Nelba L. Márquez-Greene/WaPo, one of the Newtown moms, on Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones:
There is a special insult in Jones’s segment being aired on Kelly’s program on Father’s Day. The grief of fathers is often ignored. In Newtown and across the country, bereaved fathers often grieve the loss of their loved ones without any support. On a weekend that honors dads, showcasing Jones — a man who has denied that our children were murdered — shows a breathtaking lack of sensitivity.
Kelly’s rationale for airing the interview is to “shine a light” on conspiracy theorists. I would argue that we can shine a light on better things. We can shine a light on brave communities that have to reorganize after tragedy. We can shine a light on grief and the solutions needed to fix some of our problems. We can do better than shining a light on someone willing to make money in a way that causes harm to so many.
As Americans, we will always be curious and courageous in seeking truth. But when this search for truth becomes an exploitative venture to stir up controversy for ratings and financial gain, and here I’m talking about NBC, we must recognize the consequences.
The piece aired last night. I didn’t watch. Enjoy the backlash, NBC, for your decision to put ratings above human decency.
Axios:
Trump's new campaign: stoke the base, sully the investigators
A milestone, on Day 148 of the Trump presidency: Amid all the bluster and bellyaching, President Trump is acknowledging for the first time — with both public and private actions — that he's fighting to save his presidency.
It's his next campaign — triggered by his own pique and carelessness, long before he would have to formally gear up for 2020. This is a big reason nearly every action — and reaction — is aimed at shoring up his base.
In moments of clarity amid his fits of rage, Trump knows he boxed himself in politically and legally by firing FBI Director Jim Comey, triggering what he though he could avoid: an all-consuming investigation focusing on him.
Pause for a moment to soak in that the President of United States confirmed on the record via Twitter that Mueller is gunning for him. And attacked his own deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein (who now might resign or recuse himself).
And who is that base? Lots from WaPo on that to follow, based on new joint polling with Kaiser Family Foundation.
Dan Balz/WaPo:
Rural America lifted Trump to the presidency. Support is strong, but not monolithic.
At a time when his job approval rating is in net negative territory nationally, more than half of all adults (54 percent) in rural America say they approve of the way he is doing his job, according to a new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey. His approval rating among rural Americans is 10 percentage points higher than among suburbanites and 22 points higher than among city dwellers.
At the same time, however, any suggestion of rural America as near-monolithic in its support for the president represents a sizable oversimplification. Even in areas of the country where Trump scored some of his biggest margins, he is a divisive figure — loved by his supporters but disliked by many who voted for Hillary Clinton. Four in 10 adults in rural America disapprove of his job performance, a hefty number for a president still in the early stages of his tenure.
My working thesis: “I like and support Trump because even though he’s a jerk, wrong and embarrassing, he fights for Our Tribe when no one else will. That’s why any given mistake — from Russia entanglement to being a grifter/emoluments — won’t matter. Who else fights for us, the rural America who see small town life as good? Every fight he has is a fight for us.”
It may not be overt racism and antipathy for People of Color for all of them (it certainly is for some). But the end result looks the same, and white evangelicals protecting Christian America (as they see it) is a big part of the base.
Jose DelReal and Scott Clement/WaPo:
Poll of rural Americans shows deep cultural divide with urban centers
The political divide between rural and urban America is more cultural than it is economic, rooted in rural residents’ deep misgivings about the nation’s rapidly changing demographics, their sense that Christianity is under siege and their perception that the federal government caters most to the needs of people in big cities, according to a wide-ranging poll that examines cultural attitudes across the United States.
The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of nearly 1,700 Americans — including more than 1,000 adults living in rural areas and small towns — finds deep-seated kinship in rural America, coupled with a stark sense of estrangement from people who live in urban areas. Nearly 7 in 10 rural residents say their values differ from people who live in big cities, including about 4 in 10 who say their values are “very different.”
That divide is felt more extensively in rural America than in cities: About half of urban residents say their values differ from rural people, with about 20 percent of urbanites saying rural values are “very different.”
Maria Saccetti and Emily Guskin/WaPo:
In rural America, fewer immigrants and less tolerance
An insurance salesman in rural Louisiana worries that immigration will sink the United States further into debt. In the Ohio countryside, a father of five says immigrants lower wages. But in New Orleans, a lifelong urbanite credits immigrants with rebuilding her hurricane-scarred neighborhood.
A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of nearly 1,700 Americans — including more than 1,000 in rural areas — reveals that attitudes toward immigrants form one of the widest gulfs between U.S. cities and rural communities.
Read the above, it’s short but very good.
Letters to the editor, LA Times:
When Kamala Harris and women everywhere do their job well, they get called 'hysterical'
Max Boot/FP:
Donald Trump Is Proving Too Stupid to Be President
“You know, I’m, like, a smart person.” Uh huh.
Why does he know so little? Because he doesn’t read books or even long articles. “I never have,” he proudly told a reporter last year. “I’m always busy doing a lot.” As president, Trump’s intelligence briefings have been dumbed down, denuded of nuance, and larded with maps and pictures because he can’t be bothered to read a lot of words. He’d rather play golf.
Neil Irwin/The Upshot:
Trump Is Offering Populism, Minus the Free Candy
The thing about populism is it usually involves doing things that are popular.
This is something that European nationalists and Latin American strongmen have long known. When they come to power, they aim to deliver concrete benefits to their supporters, even at the cost of their nations’ long-term fiscal health.
President Trump has delivered on some of the things he promised supporters on the campaign trail: He has appointed a conservative Supreme Court justice; begun more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws; and directed his appointees to slash regulations on fossil fuel and other industries. But in terms of spending, Mr. Trump has embraced the austere preferences of congressional Republicans, even when that approach has contradicted his campaign promises.
Paul Kane/WaPo:
The Democratic establishment is on the verge of having its best one-week performance in a very long time.
Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam captured the Democratic gubernatorial nomination Tuesday with the full force of the Old Dominion’s party machine behind him, winning by a larger-than-expected margin of almost 12 percentage points over a one-term congressman who ran as an insurgent in the mold of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
On Tuesday outside Atlanta, Democrats have a very real chance to win a special election for a House seat that has been safely in Republican hands since 1978, using first-time candidate Jon Ossoff, 30, who has assiduously stuck to an offend-no-voter strategy drawn up by leading party operatives in Washington.
If Ossoff can pull off this victory in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, it will deliver a much-needed positive jolt to the party apparatus. For weeks, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been under siege for focusing heavily on this seat in the Atlanta suburbs while paying far less attention to three other special elections in districts that are more rural, less educated and went for President Trump by large margins in last year’s election.
Ossoff is figured to have a hair’s breadth lead in GA-06, where a win is far from assured. It’s a Republican leaning district which voted for Trump by 2. But to be competitive is remarkable. Best to look at VA and GA together.
Dan Balz/WaPo:
Trump’s contradictory coalition roils elections in Virginia, Georgia
Many analysts believed Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman and adviser to President George W. Bush, would cruise to victory in the primary. Instead, he barely defeated Corey Stewart, a Trumpian candidate who campaigned against immigration and for the preservation of the state’s Confederate monuments.
More evidence of the Trump effect on politics exists in Georgia ahead of Tuesday’s special congressional election in the 6th District, which covers suburban Atlanta. Pre-Trump, Republican Karen Handel probably would have held a comfortable lead. In the age of Trump, she is at risk of losing to Democrat Jon Ossoff.Days before the vote, neither side is confident of the outcome in a district that former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney won by 24 points in 2012 but Trump won by just 2 in November.
The Virginia and Georgia elections offer two angles from which to examine the impact of Trump’s presidency on the politics of both parties. In Virginia, it is the story of a GOP coalition at odds with itself. In Georgia, it is Trump’s capacity to unite otherwise fractious Democrats as he unnerves many of the well-educated Republican voters.
It is entirely possible that, as usual, the Dems in disarray stories are overblown. And it is also entirely possible that both VA and GA in their separate ways prove the point that Trump voters being solid and monolithic is a false construct. VA moderates voted D, leaving the field for a Trumpian candidate, and a red GA district is competitive because of Trump.
Now is not the time to shame these moderate voters, even if it’s perfectly fair to not count on them as solidly ours. They need to be won over, and in a way that doesn’t lose and disrespect our base (women and PoC, first among equals). It would be helpful to do it in a way that doesn’t disrespect rural America, too, although sometimes you can do your best and be left with outvoting them.
That’s ok, too, because we are not abandoning anyone.