Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The “ratings” are a little bit tepid

Trump is bragging about his unprecedented numbers on Tucker’s Xitter show last night saying that it got over a hundred million viewers. That’s not true. “Views” on the platform are recorded as anyone who may have scrolled past it , not how many people actually saw it much less watched it. Here are the more pertinent numbers:

As of this writing, Carlson’s interview with Trump has been reposted (formerly “retweeted”) 171,800 times, quote-posted (formerly “quote-tweeted”) 14,500 times, liked 578,100 times, bookmarked 46,500 times, and has been replied to around 47,000 times. Not especially low numbers. It’s undeniable that Trump has a lot of supporters, many of whom swarm on Twitter.

But these days, Fox averages about 1.7 million viewers during its primetime broadcast. And notice the specificity of the word “viewers.” Because none of the numbers tracking engagement on a X post tell you if someone actually watched the video.

We have no idea how many people sat through the whole 45-minute interview between the former president who has been indicted four times, and the man who used to host what the New York Times declared to be “the most racist show in the history of cable news.” It’s impossible to draw any conclusion whatsoever. But if we assume engagement is a likelier means of getting an accurate count than passive “views,” the interview almost certainly did not end up “overshadowing all of Television programming on Wednesday night,” even if ratings were halved by Trump’s absence, as Brian Stelter predicted.

There are plenty of posts that get far more engagement than that. Look any big celebrity for instance. I’m sure a lot more people watched the debate. Luckily for Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy represented.

Here’s an article about how Trump mini-me Vivek Ramaswamy made his fortune. He’s a familiar type:

On the campaign trail, as he lays out why he is a different kind of presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy calls himself a Harvard-trained “scientist” from the lifesaving world of biotechnology.

“I developed a number of medicines,” Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and conservative writer, told a gathering at a construction firm this month in Davenport, Iowa. “The one I’m most proud of is a therapy for kids, 40 of them a year, born with a genetic condition who, without treatment, die by the age of 3.”

The reality of Mr. Ramaswamy’s business career is more complex, the story of a financier more than a scientist, and a prospector who went bargain hunting, hyped his vision, drew investment and then cashed out in two huge payouts — totaling more than $200 million — before his 35th birthday.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s enterprise is best known for a spectacular failure. As a 29-year-old with a bold idea and Ivy League connections, he engineered what was at the time the largest initial public offering in the biotechnology industry’s history — only to see the Alzheimer’s drug at its center fail two years later and the company’s value tank.

But Mr. Ramaswamy, now 37, made a fortune anyway. He took his first payout in 2015 after stirring investor excitement about his growing pharmaceutical empire. He reaped a second five years later when he sold off its most promising pieces to a Japanese conglomerate.

The core company Mr. Ramaswamy built has since had a hand in bringing five drugs to market, including treatments for uterine fibroids, prostate cancer and the rare genetic condition he mentioned on the stump in Iowa. The company says the last 10 late-stage clinical trials of its drugs have all succeeded, an impressive streak in a business where drugs commonly fail.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s resilience was in part a result of the savvy way he structured his web of biotechnology companies. But it also highlights his particular skills in generating hype, hope and risky speculation in an industry that feeds on all three.

“A lot of it had substance. Some of it did not. He’s a sort of a Music Man,” said Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat and former health secretary during the Obama administration who advised two of Mr. Ramaswamy’s companies.

For his part, Mr. Ramaswamy said that criticism that he overpromised was missing the point. Although he promoted the potential of the doomed Alzheimer’s drug, he now says he was actually selling investors on a business model.

“The business model was to develop these medicines for the long run. That’s the punchline, that’s the most important point,” he said.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s wealth is now underwriting a long-shot run for the Republican nomination that includes a campaign jet, plush bus and $10.3 million of his own money and counting. On the campaign trial, he sells what he calls “anti-woke” capitalism, skewering environmental, social and corporate governance programs and dismissing debates about racial privilege.

He is the child of Indian immigrants, and “privilege,” he said recently in Iowa, “was two parents in the house with a focus on education, achievement and actual values. That gave me the foundation to then go on to places like Harvard and Yale and become a scientist.”

With an undergraduate degree in biology from Harvard, Mr. Ramaswamy isn’t really a scientist; he made his name in the world of hedge funds and his graduate work was a law degree from Yale.

Along the way, he invested in biotech and became enamored with an idea for developing high-risk prescription drugs: scour the patents held by pharmaceutical giants, searching for drugs that had been abandoned for business reasons, not necessarily for lack of promise. Buy the patents for a song, and bring them to market.

Like Elon Musk’s phony reputation as a visionary inventor, Ramaswamy is selling himself as a visionary scientist and it’s just as phony. He’s a smart hustler who made a bundle by buying and selling.

He got out of from under his failed Alzheimers drug (after hyping it to the moon) leaving other investors to shoulder the loss. Trump would call that smart.

Mr. Ramaswamy has expressed regret for years about the failure of his drug for Alzheimer’s, a disease that has long bedeviled researchers. And the criticism that he profited while his investors lost angers him, he said.

“On a personal level, it grates on me a little bit,” he said. “The business model of Roivant was to see these drugs through the market, and we could have cashed out big, and employees could have cashed up big, but that was not the business model.”

But Mr. Ramaswamy did eventually cash out on Roivant.

In 2019, Roivant sold off its stake in five of its most promising spinoff companies to Sumitomo, a giant Japanese conglomerate.

That proved to be Mr. Ramaswamy’s biggest payday. His 2020 tax return included nearly $175 million in capital gains.

In recent years, Mr. Ramaswamy has stepped back from Roivant, leaving his roles as chief executive in 2021 and chairman in February. He remains the sixth largest shareholder in the company, with a stake currently valued at more than $500 million. (He has yet to file personal financial disclosures for his presidential run, but he has released 20 years of tax returns, which were provided to The Times by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, two Yale business school academics who have studied Mr. Ramaswamy’s business record. The candidate has also called for his competitors in the Republican race to do the same.)

Mr. Ramaswamy’s pitch that his business model would lead to affordable drug prices has not come to pass. One example is the product for which he has said he is most proud, a one-time implant for children with a rare and devastating immune ailment. When Enzyvant, the Roivant spinoff company by then controlled by Sumitomo, won regulatory approval in 2021, it set a sticker price of $2.7 million.

He sounds like the felon Martin Shkreli, whom he coincidentally helped substantially when he was starting out.

The guy is a clever hustler who made a bundle in the world of pharmaceuticals with business savvy. But a scientist? Uhm, no. He called climate change a hoax in the debate last night. He knows better. But he knows his marks.

It’s so awful in so many ways. But since people are taking it seriously as some sort of political manifesto. (They talked about it in the debate last night.) I think it’s worthwhile to point this out:

Reminder: The “Rich Men North of Richmond” policy agenda is utterly incoherent. Anthony says government spends too much money, but also isn’t helping people enough. Miners (who earn 20 percent above the average national wage) are somehow in trouble. Skinny people are dying in the streets from drugs and suicide. But fat welfare queens are bringing home the bacon.

The entire thing is an evasion of personal responsibility and an exercise in special pleading: The government should spend more money on the people I like and less money on the people I do not like. And also: Everything that’s wrong in my life is someone else’s fault.

Finally: Oliver Anthony seems unaware that the places he romanticizes are actually the ones sucking the most off the government teat and contributing the least to our economy. We are indeed a nation of makers and takers. And the takers are Oliver Anthony and his friends.

Thank you JV Last. He is 100% right. All that bullshit has been swirling in our politics for 150 years and it’s probably never going to change. But the rest of us aren’t obligated to defend it. It’s crap.

Donald Trump keeps exhorting Republicans in congress, both publicly and privately, to step up and use their power to go after the prosecutors who are indicting him for his many crimes. And like the good little MAGA soldiers they are, they’re following his orders:

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added. The anticipated questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans could launch their own state-level investigation into Willis’ probe, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has spoken to top officials in the state about a potential probe. She has also been pushing for a congressional-led inquiry into Willis, who has previously dismissed GOP accusations accusing her of being partisan and consistently defended her investigation.

“I’m going to be talking to (House Judiciary Chair) Jim Jordan, (House Oversight Chair) Jamie Comer, and I’d like to also ask (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy his thoughts on looking at doing an investigation if there is a collaboration or conspiracy of any kind between the Department of Justice and Jack Smith’s special counsel’s office with the state DA’s,” Greene told CNN. “So, I think that could be a place of oversight.”

It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.

They used to be big “states’ rights” boosters but they’ve always been against it when it suits them. The new federal authoritarianism seems to suit them quite well.

This will come to nothing. Maybe they can get some spectacle out of it but I kind of doubt it. This is basically what a Republican majority does now: put on a show for King Donald. They’re nothing but court jesters.

The great Alexandra Petri on the debate last night.

If you said, “Would you like to watch Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie talk to each other for two hours? FYI, the place where they’ll do so is hotter than Beelzebub’s armpit!,” I would have said, “No, thank you.” But if you said, “The alternative is watching Donald Trump talk to Tucker Carlson on the website formerly known as Twitter,” I would say, “I can’t wait to hear what Ron, Vivek, Nikki, Tim, Doug, Mike, Asa and Chris have to say!”

Wednesday night’s debate on Fox News raised all kinds of questions. Like: “Why is this happening?” and “Where is Donald Trump?” and “Is it technically a primary debate or more of a secondary debate given the levels where these people are polling?”

Here is approximately how it went.

Bret Baier: Hello. We have brought a bell just because we enjoy the sound of a bell.

Martha MacCallum: Feel free to speak over it; it will give the evening a fun, musical vibe.

Baier: Yes, and speaking of music, candidates, the number one song in America is something called “Rich Men North of Richmond”! Governor DeSantis, introduce yourself by providing a close reading of the subtle lyrics of this song.

DeSantis: Hang on, first I have some prepared remarks! Joe Biden’s basement! Hunter Biden’s paintings! “Rich Men North of Richmond”! Taxes! Florida!

Baier: Chris Christie, why would you be better as president?

Christie: Bret, I have spent the last four years sailing around sharpening my traffic-cone harpoon for my hated foe (from hell’s heart I spit my last breath at him!), and the one question I did not expect was about a scenario where I could actually become president. Uh, I was governor of New Jersey? So, take that for what it’s worth.

Scott: I have come to this debate with some specific numbers at my fingertips! I was told everyone would be excited about specific numbers! If not, I would really like those hours back.

Ramaswamy: Hello! You may be wondering, who is this skinny guy with a funny name? I’m not a politician who is going to offer you a series of prepared, meaningless platitudes. I’m a businessman with no political experience who is going to offer you a series of prepared, meaningless platitudes. Isn’t it time we stopped running away from things and started running toward things? I am not running for president so much as I am running for the title of Favorite Grandson of your Fox News grandmother. Have you ever considered that people don’t love God anymore?

Pence: I have never once considered it.

Baier: Governor Haley, when polled about you, people say, “Who?” and “Huh?” and “The comet?”

Haley: I don’t care about polls! I care about the truth! The truth is that we are spending too much, and our children will never forgive us! I am pretty sure the reason is the debt thing and none of the other things I have ever said, for instance about keeping trans girls out of sports.

Pence: Hello! I am here to recite scripture and keep referring to the Trump-Pence administration, and I’m all out of scripture. That was some Mike Pence humor; I will never be out of scripture! I am unquestionably the best-prepared person in this race, the single individual with the experience that is closest to being the president, with no exceptions that spring to mind. I have been in the hallway. I have been in the White House. Do you like what my administration did with the Supreme Court?

Ramaswamy: Now that we’ve gotten everyone’s prepared remarks out of the way, we can have a real debate.

Pence: Was that one of yours?

Ramaswamy: You think now is the time for incremental reform. I think it is the time for actual revolution.

Pence: Good Lord, no thank you. I do not have any revolutionary proposals. I believe in mild, small, incremental change. Except for a nationwide 15-week ban on abortion, which I want to implement because I promised it to God.

Haley: Let’s be realistic! Women hate hearing this. Let’s just admit that it will never happen. But we’re all going to say we want it to happen! But, ladies, it’s not going to happen.

Pence: I disagree. I will make it happen.

Haley: I know we all have to say that, but, like, we have to admit it won’t happen or no one will ever vote for us again.

Pence: Hmm.

Baier: Wait! I just remembered we have two more people here!

Burgum: Hi! I just hurt my leg, which you can’t really see on TV but was a big deal for me. I’m from a small town, and I’m so excited to be with all these people!

Hutchinson: It’s fine, I also forgot that I was here!

Baier: Climate change. Here is a young person.

Young Person: Please tell me that anyone on this stage believes in climate change, the only issue I care about because I anticipate living on this planet for at least 60 years. I am starting to get worried. Can we have a show of hands?

DeSantis: No! We are not schoolchildren! We will not raise our hands or acknowledge the existence of science!

Ramaswamy: As the only one on this stage who is not bought and paid for, I have a thought.

Christie: I have had enough of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT and stole his opening gambit from Barack Obama.

I came here to bludgeon Donald Trump verbally, but Trump is not here and I have a lot of verbal bludgeoning built up.

Baier: Governor Haley, are you bought and paid for?

Haley: What an odd question. I will answer it by quoting Margaret Thatcher favorably.

Baier: Why do we have homelessness, drugs and crime?

Pence: Because Democrats talked about defunding the police, and everyone knows that if you say “Defund the police!” into a mirror three times, crime appears. It’s just science, or, as Governor DeSantis and I prefer, religion.

Christie: I disagree. Crime went up because Hunter Biden did it.

Ramaswamy: That is a good point, but in fact crime went up because we have forgotten to have enough hard work and family and faith. We are having a national identity crisis, and I say to this nation what I would say to anyone going through a mental health crisis: THIS IS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT PATRIOTIC ENOUGH!

Pence: Hush. I despise you. Never say that we are not patriotic enough. During the Trump-Pence administration, I hugged the flag every night, with my wife’s approval. There is an eagle that would be very sad to hear you say that, as would Ronald Reagan, who is an angel now.

Ramaswamy: We live in a dark moment of internal cultural civil war.

Pence: No, we don’t. It is morning again in America, as it never was not.

DeSantis: I fixed all crime in Florida.

Baier: No, you didn’t.

DeSantis: That’s just according to your numbers.

Burgum: No one ever asks about the crime in small towns.

Hutchinson: We should have respect for the rule of law, and that starts at the top. With that fellow, Name.

[Audience gasps! Petals fall from a rose under a glass globe on the debate stage.]

Baier: You did it. You mentioned him. The elephant not in the room. If he’s convicted, would you still support him? Raise your hand.

[Christie gestures.]

MacCallum: Christie, were you raising your hand?

Christie: To OBJECT!

MacCallum: I don’t think anyone on this stage understands the concept of answering questions via a show of hands.

Christie: I’m Chris Christie, and I’m here to say: The time to stop Donald Trump is now! Not any of the other times! Now! This is what passes for courage in the Republican Party!

[Commingled cheers and boos from the audience.]

Ramaswamy: Enough pandering. I’m going to be completely honest and speak from the heart. Donald Trump was the best president of the 21st century.

Christie: You make me laugh.

DeSantis: You would make me laugh, but I have been instructed by my consultants not to laugh because it’s “off-putting” and “gives nightmares.”

MacCallum: Do you believe that Mike Pence did the right thing?

DeSantis: I think we need to end the weaponization of the Justice Department. It’s about Jan. 20, 2025 — I was once Navy SEAL-adjacent, and I learned in my adjacency that you must focus on the mission.

Baier: This is not an answer to the question.

DeSantis: Can we go back to piling on Ramaswamy? Pretend I didn’t say anything.

Ramaswamy: I would pardon Donald Trump.

Pence: May I speak? I was kind of involved. I think Mike Pence did the right thing. I think Mike Pence was a hero. Mike Pence kept the promise he made on Ronald Reagan’s Bible. Ronald Reagan is proud of Mike Pence.

Baier: Should we support Ukraine with more military aid?

Ramaswamy: Absolutely not. I am raising my hand!

Haley: You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.

Ramaswamy: Have fun on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.

Haley: A president must possess the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. I am not saying you lack that, but I’m also not not saying that.

Christie and Pence (cheering, banging their lecterns): Yeah, get him! Take him out!

Christie: Before you get too up on me, I would like to deport every undocumented person.

Baier: Uh, let’s talk about education.

DeSantis: In Florida, we did a good job with education. I’ve learned so many facts! According to something that’s probably a textbook, because I have approved it for classroom use, Ron DeSantis is not only the best governor we’ve ever had, but also the first and the tallest!

Baier: Now for the lightning round, or as we like to call it, the point in the debate when we entirely lose control.

Pence: I hear a bell ringing, but I don’t know why.

MacCallum: Governor Christie, will you level with the American people about UFOs?

Christie: Huh? Sure. Yeah. Why not?

Baier: Well, thanks for a normal evening.

DeSantis: Thank you for not making me talk!

Pence: This was far from the worst time I’ve had at a gathering of Republicans!

That’s closer than you think…

The @GOP—as I've said before–is not just a threat to the nation. It's a threat to the planet. https://t.co/caukfFA7UF

— Prof Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) August 24, 2023

Kudlow: I loved that Pence talked about tax cuts… I thought Vivek had a good moment, climate change is a hoax. You’ve got Nobel prize winners saying climate change is a hoax.. pic.twitter.com/mECnT6WjZP

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 24, 2023

They are trying to kill their own children.

This one’s been off my radar

The insurrectionist-in-chief plans to proudly turn himself in today for booking in Atlanta. Donald Trump, the ever-blustery showman and former president, has scheduled the media circus in primetime for maximum television ratings.

Receiving less coverage is the multi-state plot to access voting software included in Fulton County District Attorney Fanu Willis’ indictment. Ben Clements and Susan Greenhalgh take up the story for Slate.

“There have been multiple accounts of Trump supporters unlawfully accessing voting systems to copy proprietary vote-recording and vote-counting software in Michigan, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. These reports spurred criminal investigations in their respective states, but until Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed charges last week, none of these probes had tied the crimes back to Trump’s coordinated, multipronged plot to stay in power,” the pair explain.

Willis includes the software heist in her racketeering indictment. The irony is that it was uncovered not by state or federal authorities but by the nonprofit “Coalition for Good Governance, in connection with a civil lawsuit that has been ongoing since 2017.” The group turned up evidence that Sydney Powell “allegedly funded and directed the January 2021 theft in Coffee County as part of a multistate contract to take copies of voting software—in not just Georgia, but also Michigan and Nevada.”

Clements and Greenhalgh lay out the plot that forced the resignation of Coffee County election supervisor, Misty Hampton (since indicted):

Following Hampton’s resignation, her successor, James Barnes, reported “alarming” irregularities in the Coffee elections office to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The secretary’s office told Barnes it would investigate. But according to Barnes, no one followed up.

Shortly after he took office, Barnes found that he couldn’t access the county’s election management server because the password had been changed without authorization from, or knowledge of, Raffensperger’s office. The secretary’s technicians were unable to access the election server and were forced to replace it, but (according to Barnes) they did not investigate further. In August 2021, Barnes wrote a memo to the secretary of state detailing further security concerns he’d observed in the Coffee office when he was first hired, including the disquieting fact that the faceplates of some of the vote tabulators had been removed.

Although the secretary’s investigators had open investigations into other incidents in Coffee County, an investigation summary filed in September 2021 seems to show that, despite these multiple red flags, none of these issues were examined by the secretary’s investigators. In fact, in late April 2022, even after evidence of the breach had been provided, the secretary of state’s chief operating officer, Gabe Sterling, derisively denied that the breach had occurred. And when questioned by a reporter, Raffensperger provided conflicting answers as to when his office first learned of the software breaches.

Clements and Greenhalgh insist:

There is still no indication that the federal government is investigating the multistate plot to take voting software. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations is still slow-walking the investigation and has not held anyone accountable. And the Georgia secretary of state is still downplaying and dismissing the significance of the software theft.

I’m in no position to opine on the alleged vulnerabilities of the software itself. But I will note that just because a skilled hacker, given access to the machines, enough of them, with enough time, and undetected, could, in theory, manipulate election results, does not mean it is likely to happen or has happened or is widespread.

But if Powell and others did indeed conspire to access election equipment in multiple states, they should face prosecution in each and every one.

This ↓↓↓

And this:

WOW. Joe Biden’s first presidential campaign ad just aired on Fox News, moments before the debate is set to start. Joe Biden is making his way into the debate whether Fox & Republicans like it or not. This is exactly how you do it. Genius. pic.twitter.com/RQdF89S2HP

— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) August 24, 2023

It may not have been Biden’s first campaign ad, but it was well-placed.

“The first ad that is part of the campaign is focused on the economy and seeks to contrast Biden’s record with former President Trump and the ‘MAGA agenda.’” The Hill reported Monday.

These were placed all around Milwaukee, reports People:

Lot of Dark Brandon in Dem debate counter-programming, these are on billboard screens around Milwaukee pic.twitter.com/lNJSGry1Wl

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) August 23, 2023

“Dark Brandon,” President Joe Biden‘s satirical alter-ego, is making a bold appearance on the day of the first 2024 Republican debate — not only on billboards in Milwaukee, where eight GOP candidates are set to take the stage on Wednesday evening, but in a digital ad on FoxNews.com.

From midnight on Wednesday until 11:59 p.m., the internet meme-turned-campaign tool will have prime placement on Fox News’ website with a pro-choice ad touting Biden’s mission to defend abortion rights, one year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“I think it fits both the president’s ethos of going everywhere and not writing off any voters,” Rob Flaherty, Biden’s 2024 deputy campaign manager, tells People. “It also speaks to the sort of strided, swaggy Dark Brandon personality of, ‘Yeah, we’re going to go on Fox News and talk about protecting and restoring Roe.'”

The contrast between Biden and the Republican field and their supporters’ dishonesty are there for anyone whose eyeballs are not filled with kool-aid.

Roy Edroso watched as much of the “presidential” debate as he could stand (if you’re into that sort of thing). The GOP’s ads, he observes, “look like something out of a neurological experiment.”

Edroso summarizes in one line: “There is one thing that I’m pretty sure won’t change after I leave: I don’t think anyone, even the screamers, even the crazy people, expects to see a president come out of this.”

This new talking point is just plain weird. It’s all over Fox News that Biden doesn’t care about the Maui fire victims:

Jeanine: This guy has been lying from the moment he came onto the political scene. He has a lack of empathy, egocentric… He is lying and he is narcissistic.. He is a narcissist and a egomaniac pic.twitter.com/KWgiWLyByD

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 22, 2023

Roberts: The weird thing, I cannot understand about Biden. He goes to maui and instead of saying I can't imagine what you've gone through, this is the worst thing that I've seen and we are going to do everything we can… pic.twitter.com/GatjkCIH86

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 23, 2023

Okaaaay:

Biden: And for as long as it takes, we're going to be with you, the whole country will be with you. pic.twitter.com/n5PHbJrKez

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 21, 2023

For some weird reason, the fact that Biden stopped to talk to a dog handler and pat the dog is being portrayed as more evidence of his cold indifference to suffering. Whatever.

This is clearly an official talking point that’s coming out of Republican circles following the old Karl Rove strategy of “attack your enemy’s strength” as they did with John Kerry. But that was attacking him for something he’d done long in the past that couldn’t be verified. This is something that’s happening in real time.

Not that it will stop them. They have realized that they can say anything — up is down and black is white — and their audience will believe them because they see nothing else. And if they do happen to see something that refutes the MAGA media, they just think it’s fake news.

And honestly, the right is so performative now that it’s really all just a big game show to them. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. All that matters is if it owns the libs. I don’t think the rest of the country is on board with that though. At least I hope not.

Also this:

“Joe Biden just fell asleep in the middle of his meeting with victims of the Maui fires”

— Text posted on social media with an edited video featuring President Biden, Aug. 22, 2023

Attacks on President Biden’s age and overall mental and physical fitness are far from new.

This latest example — a moment clipped from the live coverage of the president’s Monday visit to Lahaina, Hawaii, by Gray Television-owned Hawaii News Now — shows how the internet can be used to amplify, escalate and manipulate a moving image.

The Facts

An isolated 32-second clip, posted and reposted by several accounts, seemingly showed an octogenarian president, head tilted down, struggling to stay awake at an event as community leaders expressed the pain felt by Lahaina residents reeling from a deadly wildfire.

It was a viral moment, thanks to shares from notables like Fox News host Sean Hannity, Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) and others, who framed the clip as yet another example of Biden demonstrating that an old and tired president was unable to lead the country through moments of crisis, as he was once again caught nodding off by roving news cameras.

Though misleading and lacking context, these posts didn’t make use of video editing tricks; instead, they relied on selective isolation.

The outright manipulation comes in the form of an even shorter version, cut down to 12 seconds. The edited video featured in a post by Matt Wallace, a conservative influencer with more than a million followers, shares the same markings found in the longer viral version and sourced to a Hawaii News Now broadcast. However, it slices and dices through the moment — cutting away from Biden right at the moment he nods his head while gazing down, clearly awake. This catchier edit of “sleepy” Biden gained more traction, racking up over 12 million views. That reach was extended through shares by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a right-wing House freshman, as well as others.

The moment in full, of course, paints a different picture. It shows a somber Biden, reacting when directly addressed, tilting his head down and nodding as the speaker continues to illustrate the challenges facing a devastated Lahaina community. At the 19:30 mark of this higher-quality C-SPAN feed of the same camera angle, viewers can see fuller detail — and get a better look at Biden’s gaze, which remains clear and wide-eyed.

The Pinocchio Test

This is a classic case of manipulated video. Anyone who shared it earns Four Pinocchios.

And this too:

This doctored video of Joe Biden visiting Maui, Hawaii, which claims to show residents chanting against him, has been viewed four million times.

The unedited video of the exact same moment is on YouTube, and no chants against Biden can be heard in it. pic.twitter.com/0QFjeHBsUx

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) August 23, 2023

There are no limits on social media.

The last time Trump skipped a debate was January 28, 2016. Remember this?

Those were the days. I’m going to guess that won’t happen this time. Ron DeSantis has been admonished not to go after Trump and instead take on Vivek Ramaswamy and he’s already sinking like a rock in the polls. Chris Christie will likely be the lone Trump critic and he’ll probably be pretty harsh. But what difference does it make? This debate is basically a death watch pageant to determine who will be in position to step in if Trump is unable to run?

Nothing will ever beat this moment, however.

He’s so dignified.

The good news for Trump lovers is that he’ll be with Tucker Carlson on his Xitter show:

The interview between Carlson and Trumpalmost didn’t happen, according to two people familiar with its planning.The men had been talking informally for two months about possibly setting up an event to draw attention away from the Fox-hosted debate.

But Carlson was scheduled to be out of the country this week for interviews with Hungary’s autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orban and with Aleksandar Vucic, the president of Serbia, making it difficult to schedule the interview.

Trump had been going back and forth about whether he would show up onstage for the Wednesday RNC debate, or any other. He had dined with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and the network’s president, Jay Wallace, at his Bedminster Club earlier this summer and left them with the impression that he may participate in the event,according to three people familiar with the dinner.

But Trump has long complained that the network appears to have turned on him,with Foxgiving at-times favorable coverage to rivals such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch has encouraged Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to enter the primary.

Two weeks ago, Trump and Carlson fixed a date for the interview andCarlson’s team made the last-minute decision to “bang it out” right before heading to Europe, according to someone familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Carlson began posting his shows to his account on Twitter in June.Elon Musk, X’s owner, has been personally involved in developing features that Carlson’steam believes will make their videos more accessible, including making it possible to play X videos on television sets using Apple’s Airplay feature,according to a person close to Carlson.Carlson’s team also pushed X to develop a “picture in picture” feature that allows users to continue watching an X video while using other features on their phone, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump did not want it to become public that he had taped the interview and instructed his team to keep it a secret, advisers said. Trump’s team tried to keep signaling he might still attend the Fox debate, with aides refusing to confirm he was considering sitting for a Carlson interview that he had already recorded. Even then, he kept polling people on whether he should attend the debate.

For its part, Carlson’s team did not see the Bedminster sit-down as a guarantee that Trump wouldn’t also decide to attend the debate this week.

Trump did not officially tell RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel of his decision to not appear onstage until Sunday, even after word of the Carlson interview had become public. Trump toldMcDaniel that the decision was not meant to spite her, according to people familiar with his calls.

Trump told advisers he didn’t want Carlson’s interview to appear on X because it is a competitor to Truth Social, Trump’s social media network. But Carlson and his team have been building a relationship with Musk for months and told Trump that they did not think Trump’s own platform had the necessary reach.

Carlson has echoed and amplified Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, while also advancing a theory that the “Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

But Trump has long accepted a level of criticism from Carlson that he didn’t from most of the other Fox hosts, according to people familiar with the dynamic between the two men.

While at Fox, Carlson interviewed Trump multiple times but maintained a more independent posture than some of his fellow hosts, such as Sean Hannity or Jeanine Pirro.

After Carlson’s texts excoriating Trump were released as part of Dominion’s litigation against Fox, Carlsonattempted to assure the former president that he had been blowing off steam afterhaving been misled by Trump aides.

In one such incident, Carlson had to correct an error in a segment about dead people supposedlyvoting in the 2020 election in Georgia. The information had come to one of Carlson’s producers from a Trump aide purporting to have proof of voting irregularities in the state, and has been widely debunked. Carlson railed privately against the unreliability of the information peddled by Trump’s team.

But Carlson’s show has always carried enough Trump-friendly commentaryto remain in the former president’s good graces.

Even after Carlson’s texts became public in March, Trump signaled that he was happy with Carlson’s special that was running on the network’s digital streaming service. The program argued that the Jan. 6 attack was not a “deadly insurrection” and that the violence of the day had been overblown. Multiple people have been convicted in federal court of seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack. Four people in the crowd died, a Capitol Police officer died after being beaten by rioters and four Capitol Police officers who served on Jan. 6 died by suicide in the days and months after.

Trump shared an article about Carlson’s special and wrote, “he doesn’t hate me, or at least, not anymore!”

Soon after, Carlson invited Trump to come on his Foxshow and Trump agreed. Carlson and his production team traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida to conduct the interview. “For a man who is caricatured as an extremist,” Carlson said of Trump, in his introduction to the interview, “we think you’ll find what he has to say moderate, sensible and wise.”

After Fox canceled Carlson’s show, the network’s ratings took a hit. In the four weeks before Carlson’s exit, Fox averaged 2.6 million viewers in prime time; in the four weeks after, Fox averaged just 1.6 million — still at the top in cable news but down 39 percent. The network has recovered some of those viewers with a new prime-time lineup, which has boosted its average total viewers in prime time to 2.2 million.

Trump has complained to his aides that Carlson was not friendly enough to him at times during his presidency. But he also maintained a respect for Carlson’s high ratings, later telling advisers he couldn’t believe Fox fired Carlson.

Fox has not yet released Carlson from his contract, which expires in December 2024. The company has informed Carlson he is in breach of his contract by releasing videos on X. Carlson’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, has in turn accused Fox of violating Carlson’s right to freely express his views on current events.

The two men don’t have additional events planned together. While Carlson is at work trying to stand up a new company, rebuilding studios in Maine and Florida, he wants to maintain some distance from Trump, whose false denial of the results of the 2020 election frustrated Carlson and helped make Fox the target of costly legal battles.

But Carlson continues to enjoy Trump’s company, to a point. “Do I like Trump? I love him. But there are many levels to Trump,” Carlson told his authorized biographer Chadwick Moore. “He was a completely ineffectual president. He couldn’t manage my household. He’s not a manager, and that’s very frustrating to watch.”

“But Trump on the level of guy? To have dinner with Trump is one of the great joys in the world. If you were to assemble a list of people to have dinner with, Trump would be in the top spot,” Carlson said.

“In the end, Trump is just the maitre’d, a wonderful host. Funny, outrageous, absolutely on his own planet.”

I’m pretty sure that’s not really a compliment. Not that Trump cares. He just wants to stick it to Fox and going on Tucker to be broadcast during the debate is the perfect way to do it.