Front-Row Seats at the Great Lib Purge
Plus: How Democrats should outflank Trump on law and order.
Look, we’re not complaining about our lot in life. But one bummer about covering mostly national politics is it feels like nobody ever tries to bribe you by trying to pass you a wad of cash inside a half-eaten bag of potato chips. That’s apparently an experience unique to New Yorkers covering Mayor Eric Adams’s re-election bid, per the City:
A former top City Hall advisor and current campaign confidante to Mayor Eric Adams attempted to give money to a reporter from THE CITY following a campaign event in Harlem Wednesday.
The failed payoff—a wad of cash in a red envelope stuffed inside an opened bag of Herr’s Sour Cream & Onion ripple potato chips—was made by Winnie Greco, a longtime Adams ally who resigned last year from her position as the mayor’s liaison to the Asian community after she was targeted in multiple investigations. She resurfaced recently as a consistent presence in his re-election campaign. . . .
“I make a mistake,” she said. “I’m so sorry. It’s a culture thing. I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I feel so bad right now. I’m so sorry, honey.”
Eric Adams may have been mired in the single digits for months, but his continued presence in the mayoral race may be worth it for this story alone. Happy Thursday.
A Day at the Lib-Purging Circus
by Andrew Egger
Here’s something worth thinking about: During Trump 2.0, what exactly is the purpose of the constellation of websites—the Daily Wire, the Federalist, Townhall, and the like—we all used to call “conservative media”?
In olden times, outlets like these existed for a few reasons. At their best, they advanced earnest arguments for the policy programs of various strains of right-wing thought. At their worst, they were little more than clickbait factories, keeping their readers cranked to full tension with a slurry of low-calorie, high-rage stories about the alleged malfeasance of Democrats, journalists, and “elites.”
Neither purpose seems particularly relevant to the present moment, though. Not even professional conservatives are deluding themselves that Republican policy flows downstream from reasoned debate these days. And the ragebait business model has been short-circuited by the rise of the infotainment influencer class; you don’t need a masthead to make a little money foaming at the mouth online.
I was bouncing all this around in my mind yesterday while reading a remarkable piece in the Daily Wire about a lawyer serving in the IRS Office of Chief Counsel. The headline: “Top IRS Lawyer Under Trump Pledged To ‘Resist’ President, Is Former Dem Aide.”
Unless you happen to be his coworker or his mom, you’ve probably never heard of Anthony P. Sacco. He’s a functionary, a guy who helps the IRS interpret tax laws in specific situations. But, the Daily Wire alleges, beneath that innocuous front is a filthy secret: Sacco “openly advocated for far-left positions for years prior to joining the agency,” particularly when he was—get this—a tax-policy aide for the Senate Finance Committee under Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Among these far-left positions? An assessment that the GOP had “completely obliterated principles, integrity, and norms,” a stated sympathy for court-packing and prison abolition, and the use of hashtags like “#resist.”
The piece includes calls for Sacco’s firing from Sen. Tom Cotton and a nameless “senior Republican aide who works on finance issues in the Senate.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the aide said, “should clean house to get this politicization out.”
At no point in the Daily Wire article is Sacco accused by anybody of any sort of actual misconduct. The entire article boils down to one thing. Dude’s a lib. He should get the fuck out.
‘No libs allowed in federal jobs, period’ is not the stated policy of the federal government, even in Trump’s America. But what’s increasingly difficult to survive is being clocked as a liberal. Sacco hasn’t been fired—not yet, anyway, as far as we’ve seen—but we imagine he’s having a rough few days.
Institutions like the Daily Wire play an interesting role here. In a warped way, this story trades on access—a realm in which right-wing journalists still have an edge on right-wing influencers. Plainly, Cotton and others in the GOP Senate have some sort of axe to grind with this poor lawyer, and they’re turning to the Daily Wire to launder their hit.
But it’s also notable that these stories are playing out in public. If you’re a Republican in government who wants to get an annoying Democrat you’ve been dealing with fired, why not just drop a line to his boss behind the scenes?
There’s a strange and unsettling element of audience participation to stories like this. The apparent goal is to get Republican social media buzzing about the awfulness of the official, and only then to give them the scalp they asked for. More and more, Republican politics and Republican media aren’t just calibrated to get Democrats out of government. They’re calibrated to keep the government in a constant audience-pleasing state of lib-purging—and to keep the MAGA base feeling like valued participants in those purges every step of the way.
More Cops, Less ICE
by Mona Charen
The Trump administration’s militarization of and takeover of law enforcement in Washington, D.C. has spurred a lot of fact-checking about the level of crime in the nation’s capital, stressing how much crime rates have declined since 2023. That’s fine and necessary, but it should not be Democrats’ only strategy for countering this despotic move. People always worry about crime—even overestimating crime rates—and a political party that tries to talk them out of this will not gain much traction.
A better tack is to highlight just how much the Trump administration is compromising actual crime-fighting. Diverting FBI agents to street patrols is stupid and wasteful. They are not trained for ordinary police work, but rather for finding and arresting swindlers, terrorists, and child-porn sellers. Ditto for DEA agents and the other federal officials Trump has pulled from their regular duties.
It’s a perfect microcosm of what this administration is doing more broadly about lawbreaking. They’ve invented an immigrant crime spree and diverted resources to fighting that “threat” at the expense of real crime in America. Rather than invest in more cops, a policy that has a proven track record of reducing crime, the Republicans are spending scores of billions to harass, arrest, detain, and deport noncriminal aliens. They’ve created a massive new ICE police force that will be larger than the FBI to deal with this completely bogus crisis. The overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States have committed no crime other than the status violation of being here without authorization, which is why ICE is tackling and arresting gardeners, nannies, and roofers. Meanwhile, our cities, which could really use some extra funds to hire more police, are being neglected.
The Democrats should be the party of more police, and also more judges. As Josh Barro notes:
A lot of the problems with criminal justice in Washington lie in the federal courts where the city’s major prosecutions happen. There are too many judicial vacancies, and the U.S. Attorney’s office has been declining too many prosecutions, meaning too many criminals go free and too many miscreants believe they will get away with crime. Fixing those prosecutorial problems is a federal responsibility—Democrats should say that if Trump wants to be tough on crime, he can start by making sure prosecutors are bringing enough cases and there are enough judges to hear them.
More cops, less ICE.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Putin Always Breaks His Word. Why Would This Time Be Different? A peace agreement with Putin is a contradiction in terms, writes Mark Hertling over on the homepage.
Don’t Feed the Dictator… Russia is losing in Ukraine, red-state governors are disrupting National Guard families to please Trump, and Pete Hegseth’s alpha act is wearing thin. Adam Kinzinger joins Tim Miller on the flagship pod.
‘Blood in the Water’: Dems Smell GOP Weakness But Aren’t Sure How to Attack… Will GOP gerrymandering and unpopular Trump policies bite Republicans in the ass? A December special election could test that theory, reports Lauren Egan in The Opposition.
Colombia’s Challenging Path Forward… On Shield of the Republic, Eliot and Eric talk with Juan Carlos Pinzón, former Colombian ambassador to the U.S., about former President Álvaro Uribe’s fight against FARC and narcotrafficking, Colombia’s backsliding since, and Uribe’s current prosecution.
Quick Hits
HOW TO BEFRIEND A BABY: The new media normal isn’t just for right-wing publications. Feast your eyes on yesterday’s newsletter from Axios bigwigs Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, a straightforward #TheMoreYouKnow-style primer for business leaders and other pillars of society on how to flatter Donald Trump into your corner.
Nuggets of wisdom abound. Don’t let your pals critique Trump policies (“you often pay for the sins of friends, partners, or associates”). Don’t overreact to his tantrums (“No matter what he says or claims to be doing, wait”). Don’t let him notice you’re buttering him up (“Kiss ass—but in moderation”). Last but not least: “Pony up.” Trump’s super PACs aren’t going to stuff themselves.
Much of this is probably good advice for people wanting to get something out of Trump. But what makes the item such a perfect example of the zeitgeist is the way it frankly discusses the wide array of lunatic behaviors that make Trump Trump while somehow making them seem like they’re just core principles of doing business—neither right nor wrong, really, just the fact of the matter.
It’s an insidious, soul-rotting thing to accommodate oneself to—as the newsletter demonstrates in another way, perhaps accidentally. Tip #4, “build two spheres of influence,” rattles off a laundry list of the “MAGA-savvy operators” that those who want to ingratiate themselves with Trump should “find—or hire”: “Arthur Schwartz, Cliff Sims, Andy Surabian, Jeff Miller, Jason Miller, Chris LaCivita, Kellyanne Conway, Brian Ballard or Ches McDowell.”
“Smart brevity” or sponsored content? It’s getting a little hard to tell.
MORE LIKE PAYSTATION, AMIRITE?: Trump’s tariffs are making video games pricier, per Politico:
Sony announced Wednesday that its popular video game console, the PlayStation 5, will face a price increase in the United States this week, with the company becoming the latest console maker to raise its prices amid President Donald Trump’s global trade war.
“Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment,” Isabelle Tomatis, Sony’s vice president of global marketing, said in a Wednesday press statement. The price changes were limited only to consoles sold in the U.S.
Sony’s announcement follows similar price hikes on Nintendo’s original Switch console and various products in Microsoft’s Xbox platform in recent months. But maybe it won’t be so bad for the boys out there. After all, video game consumers skew young and male—a demographic that swung hard for Donald Trump last year. Who knows? Maybe the guy who spent billions in taxpayer money bailing out farmers during his first term has a plan to salve the economic pain of our great patriotic gamers.
Cheap Shots
C'mon--when in human history has a government that encouraged its people to rat out their neighbors for not being sufficiently loyal to Dear Leader on flimsy accusations, causing them to lose their jobs or get renditioned out of the country, ever turned out poorly?!
I guess the bastards will go after Vanzetti next.