Just before I posted this piece, the former president gave a press conference. The questions weren’t as difficult as those he faced at last week’s convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, but if the current Theory of Trump is accurate, they aren’t going to help Donald Trump . They’re going to hurt him.
We should all be so lucky. The current Theory of Trump comes from Sarah Longwell. She’s the publisher of The Bulwark , a former Republican and a pollster.
She’s often on cable news talking about what swing voters want. Last week, after the NABJ’s interview, she said the more people see Trump, the lower his approval ratings are. The less they see, the higher they are.
That’s her Theory of Trump, and that should sound familiar to you. I have been saying for months that most people, most of the time, have not been paying attention to politics. That’s why the president’s approval rating has been so low relative to Trump’s.
Once he secured the GOP nomination, people would start paying attention, and when they did, I argued, Joe Biden’s approval rating would start to improve. It may not look like it, since the president is no longer in the running, but I was right – for about two days. On June 25, the polling average of the president’s approval rating eclipsed Trump’s for the first time this year.
(This is according to 538’s polling average tracker, and granted, it was low, about 40 percent.) But then came The Disaster Debate on June 27. That was the end of my theory, at least as it applied to Biden.
The part about Trump was right, though, and Longwell’s Theory seems to affirm that. It also seems to affirm another of my arguments here at the Editorial Board – that Trump is an “affirmative action” candidate. His approval rating increases when his time in public decreases .
So his success isn’t because of him. It’s in spite of him. Something is pushing those numbers up, of course, namely the Republicans, the rightwing media apparatus, the billionaire class and Washington press corps generally oriented toward the preferences of white people.
Trump doesn’t earn ratings. They are given to him. If we accept the illiberal view of affirmative action – it rewards the undeserving – that’s him.
Being the “affirmative action” candidate isn’t all sunshine, though. Like many a rich man’s son, Trump doesn’t believe he has been given his success. He believes he has earned it, and he has earned it by means familiar to many a rich man’s son – by dominating people, usually through some combination of breaking the law and daring authorities to enforce it.
And it’s this belief that he has earned his success through domination that’s putting this rich man’s son in a pickle. The more he feels the urge to dominate people’s minds, the less people want, and the less people want, the less likely he is going to win the election. Remember the difference between need and want.
Vice President Kamala Harris wants to be president. She wants your attention for the purpose of achieving that objective. (If she loses, she will go back to her own life, a pretty good one, I’d say.
) Trump, however, doesn’t want your attention. He needs it. He must have it , the way an addict must have a fix.
And not getting what he must have is an offense, indeed a serious injustice, practically a crime worthy of any reaction, up to and including the attempted paramilitary takeover of the United States government. (If he loses this election, he’s probably going to die.) And because he must have it , he can’t understand why others don’t.
I suspect his world fell to pieces the day Biden dropped out. He really believes Biden can’t possibly believe anything he ever says, because Trump never believes anything he ever says. For Trump, men in power do not willingly give it up.
Yet the president did, and now, in addition to facing a landscape permanently changed by his departure, Trump must face the stone-cold reality of being wrong about everything. He’ll never admit it, of course, and such denial is why Trump said, during today’s presser, that he hasn’t “recalibrated” his campaign to accommodate a landscape permanently changed by Biden’s departure. Such denial is also why he said, at today’s presser, that it was virtually unconstitutional for him to face Harris, instead of the man he’s been campaigning against for the last five years.
Not only does he deserve your attention, he deserves things to stay as they were, and if this rich man’s son doesn’t get what he deserves , there’s going to be hell to pay. Which is probably what Sarah Longwell was talking about when she said voters, when they see more of Trump than they would like to see, see his “decomposition.” They are seeing what they could not see as long as the president was in the running, and they could not see Trump’s “decomposition,” because the press corps did not see it.
These same people saw The Disaster Debate, too. They saw Trump’s habitual incoherence . Yet no one, virtually no one, called on him to drop out.
Perhaps today’s presser will be for Trump what the debate was for Biden. Biden hoped to ease concerns about his age with a knockout performance. Trump may have hoped to quell concerns about him after “decomposing” at last week’s convention of National Association of Black Journalists.
He’s always been a joke, but rarely have people laughed at him, as they did at the NABJ. He believes himself the greatest of all time, but after that, he was reduced to a mere goat. The question is whether the press and pundits corps will do for Trump what they did for Biden, by which I mean ha ha, just kidding.
Even so, today everyone could see Trump is a man who can’t adjust, won’t adjust, because to do so would mean changing a lifetime of habits, including the urge to rush toward television cameras to dominate people’s minds, thus accelerating the pickle he’s in, even as he believes he’s taking, not what he’s been given, but what he deserves. In his first time publicly addressing the multiple issues raised against his family’s businesses in the last week, Gov. Jim Justice on Friday distanced himself from the family business empire and doubled down on claims that the challenges are the result of political attacks against him instead of real consequences for years of unpaid bills and fines.
In regards to a legal motion filed by the federal government this week asking a court to put 23 of the Justice family coal companies in contempt for failure to pay years of overdue health and safety fines, Justice said he is not involved in the companies’ operations. “I’m not involved in anywhere close to the daily operations, anywhere close to what you would think that I would know of our businesses,” Justice said. “From time to time, you have a tough go up and everything, but every single time .
.. if there’s a problem, it gets taken care of .
.. We may be a few minutes late to the fire, but we always show up at the fire.
” In this case, a “few minutes late to the fire” seems to mean about 10 years, with the unpaid fines dating back to as late as 2014, according to court filings. The memorandum filed by the federal government in the U.S.
District Court for the Western District of Virginia on Tuesday said mines owned by the Justice companies racked up “hundreds” of citations and orders since 2014 for violations of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act as well as standards set by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The debt for those fines — which at one point totaled about $5.13 million — were meant to be paid in full by March .
To date, about $600,000 in fines remain unpaid. Justice opened Friday’s briefing by paying respects to a coal miner who died on Aug. 5 at a Taylor County mine.
The miner, 57-year-old Joe Crandall, is the third miner to die while at work in West Virginia in 2024, according to MSHA . “We’ve lost a hero in my book,” Justice said of Crandall at the beginning of the briefing. By the end of the briefing, Justice used Crandall’s death to transition into a political rant against energy policy he believes undermines the importance of coal mining and praised former President Donald Trump.
The governor did not respond directly to parts of a question on Friday asking if his companies would be paying the delinquent fines. The lack of payment, according to the attorneys for the federal government, has yielded real harm. The unpaid health and safety citations, they wrote, are a means to compel mine operators to work within the scope of the law and ensure their employees are working in safe conditions.
“[The companies’] continual evasion of their financial obligations under the Mine Act removes the incentive of these Defendants — and other mining companies — from complying with MSHA’s health and safety standards designed to protect the nations’ miners,” the memorandum reads. In regards to the family’s Greenbrier Hotel — which is set to go up for public auction later this month due to the Justice family defaulting on millions in bank loans — Justice said leaders at JPMorgan were pursuing the foreclosure because of his politics. “It almost approaches blackmail,” Justice said of the bank’s move to recoup some of the $9.
4 million it’s still owed from loans to the Justice family by auctioning the hotel. Justice is currently running a Republican campaign for the U.S.
Senate, where he is heavily favored to win in the deep red state. “This is all about Jim Justice being the one that flips the United States Senate,” Justice told reporters on his weekly news briefing Friday. “It’s about trying to twist Jim Justice or hurt Jim Justice from a political standpoint, there is no question whatsoever that it’s about anything but that.
” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has vocally defended former President Donald Trump and his supporters against criticism from Democrats. Trump told reporters last month that, if elected in November, he may consider Dimon to serve as U.S.
Treasury Secretary. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence.
Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: [email protected] . Follow West Virginia Watch on Facebook and X .
Former Democratic congressional candidate Ike McCorkle, who recently lost his primary bid to run against Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 4th District, was arrested earlier this week for allegedly violating a protection order filed against him by a family member. McCorkle, 45, appeared in Douglas County Court shortly after the arrest, his second this year, and posted a $1,000 bond on a misdemeanor charge.
McCorkle is scheduled for a sentencing hearing on Oct. 8. In the meantime, the judge issued a mandatory protection order on top of the original order.
The mandatory court order serves as additional protection for his uncle, Jim McCorkle, and Jim’s family members. A violation of this order could result in additional criminal charges, including contempt of court, arrest or harsher penalties. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Ike McCorkle was first arrested in January after sending an email to Jim, who had a protection order in place that began on Aug.
23, 2022, and expires on Aug. 23 this year. Under the order, which also protects Jim’s wife, daughter and two grandchildren, McCorkle was directed not to make contact of any kind, including email.
Yet, according to Jim, McCorkle sent 14 family members, including Jim’s brother, sisters and other close relatives, an email this week directing them to “tell Uncle Jim that he is a child abusing petty, disgusting, arrogant, cowardice, lying piece of dog feces that has never served a day in his life.” Reached by phone, McCorkle declined to comment for this story. In the email, McCorkle wrote that he is in the process of getting Jim’s claims and legal actions thrown out and that once he does he plans on suing Jim for defamation and other alleged offenses.
Five days before he sent that email, McCorkle pleaded guilty to the charges stemming from his January arrest and admitted to violating the court-ordered protection order. In the plea agreement, Chief Deputy District Attorney Garrik Storgaard agreed to a sentencing hearing in early October that includes an investigation into whether McCorkle should be allowed to possess a firearm as part of his probation terms. McCorkle holds a federal firearms license and owns a firearms business called Uncle Ike’s Firearms Emporium.
It’s unclear if the terms of that settlement agreement, which included six months of supervised probation and the completion of a court-ordered mental health evaluation and treatment, will change based on McCorkle’s recent contact with Jim’s family and arrest. McCorkle lost his third attempt to win the 4th Congressional District seat in July after his primary opponent, Trisha Calvarese, earned 45% of the vote to his 41%. He ran unopposed in the 2020 and 2022 Democratic primaries but lost to former U.
S. Rep. Ken Buck in the general election.
Editor’s note : This story was updated at 7:45 p.m., Aug.
9, 2024, to correct the date of the sentencing hearing. SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST. Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: [email protected] .
Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and X . U.S.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) and former U.S.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake) were each targeted in swatting attempts days after winning their party’s nomination for U.S.
Senate. During a campaign event on Friday, Slotkin confirmed there had been an incident of swatting — falsely calling emergency services to and deceiving them into sending armed police to another person’s address — at her home in Holly. “I wasn’t there.
It, you know, pulled out a bunch of law enforcement who should have been doing other things and should have been working on real security threats,” Slotkin told reporters “We’ve turned it over to the [U.S.] Capitol Police, they’re doing an investigation and we want to hold people accountable.
” Rogers spoke out against the incident prior to a notice from his own campaign reporting a swatting attempt against Rogers’ family. “The reports that Rep. Slotkin’s home was ‘swatted’ last night are horrific and I am glad to hear that she was not harmed,” Rogers said in a post on X .
“As a former FBI agent I can tell you that diverting law enforcement toward fake crimes is dangerous and can lead to very bad outcomes. I know this because I was a victim of a similar incident in 2013. It’s my sincere hope that the perpetrators are found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Rogers said.
Former U.S. Rep.
Peter Meijer (R-Grand Rapids) also weighed in, calling the attempt “disgusting.” “Unfortunately in Michigan, candidates for office have to publicly list the address of their home residence in order to qualify for the ballot,” Meijer said in a post . “It’s important to confirm candidate residency requirements, but given threats to public officials there has to be a better way to balance this need with privacy and security concerns.
” On Friday, Rogers spokesperson Chris Gustafson released a statement reporting Rogers’ family had also been targeted in a swatting incident. “Today, family members of Mike Rogers were the target of a swatting attempt at their home in Livingston County. Michigan State Police responded to the false threat and thankfully no one at the home was harmed.
Mike and his family are beyond grateful for the professionalism and swift response of law enforcement,” Gustafson said. “This is the second time that Mike has been the target of a swatting, first in 2013 as a member of congress, and reports that Rep. Slotkin was also the target yesterday are a clear example of the deeply concerning trend of political violence that has quickly become the norm,” Gustafson said.
“This kind of violence cannot be tolerated and it is our hope that those responsible will be quickly prosecuted and held accountable..” Michigan State Police Lt.
Rene Gonzalez confirmed state police told the Advance in an email that an MSP sergeant responded to an address in Genoa Township for a report of a domestic situation who later determined it was a false report after making contact with the female homeowner. While state police could not confirm if the home was connected to Rogers, Gustafson previously confirmed that Rogers was living with his sister-in-law in Genoa Township near Brighton while awaiting construction of his home in White Lake Township. Slotkin later responded to the incident on X , calling the news “deeply troubling.
” “I am glad to hear both he and his family were not harmed. This type of behavior is not acceptable in public life. I thank Michigan State Police for their swift and professional response and I hope those responsible are investigated and held accountable by law enforcement,” Slotkin said.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J.
Demas for questions: [email protected] . Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X .
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