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Tag: early and often

  • Can New Jersey’s Dying Political Machine Save One Menendez?

    Can New Jersey’s Dying Political Machine Save One Menendez?

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    Bob Menendez arrives in federal court in New Jersey last year accompanied by his son, Rob.
    Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    Hudson County, New Jersey, is one of the country’s last remaining redoubts of old-fashioned machine politics where, just across the river from the city, political bosses control patronage and can funnel loyalists to the polls for their preferred candidates. Its most powerful figure is Robert Menendez, the New Jersey senator now facing corruption charges in federal court.

    When Menendez’s successor in Congress, Albio Sires, decided not seek another term in 2022, almost instantaneously, every major political figure in the county — including Sires — decided to back Menendez’s 36-year-old son, Rob, who had never before run for office.

    Two years after he was elected on the strength of his name, Rob Menendez might lose for the same reason. He is facing a well-funded challenge in the Democratic primary this June from Ravi Bhalla, the two-term mayor of Hoboken who is going after the congressman as a corrupt nepo baby. Menendez, he says, shared “the same consultant … the same donors, same corporate PACs, the same lobbyists” with his father. The congressman is “nothing more than old wine in new bottles … it’s getting more of the same, but just from another generation,” he says.

    Rob Menendez spent his entire youth watching his father’s rise to power. He was not even 1 year old when Bob became mayor of Union City in 1986 after testifying against the prior mayor’s corrupt political machine while wearing a bulletproof vest in federal court. He was 2 and a half when his father first paired his mayoralty with a seat in the state legislature in 1988. By first grade, Bob was building his own organization as he made it to Congress. During the summer before Rob went to high school, his father was floated as a potential running mate to Al Gore. Rob was in college at the University of North Carolina when Bob became a senator and immediately took a job at the politically connected law firm of Lowenstein Sandler after graduating from Rutgers Law School. In 2020, Rob was floated as a potential mayoral candidate in Jersey City against incumbent Steve Fulop (who has pointedly refused to back Menendez’s congressional bid) and got his first job in government from Governor Phil Murphy, who appointed him as a Port Authority commissioner in 2021. He was elected to Congress in 2022 with minimal opposition and has become a dependable and loyal member of the Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill.

    Even though he is mayor of Hoboken, Bhalla isn’t beloved there and several members of the city council have backed Menendez. Running in a majority-Hispanic district in New York City’s pricey television market, it will be expensive for either candidate to advertise and do so in both English and Spanish ads. This makes it more difficult for Bhalla to introduce himself to voters outside of Hoboken, though arguably it makes it more difficult for Menendez to differentiate himself from his father. (Menendez’s campaign declined to make him available for comment.)

    Normally, a primary challenge against a candidate backed by a machine would go nowhere, but the political landscape in the Garden State is unrecognizable compared to just a few years ago. Bob Menendez is now a political pariah as he faces criminal indictments for allegedly being a foreign agent of both Egypt and Qatar. The power of machines has been permanently weakened after Tammy Murphy, the machine-backed wife of the governor, dropped out of the race to replace Mendendez last month. Most of all, the most powerful tool for machine politicians to sway voters, the ballot line, has been invalidated by a federal judge as a result of a lawsuit filed by Andy Kim, the progressive congressman who forced Murphy out of the race. (The ruling is being appealed.) “The line,” as it’s known, is a unique feature to New Jersey politics that gave preferred placement on ballots in primary elections to the candidates endorsed by county party chairs. Endorsed candidates all ran together in a single column rather than having candidates grouped by the office in which they sought.

    Even Bhalla concedes that the differences between the two “aren’t that stark” and that this is a race about Menendez and what he calls a toxic political culture. “I often say that my biggest liability in my ability to rise up in Hudson County politics is that I’m qualified,” he says. Quoting an unnamed fellow elected official, he says “the selection” of Menendez to fill the House seat was “rank nepotism.”

    With Kim now cruising to the Senate nomination and the senior Menendez exploring a campaign as an independent while headed toward a criminal trial scheduled for May, the congressional primary will be a critical test of the strength of Jersey machine politics. Even with the end of “the line,” political bosses are by no means extinct in the district, even if they are endangered.

    In Menendez’s native Union City there still is a powerful Democratic organization led by Brian Stack, who serves simultaneously both as mayor and state senator. North Bergen has Nicholas Sacco, who is still mayor but had to finally step down as state senator as well after getting redistricted with Stack. The area has a warren of tiny, dense municipalities with a large number of political patronage jobs. As one plugged-in Hudson County Democrat noted, “it is the last bastion of real political-boss-driven politics there. There are incredibly popular, well-liked mayors who really can deliver thousands and thousands of votes and have large volunteer organizations and put hundreds of people on the streets.”

    This is in contrast to the district’s southern portion, where white-collar workers who commute at least part time into Manhattan fill the apartment towers that line the Hudson River in places like Jersey City and Hoboken. These voters may not be uniformly pro-Bhalla, but they don’t have the same connections to the county’s traditional power brokers. 

    Menendez needs a last hurrah from the machine politicians who were long loyal to his father. In a low-turnout election such as the primary, the machine’s ability to bring voters to the polls can be decisive. In an increasingly nationalized political landscape, he has to hope that at least some politics are still local.

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    By Ben Jacobs

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  • Will the Abortion Vote Help Democrats Flip Florida in 2024?

    Will the Abortion Vote Help Democrats Flip Florida in 2024?

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    Biden could wind up concentrating on Florida more than he did in 2020.
    Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    Not very long ago, Florida was considered the ultimate presidential battleground state. It determined the outcome of the 2000 election, and as recently as 2012 it was carried by a Democrat, Barack Obama. But after being won twice by Donald Trump, as Republicans swept every statewide elected office and increased their grip on the state legislature and congressional delegation, Florida is now perceived as decidedly red-tinged. Nevertheless, as Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign ponders a path to 270 electoral votes complicated by poor polling in key 2020 states like Arizona and Georgia, Florida’s 30 electoral votes remain tempting. That’s particularly true after the Florida Supreme Court simultaneously let a six-week abortion ban take effect while clearing the way for a November ballot initiative aimed at overturning it. The very next day, the same court cleared a November ballot initiative to legalize recreational cannabis use as well.

    Florida could theoretically become ground zero for a national Democratic strategy of making popular anger over abortion restrictions the big game-changer for 2024, offsetting economic unhappiness, border-security worries, and concerns about Biden’s age. As my colleague Gabriel Debenedetti has pointed out, ballot measures have become a turnout-booster for Florida Democrats: “In three of the last four election cycles, the party’s turnout appeared to be helped by ballot initiatives — on broadening medical marijuana laws in 2016, on restoring voting rights for felons in 2018, and on raising the minimum wage in 2020.”

    But is Florida likely to be close enough in 2024 to make this issue-driven reach for a win feasible? That’s not entirely clear. Perceptions of Florida’s trajectory are being heavily affected by the 2022 midterm blowout that gave Ron DeSantis a landslide 19-point reelection win. But at the presidential level, the red tide in the Sunshine State has been less dramatic, if still highly significant. Obama carried the state by a mere 0.9 percent in 2012 and then Hillary Clinton lost it by 1.2 percent four years later. Trump’s margin then increased to 3.3 percent in 2020, though the Biden campaign did not really target Florida. Demographically Florida has been a haven for tax-leery white retirees, including the blue-collar folk who have been trending Republican, and it’s also Exhibit A in the much-discussed Latino voter surge toward the GOP (much of it driven by conservative Cuban American and South American immigrants, with some drift among Puerto Ricans as well).

    Public polling of the 2024 general election in Florida has been sparse, but two polls taken in March both show Trump with a solid if not overwhelming lead (six points per St. Pete Polls and seven points according to Redfield & Wilton Strategies).

    There’s no question the twin abortion and cannabis ballot initiatives should be appealing to Democratic constituencies in Florida (especially the crucial youth vote). And the state’s 60 percent requirement for approval of state constitutional amendments means those votes will be tantalizingly close and heavily publicized. It’s also likely that the abortion policy fight will attract serious national money, with some perhaps coming from ultrawealthy Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, who is already donating heavily to abortion ballot initiatives in Arizona and Nevada.

    On the other hand, past ballot-measure fights in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022 have had a debatable effect on partisan-turnout patterns. Pro-choice forces have won them all, but often by attracting pro-choice Republican voters who still support their party’s candidates despite its anti-abortion positioning. The relatively late timing of Florida’s imposition of a near-total abortion ban (it was enacted last year but held up in the courts until this week’s judicial decision) could make the ballot fight in the state especially intense and accordingly dangerous for the Republicans responsible for this denial of basic rights.

    Perhaps the best way to characterize Florida’s status in the presidential race right now is that it’s on the Biden campaign’s watch list and could move near the top if (a) subsequent polling looks promising and (b) other states counted on to win the president an Electoral College majority appear problematic. No Democrat is simply writing off Florida right now, and even if it’s a reach, Team Biden would enjoy making a relatively cash-strapped Trump campaign devote precious resources to defending the 45th president’s home turf.


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    By Ed Kilgore

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  • Johnson Urges GOP to Save Craziness for After the Election

    Johnson Urges GOP to Save Craziness for After the Election

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    Mike Johnson has a plan for global domination.
    Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

    The ongoing tension between MAGA extremists and what passes for a governing wing of the House Republican Conference has now been crystalized by a standoff between House Speaker Mike Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. MTG is threatening to give Johnson the Kevin McCarthy treatment (a motion to vacate the chair, which brought down MTG’s friend McCarthy last fall) if he brings forward a bill containing the aid to Ukraine that Joe Biden, most Democrats, and about half of congressional Republicans appear to want. There are many dimensions to this battle, particularly when you ponder Donald Trump’s potential intervention in the dispute, since both Johnson and Greene are very much Trump vassals. But more broadly, the two lawmakers are partaking in an eternal GOP debate: Is it better to pursue the (sometimes wacky) desires of the party’s base or to delay those dreams and maximize swing-voter appeal?

    Johnson made his side of the argument gently but clearly in an interview with Fox News’ Trey Gowdy, as reported by The Hill:

    Heading into that tough debate, the Speaker took a shot of his own at Greene, warning that internal clashes between Republicans will only empower Democrats ahead of high-stakes elections when both chambers are up for grabs.

    “I think all of my other Republican colleagues recognize this as a distraction from our mission,” Johnson told Gowdy. “The mission is to save the republic. And the only way we can do that is if we grow the House majority, win the Senate and win the White House. So we don’t need any dissension right now.”

    To the MTGs of the world, the whole purpose of political power is to agitate the air on behalf of extremist ideology, and there’s no time like the present for that sort of First Amendment exercise. Furthermore, Greene would almost certainly maintain that wacky right-wing positions on the issues of the day are precisely how you build an enduring electoral coalition, since it’s what the silent majority secretly craves. But putting those sentiments aside, you cannot really weigh the merits of Johnson’s plea for a delay of ideological gratification without a look at the benefits of a partisan trifecta (control of the White House and both congressional chambers), which he thinks “dissension” might threaten.

    Most obviously, a federal government held entirely by Republicans would eliminate much of the need for all those maddening negotiations with Democrats that Johnson, like McCarthy, felt required to undertake. Yes, so long as the Senate filibuster remains you’d have to deal with a Senate Democratic minority on many kinds of legislation. But a trifecta also gives the party holding it the opportunity to bypass the filibuster and all sorts of potential congressional obstacles via the infamous budget-reconciliation procedure, in which any legislation with a budgetary impact can (in theory) be enacted by a simple majority in each House. It’s how Obamacare was enacted, and how it was very nearly repealed when Republicans gained a trifecta after the 2016 elections. Republicans did succeed in passing Trump’s proposed package of tax cuts via reconciliation before they lost control of the House.

    So if like both Johnson and MTG you would prefer massively reduced funding levels for all sorts of liberal domestic programs, with conservative policies encumbering what’s left, a trifecta in November would be great news. It’s true that Trump already has extremely ambitious and dangerous plans for a second term that may be initiated by executive order instead of legislation. But to the extent he can secure congressional authorization for the semi-authoritarian state he seems to want, the federal courts may become less of an obstacle, and the new administration would not have to worry about any obstruction of MAGA plans by congressional Democrats, either.

    Johnson can’t come right out and say that continued chaos in his own conference might cost Trump and/or Senate Republicans votes, since the conceit of the right-wing House rebels is that they are the true MAGA loyalists by definition. But it’s true that control of the White House is what’s all-important to the GOP in November, and the second most important goal is control of the Senate. It’s the upper chamber that could confirm Trump’s executive and judicial nominees without fear of a filibuster. All in all, a trifecta would be the ideal lever to pull off a radical MAGA counter-revolution with a relative minimum of open defiance to the U.S. Constitution and the messy public disturbances that might entail. Trump would be smart to remind MTG that global domination awaits if Republicans can just play their assigned roles in his restoration drama.


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    By Ed Kilgore

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  • Is Trump Really Making Big Gains With Black and Latino Voters?

    Is Trump Really Making Big Gains With Black and Latino Voters?

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    A voter casts his ballot at a polling station for the U.S. Senate runoff election on December 6, 2022, in Atlanta, Georgia.
    Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

    Among the many sources of fear and panic for Democrats during this fateful election year have been claims that key elements of the Democratic Party base, particularly young voters and people of color, are abandoning Joe Biden for, believe it or not, Donald Trump. The reported young voter trend away from Biden is probably more understandable given how this group has been impacted by inflation-related reductions in real wages, high interest rates, unaffordable housing costs, and the failure to forgive student loans (though that was the Court’s doing, not Biden’s). Younger voters also tend disproportionately to wind up being nonvoters, and in their case the big trend is less toward Trump than toward non-major-party candidates (like RFK Jr.).

    But among non-white voters, the polls keep showing shocking gains by Trump at Biden’s expense, as Ron Brownstein observes at CNN:

    Both national and battleground state public polls consistently show Trump, at this point, drawing more support from Black and Hispanic voters than any Republican nominee since at least 1960. When The New York Times/Siena College, NBC News, Wall Street Journal and CBS News/YouGov all released national polls a few days apart earlier this month, each of them found Trump winning from 20% to 28% of Black voters and 45% to 48% of Hispanic voters. That’s far more than the 12% of Black, and 32% of Hispanic, voters he won in 2020, according to the Edison Research exit polls conducted for a consortium of news organizations including CNN. (The Pew Validated Voters study found Trump winning slightly fewer Black, and slightly more Hispanic, voters in the 2020 election.) A CNBC poll released Tuesday showed Biden drawing just 57% of all voters of color, compared to 71% in the 2020 exit poll.

    The relative strength of the two parties among Latino voters has always been a controversial topic thanks to differences in polling methodologies and how that group is defined. There have always been large pockets of such voters (e.g., Florida’s Cuban American and South American populations) receptive to the GOP’s message and relatively indifferent to Democratic appeals centered on immigrants from Central America (Puerto Ricans, for example, as U.S. citizens, are naturally less interested in immigration policy). Certain trends among Latinos (e.g., income gains and the growth of conservative-Protestant churchgoing) have made some long-term improvement in the Republican vote share inevitable.

    But Trump’s apparent strength among Black voters is harder to rationalize — and perhaps even to believe. As Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz explains at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, some skepticism toward the polls is in order, based on his comparison of six major national polls with recent election results:

    On average, Donald Trump received 18% of the vote from Black voters who expressed a preference for either Trump or Biden in the six national polls. If that result were to hold up in November, it would represent by far the highest level of Black support for a Republican presidential candidate in the past 60 years … No GOP candidate since Richard Nixon in 1960 has won more than 13% of the Black vote with only Nixon in 1972 and George W. Bush in 2004 topping 10%. The average level of Black support for Republican presidential candidates in the 10 elections between 1984 and 2020 was just under 6%.

    There has been some talk about Trump’s gains among Black voters in the polls being attributable to a big movement among particular subgroups, particularly young Black men. But as Abramowitz notes from the authoritative American National Election Studies data, there were no major differences in the Biden-Trump numbers last time they met at the polls. In 2020, Biden won 93 percent of Black men along with 95 percent of Black women — and won 94 percent of non-college-educated Black voters along with 93 percent of their college-educated counterparts. He won at least 91 percent in every age cohort of Black voters.

    So was there some big pro-GOP trend among Black voters in the 2022 midterms that helps explain what’s happening now? Abramowitz doesn’t find one:

    Leaving aside the Ohio gubernatorial race in which a very popular Republican incumbent won a landslide victory over a weak, underfunded Democratic challenger, the average level of support for Republican candidates among Black voters in 2022 was about 10%. This is very similar to the average level of support for GOP House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates among Black voters over the past few decades.

    Abramowitz suggests some of the eye-popping numbers we’ve seen this year for Trump among Black voters may represent an illusion based on limited samples that can and should be addressed by surveys oversampling Black voters to get a more accurate look at what’s happening.

    But as Brownstein argues, whatever level of support Trump has among Black or Latino voters could be driven down with some targeted messaging from the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party. Trump is providing the ammunition for this kind of counterattack with his own racially and ethnically offensive rhetoric, which he’s ladling out in bigger servings than he did even in 2016:

    Even as polls show Trump posting unprecedented Republican numbers among Hispanics, he is promising the largest deportation drive of undocumented migrants in American history, including the creation of detention camps and the use of the National Guard to participate in mass round ups; military action against Mexico, including a naval blockade, to combat drug cartels; the end of birthright citizenship; and the possible reinstitution of his policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border.

    Activists working in the community say that very few Hispanic voters know that Trump is proposing any of this …

    The situation with Black voters is similar. Even as Trump is posting historic numbers among Blacks, he has proposed, as a condition of receiving federal funds, to prohibit school districts from discussing “critical race theory” in classrooms, and to require local police departments to implement the “stop and frisk” tactics that civil rights leaders say unfairly target young Black men.

    In the end, a vote is a vote, and both Abramowitz and Brownstein note that any losses Biden is suffering among non-white voters are being at least partially offset by his continuing strength among white voters, particularly the very-likely-to-vote college-educated group. If, as Republicans hope, non-white voters (including Asian Americans, a smaller but growing group that is often not polled at all) turn out to be the crucial swing vote in 2024, it’s far from clear they will tilt toward the candidate whose vision of a restored American Greatness is so consistently exciting to white supremacists.


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    By Ed Kilgore

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  • Who’s the Trump VP Pick? Latest Odds for Every Shortlist Candidate.

    Who’s the Trump VP Pick? Latest Odds for Every Shortlist Candidate.

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    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    In a typical presidential-election year, we’d currently be in the thick of primary season. But since the 2024 election will be a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, people with an unhealthy addiction to political drama are already turning their attention to the race to be Trump’s running mate.

    This is yet another aspect of the 2024 race where the normal rules don’t quite apply. Candidates typically want a potential vice-president who can “balance” the ticket demographically, ideologically, or geographically. Even Trump succumbed to this thinking in 2016: Mike Pence got the gig because he was a boring, midwestern, ultraconservative Christian with some governing experience — basically the opposite of the erratic, boorish New York TV personality. But this concession to the RNC ultimately backfired (in Trump’s mind) because Pence wouldn’t participate in his January 6 coup attempt.

    Now that Trump’s GOP takeover is complete, he’s free to pick anyone he wants. And he’ll probably put a lot of stock in personal loyalty and who has “the look” (he’s known to base hiring decisions on whether candidates are “out of central casting”). This is, obviously, very creepy and inappropriate. But it’s something you have to consider when trying to predict Trump’s VP pick.

    It’s unclear when Trump will announce his VP choice, but it could be months away; he revealed Pence was his running mate in July of 2016. For now, he’s just dropping hints about his pick. When asked in a March 14, 2024 Newsmax interview if he’s started to rule candidates out, Trump replied: “Yeah, I probably have a couple of people that you may know very well. Some people that I didn’t think behaved properly. Yeah, I think I’ve ruled some people out, but I’ve ruled a lot of people in.”

    Here’s a list (which we’ll keep updated) of who is believed to be on Trump’s shortlist for vice-president, and the pros and cons of each possibility, loosely arranged from the candidates with the best odds to the worst.

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Kristi Noem has impeccable MAGA credentials. She has government experience but is no creature of “the swamp”; she served as South Dakota’s sole representative in the U.S. House for eight years before she was elected as the state’s first female governor in 2018. In 2020, she gained national attention for easing up on COVID restrictions faster than other governors and supporting Trump’s election-fraud lies. Noem has been issuing orders and legislation that put her at the center of hot culture-war issues, such as banning “critical race theory” and targeting transgender people. She was also the top pick for VP (tied with Vivek Ramaswamy) among attendees at the 2024 CPAC.
    CONS: South Dakota is a solidly red state with only three Electoral College votes. In 2023, several outlets reported that the married mother of three was having an “absurdly blatant” affair with Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski (she’s denied this). Trump is reportedly concerned that Noem is too strict on abortion; she has called herself an “absolutist” on the issue and has defended the lack of rape and incest exceptions in her state’s extreme abortion ban.
    LOYALTY CHECK: She can often be seen on Newsmax, Fox News, and other right-wing outlets almost openly campaigning for the job of Trump’s VP.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Noem passes with flying colors. She’s a former farm girl and beauty queen whose recent memoir, Not My First Rodeo, is “chock-full of folksy idioms and Bible verses,” per The Atlantic.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: He mentioned Noem (along with Tim Scott) as a potential VP pick in February 2024, saying she’s “been incredible fighting” for him. Noem was among the six people Trump (offhandedly) confirmed are on his shortlist during a February 20 Fox News town hall. Noem met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on February 27.
    NOEM’S STANCE: When Newsmax asked her if she’d consider an offer to be Trump’s VP, she said “Oh, absolutely. I would in a heartbeat.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: As the fourth-ranking member in House GOP leadership, Elise Stefanik could help Trump do the parts of the job that don’t interest him, like working with Congress and articulating the GOP platform. She’s also a talented fundraiser. Adding a 39-year-old woman to the Republican ticket could theoretically allay any concerns voters — and particularly suburban women — might have about reelecting a 77-year-old man who was found liable for sexual abuse and repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct.
    CONS: The New York congresswoman can’t deliver her home state for Trump. And with its high turnover rate, perhaps the GOP House leadership can’t afford to lose a competent woman.
    LOYALTY CHECK: During the 2016 campaign, Stefanik harshly criticized Trump for his incendiary rhetoric and policy views, saying he “has been insulting to women.” But after she started rising in the GOP leadership, she morphed into a MAGA cheerleader. Trump may appreciate that Stefanik is seemingly so desperate to be his running mate that she’ll say just about anything, from bemoaning the plight of the J6 “hostages” to blaming the media for the jury’s verdict in the E. Jean Carroll case. But her previous anti-Trump sentiments would certainly cause headaches for his campaign.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Stefanik is a white woman from Albany of Italian and Czech heritage, but who knows if Trump considers the last name “Stefanik” “too ethnic.”
    TRUMP’S STANCE: He reportedly nodded and said, “She’s a killer,” when Stefanik’s name came up as a potential VP pick during a December 2023 dinner with Mar-a-Lago members.
    STEFANIK’S STANCE: When asked if she’d be Trump’s running mate, Stefanik said, “Of course, I’d be honored … to serve in a future Trump administration in any capacity.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Trump’s allies are reportedly urging him to pick a woman or a Black man as his running mate, and Tim Scott is the only Black Republican in the Senate. In contrast to Trump’s vision of “American carnage,” Scott is consistently described as a “sunny” and “optimistic” guy (though he’s actually pretty into partisan warfare).
    CONS: Scott’s performance in the 2024 GOP primary was unimpressive; he dropped out months before voting started. Trump doesn’t need Scott to win South Carolina, as Republicans have won the state in 13 of the last 14 presidential elections. Trump is reportedly concerned that Scott is too hard-line on abortion; the senator has said he will “sign the most conservative pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress,” suggesting he’s in favor of a national abortion ban.
    LOYALTY CHECK: Scott voted to certify Biden’s 2020 win, still thinks Mike Pence “did the right thing” on January 6, and dared to challenge Trump in the 2024 race. But he may have erased any ill will when he endorsed Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary, though Nikki Haley launched his Senate career. When Trump highlighted this awkward fact during his primary-night victory speech, Scott delivered some grade-A groveling, telling Trump he doesn’t hate anyone, “I just love you!”
    “LOOK” CHECK: Did Tim Scott get engaged to his mystery girlfriend, Mindy Noce, then feed the story to the Washington Post in a matter of hours just because he was worried that Trump wouldn’t like the look of a bachelor VP? Maybe!
    TRUMP’S STANCE: When asked about potential VP picks in February 2024, Trump mentioned Scott and Noem (though he said he didn’t want people to make “any inference” from the name drop). “A lot of people like Tim Scott — I called him, and I said, ‘You are a much better candidate for me than you are for yourself,’” Trump said, noting that Scott also gave him a “beautiful endorsement.” Scott was among the six people Trump (offhandedly) confirmed are on his shortlist during a February 20 Fox News town hall.
    SCOTT’S STANCE: Scott initially claimed he had no interest in being anyone’s VP. But he reversed course in late January 2024, saying “you can take it any way you want” when CNN noted he seemed open to being Trump’s running mate.

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Vivek Ramaswamy could be the best of both worlds for Trump. Demographically, he’s the opposite of the elderly white Florida man: a young Indian American from Ohio. But spiritually, Ramaswamy is Trump’s clone; his presidential campaign was all about railing against “wokeness” and passionately defending the former president. And he was also the co–top pick for VP in the 2024 CPAC straw poll.
    CONS: The biotech entrepreneur has no political experience and veered into extremism toward the end of his presidential campaign (for example, he called January 6 an “inside job” and embraced the “great replacement” theory). And the more Americans saw of him, the less they liked him. Shortly after Ramaswamy launched his candidacy last spring, 18 percent of Americans viewed him favorably, while 13 percent viewed him unfavorably, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages. After a campaign performance that many found glib and obnoxious, those numbers flipped. Today his average is 36 percent unfavorable to 24 percent favorable.
    LOYALTY CHECK: Ramaswamy praised Trump effusively even when they were primary opponents and demanded that other GOP candidates sign his pledge to pardon Trump. It increasingly seemed that Ramaswamy was running for a spot in Trump’s administration, not the presidency.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Can you really picture Trump putting “Ramaswamy” on a bumper sticker?
    TRUMP’S STANCE: When asked about Ramaswamy as VP in August 2023, Trump praised his obsequiousness and commented, “He’s got good energy, and he could be in some form of something. I tell ya, I think he’d be very good.” When chants of “VP, VP, VP” broke out for Ramaswamy during a January 2024 rally, Trump responded, “He’s going to be working with us for a long time.” Ramaswamy was among the six people Trump (offhandedly) confirmed are on his shortlist during a February 20 Fox News town hall. However, on March 18 Bloomberg reported that Trump has ruled out Ramaswamy as his running mate: “Trump personally told Ramaswamy he won’t be his vice presidential pick, according to people briefed on the discussion, but is considering him for posts including Homeland Security secretary.”
    RAMASWAMY’S STANCE: When asked if he’d be Trump’s running mate hours after ending his own presidential campaign in January, Ramaswamy said he’d “evaluate whatever is best for the future of this country.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty

    PROS: Since leaving the Democratic Party in 2022, former U.S. representative Tulsi Gabbard has become a regular at right-wing venues like Fox News and CPAC. She could give the GOP ticket a sheen of bipartisanship, and serve as a credible critic of her old party, which she attacked as “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”
    CONS: Gabbard would be a weird and risky Trump pick. She endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and backed Biden in 2020 after ending her own presidential bid.
    LOYALTY CHECK: Highly suspect. She hasn’t even endorsed Trump and seemed pretty excited about the possibility of being RFK Jr.’s VP (until he went with Nicole Shanahan).
    “LOOK” CHECK: This would be the least weird aspect of Trump picking Gabbard for VP. She’s a young, telegenic woman of color, so she checks multiple boxes on this front.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: Trump seemed to confirm he’s considering Gabbard, though he didn’t mention her by name. She was on a list of potential picks suggested to Trump by Laura Ingraham in February; he replied “all of those people are good. They’re all solid.”
    GABBARD’S STANCE: When asked in a March 2024 Fox News interview if she’d consider being Trump’s running mate she said, “I would be open to that.”

    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

    PROS: Selecting Texas governor Greg Abbott as his running mate would amplify Trump’s border-security messaging. He’s repeatedly clashed with the Biden administration over border policy, increasing his national popularity and boosting his job-approval rating in Texas. He’s an experienced politician and a strong fundraiser.
    CONS: Some of Abbott’s policies may be too harsh for swing voters. He signed into law one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, and critics say his anti-migrant policies are inhumane.
    LOYALTY CHECK: While Abbott isn’t as sycophantic as some other Texas officials, he and Trump generally have a solid relationship.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Abbott has used a wheelchair since 1984, when he was paralyzed from the waist down after a tree fell on him while he was jogging. It would be great if this didn’t figure into Trump’s decision, but he has expressed some pretty horrifying views about disabled people.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: During a joint interview with Abbott and Trump after their visit to the southern border on February 29, Sean Hannity asked if the governor could be Trump’s running mate. “He’s done a great job,” Trump said. “Yeah, certainly he would be somebody that I would very much consider.” When Hannity asked if he’s on the short list, Trump replied “absolutely.”
    ABBOTT’S STANCE: Abbott downplayed the idea of becoming Trump’s VP at a press conference after the border visit. “Obviously, it’s very nice of him to say, but I think you all know that my focus is entirely on the state of Texas,” he said. “As you know, I’m working right now on the midterm-election process. I’ve already talked about that I’ve announced that I’m running for reelection two years from now, and so my commitment is to Texas and I’m staying in Texas.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Like Noem, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the first woman elected to lead her state. And like Stefanik, the 41-year-old is one of the youngest and most well-known women in the GOP, so she could theoretically help Trump win over suburban women. Plus, Trump’s former White House press secretary already has plenty of experience defending his record.
    CONS: Will suburban women love Sanders’s aggressively pro-life stance? Perhaps not. Also, Sanders isn’t very popular, even in Arkansas. A recent poll found her job-approval rating is only 48 percent, the lowest for any governor in the state since her father Mike Huckabee’s rating of 47 percent in 2003. And the scandal over her office’s purchase of a $19,000 podium is ongoing.
    LOYALTY CHECK: While Sanders remained neutral in the 2024 GOP primary longer than some other VP contenders, she eventually endorsed Trump in November 2023, describing him as “my former boss, my friend, and everybody’s favorite president.”
    “LOOK” CHECK: It seems she meets Trump’s standards as she served as the face of his administration for two years.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: He endorsed Sanders’s gubernatorial bid but didn’t say anything positive about her while denying reports that she initially declined to back his 2024 campaign.
    SANDERS’S STANCE: When asked about the prospect of serving as VP on Face the Nation in January 2024, Sanders said, “Look, I absolutely love the job I have. I think it’s one of the best jobs I could ever ask for, and I am honored to serve as governor, and I hope I get to do it for the next seven years.” So either she’s trying to play it cool or she genuinely isn’t interested.

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Trump needs to win Ohio again in 2024. Who better to help him than J.D. Vance, the state’s freshman senator, who literally wrote the book on the MAGA base (at least in the view of bewildered liberals who turned to Hillbilly Elegy after Trump’s 2016 win)?
    CONS: A lot of people, actually. Trump won Ohio twice without Vance’s help. And in the 2022 Senate race, Vance’s campaigning and fundraising skills were unimpressive. That November he “underperformed the eight other Republicans on the statewide ballot by more than 11 points,” as the Washington Post noted. His current term ends in 2029, so his exit might ruin the GOP’s effort to retake the Senate.
    LOYALTY CHECK: In 2016, Vance declared himself a “Never Trump guy” and wondered if Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” Then during his 2022 Senate campaign he underwent a stunning MAGA conversion. Trump remarked at a 2022 Vance rally, “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so much.” More recently, Vance said he would have rejected Biden-won states’ electoral votes on January 6 if he had been in Mike Pence’s shoes.
    “LOOK” CHECK: If Trump really is looking for a woman or a person of color, Vance obviously isn’t his guy.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: Although Trump campaigned for Vance in 2022, he’s never seemed that impressed with his belated turn to Trumpism. At another midterms rally, Trump said of Vance, “He’s a guy that said some bad shit about me … But I have to do what I have to do.”
    VANCE’S STANCE: While campaigning for Trump in January 2024, he said, “The best place for me is to actually be an advocate of the agenda in the United States Senate.” But he added, “Certainly, if the president asked, I would have to think about it, because I want to help him.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: The former TV-news anchor turned Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is such an effective MAGA cheerleader that The Atlantic proclaimed her the “leading lady” of Trumpism. She also won a straw poll for Republican VP pick at CPAC.
    CONS: Lake lost Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial election for the GOP (though, like Trump, she baselessly cast herself as the victim of election fraud). She’s currently running in the 2024 Arizona Senate race, which would seem to take her out of the running for VP. (However, Vanity Fair reports that her frequent trips out of state have fueled speculation that she still has her eye on VP.)
    LOYALTY CHECK: Is it possible to love Trump too much? Lake seems to be on a mission to find out. She’s openly gushed about his “BDE” and personally vacuumed a red carpet for Trump.
    “LOOK” CHECK: She’s undeniably telegenic and may be what AI would churn out if asked to conjure the perfect MAGA running mate.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: In January 2024, Trump said Lake would be wonderful — in the Senate. “She’s terrific,” Trump said at a rally. “She’ll be a senator — a great senator, I predict, right? You’re going to be a great senator.”
    LAKE’S STANCE: In November 2023, her campaign spokesperson said she’s “focused on winning her Senate race in Arizona. And she looks forward to casting her vote in Arizona for president Trump and whoever he selects as VP.”

    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty

    PROS: Katie Britt, a freshman senator from Alabama, is the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate. She is also the only mother of school-aged children in the Senate Republican Conference. She has a son in eighth grade and a daughter in ninth grade with her husband, Wesley Britt, a former offensive tackle for the New England Patriots. Britt raised her national profile when she came out in favor of legal protections for IVF when an Alabama Supreme Court ruling shut down IVF services in the state, then delivered the GOP response to Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address.
    CONS: Britt’s SOTU response was terrible. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” a GOP strategist told the Daily Beast. Also, she has held public office for less than a year and Trump doesn’t need her help to win Alabama.
    LOYALTY CHECK: As former chief of staff to longtime senator Richard Shelby, Britt has a rather “swampy” past. But she managed to get Trump’s endorsement over his crony Mo Brooks in 2022, going on to win her former boss’s seat when he retired.
    “LOOK CHECK”: On paper, Britt is exactly who the GOP wants as the face of the party. But she probably ruined her VP chances with her poor delivery of the GOP SOTU rebuttal.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: Trump hasn’t said anything about Britt as a potential running mate.
    BRITT’S STANCE: She dodged the question when CBS News This Morning asked about her VP aspirations in November 2023, saying, “Oh, goodness, I’m just working hard in the U.S. Senate.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Standing next to two-term Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene could make Trump look sane and measured.
    CONS: Her selection would turn the 2024 election into a national debate over the capabilities of secret Jewish space lasers.
    LOYALTY CHECK: She’s arguably Trump’s most rabid defender in Congress. And if any of her colleagues do argue with her, she may call them a “little bitch.”
    “LOOK” CHECK: Picking the QAnon congresswoman would definitely be a wild look for the Trump campaign, but that has nothing to do with her appearance.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: He’s clearly a huge MTG fan — he’s publicly called her “brilliant” and “a badass” — but that doesn’t mean he’s making her VP. Several Trump-world sources told Rolling Stone that he’s not “stupid enough” to make her his running mate.
    GREENE’S STANCE: She’s openly fanned the “MTG for VP” speculation. In August 2023, she told The Guardian, “It’s talked about frequently and I know my name is on a list but really my biggest focus right now is serving the district that elected me.” That same month, she mused to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “I have a lot of things to think about. Am I going to be a part of President Trump’s Cabinet if he wins? Is it possible that I’ll be VP?”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Pundit Tucker Carlson was a pillar of the Fox News prime-time lineup until he was fired in April 2023, so he’d bring a huge amount of star power to the Trump campaign. Also, Melania Trump reportedly likes him as VP.
    CONS: Carlson is beloved by the “most nativist, paranoid, and bigoted constituents in the Republican Party,” as Jonathan Chait put it. But swing voters might not be as charmed by a guy who’s embraced the “great replacement” theory by name. Also, the last thing Trump wants is a running mate who might outshine him.
    LOYALTY CHECK: Though he later backtracked, we learned from the Fox News–Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit that Tucker told colleagues via text that he sees Trump as a “demonic force” and a “destroyer,” adding, “I hate him passionately.” So let’s put him down as “not that loyal.”
    “LOOK” CHECK: If Trump is okay with seeing a lot of memes featuring his running mate’s “dumbfounded face,” Carlson should be fine.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: When asked about Carlson for VP in November 2023, Trump responded, “I like Tucker a lot. I guess I would consider him. He’s got great common sense.” In January 2024, Donald Trump Jr. said the Carlson was still “on the table” and he “would certainly be a contender” for VP.
    CARLSON’S STANCE: He seemed to shoot down the idea in a December 2023 interview, saying, “I just don’t think I’m really suited for that. I mean, would anyone want to see a guy like me run for office?”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: He pitched himself to Republicans as a less erratic, not dumb Trump clone. So who better to step up if Trump becomes incapacitated?
    CONS: DeSantis embarrassed himself by running an incompetent 2024 presidential campaign. Putting two demagogic Florida men on the GOP ticket doesn’t make any sense — and it may even be unconstitutional!
    LOYALTY CHECK: DeSantis fails this crucial test. He grudgingly bent the knee to Trump by endorsing him as he dropped out of the race days before the New Hampshire primary. That may be enough to serve in a future Trump administration but he hasn’t groveled hard enough to be VP.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Nobody wants a VP who eats pudding with his hands.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: DeSantis was one of the six people Trump (offhandedly) confirmed are on his shortlist during a February 20 Fox News town hall, which is the only reason there’s been a surge in “DeSantis for VP” chatter.
    DeSANTIS’S STANCE: DeSantis seemingly took himself out of the running a day later when he said on a private call to supporters, “I am not doing that,” then made some lightly insulting remarks about Trump, the people running his campaign, and the right-wing media in general.

    This post has been updated throughout.


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    By Margaret Hartmann

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  • The Donald Trump–Elon Musk Feud: A Complete History

    The Donald Trump–Elon Musk Feud: A Complete History

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    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue; Scott Olson/Getty Images

    For several years now, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, two of our most volatile rich dudes, have been engaged in an on-again, off-again feud. Trump has dismissed Musk as a “bullshit artist,” and the Tesla–SpaceX–Boring Company CEO has endorsed several of Trump’s political rivals. However, the two men’s anti-Establishment views often align, and when Musk bought Twitter in 2022, Trump celebrated his acquisition of the social-media giant. Musk eventually made good on his promise to reverse Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter (now known as X), but the ex-president mostly stayed off the site, insisting that Truth Social would remain the exclusive home of his social-media ramblings.

    So what exactly went wrong between Musk and Trump? Are they back on good terms? And how is the public supposed to follow this drama when one of the participants only posts his “truths” on a site barely anyone uses? Here’s a guide to how it all went down, which we’ll continue to update as long as this chaotic duo keeps at it.

    As president, Trump regularly lashed out at CEOs who crossed him, but somehow Musk stayed on his good side even as he repeatedly disparaged Trump’s policies and personality.

    Days before the 2016 election, Musk told CNBC that he generally agreed with Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental plans. His assessment of Trump was harsher. “I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy,” Musk said. “He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”

    And early in Trump’s presidency, Musk criticized the “Muslim ban.”

    Nevertheless, the CEO went on to join two of Trump’s business-advisory councils — only to quit in protest.

    In August 2019, Musk said he supported Democrat Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign. That still didn’t keep Trump from heaping praise on the tech billionaire at Davos in January 2020, calling him in a CNBC interview “one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius.” He continued, “You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with originally the lightbulb and the wheel and all of these things. And he’s one of our very smart people, and we want to cherish those people.”

    In the final year of his presidency, Trump found himself increasingly in agreement with Musk over “Twitter, the moon, and sticking it to the establishment,” as Politico put it. In May 2020, Trump defended Musk’s calls to reopen Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, which had been closed because of COVID restrictions; then he headed to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to watch a SpaceX rocket launch two NASA astronauts. Musk echoed some of Trump’s criticisms of pandemic precautions, adding a new wrinkle to his ongoing drama with Twitter. Per Politico:

    From the beginning of the crisis, Musk, the temperamental billionaire leader of SpaceX and Tesla, has frequently questioned mainstream scientific research, reporting and policy on Covid-19, to the point that Twitter was forced to deal with a wave of complaints suggesting the social-media platform remove his tweets for spreading disinformation. He accelerated the proposal of hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure from the backwaters of Bitcoin Twitter discussions into the mainstream, off of two tweets (“maybe worth considering …”), bucked government lockdowns in order to keep his electric cars in production and recently stated that he believed policies designed to keep Americans safe were violating their constitutional rights. As he bluntly tweeted in March: “The coronavirus panic is dumb.”

    The announcement of Musk’s deal to buy Twitter prompted speculation that he might let the former president and various other exiles back onto the platform. Sure enough, Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” soon declared that he was against permanent bans in general and Trump’s ban specifically. He said Twitter’s decision to kick Trump off over his January 6 rhetoric was “a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

    At this point, Trump had already publicly claimed he was sticking with the flailing social-media network he had barely been using. “Truth Social will be a voice for me,” Trump told Fox News. “And that’s something nobody else can get.”

    But he made it clear that he was rooting for the Musk-Twitter alliance. “I think it is good. We want liberty and justice and fairness in our country, and the more we can have open, the better,” Trump said. “I don’t view that as a competition for what I am doing.”

    Over the years, Musk has said he’s a registered independent and described himself as “politically moderate” and “somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative.” But at the All-In tech conference in May 2022, he said Biden’s support for unions and inability to “get a lot done” had driven him to embrace the GOP, though he had mostly voted for Democrats in the past.

    “I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats historically,” Musk said. “Like, I’m not sure I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear. Now, this election, I will.”

    Although it was unclear whether “this election” referred to the midterms or the 2024 presidential contest, initially this seemed like it could be good news for Trump. A few weeks later, however, the “moderate” tech CEO revealed that the Republican who’d won him over was the Florida governor known for the “Don’t Say Gay” law and for punishing companies that defy him.

    Even though Trump initially praised the Musk-Twitter deal, in mid-May he posted on Truth Social, “There is no way Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter at such a ridiculous price, especially since realizing it is a company largely based on BOTS of Spam Accounts. Fake anyone?”

    So when Musk’s agreement with Twitter appeared to be falling apart, Trump was eager to do some gloating and settle some political grievances. At a July 9 rally in Anchorage, Alaska, for Republicans Sarah Palin and Governor Mike Dunleavy, he claimed he had predicted the deal wouldn’t happen and accused Musk of lying about voting for him in 2016.

    “He said the other day, ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that,’” Trump said. “He told me he voted for me, so he’s another bullshit artist.”

    Musk responded in a series of tweets, saying that Trump’s claim was “not true” and that he’s too old to run for president again anyway.

    The former president escalated the budding feud on July 12, attacking Musk’s various endeavors in a series of Truth Social posts and claiming he could have made him “drop to [his] knees and beg” when he was in office.

    Trump’s “truths” still don’t play nicely with other social-media sites, so Musk responded via another Twitter user’s screenshot of Trump’s post:

    On October 28, the morning after Musk officially acquired Twitter, Trump took to Truth Social to wish him well. But he also claimed, dubiously, that his own site has become “somewhat of a phenomena” so it will be his home for the foreseeable future.

    Despite claiming that he would consult Twitter’s “content moderation council” and create a “clear process” for reinstating banned accounts, on November 18 Elon Musk revived the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account because some random Twitter users told him to.

    While Trump’s tweets were visible again, he refrained from returning to Twitter, claiming that he was perfectly happy on Truth Social.

    “Truth Social is through the roof. It’s doing phenomenally well,” he said when asked about his social media intentions. “Truth Social has been very, very powerful, very, very strong, and I’ll be staying there. But I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it.”

    Trump also assured his Truth followers, “we aren’t going anywhere.”

    Announcing that you’re a fan of the U.S. Constitution used to be innocuous. But in this dark timeline it counts as a political statement.

    Musk was clearly criticizing Trump’s Truth Social post from two days earlier, in which he called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, & articles, even those found in the Constitution” to undo Biden’s 2020 win.

    On May 24, Ron DeSantis announced he was running for president in an audio stream with Musk on Twitter Spaces. It did not go well. The event was marred by multiple technical issues and failed to answer the fundamental question, “Why should I vote for DeSantis over Trump?”

    Trump mocked DeSantis relentlessly on Truth Social and took a few shots at Musk too. For example, he posted what appeared to be a video of a SpaceX rocket labeled “Ron! 2024” falling over and exploding.

    Weeks after Musk rebranded Twitter as “X,” Trump dropped by to share his mug shot:

    As of this writing, it’s the only post Trump has shared on the site since the tweets that got him banned in 2021.

    Donald Trump desperately needs money. Elon Musk is absurdly wealthy and loves demonstrating his power. So when the New York Times reported on March 5 that Trump and Musk had recently met, it seemed like there might be huge consequences for the 2024 election:

    Donald Trump, who is urgently seeking a cash infusion to aid his presidential campaign, met on Sunday in Palm Beach, Fla., with Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, and a few wealthy Republican donors, according to three people briefed on the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.

    … It’s not yet clear whether Mr. Musk plans to spend any of his fortune on Mr. Trump’s behalf. But his recent social media posts suggest he thinks it’s essential that Mr. Biden be defeated in November — and people who have spoken to Mr. Musk privately confirmed that is indeed his view.

    Musk has publicly criticized President Biden and his policies multiple times, and he recently posted, “Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a very real disease” in response to a clip of Bill Maher saying he would vote for anyone but Trump in 2024.

    But Musk quickly poured cold water on the idea that he’d be funding Trump, writing on X:

    On March 12 the Washington Post reported that Trump and Musk communicate more than has been publicly reported — and at one point Trump even offered Musk his flailing social media site. The deal was reportedly floated in the summer of 2023, and Musk declined (possibly because Truth Social is basically a MAGA-y Twitter clone).

    When the offer was made in summer 2023, Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, was “trapped in a long-delayed merger process.” But in February 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission signed off on the media company’s merger with a SPAC, and now Trump could potentially make billions if the company goes public.

    When contacted by the Post some of the parties involved gave sassy responses that did not address the substance of the report:

    When The Washington Post asked Musk about the Truth Social call and his other talks with Trump, Musk responded only that he had “never been to Mar-a-Lago,” Trump’s estate in Palm Beach.

    Trump Media & Technology Group did not address any of the facts reported in this story when invited to do so by The Post. In an emailed statement, Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said only, “We heard Trump and Musk were actually discussing buying the Washington Post but they decided it had no value.”

    The Trump campaign did not respond at all, but stay tuned. Everything we know about Musk and Trump tells us this won’t be the last word on the subject.

    This post has been updated throughout.


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    Margaret Hartmann

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  • Absolutely Everything We Know About the Trump Sneakers

    Absolutely Everything We Know About the Trump Sneakers

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    Probably not.

    After their debut, menswear analyst Derek Guy wrote a thread on X speculating on where they might be coming from (“from the soles, I will assume somewhere in a low-cost Asian country,” he claimed) and how much it might cost to manufacture them. He highlighted the fact that the website is offering only preorders for the shoes as one way Trump might profit:

    There’s no distributor or retailer, as Trump is selling it directly to consumers. How much did it cost to make this website? Maybe $100? There’s no overstock or inventory to worry about, as everything was sold on pre-order. So, for a shoe that prob costs $20 to make, maybe we can add another $20 for various associated costs. That’s still a 10x markup from cost to retail, with all the profit being pocketed by Trump. This is not at all comparable to how other fashion companies price things.

    (As a followup, Guy also wrote up some advice at Politico for how wear Trump’s gilded sneakers with various outfits.)

    Some sneakerheads have noted that the shoes look like sneakers you could order from a big China-based marketplace like AliExpress or Temu and simply customize with a T and some American flags.

    At The Bulwark, self-professed sneakerhead Joe Perticone offered a more detailed analysis. First, he emphasized that “it’s important to understand that the online sneaker market is Grifter City”:

    Pure garbage is upsold for insane amounts over the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). This excess value is determined by a number of different factors: scarcity, what’s currently (and fleetingly) considered “cool,” and unpredictable events — for example, the sighting of a celebrity wearing the yet-to-be-released kicks. Scarcity is the only factor that is in any way quantifiable, which is one of the reasons the online sneaker market is so volatile that it makes cryptocurrency look like the S&P 500.

    Perticone added that the Trump Sneakers designs “are years behind current sneaker trends”:

    To my eye, the [Trump Sneakers] appear to be cheap wholesale shoes with some shiny branding stitched on the sides. They don’t carry the material heft associated with premium sneakers, such as soles made by top-tier Italian producers like Margom or Vibram …

    The team behind Trump’s MAGA Stan Smiths appears to have borrowed the design of the shoe from the waning days of the George W. Bush administration: The $399 gold “Never Surrender High-Top Sneakers” are reminiscent of the Adidas high-tops designed by Jeremy Scott and popularized by rapper Lil Wayne during the late 2000s. Meanwhile, Trump’s other two sneakers — a $199 design that comes in red (“T-Red Wave”) or white (“POTUS 45”) — bring to mind the sock-style shoes that have been around for decades but took the sneaker market by storm in recent years thanks to innovative designs by Kanye West. 

    Watch dealer and influencer Roman Sharf won a pair of the “Never Surrender” gold high-tops with a $9,000 auction bid the same day the sneakers were launched. He later told the New York Times that “they’re still new — they smell like glue.” That is definitely not a good sign. According to sneaker authenticator Rami Almordaah, who spoke with the Los Angeles Times for a story in November about detecting counterfeit sneakers:

    Inside the box, Nikes and Jordans have a distinct smell. The fakes have a strong alcohol or a strong glue smell. The real ones have their own distinct smell, and it’s always the same.

    So if the Trump sneakers smell like glue, it is possible that they may be no better quality than cheap knockoffs.

    Putting the question of quality aside, Roman Sharf got a lot in return for his purchase. “I spent $9,000 for $9 million worth of publicity,” he told Intelligencer, describing the many interviews he has done. After the auction, he also says that Trump invited him and his son to lunch at the Trump International Golf Club. “It was just a conversation between the boys that felt like I was one of the boys, to be fair,” Sharf said.

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    Chas Danner,Matt Stieb

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  • Trump Resumes His Costly Defamation of E. Jean Carroll

    Trump Resumes His Costly Defamation of E. Jean Carroll

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    Trump’s lawsuit-seeking lips were again moving at a rally in Georgia on Saturday night.
    Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    On January 26, a jury in New York ordered Donald Trump to pay more than $83 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll as punishment for repeatedly defaming her. Another jury had sided with Carroll in May and found Trump liable for both sexual assaulting and defaming her, awarding her $5 million in damages. But the former president continued to call Carroll a liar afterward, and so she sued Trump for defamation again, and won in court again. This time, the judgment included a whopping $65 million in punitive damages, which was meant to deter Trump from repeating his false claims about Carroll. That deterrent only remained effective for 43 days.

    On Saturday — one day after he tried to post a $91 million bond in order to prevent Carroll’s attorneys from seizing his assets while he appeals the verdict — Trump resumed defaming Carroll.

    Noting the bond at campaign rally in Rome, Georgia, Trump once again called Carroll a liar:

    I just posted a $91 million bond, $91 million on a fake story, totally made-up story. $91 million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her. She wrote a book, she said things. And when I denied it, I said, “It’s so crazy. It’s false.” I get sued for defamation. That’s where it starts.

    (He actually hasn’t posted the bond yet, his lawyers have requested he be allowed to.)

    Trump also briefly referenced Carroll at a rally in Michigan last month, vaguely implying he did not know her.

    Though Carrol’s attorneys have not yet commented on Trump’s weekend remarks, Carroll has made it clear she would another lawsuit if he defamed her again. Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, has said that “all options are on the table” regarding additional lawsuits. Another Carroll attorney, Shawn Crowley, said in an interview last month that they were watching and listening, waiting to see whether Trump would start up again.

    They didn’t have to wait very long.

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    Chas Danner

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  • Did Katie Britt Misrepresent the Sex-Trafficking Story in Her SOTU Response?

    Did Katie Britt Misrepresent the Sex-Trafficking Story in Her SOTU Response?

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    Alabama senator Katie Britt’s official GOP response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday night has been widely criticized, primarily for how wholly bizarre it was, but also for the lurid stories Britt included in an attempt to illustrate why he has been a terrible nation-destroying president. A key anecdote Britt featured to that end was about a young woman she met during a January 2023 trip to the U.S. southern border who had been a victim of rape and sex trafficking as a teenager. She used the story as example of Biden’s failed border policies, clearly suggesting the woman had suffered these crimes inside the U.S. and as a direct result of the president’s failure to secure the southern border. Here is that section, from the transcript of the speech released by Britt’s office:

    [R]ight now, the American dream has turned into a nightmare for so many families. The true unvarnished state of our union begins and ends with this. Our families are hurting. Our country can do better.

    And you don’t have to look any further than the crisis at our southern border to see it. President Biden inherited the most secure border of all-time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, halted construction of the border wall, and announced a plan to give amnesty to millions. 

    We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.

    When I first took office, I did something different. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. 

    The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoe-box of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on-end.

    We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it.

    President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.

    On Friday, former Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz highlighted several details which, at best, call Britt’s framing of the woman’s story into question. In both a Bluesky thread and a TikTok video, the independent journalist said that he tried to confirm the details Britt shared, noting that during her trip to the border in January 2023, Britt and two other GOP senators, Marsha Blackburn and Cindy Hyde-Smith, held a roundtable press conference with a Mexican congresswoman, a Fox News contributor, and a Mexican sex-trafficking survivor named Karla Jacinto Romero.

    In 2004, Romero was forced into sex slavery in Mexico when she was 12 years old, and after she escaped her pimp four years later, bravely dedicated her life to activism against slavery and sex trafficking. Since then, she has repeatedly recounted the horrific details of her experience, including in testimony before Congress in 2015, and again with Britt, Blackburn, and Hyde-Smith in 2023.

    As Katz pointed out, Britt clearly cited the sex trafficking victim’s experience as a consequence of President Biden’s border policies, but if in fact the story she referred to was Romero’s, those crimes happened in Mexico at a time when George W. Bush was president. In addition Britt framed the story as having happened amid the current border crisis, in the border region, right before she began citing alleged migrant-perpetrated violence inside the U.S.

    Both Politico Playbook and AL.com columnist Kyle Whitmire reached out to Britt’s office for comment regarding Katz’s investigation, and Britt spokesperson Sean Ross sent a statement in reply insisting that “the story Senator Britt told was 100% correct. There are more innocent victims of that kind of disgusting, brutal trafficking by the cartels than ever before right now.” The statement further claims that the Biden administration’s policies “have empowered the cartels and acted as a magnet to a historic level or migrants making the dangerous journey to our border. Along that journey, children, women, and men are being subjected to gut-wrenching, heartbreaking horrors in our own backyard.”

    The Britt spokesperson hasn’t yet confirmed whether or not Romero was the victim Britt spoke with, but in a video about the January 2023 border visit produced by Senator Blackburn’s office, Britt referenced what appeared to be Romero’s account, while footage of her and Romero appeared. In those remarks, Britt argued that the U.S. needed to do more to prevent such crime:

    If we, as leaders of the greatest nation in the world, are not fighting to protect the most vulnerable, we are not doing our job.

    That’s not the argument Britt made in her State of the Union response on Thursday. If she was in fact referencing Romero’s story, Britt made up a totally false context in her speech in order to suggest Biden was to blame for something that happened two decades ago.

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    Chas Danner

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  • What Pundits Are Saying About Biden’s State of the Union (and Britt’s Response)

    What Pundits Are Saying About Biden’s State of the Union (and Britt’s Response)

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    Intelligencer’s Ed Kilgore was simultaneously befuddled and creeped out, noting that “if Britt’s speech was alternatively lurid and banal, it was the delivery that really grabbed you, and not in a good way”:

    Like she was auditioning for a soap-opera role that required a broad range of over-the-top emotions, Britt went from weepy to furious to gleeful to solemn, and executed abrupt changes in pitch and volume. …

    Perhaps like Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana wonder-boy who bombed in his State of the Union response to Barack Obama in 2009, Britt felt the need to talk down to her audience, or maybe she was over-coached. At one point, she said “the American Dream has turned into a nightmare.” Personally, I fear I will encounter Katie Britt in my nightmares, whispering “we see you” until I wake up screaming.

    AL.com columnist Kyle Whitmire marveled at the weirdness of Britt’s speech too, but wasn’t surprised that she didn’t seem real. “Britt’s problem is an old one in Alabama politics — she couldn’t be genuine and win,” he writes, “so she chose to be fake”:

    There’s nothing I can quote from Britt’s speech that can convey the strangeness of it — the mismatched emotions, the smiles in the wrong places, the jaw clenched when it shouldn’t have been — just the indescribable weirdness. It was something that had to be seen, but even then, couldn’t be understood — like postmodernism, avant-garde performance art or an involuntary behavioral science experiment. …

    All she had to do was look into the camera and read, but she tried to do more. Too much more. Her handlers attempted to brand this political newcomer as “America’s mom,” but instead, she came off as the aunt who’s been spending too much time on Facebook, and if you don’t change the subject soon, she’s going to tell you about sex dungeons beneath the pizza parlor.

    I supposed we should focus on the substance of Britt’s speech, instead of its delivery, but that, too, seemed written by ChatGPT.

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    Chas Danner

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  • Arizonans Asked to Block Themselves From Voting on Abortion

    Arizonans Asked to Block Themselves From Voting on Abortion

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    Anti-abortion activists only favor votes on the subject if it promotes their point of view.
    Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/The Republic/USA Today Networks

    Throughout the 49 years during which Roe v. Wade set abortion policy in this country, one of the mantras of the anti-abortion movement was “Let the people decide!” “Unelected federal judges,” we were told, had usurped the right of the public to determine the laws governing reproductive rights via the instruments of state politics and government, as they had done before Roe was handed down in 1973.

    Well, the U.S. Supreme Court did reverse Roe in 2022, and wherever they had the power, anti-abortion Republicans enacted the most thorough abortion restrictions they could impose in any given state. There was, however, a strong popular backlash to these new laws, even in strongly Republican states. Where it was possible to roll them back or prevent their enactment by passing or rejecting ballot initiatives, the pro-choice popular majority won again and again, in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Ohio.

    So as the 2024 election approaches, efforts are underway to place abortion policy on the ballot in a host of states (including Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota). Democrats are hoping to galvanize general-election turnout, and anti-abortion activists have been looking high or low for ways to make that harder. In Ohio, the Republican legislature tried but failed to create supermajority requirements for ballot initiatives changing state constitutions. In Florida, the Republican attorney general is seeking to stop a ballot initiative on grounds of allegedly deceptive wording.

    In Arizona, however, anti-abortion activists battling an effort to put a pro-choice constitutional amendment on the November ballot are trying a more direct method: convincing voters they should not sign petitions enabling the ballot initiative because they should not decide abortion policy. Politico explains this “decline to sign” campaign, spearheaded by the hard-core anti-abortion group Students for Life:

    The activists are deploying everywhere signatures are gathered — making their case at festivals, libraries, big box parking lots and coffee shops across Arizona. Some are simply trying to reach voters with an anti-abortion message before the other side does. Others are turning to more confrontational methods: tracking the locations of signature-gatherers on a private Telegram channel, filming them, interrupting their work, and calling security to get them removed from high-traffic spots around town.

    “We will make sure no one will get approached to sign without hearing the other side of the story,” said Chanel Prunier, who leads Students for Life’s electoral advocacy arm. She called her decline-to-sign volunteers going door-to-door across the state the “ground troops” of the anti-abortion movement.

    To some extent, these “ground troops” are promoting misinformation about the implications of the proposed amendment, arguing that it guarantees the right to an “abortion up until birth.” In fact, the initiative would simply restore the Roe standard of a right to choose prior to fetal viability, with post-viability abortions only protected in cases of a threat to the life or health of the pregnant woman. But the “up until birth” argument is key to the more general claim of anti-abortion activists that their opponents are the real “extremists” on this issue.

    The underlying argument, of course, is that voters shouldn’t be voting on abortion policy at all, at least where they might relax rather than increase restrictions. Politico quoted this line from a “decline to sign” protester standing near booths set up to secure ballot-initiative signatures:

    “There are things that shouldn’t be voted on,” Jacob Minic, one of the demonstrators, told POLITICO. “When it comes to extreme moral issues like this one, I don’t think it should be on the ballot.”

    It’s very much a “heads I win, tails you lose” approach to the issue: “The people” should be able to ban abortions but not protect them. This is, of course, in line with the anti-abortion movement’s fundamental values beneath all the rhetoric. They oppose abortion on biological, ontological, or religious grounds that have nothing to do with public opinion or democracy. Given a chance, they would embed constitutional protections for the fetus even stronger than the reproductive rights overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022. So they’re not at all daunted by the clear pro-choice majority that has emerged since abortion policy was turned over to the states — even in many red states. Whatever it takes to use the power of government to force each and every pregnancy to full term, they’re for it, even if that involves more than a bit of deception. We should all get used to it.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Trump’s Very Super Tuesday Confirms It’s His Party

    Trump’s Very Super Tuesday Confirms It’s His Party

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    Donald Trump won all but one of the Republican presidential primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday, and the vast majority of delegates awarded, eliminating any serious doubt that he will clinch the GOP nomination this month. His victories spanned the country from Maine to Alaska and included mega-states such as California and Texas.

    Nikki Haley did obtain the consolation prize of a narrow win in Vermont (which gave Joe Biden his highest percentage of the vote in 2020), adding it to the even-more-Democratic District of Columbia in her victory column. Vermont is a state where Democrats could and clearly did cross over to smite Trump, and Haley did relatively well in other states where non-Republicans were permitted to participate, topping a third of the vote in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

    But more typical were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee, which Trump won by over 50 points. He did not, moreover, underperform the expectations set by polls, providing an ephemeral sense of Haley momentum. Instead, in the three states where there was exit polling (California, North Carolina, and Virginia), it was clearer than ever that Trump is the overwhelming favorite of self-identified Republicans, with much of Haley’s vote coming from Democratic-leaning independents who probably were never on the table for the GOP in November.

    In Virginia, for example, 10 percent of Republican primary voters were self-identified Democrats and 30 percent were independents, and fully 19 percent gave Joe Biden a thumbs-up on his job performance. Among these Biden-friendly voters, Haley won by a 92 percent to 5 percent margin. Among the 81 percent who did not positively adjudge Biden, Trump won by 76 percent to 21 percent margin. It was less and less of a contest the closer you got to the heart of the GOP electorate.

    It’s emblematic that the two big endorsements Haley won on the brink of Super Tuesday, from Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski and Maine senator Susan Collins, apparently had zero impact on Republican voters in their states. Trump won 88 percent of the vote in Alaska and 72 percent in Maine.

    Overall, the New York Times projects that when all the Super Tuesday ballots are counted, Trump will have nearly 7.7 million votes to Haley’s 2.6 million. NBC News estimates that Trump has won 1,002 delegates of the 1,214 needed for the nomination and Haley only 92. There is no way she can spin Tuesday night as a moral victory or as a sign the GOP is reluctantly going along with a third straight nomination for the 45th president.

    But as the catastrophe descended, her campaign professed to be upbeat, as the Associated Press reported:

    Haley, who as of midnight had logged her only victory of the day in Vermont, spent the night huddled with staff watching returns near her South Carolina home.

    “The mood is jubilant,” spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said. “There is lots of food and music.”

    Haley did not pledge to continue her candidacy beyond this very unsuccessful day, but clearly some of her supporters — not to mention fellow travelers who simply want to cause trouble for Trump — want her to keep going until the money runs out, and perhaps all the way to the convention. Even if Trump has a medical crisis or is convicted of a felony, there is no circumstance in which Haley is going to win the Republican nomination; a convention stuffed with MAGA delegates is not going to settle for this last-ditch Trump opponent as though they don’t have several hundred more suitable options.

    Whatever Haley decides to do, the nominating calendar will turn a page, moving on to March 12, when Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Washington vote. It’s not likely the trajectory of the contest will change unless Trump is uncontested entirely.

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    Ed Kilgore

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  • California Senate Polls: Schiff Helps Garvey Edge Out Fellow Democrats

    California Senate Polls: Schiff Helps Garvey Edge Out Fellow Democrats

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    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

    In addition to the 15 states holding presidential contests on Super Tuesday, there are also a handful of down-ballot primaries on March 5. The contest that’s drawn the most national interest is the U.S. Senate primary in California, a complex and expensive battle to identify general-election candidates for the seat previously held by the late Dianne Feinstein.

    California utilizes a so-called top-two primary system in which candidates (below the presidential level) compete for spots on the November ballot without regard to party affiliation. So there could be two Democrats, two Republicans, or one of each in the general election. This system has frequently led to candidates trying to “box out” their most dangerous opponents by keeping them from making the top two in the primary vote.

    This sort of gamesmanship has been pivotal in the 2024 Senate race. Given the Democratic Party’s dominant position in California (no Republican has won a statewide race since 2006), the general election will almost certainly be won by a Democrat. But it makes all the difference in the world whether there are one or two Democrats competing in November.

    The longtime front-runner in the race, Los Angeles–area Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, very much wants his November opponent to be Republican Steve Garvey, a baseball star in Los Angeles and San Diego, whom he would trounce without much question. So he has been devoting a sizable portion of his massive campaign treasury (he’s raised about $50 million so far) to attacks on Garvey designed to consolidate GOP voters behind the former ballplayer, as opposed to either of the other two significant Republicans in the contest. Schiff is hoping that Garvey can box out his Democratic colleague Katie Porter, the Elizabeth Warren protégé from Orange County who has stronger progressive credentials and is herself a prodigious fundraiser (pulling in an estimated $24 million for the Senate race). An X factor in the race is Schiff and Porter’s distinguished Bay Area colleague Barbara Lee, whose age (she will turn 78 in July) and poor fundraising have offset her sterling progressive reputation.

    In addition to Schiff’s promotion of Garvey, Porter has also had to contend with $10 million in attack ads from a group backed by cryptocurrency executives angry at her criticisms of the industry. A wrinkle in the campaign has been an upsurge of progressive fury at Schiff for his staunch backing of Israel in its war against Hamas; Lee was an early supporter of a permanent cease-fire and Porter has supported a more conditional cease-fire effort.

    The polls show that Schiff’s strategic effort to boost Garvey at Porter’s expense is working. In the RealClearPolitics polling averages for this race, Schiff is at 26.5 percent, Garvey is at 20.5 percent, Porter is at 18.3 percent, and Lee is at 9 percent. Garvey has been steadily trending upwards in the polls as Schiff’s campaign love-bombed him; in the latest UC Berkeley–Los Angeles Times survey, the Republican actually led the field with 27 percent, two points ahead of his frenemy Schiff and eight points ahead of Porter.

    A big imponderable about this primary is turnout. Whatever its merits, the top-two system has done nothing to improve the Golden State’s reputation for poor turnout in primaries, nor have such voter-friendly enhancements as automatic voter registration (in most counties, at least) and the dispatch of mail ballots to all registered voters without the need for an excuse or an application (voters also have in-person options if they don’t want to vote by mail). This year’s turnout may also be depressed by two totally uncompetitive presidential contests and an unusually early date (California primaries are usually held in June but were moved up to coincide with the presidential primaries). Politico looked at the pace of ballots returned early and predicted very low turnout:

    California is lagging behind the 2022 midterm return rate, when the state had more ballots returned by this point in the race. Ultimately, 2022 saw a 33 percent turnout.

    There’s dozens of factors that could affect the state’s final turnout number, but [turnout monitor Paul] Mitchell is cautiously speculating that only 29 percent of California’s registered voters will turn in their ballots, falling below the current record low of 31 percent in 2012.

    Low turnouts in California have traditionally been good for Republicans, which is another factor that might help Garvey, whose own campaign and debate appearances have been decidedly unimpressive. Many Democrats have mixed feelings about the contest. On the one hand, a Schiff-Garvey general election might free up many millions of dollars that would otherwise go to a Senate race between two Democrats. More available donor money would benefit candidates in races more critical to the Democratic Party’s power (notably six competitive U.S. House races, five of them for seats now controlled by Republicans). On the other hand, strategic issues aside, Schiff is not an inspiring choice for many California progressives, as my colleague Rebecca Traister explained in her recent overview of the race:

    Porter does not always play well with others in her own party — including Nancy Pelosi, the fearsome éminence grise of both California politics and the U.S. House — and has been accused by multiple former employees of being a tough, perhaps even abusive, boss. Lee is a beloved hero of the left who has not participated in a competitive election in years and at 77 is a dicey choice to fill a seat recently vacated by a woman in possession of the philosopher’s stone. And Schiff? Schiff is fine if you want a warrior on behalf of the meager gruel of status quo politics, a candidate handpicked by the previous generation of Democratic leadership to further its dubious legacy.

    If the race for the two spots in the general election is very close, it could be a while before we know the outcome: California is a state that counts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day so long as they are received at local election offices within seven days. Another strange wrinkle is that voters will be selecting a top two not just for the full Senate term that begins in 2025, but — separately — for the last two months of Feinstein’s term (being filled until November by appointed place-holder Laphonza Butler, who chose not to pursue an elected term). It’s possible that confused voters will produce different top twos for the full and truncated terms. That would be an unlikely but fitting end to this odd Senate race full of misdirection and borderline deceit.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Biden vs. Trump Polls: Joe’s Battleground Problem

    Biden vs. Trump Polls: Joe’s Battleground Problem

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    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

    In assessing the rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on tap for November 2024, it is important to remember that their national popular-vote standing as illustrated by various polls (some head-to-head, others featuring possible additional candidates) is not necessarily the determining factor in the outcome. Thanks to our Electoral College system, it’s entirely possible to be elected president while losing the popular vote; indeed, that’s how we got George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. Hillary Clinton beat Trump by a 2.1 percent popular-vote margin and still lost the election, and in 2020, Trump came within 42,000 votes of putting together an Electoral College majority even though Biden beat him handily in the national popular vote (by 4.5 percent).

    The simplest way to explain this dichotomy is that Democratic votes are distributed less efficiently among the states. That’s not an eternal truth; John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012 overperformed their popular-vote margins in the Electoral College. But you can understand why Democrats fear that Biden needs to actually be well ahead of Trump in the national popular vote in order to win, and why polls showing Trump ahead or the contest tied alarm them. This concern has been reinforced by periodic polling of perceived battleground states (typically the ones that were very close in 2020) that show Biden in trouble.

    In the most recent batch of battleground state polls, from Bloomberg–Morning Consult, Biden trailed Trump in a head-to-head matchup by nine points in North Carolina, six points in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada, four points in Wisconsin, and two points in Pennsylvania. In a five-way trial heat including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein, Trump’s lead ballooned to ten points in North Carolina, nine points in Arizona and (shockingly) Pennsylvania, seven points in Georgia and Nevada, and six points in Wisconsin. The five-way race actually shaved a point off Trump’s lead in Michigan.

    The survey did not have a national popular-vote component, but a recent Morning Consult tracking poll had Trump leading Biden by just one point, reinforcing the impression that Democrats could again have a “vote efficiency” problem in November.

    Emerson has released its own battery of battleground polls (for the Hill) a bit earlier in February, and it showed a slightly less dire picture for Biden. The pollster had Trump leading Biden in a head-to-head matchup by six points in Georgia and Nevada, by three points in Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and by two points in Michigan and Pennsylvania. In a five-way contest with Kennedy, West, and Stein in the running, though, Emerson shows deep problems for Biden, who trails Trump by ten points in Nevada, nine points in Georgia and North Carolina, six points in Arizona, five points in Pennsylvania, four points in Wisconsin, and three points in Michigan. Emerson’s national poll in February had Trump leading by a mere one point in a head-to-head race and by two points in the five-way contest. Again, the indicators are that even in a close national race, the president is trailing significantly in the states likely to determine the Electoral College winner.

    Keeping in mind that Biden won six of these seven states (all of them other than North Carolina) in 2020, these numbers are discouraging for Democrats, albeit highly premature given the ever-changing landscape of the presidential field and the galvanizing events that could take place between now and November. It’s also worth remembering that state polling often involves small samples that make it less reliable than national polling (no Democrat is likely to forget the state polling in 2016, which showed Hillary Clinton in command in several key states she lost, particularly Michigan and Wisconsin). But the danger signs are there that Biden may need to have a distinct battleground-state strategy even if he pulls into a national lead over Trump and any other rivals.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Trump Might Not Have to Sell Off His Properties Just Yet

    Trump Might Not Have to Sell Off His Properties Just Yet

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    Photo: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    When Judge Arthur Engoron handed down a $464 million penalty to Donald Trump earlier this month, the ex-president found himself in a bind. With most of his net worth tied up in real estate, Trump does not have the cash to pay the fines outright — meaning he would need to seek out a loan to avoid a fire sale of his properties. But because Engoron banned Trump from taking out loans with New York banks, he could not easily get a loan to secure a bond for the full monetary judgment.

    But on Wednesday, Trump caught a break: New York Supreme Court Appellate Judge Anil Singh ruled that Trump can apply for a loan to pay the bond on the nearly half-billion in fines, responding to a filing Trump’s team had made earlier that day in appeals court.

    This means that, for the time being, Trump will not need to sell off his New York properties. But it was far from a total victory. Trump’s lawyers lost their effort to pause enforcement of the penalty, or to remove the independent director of compliance who oversees the Trump Organization now that Trump has been barred from doing so. Bloomberg also reports that the ruling will only remain valid “until a full appellate panel hears Trump’s request for a delay that would last for his entire appeal.”

    Before Judge Singh delivered his decision, Trump’s lawyers argued that if he could not apply for loans, he would probably need to sell some of his assets in New York. “The exorbitant and punitive amount of the judgment coupled with an unlawful and unconstitutional blanket prohibition on lending transactions would make it impossible to secure and post a complete bond,” they wrote. Singh’s decision now allows Trump to go to a bank to get the money — though he will still be required to pay tens of thousands of dollars in interest each day the bond is not posted.

    But due to his six bankruptcies and a long history of not paying bills, some major banks are understandably hesitant to loan to the former president, which has required him to go off the beaten path for post-presidential refinancing. When Trump goes to a lender in the next few weeks, he may need to negotiate on highly unfavorable terms. He might not have to sell off his New York properties just yet, but he may have to put one up as collateral.

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    Matt Stieb

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  • Biden Wrongly Roasts Trump Over Forgetting Melania’s Name

    Biden Wrongly Roasts Trump Over Forgetting Melania’s Name

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    Photo: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

    Joe Biden swung by Late Night With Seth Meyers on Monday night, ostensibly to celebrate the show’s tenth anniversary but actually to demonstrate that he’s not way too old to be president for another four years.

    Did it work? Well, sort of. Biden came off fine — for a guy who’s 81 years old. People looking for more evidence that the president is, in fact, super-old could note that he looked and sounded far less peppy than he did a few years ago. Biden also made some minor flubs, like trailing off and stopping himself twice while discussing Donald Trump and referring to his “2020 agenda” when he meant 2024. But defenders could take solace in his ability to coherently discuss serious topics, like infrastructure and the Israel-Hamas conflict, and deliver a few jokes without any major gaffes.

    Biden was clearly looking to reinforce his campaign’s messaging that yeah, he’s old, but “old beats crazy” — and it’s not like he’s running against some whippersnapper. He attacked Trump, without saying his name, by noting that he’s about the same age (77) and you can definitely tell.

    “You got to take a look at the other guy,” Biden said. “He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name.”

    Biden was referring to a moment during Trump’s CPAC speech on Saturday when he reacted to the crowd clapping for his wife, Melania, by saying, “Wow, Mercedes, that’s pretty good!”

    Seth Meyers played the clip during his monologue (at the 45 second below). “I’m sorry, Mercedes?!” the host said. “You had a nuclear meltdown when Biden messed up the president of Egypt and you can’t remember your wife’s name? Guys, I hate to say it: His mind is slipping. I think he’s too old to run.”

    Obviously, Meyers and Biden were making jokes, not delivering a news report or a press conference. But it was still weird to focus so much on Trump forgetting his wife’s name since it’s not true.

    On Saturday, X users accused Trump of calling Melania “Mercedes,” and that story was picked up by a few news outlets. But within hours it was clear that Trump was actually talking to Mercedes Schlapp, his former White House adviser, who was in the audience. Her husband, Matt Schlapp, leads the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC, and Trump addressed both of the Schlapps at another point in the speech.

    “The clips were taken out of context by disingenuous people,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told the New York Times.

    Biden’s Late Night appearance was probably targeted at people who are only casually following the 2024 election, not very online X users who were glued to the “Trump doesn’t know his wife’s name” drama as it unfolded. And Biden lobbed a more substantive age-related criticism at Trump, too.

    “It’s about how old your ideas are,” he said. “Look, this is a guy who wants to take us back. He wants to take us back on Roe v. Wade. He wants to take us back on a whole range of issues that are — 50, 60 years, they’ve been solid American positions.”

    But why build a joke around a claim that is actually fake news? It’s not like there aren’t plenty of other examples of Trump making incoherent statements. As the Times noted, he’s made confusing statements about his wives in the past:

    Still, Mr. Trump has in the past misspelled Melania’s name on Twitter as “Melanie.” And during a deposition in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, Mr. Trump mistakenly identified a picture of Ms. Carroll as Marla Maples, his second wife. A jury found that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll in the 1990s, and a separate jury ordered him to pay $83.3 million for defaming her.

    A few weeks ago, Trump claimed magnets don’t work underwater! And at another point in Saturday’s CPAC speech, Trump actually did flub his words, making it sound like he was endorsing Biden for president.

    There’s really no excuse for the Biden team undermining their point by repeating a false allegation when they had mountains of actually incoherent Trump content to choose from.


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    Margaret Hartmann

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  • How AI Is Being Used to Influence and Disrupt the 2024 Election

    How AI Is Being Used to Influence and Disrupt the 2024 Election

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    Two days before the New Hampshire primary in January, a robocall featuring an AI-generated imitation of President Biden’s voice was sent out to thousands of people in the state urging them not to vote. The call was also spoofed to appear as if it had come from the telephone of a former state Democratic Party official. Independent analysis later confirmed that the fake Biden voice had been created with ElevenLabs’ AI text-to-speech voice generator.

    The New Hampshire attorney general’s office launched an investigation into the robocall and subsequently determined it had been sent to as many as 25,000 phone numbers by a Texas-based company called Life Corporation, which sells robocalling and other services to political organizations.

    On February 23, NBC News reported that a New Orleans magician named Paul Carpenter had admitted using ElevenLabs to create the fake Biden audio. Carpenter said he did it after being paid by Steve Kramer, a longtime political operative then working for Democratic presidential candidate (and AI proponent) Dean Phillips. The campaign has denied having any knowledge of the effort.

    “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it,” Carpenter said. “There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.” He told NBC he was admitting his role in part to call attention to how easy it was to create the audio:

    Carpenter — who holds world records in fork-bending and straitjacket escapes, but has no fixed address — showed NBC News how he created the fake Biden audio and said he came forward because he regrets his involvement in the ordeal and wants to warn people about how easy it is to use AI to mislead. Creating the fake audio took less than 20 minutes and cost only $1, he said, for which he was paid $150, according to Venmo payments from Kramer and his father, Bruce Kramer, that he shared.

    “It’s so scary that it’s this easy to do,” Carpenter said. “People aren’t ready for it.”

    Kramer, who also previously worked on the failed 2020 presidential campaign of Kanye West, was paid nearly $260,000 by the Phillips campaign across December and January for ballot-access work in Pennsylvania and New York. A Phillips campaign spokesperson told NBC News that it played no part in the AI robocall:

    “If it is true that Mr. Kramer had any involvement in the creation of deepfake robocalls, he did so of his own volition which had nothing to do with our campaign,” Phillips’ press secretary Katie Dolan said. “The fundamental notion of our campaign is the importance of competition, choice, and democracy. We are disgusted to learn that Mr. Kramer is allegedly behind this call, and if the allegations are true, we absolutely denounce his actions.”

    In a statement to NBC News, Kramer eventually admitted he was behind the robocall, which he said he sent to 5,000 likely Democratic voters. He claimed he did it to prevent future AI deepfaked robocalls:

    “With a mere $500 investment, anyone could replicate my intentional call,” Kramer said. “Immediate action is needed across all regulatory bodies and platforms.”

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    Chas Danner

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  • Elise Stefanik Auditions to Be Trump’s VP at CPAC

    Elise Stefanik Auditions to Be Trump’s VP at CPAC

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    Stefanik at CPAC on February 23.
    Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

    CPAC is one of the biggest Trumpist gatherings of the year, and on Friday the rockstar was Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman and former moderate who has turned herself into a MAGA hero.

    Stefanik got one of the most rapturous receptions of any of the day’s speakers. Her big speech was practically an audition to be Donald Trump’s running mate. Attendees stood and cheered her as she boasted that she had turned a district that Obama won twice into one that was now “Trump and Elise Country.” She always invoked the full name of “President Donald J. Trump” and insisted that the real threat to American democracy came from “the radical left and the Democrats.” She celebrated January 6 as a day where she “stood up for the Constitution and election integrity” (she voted against certifying the 2020 election) and took aim at familiar bugbears like Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney. She also made sure to take credit for ousting two Ivy League presidents after grilling them over antisemitism during a House hearing. Still, she could be somewhat stilted, speaking MAGA fluently but with a slight accent. It is not her native language.

    The crowd didn’t care, offering periodic shouts of “we love you Elise!” And the center-right sins of Stefanik’s past, her ties to the pre-Trump GOP when she worked for George W. Bush and Paul Ryan? They don’t seem to matter to the Trump loyalists either.

    Stefanik has become the model for the ideological transformation of the Republican Party under Trump. Elected to Congress from an upstate district when she was just 30 as the prototype of the Republican Establishment, she has since become one of Trump’s most ardent supporters in Washington, racing to be the first member of Congress to endorse the former president when he announced his candidacy in November 2022.

    Now she’s one of the top figures in the favorite Washington parlor game of trying to pick who Trump will select as vice-president. It’s the last real suspense in American politics in a presidential race where Trump has all but sown up the Republican nomination and incumbent Joe Biden has only faced nominal opposition in his reelection bid.

    After she spoke in the cavernous hotel conference room on Friday, Stefanik was mobbed. Reporters, attendees, everyone wanted to see her, get a quote from her, get a selfie with her. After finishing a Newsmax interview, and she worked her way slowly the talk-show hosts who had camped out at the event. An NBC News reporter’s question about Alabama’s ban on IVF was left unacknowledged in the maelstrom but Stefanik eventually answered it by saying, “Like President Trump, I strongly support IVF.”

    Joe Casais, an attendee from New Jersey, praised Stefanik as a successor to Trump. “I feel like when you want someone who’s gonna step into the role. Are they still gonna fight back the way Trump is going to fight? Or are they just gonna be a pushover and you’re gonna go back to the pre-Trump years?”

    Terry Schilling, the leader of the social-conservative group American Principles Project, gushed over Stefanik as well. “I 100 percent trust Elise Stefanik and will go to the ends of the earth to support her,” said the prominent activist who has played a leading role in pushing state legislatures to ban gender-affirming care for minors.

    For Schilling, despite whatever Stefanik had done in the pre-Trump era, “she has really stepped into her role as a conservative leader for this country, and I think she has a bright future in the Republican Party.”

    The only question now is whether that future will include being Trump’s No. 2.

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    Ben Jacobs

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  • Who Will Be Trump’s VP Pick? The Latest 2024 Veepstake Odds

    Who Will Be Trump’s VP Pick? The Latest 2024 Veepstake Odds

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    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    In a typical presidential-election year, we’d currently be in the thick of primary season. But since the 2024 election will almost certainly be a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, people with an unhealthy addiction to political drama are turning their attention to the race to be Trump’s running mate.

    This is yet another aspect of the 2024 race where the normal rules don’t quite apply. Candidates typically want a potential vice-president who can “balance” the ticket demographically, ideologically, or geographically. Even Trump succumbed to this thinking in 2016: Mike Pence got the gig because he was a boring, midwestern, ultraconservative Christian with some governing experience — basically the opposite of the erratic, boorish New York TV personality. But this concession to the RNC ultimately backfired (in Trump’s mind) because Pence wouldn’t participate in his January 6 coup attempt.

    Now that Trump’s GOP takeover is complete, he’s free to pick anyone he wants. And he’ll probably put a lot of stock in personal loyalty and who has “the look” (he’s known to base hiring decisions on whether candidates are “out of central casting”). This is, obviously, very creepy and inappropriate. But it’s something you have to consider when trying to predict Trump’s VP pick.

    Here’s a list (which we’ll keep updated) of who is believed to be on Trump’s short list for vice-president, and the pros and cons of each possibility, loosely arranged from the candidates with the best odds to the worst.

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Kristi Noem has impeccable MAGA credentials. She has government experience but is no creature of “the swamp”; she served as South Dakota’s sole representative in the U.S. House for eight years before she was elected as the state’s first female governor in 2018. In 2020 she gained national attention for easing up on COVID restrictions faster than other governors and supporting Trump’s election-fraud lies. Noem has been issuing orders and legislation that put her at the center of hot culture-war issues, such as banning “critical race theory” and targeting transgender people.
    CONS: South Dakota is a solidly red state with only three Electoral College votes. In 2023, several outlets reported that the married mother of three was having an “absurdly blatant” affair with Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski (she’s denied this).
    LOYALTY CHECK: She can often be seen on Newsmax, Fox News, and other right-wing outlets almost openly campaigning for the job of Trump’s VP.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Noem passes with flying colors. She’s a former farm girl and beauty queen whose recent memoir, Not My First Rodeo, is “chock-full of folksy idioms and Bible verses,” per The Atlantic.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: He mentioned Noem (along with Tim Scott) as a potential VP pick in February 2024, saying she’s “been incredible fighting” for him. Noem was among the six people Trump (offhandedly) confirmed are on his shortlist during a February 20 Fox News town hall.
    NOEM’S STANCE: When Newsmax asked her if she’d consider an offer to be Trump’s VP, she said “Oh, absolutely. I would in a heartbeat.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: As the fourth-ranking member in House GOP leadership, Elise Stefanik could help Trump do the parts of the job that don’t interest him, like working with Congress and articulating the GOP platform. She’s also a talented fundraiser. Adding a 39-year-old woman to the Republican ticket could theoretically allay any concerns voters — and particularly suburban women — might have about reelecting a 77-year-old man who was found liable for sexual abuse and repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct.
    CONS: The New York congresswoman can’t deliver her home state for Trump. And with its high turnover rate, perhaps the GOP House leadership can’t afford to lose a competent woman.
    LOYALTY CHECK: During the 2016 campaign, Stefanik harshly criticized Trump for his incendiary rhetoric and policy views, saying he “has been insulting to women.” But after she started rising in the GOP leadership, she morphed into a MAGA cheerleader. Trump may appreciate that Stefanik is seemingly so desperate to be his running mate that she’ll say just about anything, from bemoaning the plight of the J6 “hostages” to blaming the media for the jury’s verdict in the E. Jean Carroll case. But her previous anti-Trump sentiments would certainly cause headaches for his campaign.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Stefanik is a white woman from Albany of Italian-Czech heritage, but who knows if Trump considers the last name “Stefanik” “too ethnic.”
    TRUMP’S STANCE: He reportedly nodded and said “She’s a killer” when Stefanik’s name came up as a potential VP pick during a December 2023 dinner with Mar-a-Lago members.
    STEFANIK’S STANCE: When asked if she’d be Trump’s running mate Stefanik said, “Of course, I’d be honored … to serve in a future Trump administration in any capacity.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Trump’s allies are reportedly urging him to pick a woman or a Black man as his running mate, and Tim Scott is the only Black Republican in the Senate. In contrast to Trump’s vision of “American carnage,” Scott is consistently described as a “sunny” and “optimistic” guy (though he’s actually pretty into partisan warfare).
    CONS: Scott’s performance in the 2024 GOP primary was unimpressive; he dropped out months before voting started. Trump doesn’t need Scott to win South Carolina, as Republicans have won the state in 13 of the last 14 presidential elections.
    LOYALTY CHECK: Scott voted to certify Biden’s 2020 win, still thinks Mike Pence “did the right thing” on January 6, and dared to challenge Trump in the 2024 race. But he may have erased any ill will when he endorsed Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary, though Nikki Haley launched his Senate career. When Trump highlighted this awkward fact during his primary-night victory speech, Scott delivered some grade-A groveling, telling Trump he doesn’t hate anyone, “I just love you!”
    “LOOK” CHECK: Did Tim Scott get engaged to his mystery girlfriend, Mindy Noce, then feed the story to the Washington Post in a matter of hours just because he was worried that Trump wouldn’t like the look of a bachelor VP? Maybe!
    TRUMP’S STANCE: When asked about potential VP picks in February 2024, Trump mentioned Scott and Noem (though he said he didn’t want people to make “any inference” from the name drop). “A lot of people like Tim Scott — I called him, and I said, ‘You are a much better candidate for me than you are for yourself,’” Trump said, noting that Scott also gave him a “beautiful endorsement.” Scott was among the six people Trump (offhandedly) confirmed are on his shortlist during a February 20 Fox News town hall.
    SCOTT’S STANCE: Scott initially claimed he had no interest in being anyone’s VP. But he reversed course in late January 2024, saying “you can take it any way you want” when CNN noted he seemed open to being Trump’s running mate.

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Vivek Ramaswamy could be the best of both worlds for Trump. Demographically he’s the opposite of the elderly, white Florida man: a young Indian American from Ohio. But spiritually, Ramaswamy is Trump’s clone; his presidential campaign was all about railing against “wokeness” and passionately defending the former president.
    CONS: The biotech entrepreneur has no political experience and veered into extremism toward the end of his presidential campaign (for example, he called January 6 an “inside job” and embraced the “great replacement” theory). And the more Americans saw of him, the less they liked him. Shortly after Ramaswamy launched his candidacy last spring, 18 percent of Americans viewed him favorably, while 13 percent viewed him unfavorably, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages. After a campaign performance that many found glib and obnoxious, those numbers flipped. Today his average is 36 percent unfavorable to 24 percent favorable.
    LOYALTY CHECK: Ramaswamy praised Trump effusively even when they were primary opponents and demanded that other GOP candidates sign his pledge to pardon Trump. It increasingly seemed that Ramaswamy was running for a spot in Trump’s administration, not the presidency.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Can you really picture Trump putting “Ramaswamy” on a bumper sticker?
    TRUMP’S STANCE: When asked about Ramaswamy as VP in August 2023, Trump praised his obsequiousness and commented, “He’s got good energy, and he could be in some form of something. I tell ya, I think he’d be very good.” When chants of “VP, VP, VP” broke out for Ramaswamy during a January 2024 rally, Trump responded, “He’s going to be working with us for a long time.” Ramaswamy was among the six people Trump (offhandedly) confirmed are on his shortlist during a February 20 Fox News town hall.
    RAMASWAMY’S STANCE: When asked if he’d be Trump’s running mate hours after ending his own presidential campaign in January, Ramaswamy said he’d “evaluate whatever is best for the future of this country.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Like Noem, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the first woman elected to lead her state. And like Stefanik, the 41-year-old is one of the youngest and most well-known women in the GOP, so she could theoretically help Trump win over suburban women. Plus, Trump’s former White House press secretary already has plenty of experience defending his record.
    CONS: Will suburban women love Sanders’s aggressively pro-life stance? Perhaps not. Also, Sanders isn’t very popular, even in Arkansas. A recent poll found her job-approval rating is only 48 percent, the lowest for any governor in the state since her father Mike Huckabee’s rating of 47 percent in 2003. And the scandal over her office’s purchase of a $19,000 podium is ongoing.
    LOYALTY CHECK: While Sanders remained neutral in the 2024 GOP primary longer than some other VP contenders, she eventually endorsed Trump in November 2023, describing him as “my former boss, my friend, and everybody’s favorite president.”
    “LOOK” CHECK: It seems she meets Trump’s standards as she served as the face of his administration for two years.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: He endorsed Sanders’s gubernatorial bid but didn’t say anything positive about her while denying reports that she initially declined to back his 2024 campaign.
    SANDERS’S STANCE: When asked about the prospect of serving as VP on Face the Nation in January 2024, Sanders said, “Look, I absolutely love the job I have. I think it’s one of the best jobs I could ever ask for, and I am honored to serve as governor, and I hope I get to do it for the next seven years.” So either she’s trying to play it cool or she genuinely isn’t interested.

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Trump needs to win Ohio again in 2024. Who better to help him than J.D. Vance, the state’s freshman senator, who literally wrote the book on the MAGA base (at least in the view of bewildered liberals who turned to Hillbilly Elegy after Trump’s 2016 win)?
    CONS: A lot of people, actually. Trump won Ohio twice without Vance’s help. And in the 2022 Senate race, Vance’s campaigning and fundraising skills were unimpressive. That November he “underperformed the eight other Republicans on the statewide ballot by more than 11 points,” as the Washington Post noted. His current term ends in 2029, so his exit might ruin the GOP’s effort to retake the Senate.
    LOYALTY CHECK: In 2016, Vance declared himself a “Never Trump guy” and wondered if Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” Then during his 2022 Senate campaign he underwent a stunning MAGA conversion. Trump remarked at a 2022 Vance rally, “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so much.” More recently, Vance said he would have rejected Biden-won states’ electoral votes on January 6 if he had been in Mike Pence’s shoes.
    “LOOK” CHECK: If Trump really is looking for a woman or a person of color, Vance obviously isn’t his guy.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: Although Trump campaigned for Vance in 2022, he’s never seemed that impressed with his belated turn to Trumpism. At another midterms rally, Trump said of Vance, “He’s a guy that said some bad shit about me … But I have to do what I have to do.”
    VANCE’S STANCE: While campaigning for Trump in January 2024, he said, “The best place for me is to actually be an advocate of the agenda in the United States Senate.” But he added, “Certainly, if the president asked, I would have to think about it, because I want to help him.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: The former TV-news anchor turned Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is such an effective MAGA cheerleader that The Atlantic proclaimed her the “leading lady” of Trumpism. She also won a straw poll for Republican VP pick at CPAC.
    CONS: Lake lost Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial election for the GOP (though, like Trump, she baselessly cast herself as the victim of election fraud). She’s currently running in the 2024 Arizona Senate race, which would seem to take her out of the running for VP. (However, Vanity Fair reports that her frequent trips out of state have fueled speculation that she still has her eye on VP.)
    LOYALTY CHECK: Is it possible to love Trump too much? Lake seems to be on a mission to find out. She’s openly gushed about his “BDE” and personally vacuumed a red carpet for Trump.
    “LOOK” CHECK: She’s undeniably telegenic and may be what A.I. would churn out if asked to conjure the perfect MAGA running mate.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: In January 2024, Trump said Lake would be wonderful — in the Senate. “She’s terrific,” Trump said at a rally. “She’ll be a senator — a great senator, I predict, right? You’re going to be a great senator.”
    LAKE’S STANCE: In November 2023, her campaign spokesperson said she’s “focused on winning her Senate race in Arizona. And she looks forward to casting her vote in Arizona for president Trump and whoever he selects as VP.”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Standing next to two-term Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene could make Trump look sane and measured.
    CONS: Her selection would turn the 2024 election into a national debate over the capabilities of secret Jewish space lasers.
    LOYALTY CHECK: She’s arguably Trump’s most rabid defender in Congress. And if any of her colleagues do argue with her, she may call them a “little bitch.”
    “LOOK” CHECK: Picking the QAnon congresswoman would definitely be a wild look for the Trump campaign, but that has nothing to do with her appearance.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: He’s clearly a huge MTG fan — he’s publicly called her “brilliant” and “a badass” — but that doesn’t mean he’s making her VP. Several Trump-world sources told Rolling Stone that he’s not “stupid enough” to make her his running mate.
    GREENE’S STANCE: She’s openly fanned the “MTG for VP” speculation. In August 2023, she told The Guardian, “It’s talked about frequently and I know my name is on a list but really my biggest focus right now is serving the district that elected me.” That same month she mused to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “I have a lot of things to think about. Am I going to be a part of President Trump’s Cabinet if he wins? Is it possible that I’ll be VP?”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: Pundit Tucker Carlson was a pillar of the Fox News prime-time lineup until he was fired in April 2023, so he’d bring a huge amount of star power to the Trump campaign. Also, Melania Trump reportedly likes him as VP.
    CONS: Carlson is beloved by the “most nativist, paranoid, and bigoted constituents in the Republican Party,” as Jonathan Chait put it. But swing voters might not be as charmed by a guy who’s embraced the “great replacement” theory by name. Also, the last thing Trump wants is a running mate who might outshine him.
    LOYALTY CHECK: Though he later backtracked, we learned from the Fox News–Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit that Tucker told colleagues via text that he sees Trump as a “demonic force” and a “destroyer,” adding, “I hate him passionately.” So let’s put him down as “not that loyal.”
    “LOOK” CHECK: If Trump is okay with seeing a lot of memes featuring his running mate’s “dumbfounded face,” Carlson should be fine.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: When asked about Carlson for VP in November 2023, Trump responded, “I like Tucker a lot. I guess I would consider him. He’s got great common sense.” In January 2024, Donald Trump Jr. said the Carlson was still “on the table” and he “would certainly be a contender” for VP.
    CARLSON’S STANCE: He seemed to shoot down the idea in a December 2023 interview, saying, “I just don’t think I’m really suited for that. I mean, would anyone want to see a guy like me run for office?”

    Graphic: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty

    PROS: He pitched himself to Republicans as a less erratic, not dumb Trump clone. So who better to step up if Trump becomes incapacitated?
    CONS: DeSantis embarrassed himself by running an incompetent 2024 presidential campaign. Putting two demagogic Florida men on the GOP ticket doesn’t make any sense — and it may even be unconstitutional!
    LOYALTY CHECK: DeSantis fails this crucial test. He grudgingly bent the knee to Trump by endorsing him as he dropped out of the race days before the New Hampshire primary. That may be enough to serve in a future Trump administration but he hasn’t groveled hard enough to be VP.
    “LOOK” CHECK: Nobody wants a VP who eats pudding with his hands.
    TRUMP’S STANCE: DeSantis was one of the six people Trump (offhandedly) confirmed are on his shortlist during a February 20 Fox News town hall, which is the only reason there’s been a surge in “DeSantis for VP” chatter.
    DeSANTIS’S STANCE: DeSantis seemingly took himself out of the running a day later when he said on a private call to supporters, “I am not doing that,” then made some lightly insulting remarks about Trump, the people running his campaign, and the right-wing media in general.

    This post has been updated throughout.


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    Margaret Hartmann

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  • Why Democrats Should Stop Freaking Out About Biden 2024

    Why Democrats Should Stop Freaking Out About Biden 2024

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    Relax — I’ve got this.
    Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty

    Democratic supporters of President Biden should quit freaking out. Despite what a handful of recent polls suggest, there’s good reason to believe that the White House’s policies and performance will be judged a success by the voting public, and that Biden will be elected to another four years.

    Pundits and pollsters have been warning for months that Biden’s anemic approval rating, mired around 39 percent, means Democrats are in imminent danger of losing the White House.

    “He’s losing now and there’s no plan to fix the problems other than hoping that the polls are wrong or that voters look at the race differently when they have more time to focus on it,” writes author/statistician Nate Silver.

    “Biden is not up by 12 points. He can’t coast to victory here. He is losing. He is behind in most polls,” says New York Times columnist Ezra Klein. “He is behind, despite everything people already know about Donald Trump. He needs to make up ground. If he does not make up ground, Trump wins.”

    Silver and Klein both believe that Biden’s age makes his reelection hopeless and that he should quit the race. Other analysis pieces cite polls suggesting Biden is losing ground with Black, Latino, and Asian voters. Vox’s Christian Paz recently looked at numbers suggesting Biden is struggling to attract traditionally Democratic-leaning young voters.

    At most, the numbers point to geographic regions and constituencies that need some attention from Democratic strategists. But it’s hardly a reason to panic. The “behind in most polls” rhetoric in particular is overblown and mostly wrong. According to RealClearPolitics, there have been 16 national polls conducted since January 22. Collectively, the surveys show Donald Trump leading Biden by a whopping … 1.1 percent. I’m not sure why Klein would assume Biden should be up by 12 points or some other randomly selected margin in our famously polarized country, but to conclude “he is losing” nine months before Election Day is wildly premature.

    One polling number Democrats seem to keep ignoring is the unchanging favorability rating of Trump, the all-but-certain Republican nominee. Throughout his presidency, Trump’s favorability averaged 41 percent.  Four years and an insurrection later, that number is 42 percent. The ex-president has a following whose loyalty remains famously unshakable despite riot, scandal, criminal indictments, and brazen promises to govern as a dictator. But Trump does not seem to have added to this base of loyal followers.

    For a sober reality check, I contacted Allan Lichtman, a political scientist who has correctly predicted the outcome of every presidential contest since 1984, using indicators that he claims can explain every election since Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860. Lichtman’s book Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House dismisses most polls as irrelevant to the final outcome of presidential elections.

    “The problem with these horserace polls is they’re not predictors, they are only snapshots. And they are often wrong,” Lichtman told me recently. “The early polls had Jimmy Carter trouncing Ronald Reagan in 1980; Reagan went on to win in a landslide. George H.W. Bush trailed Mike Dukakis as late as June of 1988 by 18 points; he went on to win handily for a 25-point swing. The last Gallup poll in 2012 had Mitt Romney beating Barack Obama, who also went on to win handily.”

    And don’t even get me started on the problems with polling in 2016, which famously failed to capture the surges in key states that carried Trump into the White House.

    Instead of focusing on polls, Lichtman has developed 13 smart yes/no questions built around the central idea that an incumbent president and his party will normally prevail unless they fail in key measurable areas including foreign policy, domestic policy, party unity, and economic growth. If six or more of the 13 measurements go against the incumbent, according to Lichtman’s theory, the president (or his party) gets kicked out.

    “There’s all this grousing about Joe Biden, his terrible approval ratings, he’s too old, he’s not exciting. But the Democrats’ only chance to win, realistically, is with Biden running, because you win the incumbency key,” says Lichtman, along with a second political indicator, party unity (so far, there is no serious Democratic challenger to Biden). Two of Lichtman’s economic-performance indicators — the absence of a recession and growth rates higher than the last two administrations — both look good for Biden. So does Lichtman’s indicator for a major successful domestic-policy change, which is the administration’s infrastructure law and CHIPS Act.

    There’s been no serious social unrest under Biden (another key), and no major administration scandal (Hunter Biden’s laptop comes nowhere close to Watergate or the Clinton impeachment). So it looks like seven of Lichtman’s keys are lining up nicely for Biden.

    There’s plenty that can go wrong for the administration. “What happens if the Republicans shut down the government? Who knows what effect that could have on the economy?” cautions Lichtman. The turbulence in Ukraine and the Middle East could lead to a foreign-policy debacle, and the emergence of a serious third-party challenger could tilt the playing field against Biden. But those what-ifs point to tangible matters of governance, unlike the latest polls that have rattled nervous Dems.

    “Presidential elections are essentially votes up or down on the party holding the White House. I’ve been screaming this for 40 years, and the politicians paid no attention. It’s governing, not campaigning, that counts,” Lichtman told me. “Forget the sound bites, the negative ads, the attack, the tricks. Campaign on substance.”

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    Errol Louis

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