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GOP pickups: GA

X Misses the Spot with Trump

Yesterday, Donald Trump had a much-hyped "live" streaming interview on eX-Twitter with Elon Musk. If you want to listen to it (it's almost 2 hours long), you can do so here. It did not go particularly well for either man.

Let's start with Musk, for whom there were two problems. The first is that, once again, a high-profile event on his platform was extremely glitchy. Recall that Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) eX-Twitter-hosted campaign launch was a disaster, which proved to be a pretty clear omen, as it turns out. The Trump interview started 45 minutes late because viewers could not get, and stay, connected. Musk claimed that his platform was the victim of a "massive [Distributed Denial of Service] attack." However, this is unlikely. Such an attack would affect the whole platform, as opposed to just one "space." Further, current employees of eX-Twitter told the media that it's a 99% chance that claim is a lie.

The other issue for Musk is that he didn't really get to have a "conversation" with Trump. For much of the event, Trump talked over or ignored Musk. Presumably, the Tesla tycoon was hoping to have some influence over Trump or over his devoted followers. That likely did not happen.

As to Trump, he wasn't terrible, in that he didn't say anything too bizarre, he didn't ramble too much, and he didn't slip up and say something offensive. For a portion of the interview, he even talked about policy, particularly his ideas about the economy. However, on the whole, it was basically a repeat of his stump speech and of his RNC address, which are pretty much the same thing.

These things being the case, it's hard to see how Trump helped himself with the appearance. It is difficult to know exactly how many people tuned in, and you certainly shouldn't trust any claims from Musk or Trump. What is certain is that the maximum number of viewers at one time was 1 million; over the course of the 2 hours, the total viewership was probably two or three times that. Since most of those people are going to be True Believers, and since Trump didn't say anything new or notable, it was pretty much a textbook example of preaching to the choir. He also got mocked by the Kamala Harris campaign, which live-Tweeted the event, concluding with this:

Donald Trump's extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature not a glitch of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com.

Trump's entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself—self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.

Trump is not going to be happy when he sees that.

Meanwhile, yesterday's events definitely hit Trump where it really hurts. He logged on to his eX-Twitter account yesterday, for the first time in a year, and he posted a handful of short messages promoting the interview and his various websites. Right around the same time, his own social media platform was reporting that it lost $16.4 million in the most recent fiscal quarter. Between these two things (which hint at the possibility that Trump might return to eX-Twitter on a permanent basis), the price of Trump Media & Technology Group dropped to $24.88 a share yesterday. Only one time since the company went public has the share price been that low; that was back in April. Since that time, the total value of Trump's stake has dropped by over $1 billion.

Trump's advisors, for their part, are surely worried about something else. At very least, Trump's return to eX-Twitter is more evidence that he's getting very anxious about the campaign. At most, he could make his return to eX-Twitter permanent, which would mean his wildest and craziest thoughts would reach a much, much larger audience. That makes it rather more difficult to keep him from shooting himself in the foot.

However, then no one has to look at his own boutique social media site to read his brilliant thoughts. That will make the DJT stock collapse even faster than it is now. As a result he will have to choose between his campaign and his net worth. Tough call.

We will see if Musk and Trump make this a regular occurrence. Based on how this one went, they would probably be best off leaving well enough alone. (Z)

More on the Trump Campaign Hack

Yesterday, we noted that some person or entity apparently hacked the Donald Trump campaign and stole some documents that Team Trump most certainly did not want to be made public. Yesterday, there were a few more bits of news about this story.

To start, a fair number of outlets utilized headlines that suggested the Iranian origins of the hack was confirmed. In particular, many used the phrase "suspected Iranian hackers." When you refer to "suspects" or "suspected," that's usually a term of art that refers to a judgment made by law enforcement. The current evidence of Iranian involvement comes from two sources, neither of them law enforcement. The first is the Trump campaign. The second is Microsoft, which sent out a report last week vaguely alluding to "a spear-phishing e-mail to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised e-mail account of a former senior advisor." Thus far, the FBI is refusing to confirm the Iranian origin of the attack. This being the case, we would prefer the phrasing "alleged Iranian hackers."

That said, the facts as described by Microsoft do align with what happened to the Trump campaign. The "former senior advisor" referred to appears to be Roger Stone. We cannot say we are surprised that the hackers took a long look at the people involved with the Trump campaign and decided that Stone was the weak link.

What the FBI definitely HAS confirmed is that the Trump campaign was not the only one targeted by hackers. The Harris campaign was also targeted, both when it was the Biden campaign and also after it became the Harris campaign. The Democrats, presumably keeping in mind the lessons of 2016, apparently have much better cybersecurity, so the hacks were not successful.

The fact that both major parties were targeted suggests that whoever was behind the attacks, whether Iran or someone else, was mostly interested in creating chaos, and not necessarily in hurting/helping a particular candidate. Obviously, it's possible that the two hacking attempts came from different sources, though the FBI thinks, due to similarities in methodology, that it was probably the same actor in both cases.

Readers will recall, incidentally, that back in 2016, Trump was a huge fan of the hackers who undermined the DNC and the Clinton campaign. As it turns out, he's not such a fan when it's his campaign that's the victim. And so it is that we write, for something like the third time in a week: If you live by the sword, be prepared to die by the sword. (Z)

Trump Legal News: Mambo No. 5?

Donald Trump has four different venues where he's facing felony charges. He's already been convicted in one of them, namely New York, while Washington, DC, Florida and Georgia are still going concerns (in some cases more than others). Arizona also has an ongoing election interference case. When just about everyone in Trump's orbit was indicted, but Trump himself was named only as an un-indicted co-conspirator, it seemed that he had finally had some good luck on the legal front.

Or... maybe not. A document made public this week, as a result of other activity related to the case, reveals that the grand jury very much wanted to indict Trump. However, prosecutors persuaded the grand jurors not to do it. That can't be that common a situation, but in this case, the prosecution did not feel it yet had enough evidence to go after the former president. Also, they suspected—we can't imagine why—that Trump would gum up the whole process with spurious motions and Hail Mary appeals.

The office of AG Kris Mayes says that the investigation is ongoing, and that Trump could still go from "un-indicted co-conspirator" to "indicted co-conspirator." We will also remind everyone that two different insiders, one lawyer and one fake elector, turned state's evidence last week. We don't imagine that Mayes would add Trump to the indictment prior to the election, as most state-level officials tend to observe the 90-day "don't influence the elections" custom, and we are currently 84 days out. But afterward, it appears to be a very real possibility. And once again, presidents don't have the power to pardon state crimes. (Z)

Not Taxing Tips Is Popular with Voters, Not with Economists...

One of Donald Trump's few clear and potentially achievable policy positions is his pledge to exempt tips from being taxed. It's not hard to understand why he embraced that plan; Republicans love to cut taxes (though usually on people wealthier than service professionals), and there are a LOT of people in the swing state of Nevada for whom tips are their main source of income.

The Democrats would very much like to win Nevada, too. One way to help with that is for Kamala Harris to also adopt Trump's no-taxes-on-tips plank, which she has. An even better way would be for a no-taxes-on-tips law to be passed before the election. Not only would that take away Trump's campaign plank, it would also allow the Democrats to claim credit for getting the legislation passed, since Joe Biden would have to sign it into law. In case anyone was wondering if the President is willing to do that, the White House made clear yesterday that he most certainly is.

Of course, initiatives that are politically popular sometimes aren't sound policy. That appears to be the case here, as economists and other tax experts, both right- and left-wing, are warning of the potential unintended consequences of such a law. While recognizing that the plan is largely vaporware right now, and it would matter exactly how it is written, the number-crunchers fear a disaster.

To be more specific, waiving taxes on tips would have an obvious impact on federal revenues. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the loss would be somewhere between $100 billion and $250 billion over a decade, which is a pretty big chunk. It would be even worse if payroll taxes on tips were also exempted; the last thing that Medicare and Social Security need right now is to be taking in even less money.

An even bigger problem, potentially, is that if a particular form of income is extremely tax-privileged, then some people, the type that tend to have hotshot accountants, will likely try to find ways to re-classify their income as tips. "I only earned $1 in salary this year for my work as CEO of Acme, Inc., but the company was so happy with my work, they tipped me $10,000 every week." That sort of thing. Obviously, the IRS would try to prohibit those kinds of abuses, but it's hard to know how successful they would be. And because one-third of tipped workers do not pay any income tax at all, and another third pay very little, the large potential loophole means that the lion's share of the benefits might end up going to wealthy people who aren't in the service industry at all. This may just be another reason why Trump has embraced the plan.

The people who are experts in what would help lower-income workers—say, the leaders of labor unions, or professors of public policy—assert that it would be better policy to pass laws that help all lower-income workers instead of laws that only help some. Increasing the federal minimum wage is an obvious possibility, while expanding the child-tax credit is another. However, those sorts of things have virtually no chance of getting through the current Congress, while no-taxes-on-tips might, since both parties want to claim credit, while neither party wants to be blamed for blocking it. If so, as we note above, it won't be the first time that politics made for bad policy. (Z)

...While Reforming the Supreme Court Is Popular with Everyone

Joe Biden will enjoy access to the bully pulpit for another 5 months or so. And one thing he's been using it for is to call for reform of the Supreme Court. There is no doubt that Democrats think that the Court is badly broken, and that the nine oligarchs... er, justices need to be reined in. As it turns out, according to the newest poll from USA Today/Ipsos, a majority of Republicans are also in agreement with Biden's thinking on the matter.

Biden made three specific suggestions. Here's how they poll with various partisan groups:

Proposal Dem. Rep. Ind. Overall
Binding Code of Conduct for SCOTUS Justices 89% 70% 75% 76%
Constitutional Amendment, President Not "Above the Law" 89% 54% 72% 70%
Term Limits for SCOTUS Justices 83% 51% 61% 63%

The pollster also asked about expanding the Court from 9 to 15 justices, something Biden has NOT endorsed. That possibility turns out to be rather less popular. Although 62% of Democrats are on board, only 20% of Republicans and 40% of independents like the idea, resulting in an overall figure of 38%. It's not impossible that such a thing could get through Congress with just Democratic votes, but only if the blue team has the trifecta and also kills the filibuster.

In any event, the response to Biden's actual proposal suggests two things. First, a political party wants to run on policy ideas that are popular with the rank-and-file, and that also appeal to some voters outside the party. Supreme Court reform is clearly one of those (and abortion access, of course, is another). Second, we've written many times that if the Court pushes its luck too far, it risks backlash and substantive change. It looks like that process is well underway and that, at very least, a binding code of conduct with actual teeth is in the Court's immediate future. Clarence Thomas better get in his luxury vacations while the gettin's good. (Z)

Who Might Be in Harris' Cabinet?

Axios' Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, two of the best-plugged-in journalists this side of Maggie Haberman, are already asking folks in Harris' orbit about who might be in her Cabinet if she wins. Of course, she has been running only 19 days, so her plans for an administration have not exactly been on the front burner. Nevertheless, some people close to her have begun thinking about actually governing and who would be on her team. At risk of getting out ahead of our skis, here is what Allen and VandeHei have heard:

Some other people who might get some high-level job include Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA), Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI). For Whitmer, having a high-profile government job of any kind would help her C.V. and keep her in the news until 2032, when she could run for president. If Harris would like to be succeeded by another woman, giving Whitmer a high-profile job would be a no-brainer.

Harris moved up the ranks from assistant D.A. in Alameda County to D.A. in San Francisco, to California AG, to U.S. senator, to vice president. Look for people who also worked their way up. Don't expect people like Rex Tillerson, who Donald Trump picked to be secretary of state while he was running an oil company and who had no real diplomatic experience. Expect people who have worked one or two levels below their new job and who have earned a promotion.

In any event, it is sure to be a younger and more diverse cabinet if the Democrats control the Senate. With a Republican Senate, Harris might have to compromise much more than she would like. (V)

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: You Win Some, You Lose Some

As we noted yesterday, Los Angeles resident Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been using a New York address on his candidacy paperwork. This is because his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, is also from California, and the Kennedy campaign is entertaining the delusion that it could win in the Golden State. If that did happen, the California electors would not be allowed to vote for both Kennedy and Shanahan.

Yesterday, New York Supreme Court Justice Christina Ryba had some bad news for Junior. She found that his claims of New York roots, and his promise that he is definitely moving back to the Empire State one of these days, might be truthful, but they are not relevant. What is relevant is that he does not live, and has never lived, at 84 Croton Lake Road, which is the address he used on his paperwork. That being the case, his paperwork is "intentionally misleading" and fraudulent, and so is invalid. That means he's off the ballot in New York State. The Supreme Court is the lowest court in New York state so Kennedy could appeal the decision to the New York Court of Appeals, which is the highest state court.

RFK Jr. was very angry about the ruling, and claimed that the whole thing is a Democratic conspiracy. However, he also got some good news yesterday. There was a lawsuit in North Carolina, not based on his address, but based on the claim that he subverted state election laws by forming a new political party in order to get on the ballot. If Kennedy tried to make it as an independent, he would have needed 80,000 signatures. However, by founding the We the People Party, and running as its candidate, he only needed 13,000 signatures. Wake County Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory affirmed the 4-1 ruling of the North Carolina State Board of Elections that Kennedy's machinations are fine and dandy. Why anyone in the future would ever run as an independent in North Carolina, as opposed to just making up a political party and nominating themselves as its candidate, we do not know.

Needless to say, Kennedy's ballot status in North Carolina is much more important than his ballot status in New York, since North Carolina is a potential swing state. The lawsuit in the Tar Heel State was filed by the North Carolina Democratic Party, but now that RFK Jr. appears to be taking more votes from Donald Trump than from Kamala Harris, the Party might be happy that it lost and might not bother to appeal.

At the moment, there is another Democratic-initiated "address" lawsuit pending against the Kennedy campaign, this one in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. One has to assume that if New York says he's not a resident of New York, then Pennsylvania will abide by that and toss him off the ballot. Beyond that, the ruling from Ryba opens a pretty solid opportunity for either party to get Kennedy off the ballot in the state(s) of their choice. We will soon learn if either party will avail themselves of that option. (Z)


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