The '24 Seven - 2/19/24
The top seven stories shaping the race for the White House - 2/19/24
Hello, and welcome to The ‘24 Seven - a daily roundup of the top seven stories shaping the 2024 race for the White House. If you see something I missed or have suggestions, drop me a note - 24sight@substack.com.
Happy Presidents Day. Coming tomorrow, my latest rankings of the would-be Trump running mates.
Programming note - my colleagues
and and I broke the news yesterday of some big depositions coming up in the lawsuit against CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp. This news roundup is free, but our reporting requires time and money - please consider moving up to paid to get that scoop and more here. And a huge thanks to all our supporters, the news doesn’t stop and neither do we.Cheers,
Tom
1 The cost of doing business
In honor of Presidents Day I asked the Galaxy Brain to cook up something incredible, and it did (see art above.) Just like the 2024 race for the White House, there’s layers to this — many of which seem incomprehensible — and generally inaccurate and overstated (though the interpretation is amusing.)
Pull back a moment, widen the aperture. The leading candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination is hawking golden sneakers … to pay for a historic $355 million fine imposed by New York judge Arthur Engoron who ruled that Trump and his family engaged in widespread and routine fraud.
A mutli-million dollar fine digging into real estate valuations, tax filings and top-level finance is complicated — and the reason Trump is selling shoes.
Golden sneakers are a soundbite and easily understandable - a punchline which can be fired off by the water cooler at work or over drinks after work. (Also of note was a former president being booed as he swooped in on a convention of sneaker enthusiasts.)
This tactic isn’t terribly surprising. The first time a former president had his mugshot taken, on charges that he led a racketeering effort to overthrow his election loss, he put it on merchandise to raise money for his lawyers’ bills.
2 Great America
Abraham Lincoln was the nation’s greatest president, as determined by presidential scholars who replied to the University of Houston’s Presidential Greatness Project survey. The survey measures impact, norm-setting, polarization and other measures to deem a president the “greatest”. Interesting: FDR beat out George Washington, who established the peaceful transfer of power as a bedrock of this democratic republic, for the second spot. (Trump pulled up dead last and Biden scored 14th on the list.)
(Meditation: Go the Gettysburg Battlefield sometime, stand there, quietly, and feel the sorrow and the promise of one of our country’s most defining moments. The Gettysburg Address still gives me chills.)
3 The other guys
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was confirmed dead by his friends and family, and hundreds of mourners who took to the streets to protest his death were arrested by Russian authorities, according to the New York Times.
Bill Kristol, a central architect of the neoconservative *and* Never Trump movements writes at
with Andrew Egger that a strong strategy for beating Trump in November requires “Hanging Putin Around Trump’s Neck.” They note the distinct, widespread and cemented antipathy among Americans for Russia’s president. One running thread in Trump’s political career has been a dichotomy of praising Putin repeatedly while equally attacking anyone who says he’s too close to him - so much so that “witch hunt” is now a bedrock slogan of the modern Republican Party.Which may explain why, on this Presidents Day, Trump sought to align himself with Navalny, accusing the courts of engaging in the same sham trials that Putin directs.
4 Black History Month
Trumpworld star Charlie Kirk is at the center of an internal fight among factions in Trumpworld after a raft of racist statements, including saying he wouldn’t trust flying on a plane with a Black pilot because he would assume that pilot is unqualified for the job.
Kirk can claim some credit for pushing Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to the exits, having repeatedly hammered her from his perch atop the Trumpworld mainstay Turning Point USA. RealClearPolitics reported that Kirk’s comments came up in the fabled Mar-a-Lago meeting between Trump, campaign co-chair Susie Wiles and McDaniel - as in all things Trumpworld, versions of the discussion vary greatly.
Donald Trump Jr., who has firmed up a lane with MAGA activists and Senate candidates in his father’s political organization, threw in with Kirk, saying there’s no effort to push Kirk out of Trumpworld.
But Black conservatives have been peppering Trump to disavow Kirk, one Trump adviser told 24sight.
NBC News spoke with influential, and longtime, Black Trump supporter Pastor Darrell Scott, who reportedly aired his concerns directly to Trump. “That boy’s a racist right there,” Scott told NBC News.
5 South Carolina
The South Carolina Republican Primary is Saturday. Trump leads former U.N. Ambassador and former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley by well above 30 percentage points, according to 538’s average of South Carolina polls.
All expectations are Trump wins this easily and Haley stays in race (she’s been announcing events in Super Tuesday states recently.
Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is expected to announce her plans after the primary.
6 Resistance Burnout
The New York Times’s Katie Glueck has this very interesting look into burnout on the left among “Resistance” types heading into their third election fighting against Trump.
7 The movement
My colleagues
and (fellow Messenger refugees) and I broke the news yesterday of some big depositions on deck in the sexual assault lawsuit involving CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp and Republican operative Carlton Huffman.The very Trumpy CPAC starts Wednesday (including a straw poll on who Trump should take as a running mate) with appearances from Trump and top supporters and possible running mates, including former Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson. The anti-Trump conservative Principles First summit starts Friday, featuring appearances from a number of high-profile former Trump aides, including Cassidy Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah-Griffin.