SHOW NOTES: JMart Reaches For the Towel; Ignoring Biden

Head’s Up. You’re going to want to listen to my opening monologue today.

Welcome! We are thirteen days away from the election. Things are going poorly for Kamala Harris in the early voting in Arizona and Nevada. You can’t make a lot of early voting, but when Democrats send up warning signals, pay attention.

Please Stop Being Stupid. A group of Republican Sleuths have found a residence in Pennsylvania with 53 registered voters. They knocked on the door. No one was at home. They’ve referred the matter to lawyers, but they may need Jesus because they uncovered a retirement home for nuns. The nuns even have a website. Guess what? There are 53 nuns on the website identified as residents of the home and their names match the registered voters there. Maybe it was prayer time when someone knocked on the door. Or maybe they were out steering the hurricanes.

🚨JMart Reaches For the Towel. Jonathan Martin has been one of my favorite political reporters, even with his unearned air of “Don’t you know who I am? Only I know how this city truly works.” But I’ve found him more than a bit smug and condescending this year in his writings. I share his frustration with the relentless attacks for telling people unpopular but true things, as well as the right’s descent into batcrap-crazy conspiracies. But in February of 2023, Martin reported that Democrats thought Harris would be an awful candidate. Then, in February of 2024, insisted Republicans were nuts for thinking Democrats would throw Biden overboard. The subtitle of that piece was, and I quote, “The GOP fantasy crowd is so accustomed to conspiracy theories that they’re betting the Democrats will switch candidates at the last minute. Have they actually paid attention to politics?”

Well, actually, Republicans have paid quite a bit of attention to Democrats’ desire to acquire and never surrender power.

And since Democrats did do what Martin said they’d never do, he has given Harris every single benefit of the doubt—so much so that I have privately wondered if he was hoping to get the tell-all book deal on how she won.

He doesn’t sound too optimistic as of today. I texted a friend a few days ago and said that when Jonathan Martin turned pessimistic on Harris, we’d know she was beginning to resemble toast. Here we are. His towel hasn’t been thrown in yet, but it is in his hand ready to drop.

As An Aside. The biggest problem with so many DC reporters is they lack humility these days and also lack real curiosity.

Anti-Gun Democrat Accidentally Shoots a Reporter. Lucas Kunce is an anti-gun, very progressive Democrat running against Josh Hawley in Missouri. He doesn’t mention that in his ads — just that he is a Marine. Well, he is a Marine who violated basic gun safety and accidentally shot a reporter at an Adam Kinzinger organized fundraiser for Kunce in Missouri. I’m sure Kunce and the media will use this as more evidence for gun control. Note how the liberal Kansas City Star focuses not on Kunce violating basic gun safety, but bandaging the reporter Kunce shot.

Related. Here are pictures. No responsible gun owner would shoot steel targets with an AR-15 that were as close as those. That was absurdly irresponsible and, again, any responsible gun owner would have known. Kinzinger looks like a man who suddenly realized he was supporting a fool.

The October Surprise Gets Ready. Several people have sent me this from Mark Halperin. I do not know what story he has been pitched. My guess, given the chatter, is that it has to do with Trump’s mental health. Reporters are desperate to stop Trump at this point. They will do anything. You must understand that it is not just Democrats, but the American press corps itself that wants to stop Trump. Halperin is one of the exceptions to the rule. But if the other reporters jump the gun on a story, Trump can weaponize it against them. But yes, the next twelve days will be insane. More on the spaghetti hitting the wall below.

The Quiet Part Out Loud. President Joe Biden, on the campaign trail without Kamala Harris yesterday, said Donald Trump needed to be locked up. He then corrected himself and said, “Politically locked up.” The media gave Biden a pass they’d never give Trump. But it wasn’t just Biden being a threat to democracy, a current Administration official told Alex Thompson of Axios, “For better or worse, no one is listening to him anymore and his words have little power and less reach. It’s a blip. Gone in any meaningful way by mid-day tomorrow if it makes it that long.”

Most telling of all, after that quote, every reporter rapidly moved on. They got their marching orders and obliged.

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We’re At the Spaghetti At the Wall Phase Now

🚨Language Warning🚨

The Ameican press corps, not the Democrats, have reached the phase of throwing everything they can at the wall hoping that something sticks. The Atlantic, run by Jeffrey Goldberg and funded by Kamala Harris’s BFF Lauren Powell Jobs, accuses Trump of grousing about paying for a funeral.

There’s just one problem.

Every source is anonymous and all the on-the-record sources deny it. One of the denials is from the sister of the dead soldier. But despite on-the-record denials, the media will run with this story as credible because they need to.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who is respected in the newsrooms of DC and who give him a pass on this stuff, did this in 2020 right before that election. It was the story. Anonymous people said Trump referred to dead soldiers as “suckers and losers” and even the Trump haters like John Bolton denied it on the record.

But Goldberg uses his friends in the press and their shared hatred of Trump to override journalistic rules of propriety and insist it must be true. Goldberg, by the way, is the guy who fired Kevin Williamson from The Atlantic because the gals got on the fainting couch that the magazine might hire a man who didn’t use tampons.

At MSNBC, CNN, ABC, etc. the conversations have turned to the serious nature of Trump’s second term being fascist. Jon Karl at ABC News and George Stephanouplous are beside themselves.

“The guardrails will be gone,” George says. They’re so serious. Why did they give constant passes to and make excuses for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four years? Why did they turn a constant blind eye to Joe Biden’s condition.

Just a few weeks ago, Jon Karl tried to lecture Tom Cotton on Kamala Harris’s healthcare positions and Cotton had to point out Harris has never walked back her position about ending private insurance. Karl, defiantly, insisted she had, beclowing himself in the process.

Now they’re at, “Oh my God he could win. Scream louder.”

People hate you guys in the press. Excuse my language, but too many of you have come off as arrogant self-righteous pricks who have taken a side, don’t care about the legitimate concerns of the other side, and are in such a bubble that you cannot simple process honestly the claims of the other side. Have you even kept track of all the stories you reported on to tell voters they were wrong about the economy, jobs, etc. only to see corrections to the data that proved the voters right? Because there are a lot and you keep doing it.

If a Republican told you he worked at a McDonalds in the 1980’s and refused to identify the location, you’d turn over every stone till you found the store and deny it was so until then. Kamala Harris said she did and you’ll accept anything she says — or her staff says like Jon Karl has repeatedly done.

Let’s go full circle to Jonathan Martin who did a full year of writings about every Democrat knew Harris would be a bad candidate and then decided to lecture Republicans that they were so stupid he would explain to them the way the world works. There was simply no possible way they would ditch Joe Biden.

NBC News referred to that same idea as a “quiet conspiracy theory” circulated by Republicans.

You jackassess — we were right. And you played a part in propping up this whole Biden regime. So you can have Donald Trump now. His victory is your punishment for being a bunch of arrogrant, know-it-all pricks who lack the decency and humility to consider maybe Republicans sometimes have legitimate points and maybe people outside your bubble really do think the economy sucks, not just because Fox News tells them so.

The press is about to get exactly what it deserves — more discussions of Arnold Palmer’s penis. Will you lookie here:

Where Is John Kelly?

The media is all abuzz about John Kelly saying Trump said something else nice about Hitler. It plays into their current meltdown. But where is Kelly? It is really notable he is willing to say this stuff of camera, but where are the sit down interviews.

I’d suggest that if Kelly really did think Trump were the second coming of Adolph Hitler with the paint brush swapped for spray tan that Kelly would be doing wall to wall media interviews and out there on the campaign trail with Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris.

Where is he? It is odd.

As an aside, remember Chevron is dead. That case, killed this past year by the Supreme Court, will undermine Republicans as much as Democrats. Trump cannot rule like a dictator when the courts, not the Trump appointed bureaucrats, get to have a say in shaping regulatory policy. A President can only operate as a dictator in the Executive Branch and now, thanks to the Supreme Court, is even more restrained.

The Schedule Tells Us A Lot

J.D. Vance is in Las Vegas, NV today.

Donald Trump is in Georgia today doing multiple stops.

Tim Walz is in Kentucky.

Kamala Harris is no where. Well, technically, she is in Pennsylvania, but she is doing nothing except a CNN event tonight. It is odd.

Democrats are growing really anxious about cracks appearing in the blue wall, particularly in Pennsylvania. As I mentioned up top and this morning, the trendlines for Harris in Nevada at the end are not good either. Here is Nate Silver’s chart. You can visibly see Harris’s support soften in Nevada.

Glad This Got Asked

Here’s a reporter doing her job and a politician who should have an answer, but does not. Note Kamala Harris’s lack of eye contact in the answer.

In Other News

• Georgia audit finds 20 noncitizens registered to vote (AJC)

• Los Angeles Dodgers legend Fernando Valenzuela dies (Axios)

• Headquarters of state-owned Turkish Aerospace Industries hit by deadly "terrorist attack," official says (CBS)

• Democrats Are Growing More Anxious Over Deadlocked Race (WSJ)

• Home Sales on Track for Worst Year Since 1995 (WSJ)

• North Korean troops are already in Russia, Lloyd Austin confirms (ABC)

• CNN Must Open Up Its Books in Defamation Lawsuit Over Afghanistan Withdrawal Reporting, Judge Rules (Mediaite)

• 2024 NFL trade deadline: Players to watch, team needs, rumors (ESPN)

• McDonald’s analysts are hoping outbreak resembles Wendy’s and isn’t more troubling, like Chipotle’s (CNBC)

• A Trump Promise Could Be “Catastrophic” to California’s Wine Industry (SF Chronicle) [Turns out wine can’t be made without illegal aliens]

• Montana Dem Operative Caught Tampering With Ballot Box (Daily Wire)