The 24 Seven - Nazi-punchin' Edition
The 24 Seven - Nazi-punchin' Edition
24sight News' twice weekly newsletter collecting the seven most important stories shaping the race for the White House
1 D-DAY
Eighty years ago, America and its allies embarked on a historic mission that would ultimately deal the knockout punch to the Nazis and Hitler, ending World War II and The Holocaust.
Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower launched “Operation Overlord” — as the operation was dubbed at the time — with his famous letter to the members of the U.S. armed forces.
“The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.”
Then Eisenhower said, “Ok, let’s go.” Read more from
here.President Joe Biden, while honoring the fallen, argued that the nation cannot ignore Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine — the largest European war since World War II itself.
(Even Donald Trump, who gets a lot of attention for heaping praise on modern dictators like Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, honored the veterans and the allies at the 75th anniversary of D-Day five years ago in Normandy, when he was president.)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell honored the 80th anniversary today with a warning in The New York Times that isolationism — of the type which predated America’s entry to the war — has historically failed America.
“We forget how influential isolationists persuaded millions of Americans that the fate of allies and partners mattered little to our own security and prosperity. We gloss over the powerful political forces that downplayed growing danger, resisted providing assistance to allies and partners, and tried to limit America’s ability to defend its national interests,” McConnell wrote. “Of course, Americans heard much less from our disgraced isolationists after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
2 Finding meaning
Fox News host Sean Hannity interviewed Trump Wednesday in his latest sit down with the former president. And he again asked Trump to explain exactly what he means when he’s said he would be a “dictator” for a day and would exact revenge on his political opponents from the White House, if he were returned to power.
Trump didn’t answer the question.
The Biden campaign, which has been increasingly aggressive as the general election battle heats up, immediately pushed out the clip of the exchange.
3 Judicial delays
Trump’s criminal racketeering case in Georgia has been delayed again by a state appeals court as a challenge to prosecutor Fani Willis’ ability to prosecute the case plays out, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Meanwhile, top Trump ally and former chief strategist Steve Bannon was ordered to prison Thursday for four months — almost two years after he refused to testify in the House Select Committee on January 6th’s investigation of the insurrection, NBC News reports.
The judicial system, with its Constitutional bedrock of due process, takes time to play out by design.
4 Two cents
What’s driving some young Black men to support Trump? According to rap superstar 50 Cent, who did some congressional networking on Wednesday, it’s because they’re criminal defendants, too.
“I see them identifying with Trump. Because they’ve got RICO charges,” the visiting rapper said at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump has certainly leaned into this belief that Black voters identify with criminals, hosting two criminally-indicted rappers for a rally in the Bronx (which was largely attended by White supporters) and slapping his criminal mugshot from the Georgia election interference case onto campaign merchandise.
Trump, of course, has a mixed record on issues relating to Blacks. He welcomed Kanye West to the White House when he was in office to help work on criminal justice reform and earned praise from NWA charter member Ice Cube. And he’s been a staple in rap lyrics for decades, getting mentioned in songs released by Jay-Z to the Beastie Boys.
But he’s also dined with White supremacist leader Nick Fuentes (and Kanye/”Ye”) at his Florida resort. Opined two decades ago that a “n****” could never be seen as winning his then-nascent mega-show, “The Apprentice”. Painted the nation’s first Black president as not American and illegitimate.
The New York Times reports today that in its survey of 2,000 after Trump’s conviction, growing reticence among swing voters and “double haters” who had been toying with the idea of supporting Trump prior to last week.
5 NKOTB
Newly minted Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s legacy will, to some degree, depend on who she has to work with on this side of the border.
AT Cosmopolitics scribe Elise Labott lays out some of the obstacles facing the first Jewish woman leader in North America, noting that the outcome of the November election will provide different challenges for dealing with immigration issues at the U.S-Mexico border.
“Generally, Biden's policies have focused on collaboration and reversing some of Trump's restrictive border measures, but his executive action on border control Tuesday indicates a tougher stance on immigration as he faces reelection pressures,” Labott wrote of the incumbent president’s order to curb asylum claims.
“It could inflame the relationship at a very sensitive moment between the United States and Mexico,” one analyst told Labott, adding that they anticipated a “pretty strong backlash.”
On the other hand, Sheinbaum may have to contend with Trump’s plans for mass deportations of the tens of millions of undocumented migrants already living stateside and military personnel forcing arriving refugees back into Mexico.
6 Bankrolling Democracy Defenders
One of the former Capitol police officers who helped fend off Trump’s attackers during the deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol, Harry Dunn, is starting his own PAC to keep the historic insurrection front and center through the election, NBC News reports.
The heroic former cop turned Trump critic tried running for Congress in Maryland, but lost in the Democratic primary. So he’ll be redirecting his unspent war chest towards — and presumably raising new money for — candidates opposed to MAGA’s baseless 2020 election fraud claims.
“Donald Trump has surrogates, people in the Republican Party that want to do nothing except downplay, whitewash, diminish, flat out lie about what happened that day,” Dunn said of the Jan. 6 attack.
“It’s not just regular everyday American citizens. These are elected officials that are whitewashing and saying these things. That’s why it’s so important that we never stop telling our story,” Dunn said.”
7 Help get us to the conventions
Hi friends, we’re set to head to the conventions just a bit more than a month from now. (The RNC is in Milwaukee, July 15-18, and the DNC is in Chicago, August 19-22). We’re also working to attend the first presidential debate in Georgia just a few weeks from now.
Help us out.
If you’re reading this free, enjoy our work and find it useful, please consider buying a paid subscription. In addition to keeping us and our families clothed and fed, you also get full access to our archives, commenting privileges on stories and paid-subscriber only pieces featuring our original reporting.
Our costs to get to the conventions include logistics: paying the respective parties for press seats – $250 for two seats in Milwaukee, expect similar for Chicago, tuning up one of our cars for the roadtrip from Washington (plane tickets too pricey at the moment), and finding a reasonably priced AirBNB. And food and gas. Back-of-the-envelope, we expect it will cost around $5,000 - $7,000 total to cover both conventions.
And our hearty thanks to all who are paying to keep us in the field.
It’s a hard time in the media industry, it’s going through some big changes – the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story which resulted in the first ever criminal conviction of a former president – has been replacing its reporters with robots (AI). Using AI to write serious news stories, as it turns out, is garbage. (Read this Reuters investigation of NewsBreak to find out more.)
We’re grateful to you for keeping us doing what we love, reporting.
Cheers,
Tom, Warren and Pilar