The 24 Seven: Great Expectations Edition
24sight News’ twice-weekly newsletter highlighting the seven most important stories shaping the race for the White House
1. Making Deadline
It’s the battle royale nobody wants and the country has been experiencing for half a decade now – the first debate of the presidential election rematch between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump.
In a marathon of oddities in American politics – largely centered on the challenger, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, is facing additional criminal charges and issues threats routinely, leaving the public to guess whether they should be taken seriously or literally – the debate is one of the few largely predictable moments of the race.
And it could be the most important, as the electorate, which has largely tuned out politics this election, may find the simulcast first debate unavoidable.
Which is why the respective campaigns have been racing to redefine their opponent at the last minute, even though voters routinely say they’re well aware of each candidate.
The Trump campaign opened the week by attacking CNN for allegedly canceling their national spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, when CNN anchor Kasie Hunt ended their interview because Leavitt was attacking CNN star Jake Tapper and not answering the question. Trump and his team attacking news organizations, particularly CNN, is old hat.
Biden is cloistered away at presidential retreat Camp David running through mock debates with his long-running advisers, including Bob Bauer performing as Trump, Politico reports. His surrogates on social media, meanwhile, have been posting unedited clips of Trump making incoherent comments at recent rallies – which is old hat for Biden and Trump.
Trump’s tight-knit campaign fired up its rapid response operation at the start of the week, telegraphing its lines of attack – calling Biden a liar on immigration, on jobs, on the economy. The charge-in approach from Trump versus the wait-and-see approach from Biden is hardly new either; it’s how the debate came together in the first place, with Trump’s team saying they would debate Biden anywhere, anytime and Biden’s camp skirting the long-running Commission on Presidential Debates and negotiating with the networks – on their terms.
The run-up to possibly the most important debate in modern American history has been markedly flat and predictable, leaving the real question to how each president (current and former) performs onstage Thursday.
Trump has been branding Biden as a sleepy evil-mastermind for years now. Democrats, likewise have been branding Trump as a dementia-addled would-be dictator clearly in decline. And it has worked, to great effect – so much so there’s a special new term for Americans who get it and don’t want any of it, “double haters”.
The remaining X factor here seems to be which performer takes the stage this week. Will amped-up, State of the Union Joe Biden show up? TelePrompter Trump, who knows how to stay on message and woo Big Tech Billionaire bros? Or will it be shark tales and cornpop stories?
The debate starts at 9pm ET Thursday, hosted by CNN in Atlanta.
2. Ireland *hearts* America
Everyone was all smiles — including visiting Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — last night at the Select USA Summit in Washington, D.C., as they shared stories about how much money is flowing from Ireland to the states these days.
The breezy reception, hosted by Ambassador to Ireland Geraldine Byrne Nason, featured dozens of Irish business leaders who’ve invested in U.S.-based operations, created jobs here, or otherwise contributed to the prosperous relationship between America and the once (and future?) “Celtic Tiger”. One of the participants told 24sight News that his biorefining company had rushed to invest roughly $100 million in a Wisconsin plant after poring over the corporate tax and green energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act which President Joe Biden signed into law in August 2022.
Amb. Byrne Nason noted that foreign direct investment from Ireland has reached $295 billion — which translates to more than 100,000 jobs spread across 2,500 locations in all 50 states.
“That’s the green we bring across from Ireland,” Byrne Nason said, praising a two-way relationship “that is a very 21st century one, at the cutting edge of the transatlantic economy.”
3. Two years after Dobbs
Democrats nationwide marked the second anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade protections granting access to abortions by reminding the nation that the conservative justices turned back the clock on women – and warning that Republicans plan to place more restrictions on abortion and reproductive care nationwide if they win back the White House and gain complete control of Congress.
Count on more of this, likely Thursday. As much as the 2024 election has been about the 2020 election, and the failed effort to overthrow the 2020 results, abortion access continues to animate voters on par with other top issues like immigration (on the right) and the economy (across the board).
4. Next up: Classified Docs
It may feel like a lifetime since Trump made history as the first former president convicted of a crime: 34 felonies for hiding payments to a porn star in an effort to win the White House. But that was just under a month ago. (And his equally historic criminal sentencing is set for about three weeks from now.)
But that’s only one of four criminal cases the former president is embroiled in. Trump faces 40 felonies in federal court, including violations of the Espionage Act and making false statements and obstructing a federal investigation, stemming from his removal and subsequent hiding of boxes upon boxes of classified documents – including national security secrets – upon leaving the White House in 2021.
Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon, who has been the subject of much attention herself for questions of why the case has taken so long, heard arguments at the start of this week in Trump’s attempt to claim the FBI wrongly searched his Florida resort for the missing classified documents. 24sight News friend and MSNBC contributor Adam Klasfeld reports that Cannon sounded skeptical of the Trump legal teams’ arguments.
ABC News’ ace investigative team, meanwhile, reports that Trump took a clandestine trip in July 2022 to check on the boxes of classified documents shortly before federal agents searched his Florida resort.
5. Immunity, Heard
There’s a chance the Supreme Court decides a benchmark case in the definition and limits (or lack of) to presidential powers by Thursday, just hours before the first debate. Or not. The high court issued a surprising update to its calendar, stretching its term into July, Bloomberg News reports.
6. Black conservatives for Trump
Trump’s campaign announced Tuesday it will host an event with Black conservatives in Atlanta the day before the debate (the latest sign that Trump, indeed, appears likely to attend the debate – it’s a stage with a massive national spotlight. He likes spotlights and attention. A lot.)
Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and former Trump Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson are set to headline the event, along with top Black conservatives from Georgia.
Atlanta hometown paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reports that Trump is easily leading Biden in Georgia, in large part with support from young Black voters.
Trump, who has widespread support from neo-Nazis and white supremacists, has worked heavily to embrace an image of a Hollywood-style gangster and corralled support from rappers (including, famously, Kanye “Ye” West.)
No word yet how much of the audience will be voters of color. His trip to Michigan earlier this month to court voters at a Black church was largely filled with white supporters. On the same trip, he spoke at a Turning Point USA convention headlined by a white supremacist.
7. We’re gonna make it!
With apologies to Laverne and Shirley, we made it! We are booked for Milwaukee and the RNC, just about three weeks from now. We’ll see you lakeside!
Look for updates on our special convention coverage in the coming days.
A huge thanks to our paying subscribers and everyone who threw in to get us to Milwaukee! (We still need help getting to Chicago for the DNC, but for now we celebrate!)
And a special thank you to Julie Mason. The pooligans reading this know how excellent she is, and for anyone unacquainted, head over to SiriusXM Channel 124.
I dig this stack. The Seven fills me in on things I didn’t know. That’s sayin something, since I *considered* myself a news maven. Good stuff brudda