THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

American socialists are convinced that they have a media-training problem.In the past year, members of the Democratic Socialists of America, the country’s largest leftist organization, have won electoral victories in places such as New York City and Michigan, drawing a spotlight that the group has struggled to handle.Last month, the DSA’s co-chairs, Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique, gave several high-profile interviews that even many of their most fervent supporters agree were disastrous. The two leaders struggled to give straight answers to simple questions, and they defended outlandish policies, such as abolishing prisons and police. They seemed to present socialists exactly the way their opponents caricature them: as extremist, unserious, and unprepared.In damage-control mode, many of DSA’s defenders on social media are repeating the phrase media training as though it were a mantra. If only the group’s leaders had been better prepared to deal with media outlets, the thinking goes, they would have avoided this train wreck. The DSA’s communications director, Priscilla Yeverino, recently told Axios, “Our leaders aren’t politicians. They’re working-class people and new to doing media.”The idea that the DSA’s troubles on prime-time television are a technical matter solvable by the right training is surely comforting, but it is also wrong. The group has a bigger problem: It is led by unpractical extremists whose views are a far cry from those that its electorally successful figures, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, espouse.[Read: Why do rich kids love socialism?]This disconnect is partly explained by a sharp division within the DSA. One wing engages in mass politics and includes AOC, Mamdani, and other socialists committed to democratic principles. The other wing is sectarian and extremist: It evinces little commitment to democracy and includes open admirers of Hamas, the Iranian regime, and historical dictators such as Mao Zedong. If the interviews with the DSA’s co-chairs were embarrassing, that’s a result not of a lackluster media performance but of the actual positions the group has embraced.A closer look at the interviews confirms this. Romer, who belongs to the sectarian wing, evidently did not know what the 2000 Camp David Summit was and could not say what “taxing the hell out of millionaires,” as she demanded, would look like in practice. When asked about authoritarianism in Cuba, she praised the country’s constitution and suggested that Americans should learn from it.Maybe media training could have taught Romer what… [TheTopNews] Read More.

David Huerta sat on a steel bed too small for his burly frame in a Los Angeles jail last summer and looked out a small rectangular window at Dodger Stadium, where he’d once spent evenings with his two boys. He was the kid who’d made good, although it hadn’t been easy. His mother died from breast cancer when he was 4. He was raised in southeast L.A. by his dad, a veteran of the Korean War turned Teamster, who paid the bills by loading and unloading cargo—and, when he was out of work, took his sons with him to the hiring hall. Huerta steered clear of gangs and instead went to college, became a union organizer, and worked his way up to become president of the largest labor union in the state, the Service Employees International Union of California.Yet here he was.He was sure that he hadn’t done anything illegal. He had screamed at masked federal agents as they executed search warrants at a downtown apparel business that was suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants. He had been angry, no question—especially at President Trump. He had flipped his middle fingers at the masked federal officers. At one point, he sat down in front of the business’s gate; later, he encouraged other protesters to form a picket circle in front of it. When an officer warned him he might be arrested, he replied, “I can’t hear you through your fucking mask.” And when a police van tried to enter, he stood with his hands on his hips nearby. He considered all of that well within the bounds of his First Amendment rights. But he couldn’t stop second-guessing his decision to show up at such a volatile scene alone.Huerta wondered how his wife and sons, his niece and nephew, and his other family members would react to seeing videos of his arrest. He wondered if he had somehow jeopardized the safety of his union’s hundreds of thousands of members by drawing unwanted headlines. He wondered if his arrest would make others more fearful of opposing this administration’s actions. He wondered when he would be released—or if he would be. He wondered if he could survive prison, should it come to that. And he wondered what his late dad would’ve thought of him sitting on a thin, stained mattress as his cellmate on the top bunk managed a comedown from drugs. Would he have… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Like late-summer humidity, Hasan Piker hangs heavy over the discourse.At a rally on Monday, Vice President Vance brought up the hard-left streamer in an attempt to paint the Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed as anti-American. Last week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Piker’s recent statements about Jewish Americans  “dangerous and anti-Semitic.” Senators Jon Ossoff, Cory Booker, and Jacky Rosen said much the same. Facing questions about a totally different set of Piker comments, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hustled into an elevator.Some Democrats are trying to dismiss the 35-year-old political commentator as irrelevant. He’s just “a streamer in California,” El-Sayed said on Saturday, waving off questions from reporters. Piker himself has spent the past week casting himself as the victim of hysteria. “I have become this media cycle’s ‘trans athletes’ or ‘migrant caravan,’” he posted on X.But it was El-Sayed who first made Piker central to his campaign by bringing him out on the trail, partying poolside with him at an influencer event, and celebrating with him during his Election Night rally. In his thousands of hours of streaming, Piker has produced a dense catalog of comments spanning the spectrum from stupid to incredibly offensive, including several iterations of the phrase “I hate America” and, perhaps most memorably, that “America deserved 9/11.” (He quickly attempted to walk it back.) Piker also flaunts his authoritarian sympathies, calling Mao Zedong “one of the great leaders of this world” and counting the collapse of the Soviet Union among the “catastrophes” of the 20th century. Last week, he warned that “eventually someone is going to come around and take action” against American Jews who are “singularly invested in Israel.”  [Read: What El-Sayed does next matters ]Hasan Piker is part of the conversation now. He has become central to the Republican strategy in Michigan, where El-Sayed will continue to be asked about him. So, too, will Democrats across the country. The question ahead of November is whether their answers will satisfy voters.El-Sayed has moved away from Piker since winning the primary last month. The streamer has not been on the trail in Michigan. “I have spoken with the good doctor,” Representative Jim Clyburn told reporters of El-Sayed, who has a medical degree. “He has apologized. He says he will not campaign with Piker anymore.” After Piker’s comments last week about American Jews, El-Sayed said in a statement that anti-Semitism is a “scourge” and that “I stand against… [TheTopNews] Read More.

On August 8, former Representative Eric Swalwell boarded a United Airlines flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Washington, D.C. He didn’t know it, but federal agents were watching him throughout the nine-hour trip.The FBI had asked the Federal Air Marshal Service to covertly monitor Swalwell on board and to watch him use his electronic devices, to see whether its officers could visually ascertain his passcodes, according to records I obtained that have not previously been reported on. Air marshals are trained to blend in with other passengers and quietly keep tabs on their subjects, who are usually suspected terrorists or potential hijackers, not politicians.But Swalwell is an enemy of sorts to the Trump administration. For years, the Democrat has been one of Donald Trump’s most visible political antagonists, having served as a manager in the president’s second impeachment trial. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has called Swalwell a “scumbag” on national television. And FBI Director Kash Patel, the leader of the agency that wanted Swalwell monitored, described him as one of the “corrupt actors of the first order” in his 2023 book, Government Gangsters.The directive for air-marshal surveillance said that Swalwell was the “focus” of an FBI investigation, but it didn’t provide additional details. Law enforcement has good reason to investigate the 45-year-old. This past spring, a former staff member accused Swalwell of twice raping her while she was intoxicated. A woman in California accused Swalwell of drugging and raping her after he’d promised to assist with her career. Three more women have accused Swalwell of making unwanted advances and sending them lewd text messages, including nude pictures of himself. Swalwell has denied the allegations, but authorities in Los Angeles and Manhattan have opened a criminal investigation. In April, as the number of accusers mounted, Swalwell suspended his campaign for governor of California and resigned from his seat in Congress.A week after the flight from Germany, Swalwell got off another plane at San Francisco International Airport. FBI agents were waiting for him with a search warrant. They seized his mobile phone and personal computer. (It’s not clear whether, by that point, the FBI knew the passcodes to unlock those devices.) The next day, agents searched Swalwell’s home in Washington, D.C. Documents filed in federal court in California suggest that the bureau is investigating Swalwell in connection with the sexual-assault cases in Los Angeles and New York.Despite the seriousness of the… [TheTopNews] Read More.

If you’re short on cash, there is someone in Riga, Latvia, who can help. “You can literally make 100k a month with this campaign,” a young man with blond curls and a thick accent says into a camera. All you have to do is post on social media video clips of “anything that supports Republican.” Unfamiliar with U.S. politics? No problem: “If you’re not from the USA, like, What the fuck is even Republicans? like me,” then simply go to Gemini or ChatGPT, he suggests, “and be like ‘Yo, Gemini, I want some videos promoting Republican values. Give me ideas.’ Go to Gemini. Get ideas. Boom.”The man, who goes by Serviuos, is promoting a campaign called Elephant Clipping, run by his company, ClipIt. The company pays subcontractors, many from poorer countries in Eastern Europe and the global South, to chop up videos the company provides into bite-size pieces in the hope that the clips will go viral online.Such “clipping” operations have become a popular means of manipulating people’s attention. Brands, influencers, musical artists, and others spend six-figure sums on such promotional campaigns. Perhaps inevitably, the practice is now moving into politics, often without the transparency required to know exactly what is being served up and by whom. Five months before the midterms, though, Serviuos is up-front about the goal of the Elephant Clipping campaign: “So that republican win in USA,” he writes in one message. I sent Serviuos a list of questions about his work in American right-wing politics. He wrote back, “Seems very out of context,” but didn’t comment further.Many video-clipping services operate in relative secrecy so that the public isn’t aware of the manipulation of their social-media feeds. But the services also need to attract potential clippers. They typically rely on chat servers on Discord—an internet messaging app that was initially developed for gamers.After an anonymous tipster flagged Elephant Clipping to me, I was able to access its Discord server and other related political-clipping campaign chats just by clicking “Join,” noting on a form that I was based in the United States, and answering some questions about my availability and desire to clip. Once I was in, I could see the mechanics of the campaign, which pays huge sums of money to people—many of whom appeared to be outside the U.S.—to push video clips from accounts designed to look like those of ordinary Americans spontaneously touting reasons to… [TheTopNews] Read More.