You can see this new indictment of James Comey as an outrage. And it is — it’s a wantonly illegitimate act and abuse of power. I see it as more and clearer evidence of his crashing out and collapse, more direct and absurd lashing out at people on his grudge list while he is unable, unwilling to or lacks the mental wherewithal to right his own political ship.
It’s difficult to imagine anything more perverse, authoritarian, diseased or corrupt than the immediate push to back President Trump’s “ballroom” as a response to security failures revealed in the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents Dinner. It involves so many overlapping bad ideas, bad motives and even bad people that it requires a some organization and staging to cover them all.
Let’s dive in.
First, despite the chorus of claims, this was not in any sense a security failure. It was a success. A man rushed a security perimeter inside the Washington Hilton — far from the actual festivities and protectees — and he was stopped. Initial reports suggested the gunman was stopped just before or even while entering the ballroom. Neither is true. He was on a different floor. The point of Secret Service security is not to prevent every violent incident but any that endanger the President or other protectees.
One of my great meta-journalistic interests is to observe the moments when more or less obvious political realities enter D.C. conventional wisdom. They’re not strongly overlapping Venn diagrams. They often diverge pretty dramatically. I noticed one of those moments Saturday when Axios published this piece entitled “Term-limited Trump mortgages GOP’s future.” The headline mostly speaks for itself. President Trump won’t face voters again. So he’s increasingly indifferent to his political standing or perhaps more specifically unwilling to shift from or limit unpopular policies. It’s true that there are big consequences for Trump in the midterm elections. But even in the biggest blowout election Democrats aren’t going to gain supermajorities that would allow them to pass veto-proof legislation or remove Trump from office. Given the scale of High Court corruption, investigations will amount to trench warfare.
As the Iran war drags on, I wanted to share some thoughts on the proper context in which to see the conflict. Donald Trump lost this war in its very first days. Everything that has happened in recent weeks — the threats, the negotiations, the live-on-social-media breakdowns — has simply been a matter of trying to get free of that fact. This isn’t a political attack. It’s simply an accurate appraisal of what we all see. More importantly, it is the only way to understand what is happening now. Everything that’s happening today and for weeks has been focused on breaking Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz, something it didn’t have before the war started. That’s the definition of failure: fighting a war and continuing a war to clean up the mess the war of choice actually created. By this measure, the best way to achieve what is now the central war aim — opening the Strait — would have been simply not to start the war in the first place.
In a late-night Truth, Trump claims that the Southern Poverty Law Center was part of his grand, imagined conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, and writes that his DOJ’s politicized prosecution of the non-profit is a step toward overturning his electoral defeat.
(Hat tip to law professor and election expert Rick Hasen who, like us, is not really sure what Trump is going for here beyond a kind of bête noire word cloud.)
Here’s U.S. Attorney for DC “Judge” Jeanine Pirro announcing that her office is dropping its investigation into the chair of the Federal Reserve:
Her attempt to save face here is accomplished by claiming the Fed Inspector General will take over her work. But, as various reporters have noted, Powell himself had already asked the IG to look into cost overruns. It’s not clear anything new is happening.
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Talking Popes Memo: Josh and Joe are joined by Deputy Editor Nicole LaFond to figure out why Trump is feuding with the Pope, why Hegseth quoted Pulp Fiction, and what makes the MAGA brand of evangelicalism so different.
Kate and Josh discuss Swalwell’s downfall, Orbán’s ouster and Alito’s possible retirement.
The TPM Social Club is joined this week by Max Rivlin-Nadler of Hell Gate, an independent publication owned and run by journalists devoted to covering NYC.
Kate and Josh talk war and midterms from the Lone Star State (with a special bonus segment featuring the Texas Observer’s Justin Miller).
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