecutors to go after Trump, well, you’ve probably heard that one before.

    Social media isn’t the only forum in which the ex-president has lashed out at his competitors of late. In footage obtained by The Daily Beast, taken at some point following last week’s debate, Trump, sitting in a golf cart, says of Biden: “He just quit, you know—he’s quitting the race. I got him out of the—and that means we have Kamala.” (At present, Biden has not dropped out of the race.) Later, appearing to refer to Biden, he says, “Look at that old, broken-down pile of crap,” and of Harris, “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic.” (A CNN poll released days after the presidential debate show moderates and independents prefer Harris to Trump.)

    Trump’s bizarre way of ringing in the Fourth of July isn’t actually that bizarre for him. In 2013, he famously commemorated 9/11 by tweeting: “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.” On December 31, 2016, he wrote: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do.” And on Memorial Day 2023, his rambling holiday message closed with, “We must stop the communists, Marxists and fascist ‘pigs’ at every turn and, Make America Great Again!”

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    Bess Levin

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  • In the Hamptons, Wealthy Biden Donors Fear a “Dark” Future Under Trump

    In the Hamptons, Wealthy Biden Donors Fear a “Dark” Future Under Trump

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    If the number of candidate-branded plastic cups sold at the Monogram Shop in East Hampton is an accurate predictor of the election results this fall, in a Biden-versus-Trump November race, President Biden gets clobbered.

    Every presidential election cycle since 2004, the small shop on Newtown Lane has sold monogrammed plastic cups with each of the candidates’ names on them, keeping count of sales and posting the daily tally. With the exception of the Clinton-Trump showdown it’s always been a perfect indicator of the outcome of the race (including Bush-Kerry).

    “It fell apart in 2016 with everyone else,” says Valerie Smith, the shop’s owner.

    In January of this year, Smith decided to do away with the cup count. “It’s such a toxic environment,” she says. “This could lead to something unpleasant.”

    Instead, she took a neutral, quiet approach to political messaging and printed “Let Us Pray 2024” on plastic cups that, she says, spoke to everyone. And they sold “briskly.”

    But those who frequented the shop wanted the temperature-taking candidate cups back, and told Smith as much. Early last month, she caved and made Biden-Harris 2024 and Trump 2024 cups. The sales results surprised her, but not nearly as much as who was buying them.

    “From the moment we started, the sales were three to one [for Trump],” Smith says.

    “What has been fascinating, with maybe four exceptions, [is that] every single one of these cups has been bought by a woman. And what does the polling every time tell us? That Trump is in trouble with suburban women. Well, let me tell you—they’re walking in here all day long.”

    As of June 30, approximately three weeks into selling them, 689 Trump cups and 376 Biden cups had been sold (and some 100 of those Biden cups, Smith notes, were bought in bulk ahead of the star-studded post-debate local Biden fundraiser last Saturday at Barry and Lizanne Rosenstein’s oceanfront house on Further Lane). Also billed on the invite were Hamptonites like Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, and Michael J. Fox.

    Now, with many calling for Biden to leave the race following his performance in the first presidential debate, the great cup indicator has been completely thrown for a loop. So have many Democrats, who, along with their checkbooks, spend their summers in the Hamptons.

    Like Palm Beach in the winter and New York City in the spring, the Hamptons is on the donor circuit, and most politicians roll through between the end of June and mid-August, hat in hand, tapping the same wealthy donors in each place.

    The debate last week gave many of them pause.

    At parties over lobster salad and rosé, and on Main Beach in East Hampton over live music Tuesday, while gleeful local Trump supporters were texting “Bi-Done” to anyone and everyone, conversations among shell-shocked Democrats feeling stuck in purgatory swayed between “Biden should step aside” and “let him run” to “I’m not sure what he should do.”

    But behind closed doors, where the real money is pumped into the campaigns, one prominent fundraiser who asked not to be named says the mood is one of “genuine concern.”

    Demonstrators hold signs outside of a fundraiser for US President Joe Biden in East Hampton, New York, US, on Saturday, June 29, 2024.By Amanda L. Gordon/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

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    Stephanie Krikorian

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  • Chris Hayes: Joe Biden’s Reelection Pitch Is a “Tough Ask”

    Chris Hayes: Joe Biden’s Reelection Pitch Is a “Tough Ask”

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    The two leading candidates for president are aging right in front of our eyes. And that’s causing some very candid conversations all across the media world in the wake of last week’s pivotal presidential debate.

    During this week’s episode of Inside the Hive, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes noted that at the end of the day, we are all just “flesh sacks,” an immutable fact of life that “hovers around so much of this” debate within the Democratic Party over whether Joe Biden, following a disastrous performance, is the best option to take on Donald Trump. Biden is “degraded” Hayes remarked, while adding that Trump “has very clearly declined.”

    “The nature of age is that it’s not static,” Hayes observed. It’s “dynamic and it changes from day to day.” Hayes, 45, said he feels like this reality has been overlooked in some of the recent talk about Biden.

    In his view, Biden has been a remarkable president, with significant legislative achievements. “Biden’s one-term domestic policy record is arguably the best of my life,” he said. “So you can say he’s been doing a great job. It’s like, Right, but do I think that this man should have the world’s most stressful job when he’s 85 years old? And that’s what you’re asking voters to do.”

    He added, “That’s a tough ask.”

    Hayes said the ongoing debate about elderly politicians should take into account that “the spectrum of possibility for aging is so wide.”

    “People can have a stroke at 61 and never recover,” he said, and “people can turn 60 and run marathons until they’re 75 and live to be 100. No one knows what’s gonna happen. I feel like that perspective has been missing from all this.”

    “I know people who were elderly and one week they were going to a Broadway show and two weeks later I was going to their funeral,” he added. “Everyone keeps talking about age as static in a way that’s driving me insane, both the Biden people and the other people. That’s not the way it works. Literally.”

    Hayes made the case that the media scrutiny about Biden’s fitness to serve has been “exacerbated by choices the Biden people have made,” specifically to limit Biden’s interviews and news conferences.

    The relationship between the White House and the press corps has been “mutually hostile, in some ways more than average,” Hayes observed. So “part of what you’re seeing is a lot of rage pent up from journalists who have felt like they’ve been frozen out.”

    Of course, the post-debate scrutiny of Biden—Hayes called it a “rebellion” within the Democratic Party—“is going to drive polling numbers as much as the original debate. Whether that’s good or bad, like, I don’t know.”

    But it’s definitely different than the dynamic within the Republican Party.

    “This is such an amazing moment when you compare the aftermath of Trump’s conviction to the aftermath of the debate,” Hayes said. “The aftermath of the debate has been maybe a hundred times as big a story… and the reason that it’s been a much bigger story is that the center-right media never batted an eye” at Trump’s recent conviction. “They were like, It’s awesome that he was convicted. It’s great. We love it. Everyone should be convicted convicts.”

    “The entire Republican Party just unified,” Hayes said. “So there was no real story. It was just like, What are you going to do? That has not been the case with Biden’s debate performance. And so because of that—because the center-left media broadly construed from the sort of mainstream media over—is much more disputatious, I think more reality-based, there’s discourse and debate—you’re getting this huge story. But also I think that’s ultimately, in the long run, a good thing.”

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    Brian Stelter

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  • How Influencers and Algorithms Are Creating Bespoke Realities for Everyone

    How Influencers and Algorithms Are Creating Bespoke Realities for Everyone

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    David: Key to these factions are influencers. How have they become so powerful?

    Renée: They have the followers. Even conspiracy theorist influencers have followings in the millions at this point. Mainstream media doesn’t necessarily get that kind of readership on a given article or viewers on a given piece of content. But the influencer is algorithmically pushed into your feed and they have that ability to speak back, to engage in a way that media brands often don’t.

    David: How important are algorithms in helping these influencers get their message out?

    Renée: The influencer needs to be seen by their audience, and having that relationship with your audience is key, but that’s always mediated through what the algorithm is going to push to people, particularly as more and more of that in-feed real estate is determined not by who you follow at all, but by what it thinks you want to see.

    David: In your book you write about Ali Alexander, an influencer who helped organize the Stop the Steal movement in 2020. How have people like Alexander become so influential?

    Renée: People who are not Trump supporters might see him as clownish, but among the group that he’s speaking to, they trust him, they believe him, and he compels them to take action. It’s really important to realize the effect that influencer relationships have in shaping reality or driving people to act in a way. They really come up from the crowd and they’re given their power because the crowd continues to engage with them and support them and drive them.

    David: Is this what Trump is doing?

    Renée: What you see with Trump over and over again is what we call this bottom-up rumor mill, where people are chattering about things, they say it, they post it, they tag him, he retweets them, then they have the benefit of that additional clout within the community. They’ve done their part, they’re fighting for the cause. You see him very deftly working this system on Truth Social [where] he’s constantly amplifying fans and followers and engaging very much among the online supporter base.

    David: What are we missing about our current information environment?

    Renée: What I find most alarming is that people have the ability to just create reality by making something trend, to reinforce over and over and over again these conspiracy theories. You do have this increasingly divergent set of realities where there’s a deep conviction built up over many, many years of reinforcing the same tropes and stories. You can’t just correct that with a fact check.

    David: And following the demise of the Stanford Internet Observatory, there are even less people fact-checking this stuff. Who or what was to blame for your departure from Stanford?

    Renée: The chilling effect of congressional inquiries and associated lawfare, and the politicization of research, is real. Institutions need to see the writing on the wall. We have seen these tactics in the past, such as during attacks on climate scientists a decade ago, yet the playbook continues to work. If spurious investigations into politically inconvenient findings succeed in cowing institutions, there will only be more spurious investigations.

    The Chatroom

    Where do you get your political news from these days (aside from WIRED Politics, of course)? Do you stick to traditional media (newspapers, broadcast TV) or are you subscribed to political newsletters, podcasts, and social feeds? Do you consciously make an effort to get news from different perspectives? Or do you think you are living in an information echo chamber?

    I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment on the site, or send me an email at mail@wired.com.

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    David Gilbert

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  • Barack Obama, Like the Rest of the Nation, Is Worried About November

    Barack Obama, Like the Rest of the Nation, Is Worried About November

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    The last six days have been a dark time for Americans who don’t want an aspiring dictator to be the next president of the United States. Unfortunately, thanks to an objectively terrible debate performance by Joe Biden, that might actually happen—and thanks to the Supreme Court, Donald Trump has been given the green light to govern like an actual dictator, should he return to the White House. But, hey, the good news is that—no, just kidding, we don’t have any good news. Though perhaps one can take comfort in the fact that even Barack Obama is said to be scared shitless about November, in a sort of “we’re all in this together” way. Yes, the bar is that low!

    The Washington Post reports that Obama “has privately told allies who have reached out to him that President Biden’s already tough path to reelection grew more challenging after his shaky debate performance on Thursday—a harsher assessment of the presidential race than his public comments, according to several people familiar with his remarks.” Was the 44th president watching the debate with his hands covering his eyes? Did Michelle have to literally pull him off the ledge after Biden said he “beat Medicare”? That is not clear, but what is clear is that, in private, the guy is as worried as millions of other Americans. (A spokesperson for Obama declined the Post’s request for comment.)

    That collective fear was presumably not moderated by another report on Tuesday, from The New York Times, that “In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.” According to the outlet:

    Like many people his age, Mr. Biden, 81, has long experienced instances in which he mangled a sentence, forgot a name or mixed up a few facts, even though he could be sharp and engaged most of the time. But in interviews, people in the room with him more recently said that the lapses seemed to be growing more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome. The uncomfortable occurrences were not predictable, but seemed more likely when he was in a large crowd or tired after a particularly bruising schedule.

    On June 10, he appeared to freeze up at an early celebration of the Juneteenth holiday. On June 18, his soft-spoken tone and brief struggle to summon the name of his homeland security secretary at an immigration event unnerved some of his allies at the event, who traded alarmed looks and later described themselves as “shaken up,” as one put it. Mr. Biden recovered, and named Alejandro N. Mayorkas.

    As the Times notes, Biden is “certainly not that way all the time,” and aides and other people who saw him in the days following the debate reported him being “alert, coherent, and capable, engaged in complicated and important discussions, and managing volatile crises.” People familiar with the matter also cited his performance in the Situation Room the night Iran fired missiles and drones at Israel, saying he was “in commanding form” while speaking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Neera Tanden, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, told the Times the president is “inquisitive,” “focused,” and “sharp,” and that during briefings, “He will ask you a tough question and he will say, ‘How does this relate to an average person?’ And if you haven’t thought of that in that time, you have to come back to him.” Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s homeland security adviser, said that during a briefing in the Situation Room less than two weeks before the debate, the president “digested an immense amount of information” and asked her questions that were “probing and insightful.” She said his performance on the debate stage “doesn’t reflect the experience I have with him on a daily basis.”

    Obviously, from a reelection perspective, though, things are not good. In a sign of just how serious the situation is, a Times report on Wednesday said that Biden “has told a key ally that he knows he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince the public in the coming days that he is up for the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.” To that end, betting sites believe Vice President Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee. (A White House spokesman told the Times the claim re: Biden potentially dropping out is “absolutely false.”)

    Yet whether it’s Biden or Harris (or someone else entirely) on the ballot, it’s important to remember who the alternative is. And if the worst thing about Biden is his forgetfulness, well, as the Times notes:

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    Bess Levin

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  • Should Biden Stay In The Race? Everyone Has an Opinion.

    Should Biden Stay In The Race? Everyone Has an Opinion.

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    In the immediate aftermath of the first presidential debate Thursday night, an old question emerged with renewed urgency: Should Biden drop out of the race?

    The 90-minute debate, hosted by CNN and moderated by the organizations’ Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, was, as Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin wrote, “a terrible night that left people who care about the fate of the country/world/universe on the floor in a fetal position from which no one has gotten up.”

    President Joe Biden’s performance was rife with the very moments Democrats were hoping to avoid; he seemed old and frazzled. His competitor, former president Donald Trump, told lie after lie after lie—on abortion, taxes, immigration, etc. There was no real-time fact-checking provided by CNN. At some points, like when the septuagenarian and octogenarian were bragging about their golf game, it was simply difficult to watch.

    Biden mentioned the showdown with Trump and addressed his performance at a campaign event in North Carolina on Friday. “Did you see Trump last night? My guess he set—and I mean this sincerely—a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said. He continued, “Folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth.

    After the debate, per reporting from The Daily Beast, Biden campaign spokesperson, Seth Schuster, texted multiple media outlets, “Of course he’s not dropping out.”

    The mechanics of replacing Biden would be difficult, to say the least, though not impossible. Those calling for Biden to drop out of the race and release all the pledged delegates he has accumulated—3,894 of 3,937 committed so far, according to a tally by AP—were swift and stern.

    The New York Times editorial board wrote, “The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”

    “The burden rests on the Democratic Party,” the board continued, “to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man.”

    The Times also published two other opinion pieces during the debate fallout, one by columnist Nicholas Kristof entitled “President Biden, I’ve Seen Enough” and another in which Thomas Friedman writes, “I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep. I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime, precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.”

    According to Axios, a well-known Democrat who often talks to the president said that those who are surrounding Biden should tell him “the absolute truth about where he is” and that “loyalty doesn’t mean blind loyalty.”

    It didn’t take long for those in Biden’s corner to jump in and attempt to reassure an anxious American public.

    “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know.” former president Barack Obama posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Friday afternoon. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

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    Katie Herchenroeder

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  • Help us, Gretchen Whitmer. You’re our only hope.

    Help us, Gretchen Whitmer. You’re our only hope.

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    There’s no spinning it — Thursday night’s presidential debate was just plain painful to watch.

    Donald Trump spouted a firehouse of lies that President Joe Biden, plagued with a cough, was too frail and feeble to properly fend off. Too many clips saw Biden mumbling meandering non-sequiturs in a near-whisper or trailing off as he repeatedly lost his train of thought.

    Both candidates were cringe-inducing when faced with the task of discussing issues like abortion or immigration, and both also spent a disturbing and reckless amount of time talking about war. Incredibly, at one point, they even argued about who has the better golf game.

    Unsurprisingly, many Democrats are reportedly now freaking out with fresh concerns over Biden’s fitness for office, even though pundits like Ezra Klein and Jon Stewart were lampooned for raising this very issue months ago, in February. At 81, Biden is the oldest U.S. President ever.

    As soon as the debate ended, nearly the entire panel of anchors at host news organization CNN seemed to be in agreement that Biden’s performance was poor, with many suggesting he should drop out of the race for the good of the nation. It was a similar situation even at the typically Democrat-friendly MSNBC. We didn’t tune in, but we’re sure Fox News had an absolute field day with the clips.

    Other outlets joined the pile on, with The New York Times opinion section churning out at least five columns urging Biden to step down in the ensuing hours. (Sample headlines: “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race”; “Biden Cannot Go On Like This”; “The Best President of My Adult Life Needs to Withdraw”; “Is Biden Too Old? America Got Its Answer.”; and “Joe Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race.”, in which the columnist confessed to weeping while watching the debate.)

    There’s no debate over the fact that Biden is vulnerable against Trump, 78, who the President and other Democrats maintain poses an urgent threat to democracy due to his role in the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. Polls have found the candidates to be neck and neck, with Trump having an edge in swing states like Michigan.

    Of course, it’s too late for another Democratic candidate to formally run against Biden since the primary election is over (though we’ll save for another day a discussion about how more Democrats should have stepped up to respectfully challenge the incumbent; voters deserve choices based on merit, not a system that defers to seniority). There is, however, an alternative option, albeit a somewhat far-fetched one.

    As many pundits have pointed out, the party could choose to run an open convention at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. But Biden would have to first willingly step aside, something he has not yet indicated he would do. If he did, however, the delegates who have pledged to nominate him at the convention could vote for someone else. This would likely kick off a free-for-all of candidates scrambling for the nomination and could get messy. There would likely be large protests from anti-war activists opposed to continuing to support Israel’s attacks on Gaza, for example. Plus, the idea of delegates choosing a candidate and not the American voters feels undemocratic.

    This hypothetical scenario echoes the infamous 1968 DNC, which descended into chaos after incumbent Lyndon Johnson dropped out due to the unpopular war in Vietnam. That convention was also held in Chicago, and sparked seven days of protests and a police crackdown that resulted in one death and hundreds of injuries. The eventual Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, would go on to lose to Richard Nixon in November.

    If Biden were to drop out, a number of names have been floated as possible alternatives. Vice President Kamala Harris is the obvious choice from a succession of powers perspective, but Democratic governors like California’s Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer have all also been floated as strong contenders for the Oval Office.

    click to enlarge

    Joe Maroon

    Gov. Whitmer was sworn in for a second term on Jan. 1, 2023.

    As Biden struggled to answer a question about abortion on Thursday night — which should have been a slam dunk considering the widespread backlash to Trump’s Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022 — it was hard not to imagine how much better it would have been if someone like Whitmer was up there on stage instead. An articulate, energetic orator, Whitmer has made reproductive rights one of her signature issues, dramatically revealing her own experience with sexual assault to oppose a controversial “rape insurance” bill as a state senator in 2013 and repealing Michigan’s 1931 abortion ban in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade in 2023. And Whitmer, 52, who has a propensity for hopping on viral social media trends like last summer’s Barbie-mania, would likely have a much better time connecting with the ever-elusive bloc of young voters, who we can’t imagine are excited to cast their ballots in November.

    For now, though, it seems such a scenario is unlikely. The Biden campaign says he’s not dropping out, and on Friday, the President doubled down on his reelection effort while also acknowledging his poor performance.

    “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said. “I don’t walk as smoothly as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. And I know how to get things done. When you get knocked down, you get back up.”

    And Whitmer, a co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign and staunch supporter of the President, has also said she stands by him. On Friday, she released a statement in defense of Biden’s campaign:

    “For hardworking people in Michigan and across the country, this election is about which candidate can do the most to make life easier for them and their families, stand up for our rights and freedoms, and leave a better country for our kids and grandkids. On these questions, the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as people, and as presidents, could not be clearer.

    President Biden’s focus is on lowering families’ costs, building an economy that works for working people, and restoring the reproductive freedom women lost the last time Donald Trump was in the White House.

    Donald Trump is a convicted felon whose focus is on Donald Trump. And he’s told us what he will do if he gets back into the White House. He will take his attacks on women’s reproductive rights even further, try to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and spike families’ health costs, and send auto jobs to China.

    Joe Biden is running to serve the American people. Donald Trump is running to serve Donald Trump. The difference between Joe Biden’s vision for making sure everyone in America has a fair shot and Donald Trump’s dangerous, self-serving plans will only get sharper as we head toward November.”

    Whitmer has also been hailed as a serious contender for the White House in 2028, so maybe we just have to wait until next time. Still, we hope that Biden and those closest to him give serious consideration to what’s at stake in November. We deserve better than what we got on Thursday evening.

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    Lee DeVito

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  • Biden’s Debate Performance Was Objectively Terrible—and Trump Is Still Trump

    Biden’s Debate Performance Was Objectively Terrible—and Trump Is Still Trump

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    As most people with eyes and ears can agree, Joe Biden’s performance at the debate last night was a disaster of epic proportions. The president, whose critics have spent years claiming is too old for the job, looked, sounded, and acted old. His voice was hoarse. His face appeared to be frozen at many points. Most distressingly, he seemed to lose his train of thought on several occasions. When he had opportunities to nail Donald Trump—like, say, on abortion—he didn’t. Did he have a few good moments? Yes, toward the end, he recovered a bit. But overall, it was a terrible night that left people who care about the fate of the country/world/universe on the floor in a fetal position from which no one has gotten up.

    And yet: Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. While Biden was floundering, Trump spent the night spewing his usual array of insane, baseless lies, including but not limited to:

    • Claiming Democrats support abortion “after birth” (this is actually called murder and no one supports it)
    • Claiming “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned (a majority of Americans did not want Roe overturned)
    • Claiming he got us “out of that COVID mess” (hundreds of thousands of Americans died while he was president, and COVID is still very much a thing)
    • Claiming that Biden is going to quadruple people’s taxes (just not true at all)
    • Claiming Biden “made up” the story about him calling dead soldiers “suckers” and “losers” (this was reported by The Atlantic, and Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly confirmed his remarks)
    • Claiming Biden called Black people “super predators” throughout the 1990s (he did not)
    • Claiming Biden tried to remove Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2016 in an effort to help his son (this claim has been false since Trump and his allies started pushing it all the way back in 2019)
    • Claiming there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency (false)
    • Claiming January 6 was Nancy Pelosi’s fault (come on)
    • Claiming there was widespread fraud during the 2020 election (nearly four years later, there is literally no evidence of this no matter how many times he says it)

    And, of course, in addition to last night’s lies, the fact remains that Trump is a convicted felon who has vowed, among other things, to use the government to go after his enemies, wage an extreme war on immigrants, take no action on gun control, encourage Russia to attack NATO allies, get rid of career civil servants and replace them with loyalists, pardon people convicted over January 6, go after transgender care, let states monitor individual pregnancies to punish people obtain abortions, and strip funding from schools with vaccine requirements. And those are just the things he’s said publicly.

    Democrats, understandably beside themselves over the events that transpired last night, are talking seriously about the prospect of replacing Biden on the ticket. And maybe that should happen! But if it doesn’t, let’s be clear about what the alternative to electing Biden would be.

    More of this over the next over the next 4+ months would be helpful!

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    Bess Levin

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  • POTUS Debate: Biden And Trump Fight Over Their Golf Handicaps

    POTUS Debate: Biden And Trump Fight Over Their Golf Handicaps

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    UPDATE: As the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump neared the 90 minute mark, their sparring turned to their golf handicaps.

    “I would be happy to have a driving contest with him,” Biden said, adding that when he was vice president, “I got my handicap down to a six.”

    Trump then smirked and shook his head.

    Biden then reminded Trump that “I would be happy to play golf with you if you carried your own bag.”

    Trump expressed disbelief. “I have seen your swing. I know your swing.”

    Finally co-moderator Dana Bash got them to move on.

    PREVIOUSLY: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star,” Donald Trump said at one point during the debate, after Joe Biden lashed into his rival fora lengthy court record.

    “The crimes you are still charged with,” Biden said. “How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things, for having sex with a porn star on the night your wife was pregnant. You have the morals of an alley cat.”

    Trump had been asked about his statement that he would have every right to go after his political opponents.

    Trump said that “my retribution is going to be success.” He then went on to criticize the conviction of Biden’s son, Hunter, on a gun charge, while making other long discredited claims about Biden’s own involvement in the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor.

    PREVIOUSLY: Joe Biden slammed Donald Trump for encouraging rioters on January 6th, laying into the predecessor for his inaction even as many of his supporters were sacking the Capitol.

    “I sat in that dining room off the Oval Office. He sat there for three hours watching, being begged by his vice president and a number of his colleagues to do something. …Instead he talked about these people being great patriots of America.”

    “He didn’t do a damn thing, and these people shouldn’t be in jail.”

    Trump initially tried to pivot away from January 6th but, after pressed by co-moderator Jake Tapper, later defended his pledge to commute the sentences of those involved in the attack on the Capitol.

    Meanwhile, some White House reporters are noting that Biden has had a cold.

    Trump also claimed that on January 6th, he asked then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about sending 10,000 troops to protect the Capitol that day, but was turned down. That claim is false, per the AP fact check.

    PREVIOUSLY: As Joe Biden defended his record on immigration, Donald Trump got in a dig at his rival’s mental acuity.

    “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump said. “I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”

    Biden is not performing well in this debate, as Trump has appeared stronger and sharper. The president has gotten better as the debate going on, but Trump also has had free rein, often spreading misinformation about issues including his role on January 6th.

    PREVIOUSLY: Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Donald Trump was looking for a middle road on abortion in tonight’s presidential debate.

    He may have found it, at least for a few minutes until the issue turned into an ugly dispute over the horrors of rape and murder between Joe Biden and his predecessor.

    Trump said that with Roe Vs. Wade repealed, “what happened is we brought it back to the states and the country is now coming together on this issue.”

    “It’s been a terrible thing what you have done,” Biden said. “…The idea that states are going to do this is like saying we are going to bring civil rights back to the states.”

    That was one of Biden’s more energetic moments. More often than not, as Biden has delivered answers in a raspy voice and coughing at times, Trump has appeared far more energetic, even if a number of statements will not survive the fact check post debate.

    PREVIOUSLY: Joe Biden and Donald Trump started their presidential debate with no handshake, quickly sparring over some of the superlatives over their presidency.

    The first question, to Biden, was what he would say to voters who believe that they are worse off during his presidency than during Trump.

    “Take a look at what I was left with when I became president, Mr. Trump left me,” Biden said, noting that the economy “was in freefall, the pandemic was badly handled, many people were dying, all he said was it was not that serious, just inject a little bit of bleach in your arm.”

    Trump responded by claiming that his presidency saw “the greatest economy in the history of the country. We have never done so well. … We got hit with Covid, and when we did we spent the money that was necessary so we didn’t end up in a Great Depression.”

    In their allotted time, both candidates attacked each other’s record while defending their own — pretty standard for a debate. But Trump was more adept at turning any question to his own talking points, while Biden was more halting.

    The CNN debate marked a big departure from past cycles, not just in who is organizing the event but the timing: This is the earliest ever general election matchup of each major party’s presidential candidates.

    The debate also may end up being far different in tone: In studio, with no audience, and with mics muted on a candidate when it is not his turn to speak. The could make for a far different experience than in 2020 when, at the first debate, Trump interrupted Biden so frequently that the latter told the former to “shut up.”

    In advance of this debate, Biden has spent nearly a week at Camp David in preparation for what may be a key moment of his campaign, as he looks to tamper notions over his ability to serve another four years because of his age. With Trump holding leads in a number of polling averages, Biden also needs a bit of a shakeup at this stage of the race.

    RELATED: White House Correspondents’ Association Protests After CNN Limits In-Studio Print Pool Access During Duration Of Biden-Trump Debate

    Trump, meanwhile, also faces his own questions of fitness, as Biden has hammered him for his role in inciting a mob to attack the Capitol on January 6th. Biden has characterized his rival as unhinged, given his rants on social media and at rallies, and may try to further trigger Trump at this evening’s event.

    RELATED: 2024 Presidential Election Debate Schedule: Dates, Times

    The debate itself was just the type of event that focused national attention on the presidential race, as broadcasters, cable networks and streamers planned to pick up the CNN feed. Up to know, the expected uptick in audiences for election season has been a bit disappointing to the networks, as polls show much of the public has disfavored a rematch between Trump and Biden.

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    Ted Johnson

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  • A Mind-Boggling Number of Voters Who Could Decide the Election Think Donald Trump—Yes, That Donald Trump—is Better for Democracy Than Biden

    A Mind-Boggling Number of Voters Who Could Decide the Election Think Donald Trump—Yes, That Donald Trump—is Better for Democracy Than Biden

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    “Many Americans don’t recognize Biden’s custodianship of our democracy, which is a bad sign for his campaign,” Justin Gest, a professor of policy and government at George Mason University, told the Post, in perhaps the understatement of a lifetime. It’s not clear how the Biden campaign plans to change these people’s minds, but for the actual fate of democracy, it would be great if they could get on that.

    Speaking of pants-shittingly concerning news…

    Here’s some more worrisome data from the Post:

    Donald Trump is leading in 5 of the 7 battleground states that are most likely to determine the outcome of the election. The polls are particularly close in the first three battlegrounds below, meaning our average is within a normal-sized polling error of 3.5 points and either a Trump or President Biden victory is plausible. In the other four battlegrounds, the candidates’ polling leads are larger, but the race is still close.

    While the words “a…President Biden victory is plausible” theoretically make the “Donald Trump is leading” part slightly less scary, in reality they absolutely do not.

    The Speaker of the House goes to bat for another convicted criminal

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    Billion-dollar defamation lawsuits will do that to ya

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    Elsewhere!

    Trump’s Inflammatory Comments Matter More Than His Supporters Want to Admit

    Politico • Read More

    Supreme Court mistakenly posts abortion ruling document on website

    CNN • Read More

    Smearing, Flexing, and Playing the Victim: Inside Trumpworld’s Pre-debate Messaging Blitz

    Vanity Fair • Read More

    What to Know Ahead of Thursday’s Presidential Debate, According to Jack Schlossberg

    Vogue • Read More

    A Look Back at Memorable Presidential Debate Moments

    NYT • Read More

    Garland decries House GOP proposal to cut Justice Dept. funding by $1 billion

    The Washington Post • Read More

    Rudy Giuliani Loves Buying Bad Ties and Makeup on Amazon

    New York • Read More

    “I don’t know who Assange is”: global media circus bemuses sleepy Saipan

    The Guardian • Read More

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    Bess Levin

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  • A Russian Propaganda Network Is Promoting an AI-Manipulated Biden Video

    A Russian Propaganda Network Is Promoting an AI-Manipulated Biden Video

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    Among the prominent accounts sharing the video was Russian Market, which has 330,000 followers and is operated by the Swiss social media personality Vadim Loskutov, who is known for praising Russia and criticizing the West. The video was also shared by Tara Reade, who defected to Russia in 2023 in a bid for citizenship. Reade also accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993.

    The video, researchers tell WIRED, was also manipulated in a bid to avoid detection online. “Doppelganger operators trimmed the video at arbitrary points, so they are technically different in milliseconds and therefore are likely considered as distinct unique videos by abuse-protection systems,” the Antibot4Navalny researchers tell WIRED.

    “This one is unique in its ambiguity,” Fink said. “It’s maybe a known Russian band, but maybe not, maybe a deepfake, but maybe not, maybe has reference to other politicians but maybe not. In other words, it is a distinctly Soviet style of propaganda video. The ambiguity allows for multiple competing versions, which means hundreds or articles and arguments online, which leads to more people seeing it eventually.”

    As the Kremlin ramps up its efforts to undermine the US election in November, it is increasingly clear that Russia is willing to utilize emerging AI technologies. A new report published this week from threat intelligence company Recorded Future highlighted this trend by revealing that a campaign, which has been linked to the Kremlin, has been using generative AI tools to push pro-Trump content on a network of fake websites.

    The report details how the campaign, dubbed CopyCop, used the AI tools to scrape content from real news websites, repurpose the content with a right-wing bias, and republish the content on a network of fake websites with names like Red State Report and Patriotic Review that purport to be staffed by over a 1,000 journalists—all of whom are fake and have also been invented by AI.

    The topics pushed by the campaign include errors made by Biden during speeches, Biden’s age, poll results that show a lead for Trump, and claims that Trump’s recent criminal conviction and trial was “impactless” and “a total mess.”

    It is still unclear how much impact these sites are having, and a review by WIRED of social media platforms found very few links to the network of fake websites CopyCop has created. But what the CopyCop campaign has proved is that AI can supercharge the dissemination of disinformation. And experts say this is likely just the first step in a broader strategy that will likely include networks like Doppelganger.

    “Estimating the engagement with the websites themselves remains a difficult task,” Clément Briens, an analyst at Recorded Future, tells WIRED. “The AI-generated content is likely not garnering attention at all. However, it serves the purpose of helping establish these websites as credible assets for when they publish targeted content like deepfakes [which are] amplified by established Russian or pro-Russian influence actors with existing following and audiences.”

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    David Gilbert

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  • Jamaal Bowman’s Loss Is the Start of a New Era

    Jamaal Bowman’s Loss Is the Start of a New Era

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    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

    George Latimer ousted Representative Jamaal Bowman, a two-term leftist and critic of Israel, in what’s believed to be the most expensive congressional primary ever fought. For moderates hoping to check the power of the Squad in Congress, it was a joyous night; for the many progressives who hoped to save one of their most prominent politicians, it was a deeply dispiriting — if no longer shocking — turn of events.

    Latimer was technically an insurgent but didn’t campaign like one. Recruited by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Westchester County executive targeted Bowman for failing, in his view, to adequately support Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks. AIPAC spent at least $14 million on behalf of Latimer, an extraordinary sum, drowning television and radio stations with advertisements lacerating Bowman and propping up the more conservative Latimer. Notably, the AIPAC-funded ads said nothing about Israel, instead focusing on Bowman’s alleged lack of loyalty to Joe Biden, who is liked enough by many Democrats. Bowman’s embrace of the Democratic Socialists of America, who are explicitly anti-Zionist, may have alienated moderate Jewish voters even more. While outside groups like Justice Democrats managed to contribute more than $1 million in ads to help Bowman, the spending was remarkably lopsided: By one tally, Latimer-aligned PACs had outspent Bowman seven to one. Rallies with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the campaign’s final days could not save him, either.

    Bowman, a charismatic and unapologetic leftist with a penchant for controversy, would have had a tough reelection fight even if AIPAC hadn’t emerged to add so much rocket fuel to Latimer’s campaign. He faced a House censure for pulling a false fire alarm when Democrats were trying to stall a vote. Blog posts he wrote more than a decade ago appeared to give credence to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and his YouTube page following conspiracy accounts became news. He was forced to apologize after lavishing praise on Norman Finkelstein, the acerbic anti-Israel scholar, at a panel discussion. And he initially claimed reports of Hamas raping Israeli women on October 7 were “propaganda.”

    In a suburban, racially diverse seat roping in large chunks of Westchester and a northern sliver of the Bronx, these controversies collectively weighed Bowman down, especially in the district’s sizable Jewish community. Four years ago, Bowman, a former middle-school principal, had unseated Eliot Engel, a high-ranking congressman and staunch Israel hawk. Many of Engel’s allies were out for revenge.

    AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups have been casting about for challengers to defeat as many Squad Democrats — the AOC-aligned House group that has been willing to forcefully criticize the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza — as possible, and they’ve had, until Bowman, little to boast about. Summer Lee, a progressive from Pennsylvania, breezed to reelection earlier in the year, and threats to take on Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian American congresswoman who supports the BDS movement, went nowhere.

    But in Latimer, AIPAC had an ideal recruit. Until this race, he had been a liberal in good standing, working well with activist groups in Westchester and even campaigning with the support of the Working Families Party. Left-leaning Democrats celebrated him for defeating Rob Astorino, a right-wing Republican, and returning the county to Democratic control in 2018. If he was, more subtly, unwilling to ruffle the feathers of the county’s more reactionary forces, he rarely picked fights with the left and mostly focused on hyperlocal issues. Like a suburban version of Chuck Schumer, Latimer was known for showing up everywhere in the county, and no ribbon cutting or potluck dinner seemed too small for the hustling, neighborly pol to make an appearance. A former state legislator, he had been winning elections for three decades.

    Even as Latimer swerved rightward in the primary, he was well positioned to deflect attacks from the Bowman campaign. In 2020, Bowman had won by portraying Engel, who waited out the pandemic in Maryland, as aloof and out of touch with the struggles of the district. Like Joe Crowley, who claimed a Queens residence but raised his family in Virginia, Engel was no longer active among his constituents. Latimer, though, was everywhere in Westchester, and he campaigned aggressively throughout the county.

    Latimer’s triumph could come at a cost. He defeated Westchester’s first Black congressman in a primary that polarized around race. He angered many Democrats by claiming Bowman’s real constituencies were in San Francisco and Dearborn — Bowman and his allies accused Latimer of race-baiting. Black and Latino voters could view him as the new congressman for white, wealthy Westchester, where he resides, and not someone looking out for them. “I’m an outspoken Black man,” Bowman said during a recent debate. “His supporters don’t want that, because it challenges their power.”

    On foreign policy, Latimer’s unstinting alliance with AIPAC might put him on the rightward fringe of his own party, alienated even from Schumer, who called for Benjamin Netanyahu to step aside earlier this year. Democrats in Congress have grown increasingly uneasy with the war there, as Israel continues to slaughter civilians and openly rejects the concept of a Palestinian state. For now, Latimer fits comfortably with the Israel hawks in New York’s House delegation, including the Bronx’s Ritchie Torres. But life for him in Congress may only get more complicated. The Netanyahu government continues to antagonize the Biden administration, and Latimer’s views on Israel bring him into closer alignment with Donald Trump.

    Progressives, meanwhile, have been dealt a grievous blow. Bowman was a rising star and someone who could have, with enough time in the House, run for higher office. When he first ran against Engel, he was able to forge coalitions between working-class voters of color and college-educated activists. The Squad, without him, is still large enough and may grow in the coming years — even if Cori Bush, another prominent member, also loses this summer. But Bowman’s defeat marks the loss of a rare — if undisciplined — political talent. AIPAC and other moneyed forces will hope they’ve found a new blueprint for success: Recruit a willing, well-known lawmaker to run against a progressive and pump many millions into the primary.

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    Ross Barkan

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  • Cliffhanger Virginia race between Good and Trump-backed challenger is too close to call – WTOP News

    Cliffhanger Virginia race between Good and Trump-backed challenger is too close to call – WTOP News

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    FILE – The chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., is seen at Trump Tower, May…

    Visit WTOP’s Election 2024 page for our comprehensive coverage. 

    FILE – The chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., is seen at Trump Tower, May 16, 2024. Good is fighting a two-front battle to hold his seat in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District and with it his role as leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — and that doesn’t even count Virginia Sen. John McGuire, his opponent in the Tuesday, June 18, GOP primary election. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)(AP/Ted Shaffrey)

    RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A tightly contested race in Virginia between one of America’s most conservative congressmen and a challenger endorsed by former President Donald Trump is too close to call, The Associated Press said Monday.

    The AP issued an advisory saying that the margin separating U.S. Rep. Bob Good and state Sen. John McGuire is likely to remain within a margin of a single percentage point. That means the race is eligible for a recount under state law.

    Good, who currently trails by more than 300 votes out of nearly 63,000 cast, has said he will seek a recount if the state electoral board certifies McGuire as the winner.

    McGuire’s lead has actually grown slightly since early Wednesday morning.

    Good on Monday also told former Trump adviser and right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon that he will be pursuing a legal challenge to block the certification of the count in the city of Lynchburg, the largest city in the 5th Congressional District and a Good stronghold.

    “Lynchburg is the big key. That can’t be certified. There’s no confidence in Lynchburg’s results,” Good said.

    Good and others have claimed that the city botched the vote count by accepting ballots from a drop box after election night.

    In a statement Monday, the city registrar acknowledged a procedural error but said fewer than 10 ballots, if any, were affected.

    The statement from the registrar’s office says the drop box, located inside the registrar’s office, was emptied out just before 1 p.m. on Election Day. But the box was not emptied again until Friday, June 21. Seven ballots were inside.

    The registrar’s statement says staffers in the registrar’s office saw multiple ballots dropped off legally in the afternoon on Election Day but did not see any ballots placed in the box after that.

    Those seven ballots have since been mixed in with another batch of ballots, and the registrar has said counting has been placed on hold while they consult with the Virginia Department of Elections on what to do next.

    The department of elections said in an email Monday that it’s monitoring the situation in Lynchburg. The state elections board is currently scheduled to meet July 2 to certify the results.

    Only after the results are certified can Good request a recount.

    McGuire, who claimed victory on election night, issued a statement Monday thanking Good for his service and suggesting that a recount or a legal challenge would be pointless and divisive.

    “While I understand the desire to continue the fight, the outcome of this election will not change,” he said.

    Both Good and McGuire are among Republicans who have raised concerns about election integrity in the wake of Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in his 2020 reelection defeat. Good was among more than 100 GOP House members who voted in January 2021 to object to the Electoral College count from states that Trump disputed.

    In an election eve telephone rally with Trump last week, McGuire urged supporters to deliver him a margin of victory “too big to rig.”

    If Good loses, he would be the first House incumbent to lose a primary challenge this year, with the exception of one race in which two incumbents faced off due to redistricting.

    Copyright
    © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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  • Trump Suggests Biden’s Debate Prep Includes Cocaine and Steroids

    Trump Suggests Biden’s Debate Prep Includes Cocaine and Steroids

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    Back in 2020, before the first and only presidential debate, Donald Trump insanely suggested that Joe Biden was going to show up to the stage on performance enhancing drugs. “I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night,” he tweeted, like a totally stable candidate for office would, and then added of Biden’s skills during the Democratic primaries: “His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???”

    Fast-forward four years, and with CNN’s debate just days away, the former guy has revived his claim. On Saturday, at a rally in Philadelphia, Trump told the crowd: “Right now, crooked Joe has gone to a log cabin to ‘study,’” putting air quotes around study. “He’s sleeping now, because they want to get him good and strong. So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass…. I say he’ll come out all jacked up, right?”

    While it wasn’t clear if Trump was implying Biden would be injected with, say, steroids or perhaps a B-12 shot, moments later he appeared to suggest the president’s debate prep would involve a line or two of cocaine. “I’m sure he’ll be prepared,” Trump said, before bringing up a 2023 incident in which a bag of cocaine was found in the guest lobby of the White House. “Whatever happened to all that cocaine that was missing a month ago from the White House?”

    As they did in 2020, Trump and his allies have painted themselves into a corner in which they feel it necessary to float the absurd idea that Biden will be on drugs during the debate, because they’ve spent every other waking hour claiming the president is on death’s door/has dementia/can’t string “two sentences together.” So it would look really bad for them if Biden then showed up and could not only string a pair of sentences together but ran rhetorical circles around Trump, whose ability to speak has never been a strong suit. Drugs it is then!

    Team Trump is working overtime to lower expectations for Thursday

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    From the “f–k your feelings” crowd comes…

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    This man is an actual candidate for president

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    Bess Levin

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  • Lara Trump Says It “Doesn’t Matter” If Her Father-in-Law Is in Prison During the Republican National Convention

    Lara Trump Says It “Doesn’t Matter” If Her Father-in-Law Is in Prison During the Republican National Convention

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    In exactly three weeks, Donald Trump will be sentenced by Judge Juan Merchan, at which point he’ll learn if he will receive prison time. Days later, the Republican National Convention will kick off in Milwaukee, where the RNC will nominate him for president. Is his possible incarceration of any concern to the Republican committee? Not in the slightest, says his daughter-in-law.

    In an interview with Real America’s Voice, host Terrance Bates noted to Lara Trump, “Judge Juan Merchan could very well sentence President Trump to jail or some sort of prison time, not allowing him to be there for the Republican National Convention, which is of major concern.” Her response: “Here’s the bottom line. It doesn’t matter whether Donald Trump is in Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, or anywhere else they may try to put him. On the day that we, as the Republican Party, will be nominating him as our official candidate and our official nominee for president, he will accept that no matter where he is. He will go on to be our candidate all the way to November 5th, when he then is reelected as our 47th president.” Lara Trump also claimed her father-in-law’s 34 felony convictions have been “a positive for him” because people “see how third-world and communist it is, and they do not want to see this as the future of America.”

    Earlier this month, Puck News reported that “the prospect of serving prison time…appears to be sinking in more forcefully, and the former (and perhaps future) president has been peppering friends and aides” with “specific questions” about what that might entail, including, “What type of jail do you think they’ll send me to?”

    While the prevailing wisdom is that Trump will not actually receive time behind bars, not everyone in the legal community is convinced. “This is not a one-off, ‘Oops, I made a mistake on my business records,’ or even a one-off scheme,” Diana Florence, a former prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, told Politico last month. “Given the entirety of the facts and circumstances that came out during the trial, I believe, if convicted, a sentence of incarceration is warranted and justified. If I were the prosecutor, I would absolutely be asking for state prison.” Each of the 34 felony counts Trump was charged with carries a maximum sentence of four years; if convicted on more than one, he would almost undoubtedly serve the sentences concurrently.

    Melinda French Gates endorses Joe Biden for president

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    Random tangents about a cannibal definitely scream “this guy is ‘having fun’”

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    Bess Levin

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  • AI Chatbots Are Running for Office Now

    AI Chatbots Are Running for Office Now

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    Victor Miller [Archival audio clip]: She’s asking what policies are most important to you, VIC?

    VIC [Archival audio clip]: The most important policies to me focus on transparency, economic development, and innovation.

    Leah Feiger: That is so bizarre. I got to ask, could VIC be exposed to other sources of information other than these public records? Say, email from a conspiracy theorist who wants VIC to do something not so good with elections that would not represent its constituents.

    Vittoria Elliott: Great question. I asked Miller, “Hey, you’ve built this bot on top of ChatGPT. We know that sometimes there’s problems or biases in the data that go into training these models. Are you concerned that VIC could imbibe some of those biases or there could be problems?” He said, “No, I trust OpenAI. I believe in their product.” You’re right. He decided, because of what’s important to him as someone who cares a lot about Cheyenne’s governance, to feed this bot hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of pages of what are called supporting documents. The kind of documents that people will submit in a city council meeting. Whether that’s a complaint, or an email, or a zoning issue, or whatever. He fed that to VIC. But you’re right, these chatbots can be trained on other material. He said that he actually asked VIC, “What if someone tries to spam you? What if someone tries to trick you? Send you emails and stuff.” VIC apparently responded to him saying, “I’m pretty confident I could differentiate what’s an actual constituent concern and what’s spam, or what’s not real.”

    Leah Feiger: I guess I would just say to that, one-third of Americans right now don’t believe that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, but I’m so glad this robot is very, very confident in its ability to decipher dis and misinformation here.

    Vittoria Elliott: Totally.

    Leah Feiger: That was VIC in Wyoming. Tell us a little more about AI Steve in the UK. How is it different from VIC?

    Vittoria Elliott: For one thing, AI Steve is actually the candidate.

    Leah Feiger: What do you mean actually the candidate?

    Vittoria Elliott: He’s on the ballot.

    Leah Feiger: Oh, okay. There’s no meat puppet?

    Vittoria Elliott: There is a meat puppet, and that Steve Endicott. He’s a Brighton based business man. He describes himself as being the person who will attend Parliament, do the human things.

    Leah Feiger: Sure.

    Vittoria Elliott: But people, when they go to vote next month in the UK, they actually have the ability not to vote for Steve Endicott, but to vote for AI Steve.

    Leah Feiger: That’s incredible. Oh my God. How does that work?

    Vittoria Elliott: The way they described it to me, Steve Endicott and Jeremy Smith, who is the developer of AI Steve, the way they’ve described this is as a big catchment for community feedback. On the backend, what happens is people can talk to or call into AI Steve, can have apparently 10,000 simultaneous conversations at any given point. They can say, “I want to know when trash collection is going to be different.” Or, “I’m upset about fiscal policy,” or whatever. Those conversations get transcribed by the AI and distilled into these are the policy positions that constituents care about. But to make sure that people aren’t spamming it basically and trying to trick it, what they’re going to do is they’re going to have what they call validators. Brighton is about an hour outside of London, a lot of people commute between the two cities. They’ve said, “What we want to do is we want to have people who are on their commute, we’re going to ask them to sign up to these emails to be validators.” They’ll go through and say, “These are the policies that people say that are important to AI Steve. Do you, regular person who’s actually commuting, find that to actually be valuable to you?” Anything that gets more than 50% interest, or approval, or whatever, that’s the stuff that real Steve, who will be in Parliament, will be voting on. They have this second level of checks to make sure that whatever people are saying as feedback to the AI is checked by real humans. They’re trying to make it a little harder for them to game the system.

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    Leah Feiger

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  • Disputed mail-in ballots in Democratic primary for N.J.’s 2nd District must be counted, judge rules

    Disputed mail-in ballots in Democratic primary for N.J.’s 2nd District must be counted, judge rules

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    An Atlantic County Superior Court judged ruled Friday that 1,909 vote-by-mail ballots in Tuesday’s primary election must be counted despite having been opened too early by election officials. The outstanding ballots have delayed the resolution of the Democratic primary for U.S. House in the 2nd District. Unofficial results have Joseph Salerno leading Tim Alexander by 412 votes.

    Judge Michael J. Blee’s order argues that state laws for mail-in ballots were designed to leave as much room as possible to ensure that votes be counted, ABC News reported.

    “It is well settled in the state of New Jersey that election laws should be construed liberally,” Blee said.

    The status of the mail-in ballots came into question because it was discovered that the Atlantic County Board of Elections had opened them prematurely in early May, well before the legally required window of within five days of an election. The purpose of opening them had been to put timestamps on the outer and inner envelopes of the ballots, but the machines used for this processes sliced open both ballots.

    Democrats in Atlantic County argued that it was a mistake and said none of the actual ballots were removed from their envelopes. Republican officials questioned whether the ballots had been opened to speed up the vote count. GOP leaders were not requesting the votes be abandoned, but instead sought an investigation and a requirement to inform the voters whose ballots were affected. The number of outstanding ballots is slightly higher than what initially had been reported — at least 1,100 Democratic ballots and 700 Republican ballots.

    Blee was assigned to resolve the matter to break a 2-2 deadlock among Republicans and Democrats on the county Board of Elections.

    “Admittedly what happened this election was sloppy,” Blee said. “It was an inadvertent error. It was an inexcusable error.”

    RELATED: Results of the Democratic and Republican primaries for Senate in New Jersey | Republican primary results in N.J.’s 1st District U.S. House seat | Results for Democratic and Republican in N.J.’s 3rd District U.S. House race

    Salerno, a businessman and attorney, leads Alexander, a civil rights attorney, in a race with four candidates who ran to challenge Republican Jeff Van Drew, a former Democrat who switched parties in 2019. Earlier this week, the Press of Atlantic City reported Alexander had tallied more mail-in ballots by about eight percentage points. If the only outstanding votes left are the ballots that were opened too early, their inclusion likely still leaves Alexander shy of Salerno. Alexander was the Democratic nominee in 2022 and lost to Van Drew in the general election.

    Election officials have not indicated how soon a winner will be declared in the Democratic primary now that Blee’s ruling will allow the ballots to be counted.

    The irregularity is a possible signal of the scrutiny that will be exercised around mail-in ballots nationwide for the general election in November.

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    Michael Tanenbaum

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  • In N.J.’s 3rd District, Herb Conaway wins Democratic primary; Rajesh Mohan gets GOP nod

    In N.J.’s 3rd District, Herb Conaway wins Democratic primary; Rajesh Mohan gets GOP nod

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    In Tuesday’s primary election for New Jersey’s 3rd District of the U.S., five Democrats and four Republicans ran in their parties’ respective contests. Herb Conaway, a longtime Assemblyman and physician from Bordentown, was declared the winner of the Democratic race. Rajesh Mohan, a cardiologist from Holmdel, won the Republican primary. 

    The race for New Jersey’s 3rd District is wide open with incumbent Democrat Andy Kim running for U.S. Senate.

    Polls closed at 8 p.m. and results in both races will be updated below as they become available. All results are unofficial until they have been confirmed by election officials.

    RELATED: Coverage of the Democratic and Republican primaries for U.S. Senate in New Jersey | Republican primary results for N.J.’s 1st District U.S. House seat | Democratic primary results for N.J.’s 2nd District U.S. House seat

    The 3rd District covers nearly all of Burlington County and parts of Mercer and Monmouth counties. Kim is currently in his third term since he was elected in 2018. He was preceded by two-term Republican Congressman Tom MacArthur.

    Democrats

    Herb Conaway has served New Jersey’s 7th legislative district in Burlington Count for 26 years. His legislative efforts at the state level include helping developing the state’s health insurance marketplace, revamping the state’s school funding formula and improving nutritional standards in public schools. Conaway has said the biggest issue in the election is protecting democracy against authoritarianism. He plans to push for codifying abortion rights federally and take action on climate change by incentivizing the development of infrastructure for more planet-friendly technologies.

    Joe Cohn is a civil rights attorney from Lumberton who has worked on behalf of people with HIV/AIDs, seniors and people experiencing workplace discrimination. In his campaign for Congress, Cohn said too many of the nation’s problems are caused by political polarization. He stressed the importance of uniting around bipartisan collaboration. Cohn’s platform called for eliminating age restrictions for Medicare and making health care more affordable, in part by expanding price negotiation for prescription medications. He supports abortion rights and advocates for addressing climate change by prioritizing energy efficiency.

    Carol Murphy is an Assemblywoman in New Jersey’s 7th legislative district, where she was elected in 2017. She said she chose to run for Congress to uplift middle class families by dealing with issues such as rising health care costs, high property taxes, political extremism and women’s reproductive rights. In her campaign, Murphy said the most important goal should be using federal resources to make New Jersey a more affordable place to live.

    Sarah Schoengood is a small business owner from Manalapan who co-owns a company that supplies crabmeat and other seafood from the Mediterranean Sea. Schoengood said she was running for Congress to break the mold of career politicians in Washington, D.C. who aren’t in touch with the needs of regular people. She said the most important issue in this year’s election is protecting women’s reproductive rights. She also supports developing infrastructure for green energy initiatives and providing the industry with a mix of incentives and research dollars.

    Brian Schkeeper is a public school teacher and union member who launched his campaign to fight for more affordable health care and education. He said his priority would be to ensure that Social Security can remain a viable retirement plan and that women’s reproductive rights are protected.

    Republicans

    Rajesh Mohan decided to run for Congress to apply his clinical approach in medicine to improving government. Mohan’s campaign calls for stronger border protection, ensuring the longevity of Medicare and Social Security, and investing in domestic manufacturing and small business growth. He also seeks to increase investments in mental health care and reduce out-of-pocket costs for medical care by reforming the Affordable Care Act.

    Gregory Sobicinski is a business consultant from Southampton who decided to run for Congress to combat rising inflation, underperforming schools and crime in New Jersey communities. He said the biggest problem facing the country is out-of-control government at all levels creating too much interference in personal decision-making. He is an advocate for expanding nuclear energy to create a cleaner economy instead of wind and solar power. In foreign policy, Sobicinski called for the U.S. to intervene only where strategic interests are at stake.

    Shirley Maia-Cusick is the CEO of a legal services firm and views herself as an independent conservative. As an immigrant from Brazil, Maia-Cusick said she’s ran for Congress to restore the country she discovered when she moved to the United States 30 years ago. She opposes abortion and wants the U.S. to scale back its involvement in foreign conflicts to reduce the national debt.

    Michael Francis Faccone is a Jersey City native who said he hoped to serve in Congress to simplify the way legislation gets crafted. He views collaboration across party lines as an essential part of the democratic process and considers transparency and accountability the most important principles for public service. Faccone said he would advocate for policies to reduce crime and taxes, lower economic inequality and seek to improve racial inequality in criminal justice, education and business.

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    Michael Tanenbaum

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