Trump’s Next Big Lie Is Already Here
Plus: We Should Be Thanking Chris Christie
Recently in The Bulwark:
CHARLIE SYKES: Are They Liars? Or Fools?
TIM MILLER: Estoy alarmado: Univision Goes in With Trump 🔐
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AMANDA CARPENTER AND DEANA EL-MALLAWANY: Trump’s Next Big Lie Is Already Here.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP promises to “weaponize” the Department of Justice against his political adversaries if he becomes president again in January 2025—a threat based on a lie that’s already proving dangerous.
For months, Trump has been telling his supporters that the felony charges he faces in Georgia, New York, Florida, and Washington, D.C. are unjustified forms of “election interference.” He has led them to believe this “weaponization” is part of a plot by “vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections” to deprive him and his supporters of a victory in 2024. Therefore, he suggests, he is entitled to engage in the same legal warfare against his opponents when he becomes president.
BILL LUEDERS: The Problem With Hating ESG
THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS MET THE ENEMY and the enemy is . . . any and all efforts to use the levers of government to address the existential threat of climate change, advance social issues, or promote the common good.
The enemy has a name: ESG. That stands for environmental, social, and governance. It is pegged as a concerted leftist plot, onerous to businesses and disastrous to the economy. It has become a rallying cry for conservatives and a litmus test for political candidates, including the men and woman seeking the Republican nomination for president.
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
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A.B. STODDARD: We Should Be Thanking Chris Christie.
SAVE FOR TAYLOR SWIFT’S THE ERAS TOUR MOVIE, nothing in our shared American experience in 2023 has uplifted me like Chris Christie’s campaign joy ride.
Yes, many of us haven’t forgiven the former New Jersey governor for cementing Trump’s path to the nomination back in 2016, normalizing him at a critical stretch of the primary contest.
No, Christie has no chance of winning the nomination this time around; he is the candidate the base hates more than anyone, and he will not end up in anyone’s cabinet at the end of this.
MONA CHAREN: All the Single Ladies.
ECONOMIST MELISSA KEARNEY ISN’T ANYONE’S idea of a conservative culture warrior. A self-described “hard-headed albeit softhearted” economist, she has studied poverty, inequality, and family structure for more than 20 years and come to the conclusion that America’s drift away from the two-parent norm has “contributed to the economic insecurity of American families, has widened the gap in opportunities and outcomes for children from different backgrounds, and today poses economic and social challenges that we cannot afford to ignore.”
She is hardly alone among her social science peers in reaching this conclusion. As she relates in her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, these insights are more or less commonplace among those who study the matter.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Wednesday! Shorter than usual Overtime today, but I look forward to seeing people at our live event in DC tomorrow! (A few tickets remain if you want to come!)
Sphere and loathing… In Las Vegas.
Your political cartoon of the day… Hard to put it better.
The untold story of how the January 6 riots were planned on Facebook—and how the company missed it.
Cleveland in the house! Great to see a large turnout from Cleveland at yesterday’s Rally for Israel. (Including some childhood neighbors!)
The Shock of Facing American Anti-Semitism… Joel Engel writes in the WSJ: “Jews thought America was a safe haven, but Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities revealed hatred here at home.”
Trump goes all in on Nazi rhetoric… and the media gives him another free pass, argues Max Burns in The Hill.
An original homage to LA… And the people who make it fly. ⌚️
House Republicans… Want to fund the government by regular order, but under Speaker Johnson, it’s not going so well. They’ll be back after Thanksgiving (and hopefully less violent.)
The unusual inability of the House GOP… to win votes. Philip Bump analyzes the data and observes that this majority has lost more votes than the last 10 Congresses have. Why?
Is Senator Mullin OK? Maybe he should talk to somebody during the break.
News your kids & grandkids can use… Or you, a curious parent! How the I Spy books are made.
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