Item one: Why Trump could lead the GOP to an epic wipeout |
This is the kind of topic about which liberals generally don’t want good news. They want to worry. They assign to their right-wing foes a strength and formidability that they never see on their own side (I’m often as guilty of this as anybody, I confess). They lack faith in the common sense and decency of the average voter. They want, on some level, to think, or at least to fear, that disaster is around the corner. I rise today to fight that tendency. Yes, it’s early. Yeah, it’s premature. But I’m going to say: The signs I see so far? They suggest to me that Donald Trump (a) is going to win the GOP nomination and (b) stands a very good chance of leading his party to an epic wipeout next November. To understand this, you have to open your eyes to things that can be hard to see as they unfold in real time. But they’re there, and they tell us this: Trump is much more extreme, much more unhinged, much more exposed than he was in 2016. Pay attention to what you see. The most recent example, perhaps small, but I think nevertheless telling, consists of his recent “truths” on Truth Social. He posted Barack Obama’s current address. Think about that. That’s an invitation to someone to go try to shoot him. And sure enough, someone did. Shortly after Trump’s post, Taylor Taranto showed up with a machete, two guns, and 400 rounds of ammunition. He appears to have reposted Trump’s post. He was arrested, and Obama’s block in D.C. is of course heavily protected, but none of that changes the fact that a former president of the United States pretty obviously was egging his supporters to commit violence against another former president. Friday morning came the related news that federal prosecutors working on the classified documents case against Trump are facing threats from MAGA-heads. They’re posting the names of federal prosecutors online. These people’s blocks are not under heavy Secret Service protection. What if one of them gets murdered? And what are the odds, given the way Trump has riled these people up, that if he’s convicted before Election Day, there won’t be violence, at least of the generalized sort and at worst of the targeted-execution variety? That’s the first thing. Here’s a second. More from Trump’s Truth Social feed: “Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden.” Hunter Biden wrote in his memoir that he’s been clean since 2019; but let’s face it, when one hears “cocaine in the White House,” he does leap to mind. But then, Trump throws Joe Biden in there. Who thinks Joe Biden does blow? It’s unhinged, and it’s a sign that Trump’s hold on reality, always tenuous, is vaporizing and that he’s even more emboldened now to say even more outrageous things than he said in 2016, which after all is the logic of outrage: It has to get more extreme in order to continue to have shock value. What even more unhinged thing might he be capable of saying on a debate stage next fall? Combine these recent developments with the things we already know, we’ve already seen. I wrote in our June cover story that Trump’s toxic rhetoric far exceeded where he was going in 2016. If you can’t see the difference between “Drain the swamp” (2016, and something any right-populist could say) and “I am your revenge” (the words of a megalomaniacal authoritarian demagogue), then you need some history lessons. I think here also of the Trump we saw in that infamous CNN town hall. He was totally out of control. I kept watching that and thinking: Is there any chance, I mean any chance, that the centrist soccer mom from the Milwaukee suburbs who took a flier on him in 2016 against Hillary Clinton is going to want to see this deranged, blubbering, vain peacock back in the White House? I know, I know. Biden’s age. The “wrong direction” poll numbers are bad. A recession could hit, although experts have backed off that concern somewhat. Still, I take all that seriously, believe me. But I’ll tell you this. If I were a Republican, I’d be scared shitless about what Trump might do to my party next year. The presidential election won’t be a runaway, because that isn’t how it works anymore. But I’d be very worried that Trump loses all the states he lost in 2020—and by a little more than he lost them the last time—plus maybe North Carolina, which would bump Biden’s Electoral College margin up to 319–219, which in a headline sounds like a rout. And the somewhat higher margins in Arizona, Georgia, et al. would foreclose any serious attempt to cry foul. Swing voters just wouldn’t buy it. Democrats are feeling pretty confident about retaking the House. The Senate looks a lot tougher. But if Senate candidates in purple and even a couple reddish-to-red states are wedded to a standard-bearer who looks, to your average person, not just unpreferable but outright dangerous, who knows? The normal swing-voter reflex is to think, “OK, I’ll vote Biden, but I’ll balance it out by voting for a Republican for Senate” (there aren’t as many swing voters as there once were, but they exist). I’m positing that Trump could be so bad that those voters decide en masse that now is the time to punish the Republican Party and demand that they wipe the slate clean, ditch Trump, and grow up. (And, of course, throw in the anti-Dobbs backlash, which should give Democratic Senate candidates two to four points nearly everywhere.) I’m not urging overconfidence. Politicians should always run like they’re 10 points behind. I’m just saying: Pay attention to what you see. And what we’re seeing so far is Donald Trump being far more extreme than he was in 2016 and alienating a huge chunk of the voters who bought his snake oil back then. |
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The Run-Up is a TNR newsletter by senior political writers Daniel Strauss and Grace Segers, featuring all the news that matters from all the races that matter. |
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Item two: What Snopes.com tells us about the right |
Snopes.com is a website that I make a point to check every so often. It tracks down and delivers a verdict on internet rumors. It started out doing mostly nonpolitical spadework—Is such-and-such a photo real? Did this or that celebrity really say X outrageous thing? And of course the site delves into the usual urban legends, e.g., Is a certain fast food company trying to make Black men impotent? and so on. But over the last decade or so, the busy folks at Snopes have really had to police a whole new beat—the right-wing internet lie. Because these people are such conspiracy freaks and so willing to believe anything about liberals, rumors fly around the right-wing web like angry hornets. Sure, there’s the occasional equivalent on the left, but my reading of Snopes tells me that the right-wing ones vastly outnumber the ones that emanate from the left. So I took a quick gander at Snopes this morning. Does July 4 video show Hunter Biden snorting coke at the White House? No; misleadingly captioned and edited, no evidence. Is Disney opening pediatric transgender clinics? No; that was satire. Does the Ukrainian military display a “Nazi cross” on some vehicles or tanks? No; it looks exactly the same, true, but the use of such a symbol in Ukraine predates the existence of Nazi Germany. And on and on and on and on and on. Imagine the way these ridiculous things whip around people’s email inboxes. Not even just MAGA people; I have on a few occasions been forwarded such emails by old friends, usually Republicans but not extremists, who ask me, “Hey, is this true?” I presume they want it to be. The point is, there are millions of people out there who see this stuff and believe it, like that old picture (faked) of a Seattle Seahawks player (Black, of course) burning an American flag. This was 2017, when Trump was laying into unpatriotic NFL players. Yet another example of the unique brand of poison he injected into every sphere of life. |
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Item three: Shortest Fighting Words item ever |
Marjorie Taylor Greene was kicked out of the Freedom Caucus this week. The precipitating event was that she called Lauren Boebert a “bitch.” But the underlying cause was that she was too mainstream. Let that sink in. |
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Last week’s quiz: “High as a flag on the Fourth of July.” A quiz about the national holiday in history and culture. |
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1. The written Declaration of Independence was dated July 4. But maybe we’re celebrating the wrong day. On which date was it (1) adopted by the Continental Congress, and (2) signed by most (not all) of the 56 signatories? |
A. July 1, July 8 B. July 3, July 5 C. July 2, August 2 D. July 5, August 11 |
2. Which city holds the oldest Fourth of July celebration? |
A. Philadelphia B. Boston C. Washington, D.C. D. Paterson, New Jersey |
Answer: Well, here’s a Fighting Words quiz first: I was wrong! Boston was the first city to recognize July 4 as a national holiday, in 1783. But the first city to throw a celebration, in 1785, was Bristol, Rhode Island. Or it’s the oldest continuous celebration. Or something. |
3. What was interesting about the queen of the Memphis, Tennessee, Fourth of July parade in 1875? |
A. She was 67 years old. B. She was a man in drag. C. She was 11 years old. D. She was Black. |
Answer: D, she was Black. Cuz Reconstruction, you know. Here’s a really interesting Atlantic article on the brief period in the South when the Fourth was basically a holiday for formerly enslaved people. |
4. Which of these Independence Day–themed novels won, the year of its publication, the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN-Faulkner award, the only novel ever to do so? |
A. A Place Called Freedom, Ken Follett B. The Stars Are Fire, Anita Shreve C. Independence Day, Richard Ford D. July, July, Tim O’Brien |
Answer: C, Independence Day, Richard Ford. The year was 1996, and I think it’s still the only book so honored. |
5. What is notable about the Fourth of July parade in the small coastal town of Aptos, California? |
A. It is held on July 5. B. It barred any displays of patriotism in the late 1960s. C. It bills itself as “the world’s shortest parade.” D. Dick Van Dyke, who has a home nearby, has participated every year since 1986. |
6. Which of these does Bruce Springsteen not sing about in “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”? |
A. The fireworks over Little Eden B. The police arresting Madame Marie C. The tilt-a-whirl down on the south beach drag D. Little Early-Pearly in his curly-wurly |
Answer: D, Early-Pearly. He showed up in “Blinded by the Light.” |
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This week’s quiz: “I got the key to the highway.” In honor of summer travel season, a quiz about our nation’s highways. |
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1. What is the country’s longest interstate highway? |
A. I-90, Boston to Seattle B. I-80, northern New Jersey to Sacramento C. I-95, northern Maine to Miami D. I-40, Wilmington, North Carolina, to Southern California |
A. I-87, Raleigh to Wendell, North Carolina B. H2, Pearl City to Wahiawa, Hawaii C. I-97, Annapolis to Glen Burnie, Maryland D. H3, Halawa to Marine Corps Base, Hawaii |
3. What is the highest posted speed limit in America? |
A. 75, in various places B. 80, along a stretch of I-94 in North Dakota C. 85, along a stretch of Texas highway near Austin D. No posted limit, along a stretch of I-80 in Wyoming |
4. What is unusual about a 17-mile stretch of U.S. 9? |
A. It no longer exists—it was paved over for development in the 1980s. B. It is under heavy armed guard as it runs along a nuclear facility in South Dakota. C. It technically passes right through the state capital of Rhode Island. D. It’s water—the Delaware Bay, traversed by the Cape May–Lewes ferry. |
5. Rank these countries in road quality, according to WorldAtlas.com: the United States, Austria, Portugal, Denmark, Singapore, the Netherlands. |
6. Which of these cities is not mentioned in “Route 66,” probably the most famous highway song in U.S. history? |
A. Oklahoma City B. Amarillo C. Albuquerque D. San Bernardino |
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And which version is the best, Nat King Cole’s or the Stones’ or someone else’s? I grew up on the Stones’, and Keith’s solo is spot-on, but today I’d vote for Nat. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com. —Michael Tomasky, editor |
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