Independent:
Trump holds seemingly pointless press conference filled with false claims
Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said that he has “agreed” to three debates in September
Former President Donald Trump spent nearly an hour at his Palm Beach, Florida, social club on Thursday ranting to a room full of reporters as he tries to grab the spotlight from a resurgent Democratic ticket fronted by Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Peggy Noonan/Wall Street Journal:
Kamala Picks a Midwestern Smoothie
With Trump floundering, she aims to turn out her ideological base, not to win over swing voter
Kamala Harris just won her third week in a row of the first three weeks of the hundred-day campaign. She kept everyone in the political class wondering who her vice-presidential nominee would be, made a surprising choice, and unveiled him at a Philadelphia rally that was boffo. Now the runup to the convention, which has so far included packed rallies in Eau Claire, Wis., and Detroit, where a crowd packed into a hangar, with Air Force Two in the background. She’s stealing Donald Trump’s signature move. I continue to believe the woman isn’t creating a movement but a movement is creating her, and showing up.
Mr. Trump spent most of the week having what a GOP strategist told Politico is a “public nervous breakdown.” He has been particularly Saturnine and gloomy in his late-night postings. At every event since she was (still somewhat mysteriously!) elevated to her position as presidential nominee, most everything has been, for Ms. Harris, bright good fortune.
For the first time this week I thought people were wondering about the impact of Mr. Trump’s age. He is 78. He hasn’t been able to focus, make his case. Is he, in another irony of 2024, turning into Joe Biden?
This from a Reagan conservative who seems sane because, you know, MAGA.
Illustrative of the tendency for pundits to say Kamala is good because Biden was bad. Just say “huh” and move past it. They need their hook to get readers and listeners. But as far as Harris being buoyed by the moment, by a movement, Noonan is the better wordsmith.
TPM:
Trump Shows Us What Election Denialism 2.0 Will Look Like
The Republican Party has been resurrecting old myths about non-citizens voting this spring and summer, a baseless concern that, as my colleague Khaya Himmelman has reported, the party seems to feel has some rhetorical value. Trump and his allies, like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), have braided the much-hyped border crisis together with unfounded fears of undocumented immigrants heading to the polls en masse to vote for Democrats; House Republicans have pushed legislation that would block non-citizens from voting in federal elections — the fact that this is already illegal and, also, barely ever happens be damned.
In his tirade on Thursday, Trump all but confirmed that this form of election denialism will be in heavy rotation in a few months if Harris beats him, suggesting some amorphous “them” is trying to flood America with migrants.
Craig Gilbert/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Marquette poll shows striking changes in Wisconsin battleground race
Amid a summer of wild political turns, the fight for Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes is seemingly back to where it was six weeks ago — a jump ball, according to a new statewide poll by the Marquette Law School.
But under the surface, there are some striking signs of change.
Chief among them: Enthusiasm of Democratic voters has soared in the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal from the race and Vice President Kamala Harris’ emergence as the party’s new candidate against Republican former President Donald Trump.
Amy Walter/Cook Political Report:
Presidential Campaign Reset: Arizona, Georgia and Nevada Move From Lean Republican to Toss Up
The FiveThirtyEight state polling averages from July 21, the last day that Biden was the Democratic nominee, found the president trailing in the Sun Belt states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona by more than five points. Today, Trump’s lead is well within the margin of error in Arizona and Georgia. There weren’t enough polls for a Nevada average, but recent CBS and Bloomberg surveys have Harris with a two point lead. In the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Trump was leading by anywhere from two to four points, Harris now has a margin of error lead in those states of anywhere from 0.7 to 1.6%.
Harris is also seen more favorably today than she was a month ago. Back in early June, her favorability ratings were underwater by 16 points (37% favorable to 53% unfavorable). Today, they sit at 43% favorable to 49% unfavorable, or -6%. Trump has enjoyed a bit of a favorability bump as well, going from -12 in June, to -8 (43% to 52%) today.
Tom Nichols/The Atlantic:
The GOP Is a Messy Soap Opera Right Now
And J. D. Vance’s staff needs to take his phone away.
At the national level, GOP commentators seem especially flummoxed about the Walz rollout. They are, for now, trying mightily to make it seem as if Harris opting for Walz over Shapiro is evidence of roiling anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. Scott Jennings, who seems to be vying for the Jeffrey Lord Chair of Republican Sycophancy at CNN, mumbled that Harris chose Walz because the Democrats are “awash in anti-Semitism,” a smear that even his network colleagues on the panel wouldn’t let pass. Other Republicans have tried with increasing churlishness to make the charge stick online, and Trump himself has called Walz’s selection “insulting to Jewish people,” which, of course, makes no sense.
Meanwhile, J. D. Vance’s excruciating flameout as Trump’s running mate seems to have some Republicans wishing they could just drive him back to Ohio and leave him there. One source of the bad-mouthing appears to be the GOP strategist and former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who issued one of the greatest non-denial-denials in recent political history:
“When it comes to concerned people questioning the vetting or selection of JD Vance, the calls are coming in, not going out,” she said. “I’m not calling them and saying this is bad. People are asking me. They’re not just asking me. They’re asking lots of people.”
Washington Post:
Trump took a private flight with Project 2025 leader in 2022
Trump took the flight to speak at a Heritage Foundation conference, where he said, “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do."
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly denied knowing about the Project 2025 policy blueprint or the people behind it. “Have no idea who is in charge of it,” he wrote in a social media post in July.
But in April 2022, Trump shared a 45-minute private flight with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, according to people familiar with the trip, plane-tracking data and a photograph from on board the plane, which has not been previously reported. They flew together to a Heritage conference where Trump delivered a keynote address that gestured to Heritage’s forthcoming policy proposals.
“They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” Trump said in the speech.
Frank Bruni/New York Times:
There is no end to Trump’s hallucinatory disadvantages
Poor Trump. Always forced to compete on an uneven playing field.
Of all his feats of projection, which is psychology’s term for seeing your own methods and motivations in someone else, none fascinates me more than his incessant insistence that every one of his adversaries — that everyone, period — is the beneficiary of some scheme or scam that puts him at a disadvantage. If he triumphs nonetheless? It’s a testament to his peerless might. If he doesn’t? It was never a fair fight.
He’s the prince of self-pity, the bard of bellyaching, reportedly worked up over the imagined injustice or trickery of Harris’s late replacement of President Biden on the Democratic ticket. According to an article in The Washington Post this week, he told an ally: “It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too.”
The more assertively Trump presses a complaint, the more you know it’s bunk.
Dan Pfeiffer/”The Message Box” on Substack:
Why Trump's Plan to Brand Walz as Too Liberal Will Fail
Good luck turning the gun-owning, football coach into a member of the Squad.
After spending 12 hours grasping around for a message, the GOP and its sycophants in the MAGA media stumbled upon one. According to Politico:
Republicans’ insta-reaction yesterday to VP KAMALA HARRIS’ choice of Minnesota Gov. TIM WALZ as her running mate was immediate and genuine: They were positively giddy about not having to take on Pennsylvania Gov. JOSH SHAPIRO, the popular leader of the most important state on the electoral map.
“She went with the left-wing pick,” one GOP operative told us, calling it the outcome Republicans were “quietly rooting for.” Sen. STEVE DAINES (R-Mont.), charged with electing GOP senators in swing states across the country as NRSC chair, was even more succinct: “Thanks Kamala.”
So, the plan is to brand Tim Walz as a radical lefty, spinning the false yarn that Harris passed over Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly to appease Bernie Sanders and AOC. This reeks of desperation. A strategy that depends on making Tim Walz look out-of-touch by mainstream American values is one that is unlikely to succeed.
Cliff Schecter on Ted Cruz:
