Biden Used “Unhinged” Strategy to Prepare for Trump Debate

In a rude reminder of how debased U.S. politics have become, a close ally of President Joe Biden revealed the secret sauce behind his approach to helping the Democratic nominee prep for his debate in the 2020 election cycle: embody Donald Trump at his “Trump-worst.”

In a new book, The Unraveling, former White House counsel Bob Bauer explained the mechanics behind his unusual approach, which ultimately projected Biden as a poised, no-nonsense candidate beside the notoriously bombastic forty-fifth president: Be “as personally insulting and unhinged as Trump can be.”

To help Biden prepare for their first face-off on September 29 in Cleveland, Bauer wrote that he “got into the role” and “watched hours of tapes of the 45th president, as a businessman, a 2016 candidate, and then in office, and read transcripts of his extemporaneous remarks on every conceivable topic,” according to an advance copy obtained by The Daily Beast.

He also took notes from Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, observing that the younger sibling really knew “how to get under her brother’s skin.”

But unlike other debate prep approaches to Trump, Bauer writes that he didn’t attempt to look like the former president. Instead, he was laser-focused on verbal insults, hand gestures, and the intonation of Trump’s voice.

“I needed to become comfortable with heaving insults at Joe Biden,” he wrote.

The results were clear. Bauer’s conditioning helped Biden remain calm and collected during the two debates, and the prep even helped to elicit arguably the most iconic line of the match-ups, with Biden asking Trump: “Will you shut up, man?”

Meanwhile, political advisers and news outlets have attempted to identify Trump’s own battle tactics for the presidential debates since he first appeared as a legitimate candidate in 2016. The Atlantic argued that Trump relies heavily on a rhetorical approach called the Gish gallop, which they describe as a “torrent of incorrect, irrelevant, or idiotic arguments” in which one can bury their opponent.

One political insider told Politico Magazine that Trump has “no strategy, just kill and eat.” And Vox created a seven-part taxonomy of Trump’s approach, observing that he “turns tough policy questions into simple stories,” filibusters until the clock runs out to avoid giving details, and leans on his poll numbers and meaningless, three-word slogans.

Four years later, it’s not entirely clear what strategy Biden will employ for his next face-off against Trump, scheduled for June 27 in Atlanta. But whatever it is, let’s hope it’s a good one.

They say a lie travels around the world before the truth has time to put on its pants. Lies shoot through MAGAworld before the truth even has time to wake up and figure out what the heck is going on. On Monday, far-right accounts began circulating videos purporting to show fencing and barricades lining the Supreme Court. The only hitch? There aren’t any fences or barricades around the Supreme Court. The claim originated out of thin air.

QAnon conspiracy theorists and, of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene shared the footage, with many speculating the fences and barricades were put up ahead of an impending ruling from the Supreme Court on presidential immunity. “Are they afraid that the left is not going to like the ruling?” asked one far-right aggregator account in a now-deleted post. “This could be for the Presidential Immunity case later this week,” speculated Greene in response. According to The Daily Beast, the account MTG boosted deleted its bogus post, with Greene’s speculation continuing to stick around like a dense fart before she finally quietly deleted it on Tuesday.

NBC News court reporter Daniel Barnes posted a photo outside the Supreme Court debunking the spreading rumor, quote-tweeting serial plagiarist Benny Johnson’s assertion that there was fencing around SCOTUS. Barnes’s debunk was succinctly captioned, “No there’s not.” Turns out much of the footage Johnson used originated from a post made by D.C. radio reporter Mitchell Miller reporting around the building following protests ahead of the high court overturning Roe v. Wade in May 2022.

The Supreme Court has until July 1 to issue its decision on presidential immunity, a case Trump brought to the court that will determine whether he can claim immunity from federal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. A federal appeals court unanimously denied his claim in February, declaring, “We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.” The Supreme Court has multiple options on how to decide the case, with some indications in April that they may kick it back down to lower courts.

The Supreme Court has a hilarious opportunity to rule against Trump and foil the aspirations of his staunchest supporters concocting nonsense for clicks. In the meantime, there are plenty of better options to meet your thirst for content other than spinning silly yarns. Subscribing to The New Republic is a fantastic one.

Right-wing media behemoth Sinclair Broadcast Group has doubled down on its misleading reporting about President Joe Biden, insisting that they stand by their coverage despite basing their assumptions on highly questionable edited footage and verifiable misinformation distributed by the RNC.

The cable news network has advanced a coordinated story across 86 of its local news websites over the course of June, targeting Biden’s age and physical ability based on social media posts made by RNC Research, a wing of the Lara Trump–run Republican National Committee. But some of the stories went beyond the facts and into the realm of fiction, including accusing Biden of physically freezing and being in a “stupor” during a White House Juneteenth event. Another article baselessly claimed that Biden had pooped himself at a D-Day memorial event in France, all based on a video of the president sitting down, reported freelance accountability journalist Judd Legum.

Responding to an issue of Legum’s newsletter, Popular Info, which examined the company’s deceptive tactics, Sinclair responded that the claims were “FALSE.”

“We do not ‘work with’ any political party and to insinuate otherwise is spreading disinformation,” Sinclair’s corporate account wrote on X. “Our political reporting includes sources/comments/posts/research from both sides of the aisle. We stand by our journalists and their reporting.”

In a private notice, Sinclair further accused Legum of failing to be “objective” while examining its reporting tactics—tactics that included automatically syndicating identical, questionable stories across dozens of its affiliates on the same day at the same time, seemingly without any editorial discretion or vetting time allotted to the local editors and reporters staffing the channels.

But denying the accusations didn’t stop Sinclair from trying to clean up its image. Shortly after responding to Legum, Sinclair’s national desk published a new story acknowledging that Donald Trump has his own “problems stumbling over words and mixing up dates.”

Donald Trump visited a half-assed, half-white event at a Black church on Saturday, in a desperate and botched attempt to stir up support among Black voters in Detroit—but none of that is as bad as what he did next. 

Trump went on to deliver the keynote speech at the Turning Point USA “People’s Convention,” alongside his old buddy, far-right activist Charlie Kirk. 

Kirk, a meme-loving fascist who is known for getting booed off of college campuses and then whining that the girls there don’t like him, happily announced that he’d be partnering with the Trump campaign earlier this month. For someone trying to court the support of the Black community, taking the stage with someone as openly racist as Kirk is nothing less than mind-boggling. 

Earlier this year, Kirk tried to make waves by suggesting that the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, was a “mistake” and that the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped to create a “permanent DEI-type bureaucracy,” which he believes to be harmful to white men like himself.  

Last year, Kirk posted to X (formerly Twitter), “Whiteness is great. Be proud of who you are.” Earlier this year on his podcast he fretted over flying in an airplane flown by a Black pilot. 

“I’m sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified,’” he said, before insisting that it’s not what he believes, but how DEI initiatives make him feel. To Kirk, unabashed racism is a necessary “thought crime,” one that sets him apart and gives him power. 

Kirk founded Turning Point USA in an attempt to consolidate the conservative youth movement and then systematically draw them further and further right. Trump hopes to harness this power to reach the conservative youth vote, which Kirk purports to influence, but honestly, even that doesn’t seem like it’s going well. 

If Trump’s Black church roundtable failed to draw in Black audience members, it seems that Turning Point USA’s pull for the youth vote was also unsuccessful: The crowd skewed distinctly old, according to Mother Jones. 

Racist sunspot and far-right Trump adviser Steve Bannon won’t be spending his upcoming time in the clink at Club Fed, according to sources who spoke with CNN. Bannon and his legal team had expected he’d go to a minimum-security prison camp, which is still not a walk in the park, but where conditions are more comfortable and relaxed than most. As it turns out, Bannon is ineligible because he still has an open criminal case against him, and will instead report to a low-security prison—with the possibility of doing time at Rikers.

Bannon was ordered earlier this month to report to prison on July 1 to begin a four-month stint for contempt of Congress. Bannon was convicted by a federal jury in 2022 for refusing a subpoena from the House January 6 committee’s investigation into the Capitol insurrection, the flames of which Bannon had gleefully stoked in the lead-up to the deadly riot. In 2022, Bannon refused to be interviewed or to produce documents to the subcommittee—only later, after Donald Trump abstained from using executive privilege to protect him, offering to testify in a public hearing—an offer that prosecutors and the House deemed too little, too late.

Lowest-security federal prisons for nonviolent offenders convicted on federal charges are referred to informally as “Club Fed,” a dark moniker inspired by the all-inclusive luxury resort, though they bear no resemblance to its inspiration. Incarcerated people are afforded the luxury of freedom of movement and sleep in barracks-style rooms packed with dozens of other people instead of being locked in a cramped cell, without air conditioning during the summer months or heat during the winter. It is not, by any length of the imagination, cushy or comfortable—the only perk is it’s slightly less inhumane than most prisons.

Bannon is expected to report to prison in Danbury, Connecticut. That low-security federal prison holds more than 1,000 men, according to CNN, and its neighboring women’s prison was the inspiration for Orange Is the New Black. Due to his upcoming trial in New York City, it’s possible—but currently undetermined—that Bannon may be transferred to the infamously inhumane Rikers Island during his upcoming criminal trial.

Bannon’s pending criminal case, which precludes him from being able to ride out his time in “Club Fed,” stems from charges in New York where he is accused of defrauding donors with empty promises to build a border wall. He pleaded not guilty to charges from state prosecutors of money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy in September 2022 and is expected to stand trial this September in the same courthouse that convicted Trump.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s  final conversation with Donald Trump was “unnerving,” according to the infectious diseases expert.

With his new book, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, released on Tuesday, Fauci spoke in more depth about the conversation on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Live Monday night, detailing how Trump, in a phone conversation, called Joe Biden “that fucker” and promised to “kick his fucking ass” in the final days before the 2020 election.

Maddow read an excerpt from the book, quoting Fauci’s narration of that call:

“Everybody wants me to fire you,” the president said to me during [a] call [that day], “but I’m not going to fire you. You have too illustrious a career, but you have to be positive. The country cannot stay locked down. You have got to give them hope.

“I like you but so many people, not only in the White House but throughout the country hate you because of what you are doing. I’m going to win this fucking election by a landslide, just wait and see. I always did things my way, and I always win no matter what all these other fucking people think. And that fucker Biden, he’s so fucking stupid. I’m going to kick his fucking ass in this election.”

Maddow asked Fauci if the conversation “unnerved you a little bit.”

“You know, it did,” Fauci replied. “It was a little incongruous because he ended it by saying take care, see you soon, something like that. I wasn’t quite sure.

“It was unnerving. Even though you’re convinced you’re doing the right thing, which I had been, you know, trying to say all along, just level with the American public, you wind up being better off to do that; it is not a pleasant thing to have the president of the United States, when you have such a great deal of respect for the presidency of the United States, for the president to get on the phone and scream at you the way he did. So that was very tough,” Fauci added.

Fauci’s new book includes many new details about how Trump dealt with Covid-19 and how he felt about Fauci. Trump would “announce that he loved me and then scream at me on the phone,” Fauci wrote. Their contentious relationship was apparent even in the early days of the pandemic, with Trump reportedly flying into a rage after hearing incorrectly reported information and attributing it to Fauci.

Fauci’s time as the public face of the government’s efforts during the pandemic, as well as Trump’s treatment of him, earned him attacks from conservatives, who spread conspiracy theories about him and attacked efforts such as lockdowns and masks. He was the target of several smears on a recent visit to Capitol Hill, with Republicans proposing getting hold of his personal emails. More new revelations from his book, along with more public appearances, will likely draw him more vitriol and attacks, despite his career in public service.

President Joe Biden will announce a new executive order Tuesday that will shield the hundreds of thousands of immigrants married to U.S. citizens from being deported—and Stephen Miller, the ghoul behind some of Donald Trump’s harshest immigration policies, just can’t handle it.

With this policy, around 490,000 people who have lived in the country for at least 10 years will become eligible to apply for “parole in place,” meaning they can remain in the United States and receive work permits, two sources told the Associated Press.

Miller took to X, formerly Twitter, on Monday to lament Biden’s reported upcoming police announcement.

“Big news: Biden to announce an unconstitutional executive amnesty for illegal aliens during a border invasion and in the aftermath of multiple gruesome raped and murders of Americans at the hands of Biden-freed illegals. This is an attack on democracy,” he wrote, likely referring to the murder of Rachel Morin last year.

With his penchant for white nationalism, Miller is no stranger to making disgusting and racist generalizations about immigrants. He readily touts actual tragedies as political talking points, hoping to drum up reactionary votes for Trump in November.

Biden’s new policy, which is yet to be confirmed by the White House, has the potential to significantly expand the legal avenues for immigration into the United States and keep families from being torn apart.

Earlier this month, Biden announced a new immigration policy to lower the number of people crossing the southern border, which has been widely criticized by Democrats, the very people he needs to support it. The new policy also adopted new language that will make it significantly easier to deport people, and harder for those who cross illegally to gain asylum.

Although many have compared Biden’s tightening on immigration restrictions to Trump’s old policies, this is not enough to satisfy Miller, who is only concerned with reelecting his former boss so he can get back to making the United States look exactly how he dreams: all white.

Donald Trump’s campaign announced the creation of a new conservative coalition  over the weekend: Black Americans for Trump. But he failed to mention that at least three of his new endorsers are on the Trump family payroll.

Dozens of prominent Black Americans appeared on the list released Saturday, from former Georgia State Representative Vernon Jones to former NFL safety Jack Brewer. But the names of three former staffers for the RNC and the Trump campaign also, curiously, found their way into the coalition. 

They include former RNC official Gina Barr (who is currently titled as the Trump campaign’s executive director of Black coalitions), Trump campaign spokesman Janiyah Thomas, and senior Trump adviser Lynne Patton—who has received more than $233,000 in “payroll” disbursements from the Trump campaign, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

In a statement, Thomas framed the coalition’s numbers as symbolic of a growing frustration among Black Americans that they have been “left behind” by Democrats.

“While Black Americans have been left behind by Joe Biden, President Trump has prioritized the Black community,” she said in the statement. “Donald J. Trump’s coalition message to the Black community is simple: If you want to return to the policies that created rising wages, more quality jobs, stronger borders, and safer neighborhoods, then join Black Americans for Trump and vote for President Trump in November.”

Biden narrowly secured the 2020 election in large part thanks to communities of color in key swing states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan. But Biden’s campaign—which was found in a May Reuters/Ipsos poll to be leading Trump by double digits among Black Americans—wasn’t bothered by the “eleventh hour attempt.”

“Black voters sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020, and they’re ready to make Donald Trump a two-time loser in 2024,” Biden-Harris 2024 Director of Black Media Jasmine Harris said in a press release obtained by Spectrum News.

On June 12, an estimated 60 people were abruptly laid off by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Conservatives and extremists who’ve been profiled by the SPLC quickly cheered on the news.

In a hell of a self-report, Sean Davis, founder and CEO of conservative website The Federalist praised the layoffs on X (formerly Twitter). “Your entire organization is trash, and America will be better off when it’s forced to lay off every single employee,” wrote Davis. Moms for Liberty, an SPLC-designated anti-government extremist group, boosted the SPLC Union’s criticism of the organization for hoarding donations, with MfL co-founder Tina Descovich declaring, “Everything WOKE ends up rotting.”

Far-right troll Andy Ngo, whose own follower committed a deadly mass shooting inspired by his rhetoric, praised the layoffs in stereotypically unimaginative fashion, writing, “I hope the whole lot of you goes down, & one day in the future people can read about the shameful period of American history you were involved in.” Ngo has been covered previously by SPLC’s Hatewatch and described as a far-right provocateur.

The conservative rage against SPLC is to be expected, given the group’s detailed work monitoring far-right extremist movements. Moms for Liberty, for example, was categorized by the SPLC in 2023 as an anti-government extremist group for its ongoing efforts to roll back federal protections for LGBTQ youth, praising Hitler, threatening violence, and banning books.

The layoffs instead hit projects that work to serve communities in need, shuttering the Southeast Freedom Initiative, which provides pro bono legal services to detained immigrants, and the Economic Justice Project, which works to break the cycle of poverty among the country’s most impoverished communities, among other projects, according to HuffPost.

Adding to the dark celebration by far-right groups over SPLC’s sudden shrinkage, the layoffs hit 60 unionized workers, including a union chair and five union stewards, according to a statement from the union. The layoffs came two years after the SPLC reached a collective bargaining agreement with the then-nascent union, and ate a quarter of the organization’s workforce, as part of a “restructuring effort.”

“SPLC’s decision has a catastrophic impact on the organization’s work in support of immigrants seeking justice and its mission to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance human rights through support of educators,” the SPLC Union wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “How will today’s layoffs help us achieve our goals of fighting hate, decarcerating Black and Brown people, defending democracy, and eradicating poverty? The answer is: they won’t,” the union added.

* This piece has been corrected to clarify who was impacted by SPLC layoffs.

Judge Aileen Cannon appears to be sick and tired of nonparties attempting to intervene in Donald Trump’s classified documents trial—even though she’s the one who allowed them to do so in the first place.

The Trump-appointed judge issued a paperless order Monday, rejecting without explanation a couple dozen Republican attorneys general and their proposed brief opposing special counsel Jack Smith’s pending gag order on the former president, which they decried as “presumptively unconstitutional.”

Attorneys general representing the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming had all signed on to the amicus curiae. In it, they argued that the tabled gag was an affront to the First Amendment rights of everyday Americans, who have a right to hear Trump push back against legal prosecutors.

The fierce opposition arose after Smith argued for a change in Trump’s bond conditions, claiming that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s Truth Social posts were “grossly misleading” and “inflammatory.” Smith argued Trump’s posts put law enforcement and potential trial witnesses in legitimate danger.

“Those statements create a grossly misleading impression about the intentions and conduct of federal law enforcement agents—falsely suggesting that they were complicit in a plot to assassinate him—and expose those agents, some of whom will be witnesses at trial, to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment,” Smith said in May.

Cannon had previously scheduled an “unusual” hearing on June 21 to make time for oral arguments from the nonparties, including one focused on whether Smith’s appointment to the case is constitutional.

The rejection is one of few indications that Cannon actually intends to move forward with a trial that has been riddled with unnecessary and cumbersome delays. Trump faces 42 felony charges in the case related to willful retention of national security information, corruptly concealing documents, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.