The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[N.E. Brigand]

Vox columnist Eric Levitz urges Democrats to "realize that state-level races have high stakes and low costs. Your dollar will buy more progress down ballot." He notes how Democrats were able to take control of the Minnesota legislature by just one seat in 2022, with the narrowest win of 321 votes happening in a race where the two candidates spent just $124,000 and $137,000, and then:

With their single-vote Senate majority, Minnesota Democrats established paid family and medical leave, barred non-compete clauses in labor contracts, banned employers from holding compulsory anti-union meetings, bolstered workplace protections for meatpacking and Amazon workers, formed a statewide board to set minimum labor standards for nursing-home workers, directed $2.58 billion into improved infrastructure, made school breakfast and lunch free for all Minnesota K-12 students, restored the voting rights of ex-felons, invested $1 billion into affordable housing, imposed background checks on private gun transfers, initiated a red-flag warning system to remove firearms from people courts deem to be a threat to themselves or others, legalized recreational marijuana, and mandated that utilities go carbon-free by 2040, among other measures.

Governor Tim Walz signed all these Democratic bills into law.

But Republicans this year are outraising Democrats in state campaigns $62 million to $35 million. (I'm not sure if that figure includes the $2.5 million the Harris campaign gave yesterday to the Democratic committee for state-level legislative races, part of a $25 million that the campaign disbursed to down-ballot races that also included U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and governorship races.)

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In other election news, yesterday a "Michigan judge quickly rejected Robert F. Kennedy's Jr.'s attempt to get off the ballot ... 'Elections are not just games, and the Secretary of State is not obligated to honor the whims of candidates for public office.'" RFK Jr. did this to himself by accepting the nomination of the Natural Law Party in Michigan rather than by collecting enough signatures to be on the ballot as a true independent there.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

1. "US accuses Russia of 2024 election interference" (BBC).

2. "Biden administration hits Russia with sanctions over efforts to manipulate U.S. opinion ahead of the election" (NBC).

3. "Indictment: Russian propagandists used Tennessee content company to push disinformation" (The Tennessean).

There is some overlap between these three articles. This is from the third one:

Two Russian nationals who worked for Russia Today, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, were indicted on accusations they funneled nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based online content creation company to publish English-language videos on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube. The company's more than 2,000 videos posted in the last 10 months have been viewed more than 16 million times just on YouTube, according to the indictment.

The indictment, unsealed in the federal court for the Southern District of New York, doesn't identify the Tennessee company, but descriptions in the indictment match those of Tennessee-based Tenet Media.

The two indicted Russians are Kostiantyn "Kostya" Kalashnikov and Elena "Lena" Afanasyeva. The indictment says that one of them had discussions with Tenet's founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan (not named in the indictment), about how much to pay commentators Benny Johnson and Tim Pool (also not named in the indictment). Pool was then in direct contact with someone he believed to be a Hungarian businessman. The "Hungarians" had offered $2 million per year for each of them. Pool wanted $5 million per year, while Johnson, who wanted $100,000 per episode, was unhappy that the supposed businessman's (fake) C.V. said he supported "social justice": he didn't mind taking money from a sketchy pro-Russian businessman he'd never heard of, but he didn't like the idea of working for someone who held woke views. Eventually Johnson and Pool agreed to make four weekly videos each month for which they would each be paid $400,000 per month. (Pool negotiated a $100,000 signing bonus on top.) Over the course of ten months (Oct. 2023-Aug. 2024), the Russian wire transfers to Tenet totaled more than $9 million and accounted for 90% of its income.

Elon Musk has promoted Tenet's work several times.

As for the targets of the new U.S. sanctions: they include Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT (formerly Russia Today). Reporter Julia Davis notes that Simonyan has been plainly saying for a while that Russia was engaged in the sort of misinformation to which the U.S. today with the sanctions and indictments -- activity which Davis been regularly documenting for years. (Davis has occasionally been cited here, mainly the in the Ukraine thread.) The indictment quotes Simonyan as saying in February 2024 that it didn't matter that RT had been effectively banished in the U.S. since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, because RT had created an "enormous network, an entire empire of covert projects that is working with the public opinion" in the West. Some of that is probably braggadocio, but I notice that while the indicted Russians didn't set up their arrangement to pay Tenet's commentators until 2023, Tenet itself was founded in January 2022. Hmm.

Amusingly, the folks at Tenet did have qualms about disseminating video of Tucker Carlson's visit to a Russian grocery store: they thought it was too obviously propaganda. (Even Russian TV hosts said that at the time!)

Tim Pool says he too is a victim of Putin's scam, and the indictment (which he oddly calls a "leaked indictment" even though the Dept. of Justice publicly announced it) does says that the people referred to as Commentators 1 and 2 were "deceived," but I agree with those who argue that, as a supposed journalist, he had an obligation to tell his audience who was paying him. He also should have been suspicious that the messages he was being asked to share were very pro-Russian!

As for Johnson, I shared one of his tweets just yesterday:

As others have noted, Donald Trump has the affect of someone on a sedative in this interview:

To be clear: I knew that Johnson was a right-wing hack and that he was promoting Donald Trump with the nonsense about Epstein.

[N.E. Brigand]

Once when a supposed "Hungarian" payment was late and the "businessman" didn't respond to an email, one of Tenet's founders googled "time in Moscow."

In other words, they knew they were being paid by Russia. I'd like to know why they weren't charged themselves for being foreign agents.

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Meanwhile, some members of Tim Walz's family in Nebraska are Republicans who have announced they're voting for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance rather than Kamala Harris and Walz. Walz's older brother went so far as to say that the "stories I could tell" would show that Governor Walz is "not the type of character you want making decisions about your future," but the "one example" that Jeff Walz has offered is that, when they were kids, Tim would get car sick and "would always throw up on us, that sort of thing."

[Dave_LF]

They're being very careful to consistently say "unwitting" when they talk about these Russian collaborators. IMO they should at least go with "witless."

[N.E. Brigand]

A separate item referenced in the above articles that should be noted:

The Justice Department today announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as “Doppelganger,” in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws. As alleged in an unsealed affidavit, the Russian companies Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technology (Structura), and ANO Dialog, operating under the direction and control of the Russian Presidential Administration, and in particular First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko, used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election.

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Meanwhile, this happens to both Democrats and Republicans, but it's always amusing when someone warns their staff to stop leaking to the press and then that every warning gets leaked to the press. In this case, something is cooking in the Trump campaign.

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Edited to add: This wasn't mentioned on this forum yesterday, and I'm not sure it goes in this thread, but the Dept. of Justice yesterday indicted Linda Sun, who was an aide to New York's governor, Kathy Hochul, for being an agent of the Chinese government.

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Edited again to note Donald Trump's statements of support in 2021 for Joe Biden's decision to carry on with Trump's deal for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan. (We mentioned some of this at the time.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Tim Pool has repeatedly told his conservative followers online that they currently are in, or should prepare for, a civil war.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think this is a reasonable point:

"Donald Trump told us that New Yorkers were fleeing New York City en masse because of how horrible it is under Democratic leadership -- and then he turned around and sent his youngest kid to college there."

(Barron Trump is matriculating at New York University.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Barron Trump is Melania's son.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This incredible word salad becomes even more ludicrous when you keep in mind that the U.S. deficit went up more under Trump than any other president.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump was also asked today, "Would you strengthen or modify any of these economic sanctions programs, particular Russia"?

His response: "The problem with what we have with sanctions--and I was a user of sanctions, but I'd put 'em on and take 'em off as quickly as possible because ultimately it kills your dollar and kills everything the dollar represents, and we have to continue to have that be the world currency: I think it's important. I think we'd be losing a war if we lost--if we lost the dollar as a world currency, I think that would be the equivalent of losing a war. That would make us a third world country, and we can't let it happen. So I use sanctions very powerfully against countries that deserve it. Then I take 'em off, because, look: you're losing Iran, you're losing Russia. China is out there trying to get their currency to be the dominant currency, as you know better than anybody. All of these things are happening. You're losing so many countries because there's so much conflict with these countries that you're going to lose that, and we can't lose that, so I want to use sanctions as little as possible."

Interesting that he's open to lifting sanctions on not just Russia but also Iran.

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Edited to note that Donald Trump's first comments on sanctions as a presidential candidate in 2015 came in response to a question from Marina Butina, who years later was revealed to be a Russian spy.

[Maria]

This showed up in my inbox today, just chock full of clickable links.

aarp.jpg (96.7 KiB) Viewed 168 times

However, when I went to the AARP website, there was no mention of a survey being put out.
Darn phishers.

[N.E. Brigand]

An update on this one:

As was mentioned before on this forum, at the beginning of May, Donald Trump made billions via a Truth Social stock dilution on the basis of the company's shares having held about $17.50 for 20 straight trading days for a month since first going on sale. It's too late now, but the stock is flirting with that level, having dropped below $20 per share for the first time today. Here's a chart showing both the stock market value (Dow Jones average) and Truth Social stock value (both as percentages) since the company went public. Trump claims the market improvement over the past three weeks is due to people expecting him to win the election. If so, why is his own company tanking?

Yesterday Truth Social stock closed below $17.50 per share for the first time since it went public in March, closing the day at $16.90. It rallied a little today, but remained below $17.50 (closing at $17.40 per share).

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Edited to add this peek into the investor prospectus for Truth Social from 2022, which forecast the company would earn $114 million in 2023 and $835 million in 2024. How'd that work out? Truth Social had revenue of $4 million in 2023 and is on track to do the same this year, but with losses of $58 million last year and at least $343 million this year.

[Sunsilver]

This incredible word salad becomes even more ludicrous when you keep in mind that the U.S. deficit went up more under Trump than any other president.

Just came here to share that!
And they have the gall to say Biden sounded like he was senile?? Wow!

[Maria]

By now I've seen a lot of speeches by Walz.... but apparently he's leveled up.
His speechifying this time just blew me away, just when I was getting a bit jaded at hearing the same things over and over. Not this time!
If you can watch the whole thing it's well worth it:

[Frelga]

Meanwhile.

Screenshot_20240905-152619.png (777.04 KiB) Viewed 135 times

That's not a mob. There were more people at the donut shop where Tim Walz successfully ordered donuts.

[N.E. Brigand]

To go by this forum's search function (which is limited in that it won't catch text in embedded media like tweets), Dimitri Simes has never been mentioned here.

Here's the introduction to Wikipedia's article on Simes:

Dimitri Konstantinovich Simes ... born October 29, 1947 ... is a Russian-American author, editor, and political pundit. He is the former president and CEO of The Center for the National Interest, where he served from 1994 to 2022. Simes was selected to lead the Center by former President Richard Nixon, to whom he served as an informal foreign policy advisor and with whom he traveled regularly to Russia and other former Soviet states as well as Western and Central Europe.

That think tank was founded in 1994 as the "Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom" less than eight months before Nixon's death, changed its name to "The Nixon Center" in 1998, purchased The National Interest, a political journal which the Center uses "to promote the realist perspective on foreign policy," and finally took its current name in 2011 when Simes, who was the Center's leader from its founding until 2022 (when he moved back to Russia), caught heat for "attacking ... presidential candidate, John McCain, for his denunciations of Russia’s invasion of Georgia".

Simes first came to my attention after the 2016 presidential campaign, because the Center had "hosted Donald Trump's first major foreign policy address" at D.C.'s Mayflower Hotel in April of that year. This was an event at which Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, was in attendance and may or may not have met with Trump or his aides at a reception before the speech. Simes is mentioned in Robert Mueller's reports for a letter he wrote to Jared Kushner, but Mueller didn't find that Simes had engaged in any criminal activity.

Then last month, the FBI searched his Virginia estate, and the Associated Press reported today: "Former 2016 Trump campaign adviser is charged over his work for sanctioned Russian TV." Both Simes and his wife Anastasia (some 20 years his junior) were indicted for evading sanctions: they were paid more than a million dollars (and provided a personal car and driver) for appearances on Channel One over the past two years. The U.S. Attorney who announced the charges said, "Such violations harm our national security interests — a fact that Dimitri Simes, with the deep experience he gained in national affairs after fleeing the Soviet Union and becoming a U.S. citizen, should have uniquely appreciated."

[N.E. Brigand]

OK, we have some news at last on this front:

It certainly is strange that even after a week, there's been no reporting about who specifically pushed the Arlington cemetery official who tried to prevent the Trump campaign from breaking the law. If reporters really don't know -- which I think is unlikely -- it can only be because they don't want to know, i.e., haven't been chasing that story. Presumably the two thugs are journalists' regular sources in the campaign, and they don't want to lose that access.

Which I suspect is related to this (and maybe also reports that Trump's campaign managers are meeting with Congressional Republicans tomorrow):*

Meanwhile, this happens to both Democrats and Republicans, but it's always amusing when someone warns their staff to stop leaking to the press and then that every warning gets leaked to the press. In this case, something is cooking in the Trump campaign.

NPR reports that the two campaign staffers who "verbally abused" an Arlington official trying to enforce the cemetery's prohibition on campaign photography "are deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team," and it was Picard who shoved her.

As noted here, Caporale, who was once an aide to Melania Trump and also worked for Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, played a role in January 6th, when he was working both for Trump's campaign and for a company called Event Strategies (of which he was later the CEO), a firm which also had done work in Ukraine for Paul Manafort.

*Edited to add: apparently not. Today's meeting between the Trump campaign managers and Republican members of Congress was apparently just to reassure the latter that the campaign has a realistic plan to defeat Vice President Harris in November.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

More nonsense from Peter Thiel-backed Nate Silver.

https://x.com/IAPolls2022/status/1831793268503597263

In contrast, 538 gives Harris a 57% chance of winning, which is far more in line with the state of the polling.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 ... -forecast/

[Dave_LF]

Here are Silver's actual words on the matter, as opposed to some bot (?) tweeting out numbers from his model:

Last update: 4:15 p.m., Thursday, September 5: I’m back in the United States so expect updates to return to more of a late-afternoon rhythm!

Subjectively this seemed to me (Nate) like a decent day of polling for Kamala Harris, but she was hurt by this series of polls from a Democratic group that showed her exactly tied with Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Our polling averages apply a relatively harsh “house effects” adjustment to partisan-sponsored polls, so it interprets ties in partisan polls as losing. And PA/MI/WI polls are really important to the forecast.

But we’re now finally starting to get some post-Labor Day polls, which look decent for Harris, and those will be subject to less of a convention bounce adjustment than polls that went into the field immediately after the DNC. So we’ll see what the next several days bring.

In contrast, 538 gives Harris a 57% chance of winning, which is far more in line with the state of the polling.

Silver is quite explicit that his model is not designed to reflect the current state of the polling, or even the future state of the polling, but rather the probability of winning in November.