Author: A.T.

In case you haven’t seen this 60-second spot.*

Suddenly Trump Looks Older and More Deranged. 

“Now the Republicans are the ones saddled with a candidate who can’t make a clear argument or finish a sentence” — a twice-impeached felon, who puts more faith in Putin than in the FBI (except when they’re investigating Hillary).

Trump’s Alarming New Rant About Dictators Exposes Media’s Epic Failure

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At a rally in Michigan over the weekend, Donald Trump uncorked one of his longest rants ever in praise of the world’s autocrats, strongmen, and dictators. He hailed Xi Jinping of China as “brilliant” for controlling 1.4 billion people “with an iron fist,” and described Xi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as “tough” and “smart.” We talked to Rick Wilson, the prominent Never Trumper and Substacker, about Trump’s explicit campaign promise of authoritarian rule, the GOP’s enthusiastic embrace of it, and the media’s utter failure to alert voters to what’s coming. Listen to this episode here.

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It’s particularly rich for Trump to claim to be the candidate of order when the crime rate rose during his presidency and is plunging during Joe Biden’s. In 2023, there was a record decrease in the murder rate, and violent crime, ABC News reported, “plummeted to one of the lowest levels in 50 years.”

Trump’s argument about foreign policy is also fundamentally deceptive. . . .

Trump wants you to be a goldfish. He wants you to empty your mind of the past so that he can fill it with his own “alternative facts.” The Republican National Convention was one long exercise in creating memories of a Trump term that never existed. The real Trump term was chaotic and dangerous from start to finish, and if Americans’ memories don’t improve soon, the voters who seek peace and stability will instead bring us violence and tears.

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The money is flooding in.  Feel free to pile on.

ANIX

The news was released before Tuesday’s opening — FDA Approves Anixa Biosciences’ Individual Patient Trial Application For Ovarian Cancer CAR-T Therapy — and the stock promptly fell 9% on very heavy volume.

I asked my pharma guru how that could be, and he explained:  “The FDA doesn’t “approve” you to dose a second patient. You propose to them a scenario and so long as they don’t have serious safety concerns, you’re welcome to go ahead. It’s like saying that Harvard “approved” you to apply to go to school there by accepting your application.  Meanwhile the board of directors is insane and derelict in their duty if they’re wasting 5 million dollars buying their stock instead of conducting clinical trials.”

Having the happy gene, I remain hopeful that ANIX may indeed have a therapy for this terrible disease — as well as an effective vaccine to prevent breast cancer.  If either panned out — which guru considers a long shot at best — the company would be worth fifty times its current valuation.  Clearly: only for money you can truly afford to lose.

And speaking of speculations . . .

BOREF

If you download this new report on sustainable airport taxiing, you’ll find WheelTug on pages 78-80.  That the WheelTug concept makes sense and continues to be taken seriously is a hopeful sign — but (needless to say) no guarantee that our decades-long wait will be rewarded.

*In part: “As a tough prosecutor, Kamala Harris dealt with men like Trump all the time: rapists, con men, frauds, criminals.”  (I added those links because it’s amusing to see who called him those things.  I couldn’t find a prominent Republican for the last one; it would be political suicide.)

He did it.

As LZ Granderson and so many others have opined, Biden’s decision to drop out is one of the most patriotic moments in a long life of service.

In case you’re looking for the link to express your support and help keep the nation on course, click here.

We’re gonna win!

Pete versus JD.  A debate I think we’d all like to see.  (Bill Maher – 3 minutes.)

Don Jr.’s girlfriend thinks we stormed the beaches of Normandy to fight communism.  And this was no unscripted slip-of-the-tongue (40 seconds).

Fareed Zakaria explains how the parties have changed.

“To understand how complete that transformation is, notice that not a single former nominee of the Republican Party for president or vice president is attended the Republican National Convention.”

He goes on to say:

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Biden was a strong candidate against Trump in 2020 and has been an excellent president with major accomplishments in both domestic and foreign policy. His manner and tone have been dignified, decent and empathic.

But for months now, it’s been clear that this would not be enough. In early May, I pointed out that polls had Biden headed for a loss and that the key number to look at was the question of who voters felt was more competent. In 2020, Biden led Trump by nine percentage points; earlier this year, Trump led Biden by 16 points — a 25-point shift. This is obviously a reflection of people’s sense that Biden was just too old for the job, a perception he could not change. And that was before the debate.

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Crime is falling, inflation is falling, mortgage rates are falling, we’re producing more oil and gas than any country in history — including in Trump’s best year — and the border crisis persists solely because Trump has willed it to.

There’s still lots we need to do — starting with that border crisis he insists we not end until he can ride it back to power.  But we’ve made real progress and are poised to make lots more.

If I had to predict: Joe will get the thunderous, prolonged standing ovation he deserves next month as he takes the stage to support our nominee.

That nominee and his or her VP will forcefully prosecute the case against Trump and — with our help, help, help — save America from fascism.

Which someone should tell Kimberly Guilfoyle is what we stormed the beaches of Normandy to defeat.

THE TOP LINE

Two things can be true at the same time:

1. Our chances of winning in November are better if Joe takes the win and passes the torch.  He’s been a great president.
2. If he doesn’t, we can still win.  He and his team of 4,000 would continue to make us proud and move us forward.

Either way, we have to get the job done.

The alternative is the twice-impeached convicted felon and adjudicated rapist whom Putin loves — but whom Republicans like Nikki Haley and J.D. Vance call “unhinged” — “a con man” — “dangerous” — “America’s Hitler” . . . a man who “destroys everything he touches,” running to wreak “vengeance” and “retribution.”

He already controls the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, and had the power to invoke a Senate filibuster to keep the border in crisis — his best campaign issue.

Watching in horror won’t help.  Lamenting the situation won’t help.  Tuning out won’t help.  Only helping will help — regardless of who our nominee turns out to be.  For example: here, here, and here.

MENENDEZ

Convicted on all counts.

Kevin Drum:

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Let’s tally up the score so far.

Joe Biden’s Department of Justice has now secured convictions against two Democrats:

• The president’s son, thanks to pressure from Republican lawmakers.
• Robert Menendez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey.

In addition, they have indicted one other Democrat:

• Henry Cuellar, a Democratic member of Congress from Texas.

Meanwhile:

• A federal judge appointed by Trump has dismissed charges he’s clearly guilty of, based on reasoning that would make a first-year law student blush.
• The Supreme Court, with three members appointed by Trump, has quashed two of the four charges against him for trying to overturn a legal election. They then granted him immunity so broad that it jeopardizes the other two charges, very likely killing the entire case.

Now can we talk again about how the federal court system has been weaponized?

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VANCE

What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate (from the Atlantic):

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. . . [A]s Romney surveyed the crop of Republicans running for Senate in 2022, it was clear that more Hawleys were on their way. Perhaps most disconcerting was J. D. Vance, the Republican candidate in Ohio. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney told me. They’d first met years earlier, after he read Vance’s best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Romney was so impressed with the book that he hosted the author at his annual Park City summit in 2018. Vance, who grew up in a poor, dysfunctional family in Appalachia and went on to graduate from Yale Law School, had seemed bright and thoughtful, with interesting ideas about how Republicans could court the white working class without indulging in toxic Trumpism. Then, in 2021, Vance decided he wanted to run for Senate, and re­invented his entire persona overnight. Suddenly, he was railing against the “childless left” and denouncing Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a “fake holiday” and accusing Joe Biden of manufacturing the opioid crisis “to punish people who didn’t vote for him.” The speed of the MAGA makeover was jarring.

“I do wonder, how do you make that decision?” Romney mused to me as Vance was degrading himself on the campaign trail that summer. “How can you go over a line so stark as that—and for what?” Romney wished he could grab Vance by the shoulders and scream: This is not worth it! “It’s not like you’re going to be famous and powerful because you became a United States senator. It’s like, really? You sell yourself so cheap?” The prospect of having Vance in the caucus made Romney uncomfortable. “How do you sit next to him at lunch?”

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Vance was the choice of Project 2025 (60 seconds).  So if you don’t think they’re serious about radically changing your country for the worse (unless you’re a white Christian nationalist who prefers Putin to the FBI and wants to criminalize porn, etc.), here’s one more data point:  They got their pick.

Take heart!  We’re gonna win.

Not Speaking Truth To Power: our leaders owe it to their leader — and the country — to tell him what they think.

If not Joe, who?  According to this ranked-choice poll, Kamala.

Passed over for VP:

> Gov. Doug Burgum, who said he wouldn’t do business with Trump.

> Marco Rubio, who called Trump a con artist.

Chosen:

> J.D. Vance, a never-Trumper who compared Trump to Hitler.

(In fairness, what Republican hasn’t said unflattering things about Trump? Two minutes worth sharing.)

And much more — read the oppo research memo Steve Schmidt shared yesterday.

Now Vance says he got it wrong; having seen the results Trump got as president, he’s become a big fan.

In fact, the economy Trump was handed was much better than the economy he handed off.

Trump will blame that on the pandemic — and who could have predicted a pandemic?

Trump slashed CDC staff inside China prior to COVID.  The program in China specifically charged with spotting new infectious diseases went from having four American staff in 2017 to none by 2019.

Even without those cuts, it’s not clear COVID could have been averted the way Obama averted Ebola.  But the contrast between competence and bluster seems clear.  Same with providing affordable health care.  And bringing manufacturing jobs home.  And revitalizing our infrastructure.  And working out a truly bipartisan solution to the border crisis that “he alone” prevented from becoming law.  Read the bill.  It would have ended the crisis.  Trump insisted the crisis continue.

But I digress.

THE SHOOTER

In 2021, he sent $15 to a progressive group, but he later registered as a Republican — so maybe he was just a hopeless loner . . . bullied every day in school . . . obsessed with guns, rejected by the rifle team, who wanted to prove he was a good shot after all.  Too early to know.

Kristina M.: “Whether or not it was politically motivated, ‘mass’ shootings happen on average more than once a day in the U.S.  This one is shocking only because the venue was so highly secured.  Either all mass shootings are tragedies that demand we do something to prevent them; or, as Republicans repeatedly tell us, they are ‘the price of freedom’ and we just have to live with them.”

Any political violence — let alone something as egregious and tragic as Saturday in Pennsylvania — is completely unacceptable.

Like everyone else, I condemn it.

I found this perspective worth the 8 minutes.

He might have added that while a mob was chanting “hang Mike Pence,” hunting for Nancy Pelosi, storming the Capitol, and beating police . . . the man who had incited them to “fight like hell” (knowing that many were armed) watched for more than 3 hours as they did so, brushing aside pleas from all sides to call them off.

Trump’s son-in-law is going to build “a memorial dedicated to all the victims of NATO aggression.”

General Wesley Clark calls it “a betrayal of the United States, its policies, and the brave diplomats and airmen who did what they could to stop Serb ethnic cleansing.”

Putin loves Trump.  Trump loves Putin — and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and strongmen across the board.  He aspires to be the strongest of them all.  Democracy is not his thing — authoritarianism is.  And hey, he’s entitled to favor any form of government he wants.  “It’s a free country.”  At least for now.

But we get a say, too, November 5.

(Not, needless to say, by violence.)

The GOP Platform Perfectly Reflects the Lunacy of Trump’s Party.  “It’s an unconditional surrender to the cult of Trump, and its plan to reduce inflation* is laughable,” writes Timothy Noah in the New Republic:

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“Republicans,” the 2024 platform says, “will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.” If that rings a bell, it’s because this is slight reworking of what Trump said last Veteran’s Day in Claremont, New Hampshire: “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” It did not go unnoticed back then that “vermin” echoed Hitler (“Should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?”), so the offending word was scrubbed from the platform version.

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Maureen Dowd: For Biden, a Race Against Time.

Chris Matthews: He’s Our Guy.

David Frum: “Biden has been an astonishingly successful president“ . . .

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With a wafer-thin majority in the House and Senate in his first two years (and despite losing the House for his second), Biden enacted more major liberal legislation than any other president since Lyndon B. Johnson. He organized the successful defense of Ukraine against Russian invasion, expanded and invigorated NATO, and faced down internal opposition in his own party to stand by Israel in its hour of need.

Over his four years in office, one social indicator after another has turned positive after trending the wrong way under even the pre-pandemic Donald Trump: Crime is down, marriages are up; opioid deaths are down, the number of American births is up. Not all of this was his personal work, but it happened on his watch—and the opposite happened on the previous watch.

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. . . but, Frum says, the President should pass the torch.

If he doesn’t, we just have to hunker down and make sure he wins — and we will — because in his second term, he and Kamala and their team of 4,000 appointees will do a terrific job for average Americans and for the world at large.  And because — more to the point — the alternative is the end of the American experiment.  A Trump/Putin victory; monuments to NATO aggression, and all.

All that matters is that we win.  Which means all that matters is that we select whichever slate gives us the best chance.

*Inflation, which Trump would have his followers believe is raging out of control, came in at one-tenth of one percent in June, or 1.2% annualized.  So when they say inflation was 3%, it means prices are 3% higher than they were a year ago, which includes not just the most recent month’s rise, but the prior 11 as well.

I’m not suggesting a month’s inflation can be measured with precision; or that next month might not be worse.  But it seems pretty clear inflation is not raging; prices are rising slower than wages; and the current rate, whether 1.2% annualized or 3%, is not far from the Fed’s 2% target.  (You might think the target should be zero — if inflation is bad, why have any of it?  But, among other things, a little inflation greases the psychological wheels.)

George Clooney says . . .

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I love Joe Biden.  But we need a new nominee.

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I’m guessing you’ve already read that one.

Tom Friedman says . . . 

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Both men running for president right now are unfit for the job: One is a good man in obvious cognitive and physical decline, and the other is a bad man who lies as he breathes, whose main platform is revenge . . . .

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It’s worth reading in full, but that’s the nub of it:  Which would we rather have?  A good man who’s slowing down; or a bad man with enormous energy to do terrible things?

Consider:

If Biden says “Putin” when he means Zelensky or “Trump” when he means Harris (and then quickly corrects himself), no damage is done.  He’s not going to slip and accidentally veto a bill that revitalizes the nation’s infrastructure (a bill Trump never managed to get passed); or accidentally side with Putin against the FBI and against Ukraine. 

But when Trump carries out Project 2025 — and becomes the world’s strongest strongman — terrible damage will be done, with more to come in his third and fourth terms.  (Do you think he would ever willingly give up power, except, perhaps, to his son?)

Consider, too, the difference between the two parties:

As Friedman notes, “only one party in America’s two-party system is ready to defend our constitutional order anymore.”  The other “is ready to renominate Trump even though many of those who worked most intimately with him in his first term — including his vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, chief of staff, national security adviser, press secretary, communications director and attorney general — have warned that Trump is erratic, immoral and someone who must never be let near the White House again.”

Whom would you rather have: a good man in a wheelchair with serious health problems who might not live out his fourth term, or a fascist with a mustache who holds legendary rallies?  Or, to move it forward 80 years: an aging but experienced, principled leader like Biden; or someone with more energy like Putin/Le Pen/Trump?  (I lump them together because Le Pen recently did.)

Consider this anecdote from 1962: When Presidents Played By the Rules.  (And read books.  And tried to set a good example for the nation’s kids.)

Democratic Presidents still do.

I titled this post Either Way, We Win because, whatever happens, we must and, I think, will.

There’s no question that Joe and his team of 4,000 highly competent appointees — who will need no transition or learning curve to keep moving the country forward — would be a thousand times – a million times – better than Trump and the team he would assemble once he released some of them from prison.  If Joe is our nominee, I feel sure we can persuade enough voters of that to win.

It will be tough — but so was Georgia in 2022, when we had to elect that state’s first Black and first Jewish senator.  No one thought we could – but we had to, and we did.

That said . . . and as clear as yesterday’s press conference made it that, though old, Joe Biden really knows his stuff and has invaluable relationships with leaders around the world . . . I’m in the camp that believes our odds are better if Joe takes the win, passes the torch, and gives us the energizing excitement of a mini-primary, and/or a fresh story.

However the next few days and weeks play out, though, we have to win — and absolutely can.

Have a great weekend.

The author remains strongly for Joe — but . . . look where he winds up, just in case.

(And do you know who would make a great Secretary of State in this scenario?  Joe Biden.  Or — to drive Putin completely batshit — Hillary.)

Long, but interesting.

You saw the good outcomes in Europe.  Progressives won in Britain.  In France, Trump-like nationalists finished third.

(Watch what Le Pen says about being allied with Trump/Putin — 40 seconds.)

Normal, free and fair democratic elections.

But of course that’s not how it works in Putin’s Russia or Kim’s North Korea — or lots of other places around the world.

A friend writes to say:

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We must not forget about the upcoming presidential “election” in Venezuela on the 28th.

It would be following the now typical Nicaraguan model of democratic pretense, except that down here, we are all learning a lesson in charismatic leadership. Lo and behold, Maria Corina Machado (MCM) is spearheading the democratic opposition to the current authoritarian and quasi-brutal regime. They disqualify her, threaten her, put innumerable obstacles in her way, and she responds brilliantly and her movement only grows. Everyone now knows that in an even vaguely equitable election, she (or since they disqualified her, her surrogate candidate Edmundo González) would win in a landslide. All of a sudden, this stolid, dense authoritarian regime has an unanticipated and non-trivial problem on its hands.

Chavismo wants to pretend to have a democratic election, but they have no intention (ZERO) of giving up power except in a few carefully negotiated instances for appearance’s sake. (Where would they go, if not to jail?)  So they have long been training in the techniques of the heavy-handed regimes of Cuba and Nicaragua, which have demonstrated real success at staying in power at whatever cost. But now they find that they have MCM all over them, and it is increasingly unclear how they can fake it. This is the stuff of Nelson Mandela on a local, Latina scale.

So keep an eye on what is coming in Venezuela and pray for the best.

(If you should want to say anything publicly to call attention to this, please keep me completely anonymous. The heat is on down here.)

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For more on this, watch Thor Halvorssen’s conversation with the bravest woman in South America.

Whether it’s Joe or someone else, we have to win or else Trump (and then his son) will never leave.

And then what?

The Lincoln Project: “For those who can’t imagine the death of American democracy, we imagined it for you” (4 minutes).