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- Trump’s War Lacks a Marketing Plan
A year ago yesterday, President Trump turned the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom to try to boost the slumping sales of his then-pal Elon Musk’s electric-car company. A few months ago, Trump declared from behind the Resolute Desk that he was Boeing’s “salesman of the year,” claiming to have helped facilitate the purchase of hundreds of aircraft. And long before he entered politics, Trump slapped his name on just about anything—apartment buildings, steaks, even a dubious for-profit university—to market it to the masses. Trump will sell anything.He has now made one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency: launching a war against Iran. The conflict, which is well into its second week, has widened throughout the Middle East, sent oil prices skyrocketing, and caused tumult in the financial markets. Yet Trump has not sold the war. In many ways, he hasn’t even tried.The absence of a sales strategy is all the more confounding when you consider the political stakes. The upcoming midterm elections were supposed to be about the economy. That was perhaps Trump’s most effective issue in the 2024 presidential campaign, as voters grew frustrated with the stubborn inflation that permeated Joe Biden’s presidency. Trump vowed to fix it, but his record over the past 15 months is inconsistent: Yes, inflation has cooled some, but last month’s jobs report was brutal; the president’s tariffs have created confusion and kept costs high; and the economy is starkly stratified—the rich are doing great, and everyone else is decidedly less so. Republicans have been on a losing streak in a series of elections, and poll after poll reveals a clear disapproval of Trump’s handling of the economy.But there were some real silver linings. Chief among them: gas prices. Ron Klain, who was Biden’s first White House chief of staff, told me a few years ago that the first thing he did each morning while in that role—even before seeing if the president had called—was check the price of a gallon of gas. Bill Clinton was equally obsessed, realizing that gas-station signs were billboards for the nation’s economy. Trump made the low cost of gas a staple in his stump speech and gave it a central spot in his State of the Union address a few weeks ago. It was key in White House talking points for Republicans pitching voters to keep them in power: See, things are getting better.… [TheTopNews] Read More.6 days ago - A Police Report About a House Candidate Surprised the White HouseThree days after President Trump announced his “Complete and Total Endorsement” of the Louisiana congressional candidate Blake Miguez, the Republican contender posted a video from outside the West Wing boasting of his close relationship with Trump and his team. “I just got done having some great meetings with the White House,” he told his supporters on February 7.What he did not say—either publicly or to Trump’s advisers at the time—was that there was a political bombshell about to drop on his campaign for Louisiana’s deep-red Fifth Congressional District. Months earlier, when Miguez was running for the U.S. Senate, a 2007 police report had surfaced that showed that Miguez’s former girlfriend had accused him of rape and other abusive behavior, including locking her in bedrooms, taking away her keys, and holding her down. The Miguez campaign denies the claims.In the report, which I obtained, the woman described to police how Miguez had sex with her even though she told him no, and then followed her when she fled the home. She told police that she’d hidden behind a car near a convenience store until a friend could join her, then called 911. An officer took her to a hospital for a rape-kit examination, the report stated. Miguez, who was then 25 years old, was detained and questioned. After the woman, then 22, told a detective that she did not want to press charges, none were filed. “I called 911 cause I honestly was/am scared!” she wrote in a voluntary statement to the police.The police report has put the president in a difficult position, because Trump has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and was found liable for sexual abuse in a New York civil trial. The president has denied any wrongdoing. Two people familiar with the White House endorsement process told me that Trump’s top advisers were not informed of the police report or the rape accusation before the president endorsed. That has raised concerns that Miguez either wasn’t fully vetted or wasn’t forthcoming about discoverable documents from his past. The report has been circulating in Louisiana for months, according to people familiar with the effort to uncover it, and last fall, a private investigator requested public records related to the woman that have since been used to try to undermine her credibility.“It has been widely discussed amongst the political crowd that there was a massive bomb,” one Republican who works… [TheTopNews] Read More.7 days ago
- The Republican Who Wants to Banish His Own ConstituentsThe Islamic Center of Columbia, Tennessee—a small city about 45 miles south of Nashville—had been around for only a few years when white supremacists burned it down. On a Saturday in early 2008, three young men went to the mosque armed with spray paint and Molotov cocktails. According to a federal indictment, they first defaced the exterior walls with swastikas and phrases including White Power. Then they broke into the building and set it aflame.“Everything on the inside was charred,” a former member of the Islamic Center told me. “The roof had come down, and they had to demolish the building afterwards.” The mosque, which had a few dozen members, had been the first in Columbia and was, for a time, the only Muslim house of worship between Nashville and Huntsville, Alabama. After the fire, its leaders bought an empty church building nearby and converted it into a new mosque, though they initially kept their plans for the space a secret to avoid a community backlash.The former member who related this to me asked that I not publish his name, because nearly two decades later, the Muslim community in middle Tennessee is again on edge. The membership of the rebuilt Islamic Center of Columbia is smaller but still active. Its mosque sits less than a mile from the district office of the area’s U.S. House member, Andy Ogles. But Representative Ogles, a Republican in his second term, doesn’t seem to want Muslims to reside in his district. And he doesn’t want them anywhere else in the country, for that matter. “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” Ogles posted on X on Monday. “Pluralism is a lie.”[Ali Breland: Meet the new Proud Boys]Ogles is a Trump loyalist who has proposed amending the Constitution to allow the president a third term. Ogles has long denigrated Muslims; he’s pushed for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (who was born in Uganda and with whom Trump has lately been chummy) to be denaturalized and deported, and just last week, he called for a ban on immigration from several majority-Muslim countries. His comments on Monday were more sweeping, and a more direct attack on America’s constitutional values. They also imply an outright rejection of thousands of Ogles’s own constituents.Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District includes parts of Nashville and several counties to the south. For 20 years, its House representative was a centrist Democrat, Jim Cooper, who… [TheTopNews] Read More.7 days ago
- 0% intro APR until 2024 is 100% insane
[TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago - The Axe Files with David AxelrodGo beyond the soundbites and get to know some of the most interesting players in politics. [TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
- Margins of ErrorLook closely at almost anything and you'll find data—lots of it. But what are those numbers really saying about who we are and what we believe? Harry Enten is on a mission to find out. [TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
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