The 24 Seven - Signals of Distress
24sight News' twice weekly newsletter collecting the seven most important stories shaping the race for the White House, May 30, 2024
1 Recusal refusal
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has offered a number of explanations for the distress flag flown outside his suburban Washington home on January 6th, most consistently blaming his wife.
But the thing which caught former president Donald Trump’s admiration was his refusal to recuse himself from the high court’s pending decision on “presidential immunity” – the argument from Trump’s legal team that presidents immune from prosecution for actions taken while in office.
Related, this 2019 profile of Roy Cohn from Politico’s Michael Kruse. Trump has fashioned much of his career from his first chief advisor in life and politics, Cohn. Cohn refused to follow rules and laws and got away with much of it, until he didn’t.
2 Waiiiiting, is the hardest part
Jurors in the campaign fraud trial of Trump in Manhattan are in their second day of deliberations. According to notes from yesterday’s start of deliberations, the 12 jurors said they want more information on former National Enquirer honcho David Peckers discussions with Trump and former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen’s testimony about their meeting at Trump Tower in 2015 to discuss killing scandalous stories – like the one which led to the first criminal trial of a former president.
Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor, opens her analysis of what to expect by writing, “I warned you this part would be excruciating.” Recommend reading her piece here at
as we continue waiting for a verdict.Is the jury giving you eyes? There’s 12 members, that’s 24 eyes, they could be looking anywhere. A lot of people with no idea how this will turn out have predicted how this will turn out. (Not us, even though our name IS 24sight.)
Sky point to Tom Petty (here’s the man talking about how he wrote that classic. H/T @super70ssports)
3 Kemp watch
Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who made a name for himself twice fending off Trump – first in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and then in his re-election bid, when Trump’s anointed challenger to Kemp flopped in the 2022 primary – is looking at his next steps, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Kemp has started making moves which could portend either a run for the U.S. Senate in 2026 or possibly a run for president in 2028.
It’s a good reminder that as much as Trump dominates much of the Republican Party, he doesn’t exert complete control and plenty of ambitious pols are already looking past him to what’s next.
4 Mike Johnson’s Second First Shot
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Republicans would look to renew the 2017 tax cuts, expand energy production and pass new border security measures if Trump is back in the White House next year, in an interview with 24sight News friend, and discerning fashionista, Kadia Goba.
Johnson is the rare Republican who’s figured out how to manage Trump while keeping a lid on the crazier wing of the people who elected him. We’re old enough to remember Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s many promises to depose Johnson, which ended with Trump rhetorically patting her on the head and Johnson staying put.
5 Corruption Trial
It’s a political criminal trial! But not about Trump.
Sen. Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who prosecutors allege took bribes and used his powerful seat as a senior member of the U.S. Senate to secretly help the Egyptian government, is on trial
The prosecution has spent the week reading reams of text messages and exchanges showing Menendez allegedly working secretly for his Egyptian handlers, Politico reports.
Menendez’s lawyers have blamed his wife, who often acted as the intermediary, in their defense of the New Jersey Democrat.
6 What if they’d been Black
As President Joe Biden has amped up his efforts to win back disenchanted Black voters, he’s sharpened his rhetoric and targeted his campaign stops. In a rally in Philadelphia Wednesday, Biden argued that Trump would be immensely worse if he was back in office.
“What do you think would have happened if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol? I don’t think he’d be talking about pardons,” Biden said.
Trump has made a key part of his race for the White House attempting to appeal to Black voters, recently appearing in the Bronx with two rappers charged in a gang case in New York and promoting his criminal mugshot on merchandise as a way to connect with Blacks.
What’s not yet clear is whether Black voters would widely shift to voting for Trump or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or sit out the race. (This is a critical dynamic among other key blocs of voters, notably on the other side disillusioned conservatives and moderate Republicans turned off by Trump and the January 6th insurrection.)
7 The N Word
Today, 20 years after the launch of “The Apprentice” which ultimately catapulted Trump to the White House, one of the original producers on the show revealed that Trump had said he didn’t think America would believe a “n***** winning” on the show. Trump was referring to a showdown between Kwame Jackson, who is Black, and Bill Rancic, who is white, in the first season of the show.
(The producer, Bill Pruitt, explained that he revealed the existence of a tape with Trump saying the N word because the non-disclosure agreement, with a threat of $5 million fine, had finally expired.)
Four years later, America elected its first Black president, Barack Obama. And a few years after that, Trump began pushing the racist “birther” conspiracy alleging that Obama was not actually American. Obama defending himself against Trump’s attacks at the White House Correspondents Dinner at the time is widely credited with enraging Trump so much that he ran for president.