Democrats Need New Outreach Strategies: Experts

 Then-U..S. Sen. Kamala Harris, shown during acceptance speech for the Democratic Vice Presidential nomination on Aug. 19, 2020.

Editor’s Note: The following guest columns were written by Dan Rather and Ron Filipkowski following Republican Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election Nov. 5, 2024. Both authors conclude that Democrats require major charges in their media strategies, starting immediately. Each has considerable expertise, as summarized below. Their columns are excerpted with the complete columns available via the links. Excerpted also in the appendix are several other media experts who provide context summarizing billionaire-funded radical right media, including platforms controlled by Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Dan Rather first published the column below in his near-daily column “Steady,” which he so named to urge readers to stay balanced during troubled times. Rather,, whose 93rd birthday was on Oct. 31, is currently based in his native Texas and New York. The iconic author and journalist worked for many years as the CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor.

Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch.com, is a former federal and state prosecutor. A Marine and former Republican based in Florida, Filipkowski has amassed a massive following for his reporting exposing those who threaten American democracy. Filipkowski co-hosts the hit podcast ‘Uncovered’ on the MeidasTouch Network.

Excerpted at bottom below these columns are commentaries on the decisions by most newspapers, including the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, to refrain from presidential endorsements this fall, a new situation in U.S. presidential coverage. It ocurred at the same time as increased efforts by Russian media working with U.S. assets to tilt the election in favor of Trump, with coverage also excepted below and illustrated by the flags, shown at right, outside an American home.

– Andrew Kreig, Justice Integrity Project editor

Steady, Tune In. Not Out. We disengage from the Donald at our own risk

By Dan Rather, right and Team Steady

 If you have turned on a television or opened a browser or a newspaper — I know, a quaint notion — in the past days, you have been bombarded with dozens of reasons why Kamala Harris lost and the Democrats are flailing. The finger-pointing and recriminations are only adding to the despondency so many are feeling right now.

Whether it was the economy, or the border, or identity politics, the biggest problem for the Democrats was and is messaging — how voters perceived those issues. In a double-blind poll conducted in October, voters preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s when they weren’t told whose policies were whose. Read that again.

The Democrats need to radically change how they communicate and thus campaign and ultimately govern. It is head-spinning to many who cover American politics that somehow Republicans are now perceived as the party of working people. That is a major messaging failure by Democrats.

The Right Supports a Network of Conferences, Podcasters & Rallies; the Left has MSNBC,

It’s time for Democrats to rethink their approach to grass roots organizing.

By Ron Filipkowski, right, via Meidas Touch Network

Imagine every week, somewhere in America, there is an event featuring nationally prominent Democratic elected officials, TV personalities, celebrities, artists, state and local officials, candidates, podcasters, journalists, and social media influencers. A one-day or weekend event, sponsored and hosted by different organizations, each with their own group of speakers, in different states, all year round. That is what the Republican Party has had in place for a decade to recruit, build, inspire, organize and motivate their base.

The Democrats have MSNBC.

Since I have attended, watched and covered these events on the Right for years now, I am often asked why the Right has embraced these so enthusiastically while the Left has virtually nothing equivalent. My theory always was that Republicans enjoy doing things in groups and Democrats are more individualistic. But every time I would mention that while speaking to a group of activists, their response was always the same – ‘I would go to something like that!’

Democrats do some of this in the final few months of major election campaigns, but it is nothing like the network that the Right has created.

Panel topics for one of these conferences on the Left could be: Why Are We Losing Men under 40? Why are Latino Voters Disillusioned With Democrats? How Can We Talk About Abortion in a Way That Doesn’t Alienate Christians? Democrats Need to Articulate a Border Policy, What Should It Look Like? Trans Athletes and Competitive Sports.

Contact the editor Andrew Kreig

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Steady, Tune In. Not Out. We disengage from the Donald at our own risk

By Dan Rather, right and Team Steady

 If you have turned on a television or opened a browser or a newspaper — I know, a quaint notion — in the past six days, you have been bombarded with dozens of reasons why Kamala Harris lost and the Democrats are flailing. The finger-pointing and recriminations are only adding to the despondency so many are feeling right now.

Those feelings are valid, and wanting to disengage is an understandable reaction. After all, many of you were hyper-engaged for an exhausting nine years, and now, we are here. But to disengage completely would notch another win for Donald Trump. The less people know and understand what he is doing, the better for him. Writing off the country, moving overseas, binge-watching every “Real Housewives” episode — whatever disengagement looks like to you, it plays right into his hands.

Exit polls showed that the more attention voters paid to political news, the more likely they were to vote for Harris, by wide margins. Harris +13 for voters who paid a great deal or a lot of attention. Trump +23 for votes who paid little or none at all.

So, as soon as you are able, we all need to focus on his far-right MAGA agenda. Ignorance is not bliss.

While the loss in the presidential race wasn’t quite as dramatic as first thought, the trends are troubling, with traditional and sure-thing voting blocs moving away from Democrats and toward Trump. The solutions are more nuanced than simply moving more to the left, or to the center, or rejecting the “woke” agenda.

Whether it was the economy, or the border, or identity politics, the biggest problem for the Democrats was and is messaging — how voters perceived those issues. In a double-blind poll conducted in October, voters preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s when they weren’t told whose policies were whose. Read that again.

The Democrats need to radically change how they communicate and thus campaign and ultimately govern. It is head-spinning to many who cover American politics that somehow Republicans are now perceived as the party of working people. That is a major messaging failure by Democrats.

The Republicans have been masterfully playing the communications long game, and it’s paid off in a huge way. They orchestrated an asymmetry in news coverage. It started with Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, which gave birth to his Fox “News” with Roger Ailes as puppet master. Next came Newsmax and its ilk. Now the right has two huge social media networks: Truth Social and X. The thing that is so remarkable about the right-wing media is the cohesiveness of its voice — which doesn’t speak the truth.

The rest of the media landscape doesn’t speak with one voice — nor should it, not in a healthy democracy. But if you are trying to combat a right-wing media monster, it is a big disadvantage.

The Democrats, who have been using an outmoded communications playbook for far too long, are also speaking in an echo chamber, not able to reach people outside their core constituencies. Preaching to the choir was never more obvious than this election cycle.

Post-election social media has seen a surge in stories of Trump voters surprised to hear that tariffs will raise prices. And Trump voters are shocked to learn that their undocumented relatives could be deported. There was no shortage of stories about the dangers of tariffs and mass deportations, but the information wasn’t getting to the people who needed to hear it.

How do the Democrats get them to hear it, or see it, or read it?

According to Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer, the right wing has found a way to infiltrate non-political social media “on topics like comedy, gaming, gambling, and wellness,” he wrote in Media Matters on Substack. “We haven’t incubated our progressive political media enough, nor have we been willing to go into the non-political spaces where the most critical segment of voters are getting their info.”

If they can figure out how, they will have a great opportunity the moment Trump is inaugurated. He has said his first piece of legislation will be a huge corporate tax cut, given to the very companies who are gouging consumers at the grocery store. The Democrats need to communicate the real ramifications of this tax cut, whom it will hurt and whom it will help. To do so, they need to pop the liberal information bubble.

Please know, all is not lost. This election wasn’t a blowout like Reagan’s 1984 result (he won by 18 points) or even Obama in 2008. Just over 2 points separated Trump and Harris. In many states, voters backed Trump but also backed ballot initiatives that are counter to the MAGA agenda: abortion rights, paid family leave, and raising the minimum wage. In Missouri, 12 percent of voters chose Trump and abortion rights. While the Democrats have an enormous hill to climb, they aren’t starting at the bottom of it.

The Trump – MAGA “Traction — People’s Convention” poster for a June 16-18 event in Detroit, Michigan.

The Right Supports a Network of Conferences, Podcasters & Rallies; the Left has MSNBC

It’s time for Democrats to rethink their approach to grass roots organizing

By Ron Filipkowsk, right, via Meidas Touch Network

Imagine every week, somewhere in America, there is an event featuring nationally prominent Democratic elected officials, TV personalities, celebrities, artists, state and local officials, candidates, podcasters, journalists, and social media influencers. A one-day or weekend event, sponsored and hosted by different organizations, each with their own group of speakers, in different states, all year round. That is what the Republican Party has had in place for a decade to recruit, build, inspire, organize and motivate their base.

The Democrats have MSNBC.

Since I have attended, watched and covered these events on the Right for years now, I am often asked why the Right has embraced these so enthusiastically while the Left has virtually nothing equivalent. My theory always was that Republicans enjoy doing things in groups and Democrats are more individualistic. But every time I would mention that while speaking to a group of activists, their response was always the same – ‘I would go to something like that!’IMG_1887

Democrats do some of this in the final few months of major election campaigns, but it is nothing like the network that the Right has created. Sure, we have all made fun of these events. Many of the speakers at right-wing conferences are nutty conspiracy theorists, christian nationalists, charlatans and grifters, and people who attend them can be fairly culty, but they are effective. While Democrats laugh at them or criticize them for what is taking place, they are doing nothing of their own to counter it.

Let’s say, in a few months after the mourning period is over for 2024, a major conference was announced in a major city of a swing state that featured Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear, Eric Swalwell, Jared Moskowitz, Jasmine Crockett, AOC, along with a few celebrities of the entertainment industry, TV news commentators, journalists, podcasters and social media influencers. Would you go if that was in your state? IMG_1890

Although the formats vary, most of these conferences on the Right play out a similar way using the CPAC / Turning Point USA model pioneered by Matt Schlapp and Charlie Kirk. Early on they feature panels of 3-4 speakers discussing a specific topic for 30-60 minutes, taking questions from the audience. Then speakers begin with local officials, then podcasters/influencers, then TV hosts, then celebrities, then the headliner politicians being featured. They talk about what is on their mind, what they think people need to do, propose new ideas and vision.

Panel topics for one of these conferences on the Left could be: Why Are We Losing Men under 40? Why are Latino Voters Disillusioned With Democrats? How Can We Talk About Abortion in a Way That Doesn’t Alienate Christians? Democrats Need to Articulate a Border Policy, What Should It Look Like? Trans Athletes and Competitive Sports. I’m sure we each could think of many more. And the panelists could be chosen who are experts in these areas, but also have diversity of thought on them.

It would be critically important for every attendee to feel that they can share their thoughts and ideas without being shouted down or attacked. Honestly, that is a serious problem on the Left. If you step out of line with a certain orthodoxy, people are often branded racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic, or that they don’t care or empathize with a particular person’s group or plight because they have a different opinion about an issue that person is passionate about.

These conferences need to be a safe space where orthodoxies and conventional wisdom can be challenged and debated. People can disagree, argue their points passionately, hash things out, and still part as friends. Those kinds of debates happen on the Right, not so much on the Left where people have great ideas, new approaches, different perspectives, but are afraid to share them for fear of being shouted down, scorned, ostracized, or tagged with a odious label.

The Right invests in these conferences and events. Spends millions of dollars on them on advertising, venues and speaker’s fees. But over time they have been so well attended, with attendees buying tickets and advertisers and sponsors lining up, that they now turn a healthy profit for the people who run them. While you don’t have to pay for an elected official or candidate who just wants face time with activists, speakers lower down the food chain need their travel paid for and modest fees for their time.

People don’t even have to attend in person anymore. These events are all livestreamed on X, Instagram, Facebook Live, Rumble, YouTube, and get lots of coverage from Fox, Newsmax, Real America’s Voice, Right Side Broadcasting and other right-wing channels. Hundreds of thousands of people on the Right watch these conferences from home and on their phones, week after week after week.

Although the formats vary, most of these conferences on the Right play out a similar way using the CPAC / Turning Point USA model pioneered by Matt Schlapp and Charlie Kirk. Early on they feature panels of 3-4 speakers discussing a specific topic for 30-60 minutes, taking questions from the audience. Then speakers begin with local officials, then podcasters/influencers, then TV hosts, then celebrities, then the headliner politicians being featured. They talk about what is on their mind, what they think people need to do, propose new ideas and vision.

Panel topics for one of these conferences on the Left could be: Why Are We Losing Men under 40? Why are Latino Voters Disillusioned With Democrats? How Can We Talk About Abortion in a Way That Doesn’t Alienate Christians? Democrats Need to Articulate a Border Policy, What Should It Look Like? Trans Athletes and Competitive Sports. I’m sure we each could think of many more. And the panelists could be chosen who are experts in these areas, but also have diversity of thought on them.

Related News Coverage

Nov. 10

Washington Post, For legal disputes, Elon Musk’s X picked a venue far from Texas HQ, Tobi Raji, Nov. 10, 2024. Tech billionaire Elon Musk has chosen a sprawling federal court district in northern Texas to resolve all lawsuits filed against X, the social media platform he owns that was formerly known as Twitter.The decision ensures that such lawsuits will be heard in courthouses that are a hub for conservatives, which experts say could make it easier for X to shield itself from litigation and punish critics.

It’s typical for companies to specify in their terms of service where lawsuits against them may be filed. But the businesses usually have a clear connection to the chosen court district, experts say. For example, Instagram, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, says all lawsuits against the company should be filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California or a state court located in San Mateo County, California, which is home to Menlo Park.

But under X’s new terms of service, which take effect Nov. 15, lawsuits against the social media platform must be filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas — not the Western District of Texas, where the company is headquartered.

Mass protests and crackdowns that engulfed colleges in the spring have dissipated, and campuses are far calmer and quieter this fall. But at some schools, student groups have struck a strikingly more militant tone.

Earlier messages were not gentle — Israel’s actions were regularly dubbed “genocide” — but until recently few had openly endorsed Hamas and its leaders.

To some, including many in the Jewish community, it’s an alarming shift. But to others, the new rhetoric is the natural evolution of a movement responding to a brutal war now in its second year, with no end in sight. By changing his company’s terms of service, Musk has ensured that lawsuits against X will be heard in courthouses that are a hub for conservative judges.Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck accused Musk of “quintessential forum shopping” — the practice of identifying a court or district where one believes they will receive a favorable ruling. He noted that 10 of the 11 active judges in the Northern District were appointed by a Republican president, compared with six of 11 judges in the Western District of Texas.

“Whoever wrote these terms of service appears to believe that conservative judges are more likely to rule for X in the typical case than randomly selected judges across the country,” Vladeck said.

Nearly a dozen legal and tech experts, lawyers and court watchers said X’s decision to steer all lawsuits to northern Texas is indicative of a broader effort by companies to find favorable venues, an issue that has plagued lawmakers and advocacy groups for years.

Everyone Is Entitled To My Own Opinion, Media Commentary: Sanewashing and Wishcasting: How the press continues to fail us, Jeff Tiedrich, right, Nov. 10, 2024. If we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay.

The worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media utterly failed us during the 2024 campaign season, New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn came right out and said it: defending democracy is a ‘partisan act,’ and we won’t do it — and, fuck us all, the press kept their word, and didn’t do it. they enthusiastically put their fingers on the scale for Donny Convict.

Arguably, the media’s worst transgression was the sanewashing — the cleaning-up of Donny’s incomprehensible blitherings, to hide his obvious cognitive disintegration and make him sound coherent.

A minutes-long disjointed word-salad about how tariffs on Chinese goods were going to lower the cost of childcare became “a major economic speech.”

Donny’s inability to keep his increasingly-demented mind on the topic at hand — his crazypants pinballing from they’re eating the dawgs to Hannibal Lecter wants to have you for dinner to would you rather be eaten by a shark or electrocuted — was explained away by Donny as his brilliant “weave.”

That explanation, to The New York Times, “did all sort of seem to make sense.”

Post-election, the media has mostly moved on from sanewashing, and has now jumped feet-first into wishcasting. What’s wishcasting? over to you, Wiktionary. “[Wishcasting is] the act of interpreting information or a situation in a way that casts it as favorable or desired, despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a conclusion; a wishful forecast.”

Sure enough, the media has now gone into overdrive, churning out piece after piece in which they promise us that if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay. Not twelve hours after the election had been called for Donny, the Times wasted no time in assuring us that the election of a vindictive fascist is an amazing opportunity for vindictive fascism not to happen.

Nov. 8

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Trump Calls for Investigation into Truth Social Stock Dump Rumors, J.D. Wolf, Nov. 8, 2024.  Trump claims he has no intention of selling his Truth Social stock Truth Social stock has been volatile. It has fluctuated between its high of $79.38 and its low of $11.75 and experienced trading halts multiple times. Trump’s Twitter clone has been criticized for not having a business model that makes financial sense, taking in less profit than its expenditures by a large margin.

Some have suspected Trump was looking to pump up the price of his stock and then dump it as other founders of his social media app have done. In a Truth Social post, Trump claims he doesn’t intent to sell his stock, and in a show of authoritarianism, is calling for authorities to immediately investigate that those who are behind these rumors.

Trump’s post communicates his intention to continue to maintain businesses while holding the presidency. Trump likely hopes the using the app while president will drive his social media app into profitability.

RawStory, ‘They need to be burned’: Project 2025 chief calls for destruction of Boy Scouts, Brad Reed, Nov. 8, 2024. ‘They need to be burned’: Project 2025 chief calls for destruction of Boy Scouts.

Kevin Roberts, the architect of the controversial Project 2025, writes in his soon-to-be-released book that he wants to conduct a “slow burn” of multiple American institutions.

The Guardian has obtained a copy of the book, which is titled “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America,” and calls for setting presumably metaphorical fire a wide variety of institutions that are insufficiently right wing.

“Many of America’s institutions have been completely hollowed out,” Roberts contends. “Decadent and rootless, these institutions serve only as shelter for our corrupt elite. Meanwhile, they block out the light and suck up the nutrients necessary for new American institutions to grow. For America to flourish again, they don’t need to be reformed; they need to be burned.”

Roberts’s list of institutions in need of a fiery cleanse includes both traditional conservative bogeymen such as the media and Ivy League universities but also some institutions that were once seen as staunchly conservative, including the FBI, “80% of ‘Catholic’ higher education,” and even “The Boy Scouts of America.”

Also on Roberts’s list is the asset management firm BlackRock, which The Guardian notes “has been a key investor in Trump Media & Technology Group, the president-elect’s social media company.”

The Guardian also says that Roberts’s obsession with fire is evident throughout the entire book, as he offers philosophical musings on the virtues of burning things.

“That’s the funny thing about fire. It is so fleeting, a flame flickering from moment to moment, yet in its evanescence, it is eternal,” he writes at one point. “Of all the elements, fire is most associated with transformation, renewal, and change. You can’t have a blaze without some kind of sacrificial transformation of fuel into fire. Yet precisely for this reason, fire demands an attention to continuity. Unlike any of the other elements, fire dies … a fire must be continually tended.”

Nov. 7

Washington Post, Elon Musk says Trump win is just the start of his political ambitions, Trisha Thadaniand Elizabeth Dwoskin, Nov. 7, 2024 (print ed.).  Trump called the billionaire a ‘new star’ during his victory speech and Musk announced plans to push GOP candidates in the 2026 midterms and beyond.

Elon Musk played a video game on his private jet as it hurtled toward Palm Beach, Florida, where he was due to watch election results with former president Donald Trump. As aircraft engines whirred in the background, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX told thousands of listeners that the 2024 presidential campaign was just the start of his political ambitions.

America PAC, the pro-Trump political group Musk formed and funded with at least $118 million of his own money, “is going to keep going after this election, and prepare for the midterms and any intermediate elections,” Musk said on a live stream on his social media platform X. In the next round of races for the House, the Senate and even some local offices, he said his super PAC “is going to aim to weigh in heavily.”

Later, as Musk hung out at Mar-a-Lago with other wealthy donors and a Trump victory appeared guaranteed, his posts on X became increasingly triumphant. “The future is gonna be fantastic,” he wrote over a picture of a SpaceX rocket launching on a pillar of flame.

Musk’s presence at Trump’s side Tuesday night marked an inflection point in an unprecedented metamorphosis, as the world’s richest man vowed to turn his erratic but visionary ethos more fully to the nation’s politics. Since endorsing Trump in July, Musk — once known primarily for pushing boundaries in electric vehicles and rockets — has become a prominent force in the conservative political movement set to return to the White House.

As the election results poured in, Musk tweeted about his excitement about working with Trump on a commission to slash government spending. He posted a picture of himself deep in conversation with the former president and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White at the Trump watch party, adding a fire emoji and four American flags. And over a meme of himself holding a ceramic sink in the Oval Office, he wrote: “Let that sink in.”

Trump added to the sense of destiny, fawning over Musk, his rockets and his satellite internet service as he declared victory early Wednesday. “We have a new star,” Trump said. “A star is born — ELON!”

Wealthy donors have long used fat pocketbooks to shape the political landscape, but Musk has unique power and appeal, longtime Republican strategists said. In addition to his immense wealth — Bloomberg estimates his net worth at over $260 billion — Musk has an avid online following of hundreds of millions, control of a major social media platform and a willingness to push political and legal boundaries, allowing him to redefine notions of how a business tycoon can engage with politics.

Nov. 4

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: MLK’s Daughter Blasts Trump’s “Meme Team” Deepfake Video, J.D. Wolf, Nov. 4, 2024. MAGA is spreading a fake video depicting the civil right leader pushing MAGA talking points and endorsing Trump

The account “MAGA Resource” embedded the video from it’s original source, “Ramble Rants” which posted the video during Black History Month and claimed: “If Martin Luther King, Jr. was alive today, he’d support President Trump #DilleyMemeTeme #BlackHistoryMonth”

“Ramble Rants” is part of the Dilley Meme Team, also known as “Trump’s Online War Machine.” The account has asked its followers to complain to Twitter about the “deepfake” community note warning on the post by “MAGA Resource.”Ramble Rants

The Dilley Meme Team is a controversial group that has been used by Trump to promote his MAGA agenda. In August, Trump posted a video meme from the Dilley Meme Team using a parody of Alanis Morissette’s song Ironic that had a verse suggesting Kamala Harris performed oral sex in exchange for political power.

The New York Times has described the Dilley Meme Team as group as “a team of meme-makers” that are “flooding social media with pro-Trump posts riddled with sexist and racist tropes.” The newspaper also reported that Trump has played video from the pro-Trump “troll army” at his own rallies.

The New York Times said the group has “effectively served as a shadow online ad agency” for Trump’s campaign. The group doesn’t have any problem pushing misinformation and deepfakes, like the Martin Luther King, Jr. Trump “endorsement” video.Trump with Reanna and Brenden Dilley.

In August, the group’s leader, Brenden Dilley, a former Republican House candidate, was a guest in Trump’s box suite at the Poinsetta Bowl, according to a Twitter post by Dilley. Trump also sent Dilley an autographed news article thanking him for his help in defeating GOP rival Ron DeSantis.

The Dilley Meme Team’s fake Martin Luther King video is disgusting and doesn’t honor the legacy of the civil rights leader. This is exactly the type of content that Trump has encouraged.

Nieman Lab at Harvard University, The Washington Post isn’t alone: Roughly 3/4 of major American newspapers aren’t endorsing anyone for president this year, Joshua Benton, Nov. 4, 2024.  Led by risk-averse corporate owners, dozens of the biggest U.S. newspapers have decided their editorials should express opinions on everything except who should be president..

I can’t remember the last time I was as shocked by a news-industry number as I was by 200,000. Specifically, the 200,000 Washington Post subscribers who NPR’s David Folkenflik reported cancelled their subscriptions in the days after the paper announced it wouldn’t be endorsing in the 2024 presidential race. (Not long after, the number grew to “more than 250,000” — a number the Post’s own reporters later confirmed.)

I have all the respect in the world for Folkenflik, but my brain refused to believe it at first. 2,000? Sure. 8,000? Okay. Even 20,000? Those seemed within the realm of possibility. But 200,000 was consumer action on a scale unseen in the modern news business — and without any organized force pulling the strings. All this at an outlet that had, only weeks earlier, been chuffed about an increase of 4,000 subs so far in 2024. Post owner Jeff Bezos, the man behind the non-endorsement call, didn’t help things with a tone-deaf op-ed packed with C-minus arguments.1

Perhaps Bezos thought he would avoid customer outrage because declining to endorse for president is a growth industry in America — and has been since Donald Trump first came down that escalator. I first wrote about this two years ago when it became clear that the country’s largest newspaper chains — all either private equity-owned or -adjacent — were growing allergic to making the call. Using a database of newspaper endorsements from The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara, I tracked how many of the 100 highest-circulation newspapers had declined to endorse for president. The trend line is rather clear:

In five election cycles, endorsing for president went from a “nearly everybody” thing to a “barely half” thing. You can find all the details in that story, but the tl;dr is that, in 2016, newspapers overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump and faced enormous blowback from Trump supporters — in the form of cancellations and, in some cases, threats that led to papers hiring extra security for their employees. That, combined with the continued decline in the U.S. newspaper business — which led some publishers to question the value of annoying any sliver of their remaining customers — led to a widespread abandonment of endorsements in 2020. Papers that had endorsed Clinton in states that Trump won were the most likely to bail.

And not long after 2020, even more publishers began to announce their intention to exit the arena — citing a mixture of tight budgets and a sudden belief that editorial pages should have an opinion on every issue under the sun except for who should be in charge of the country.

So, one day before the nth-consecutive “most important election of our lifetimes,” how much more retrenchment has there been? A lot.

We’re looking at a universe of 95 newspapers.2 Of those papers, here’s how their endorsements broke down in 2016:61 endorsed Hillary Clinton1 endorsed Donald Trump3 endorsed Gary Johnson2 endorsed “anyone but Trump”21 endorsed no one7 are unknown3

Move ahead to 2020 and the shift is clear:44 endorsed Joe Biden7 endorsed Donald Trump44 endorsed no one

And what about 2024? According to my hunting through dozens of newspaper opinion sections, here’s where we stand just before election day:22 endorsed Kamala Harris2 endorsed Donald Trump71 endorsed no one

That’s right: Three-quarters of the nation’s largest newspapers have declined to endorse anyone for president this cycle. That’s despite one candidate who — completely in character — volunteered yesterday that he wouldn’t mind if a gunman would “shoot through the fake news” at his rallies. Or who has called for all three major broadcast networks to lose their “licenses”4 because he doesn’t like things they’ve said about him. Or this, or this, or the ten thousand other links I could put here.

Who are the biggest culprits in this trend? The nation’s four largest newspaper chains: Alden Global Capital (through its control of MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing), Gannett, Lee Newspapers, and McClatchy.

There are 15 Alden-controlled newspapers in this dataset (in New York, Chicago, Boston, Denver, San Diego, San Jose, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Hartford, Orange County, St. Paul, Hampton Roads, Allentown, Reading, and Newport News). In 2020, seven of those endorsed Joe Biden; one, the Boston Herald, endorsed Donald Trump. This year, none of them endorsed for president, after corporate determined that “picking a candidate may alienate more readers than it persuades.”

Of the 19 Gannett newspapers in the dataset, seven endorsed Biden in 2020 (none endorsed Trump). But the chain decided it wanted less opinion in its opinion sections and that it would “returned to our roots as a facts-forward, down-the-center survey of our nation.” No endorsements for president this time around.

McClatchy has eight newspapers in the dataset, and none of them endorsed for president in 2020, with its new hedge-fund owners saying only papers that conducted individual editorial-board interviews with the candidates could make an endorsements.5 But while six of the eight newspapers continued their non-endorsement this cycle (Miami, Fort Worth, Sacramento, Fresno, Lexington, and Kansas City), its two North Carolina newspapers — the Raleigh News & Observer and Charlotte Observer — broke ranks and endorsed Harris.6

The last major chain, Lee, had a more mixed showing. Of its eight newspapers in the dataset, seven had endorsed Biden in 2020 (with one abstention). This year, four endorsed, all picking Harris: St. Louis, Buffalo, Madison, and Tucson.7 Others kept their silence. (Here’s Omaha: “After debate, research and consideration, our editorial board has concluded we serve our readers best by not endorsing candidates for office or weighing in on ballot initiatives directly. You don’t need our opinion on whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris would make a better president.” Quad Cities: “After thoughtful discussion, the board has decided informing voters is better than picking a side. The process, a long-standing tradition of newspapers, does not appear our best method of serving readers in 2024.”)

Outside the big chains, other papers declining to endorse include the Tampa Bay Times, the Minnesota Star-Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun — along with the two that caught national attention, the L.A. Times and Washington Post.

Interestingly, while most of the new non-endorsers went for Biden in 2020, several of that year’s Trump endorsers have also zipped their lips. The Spokane Spokesman-Review stopped all endorsements after its owner backed Trump to some controversy four years ago. The Toledo Blade, which has spent 2024 in a family battle for corporate control, “opted to stay neutral” this year. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette doesn’t seem to have endorsed this year (though it’s also said it didn’t really endorse Trump last time, either). Only two major papers — the Las Vegas Review-Journal (owned by Miriam Adelson, who has given $100 million to a pro-Trump super PAC) and the New York Post (Rupert Murdoch) — appear to have come out for Trump this time.

So, big picture: Roughly 3 out of 4 major American newspapers have stopped endorsing for president — something that nearly all of them did just twenty years ago. A trend that began in 2012 has accelerated in every cycle since and now overtaken most of the industry.

In fact, it’s been happening long enough that we can ask bigger questions. Have the papers who have stopped reaped any sort of trust dividend — the sort that Jeff Bezos would have you believe was one non-endorsement away? Have Trump supporters rallied to support any of the papers who have preemptively kept their mouths shut? Has anyone sensibly explained why newspapers should have a dedicated section devoted to expressing opinions on everything except who should be leader of the free world? I think the only honest answers here are no all around — and I suspect there are at least 250,000 people who might agree.

New York Times, New York Times Passes 11 Million Subscribers, Katie Robertson, Nov. 4, 2024. The Times reported steady growth in digital subscriptions in the third quarter and a profit for The Athletic for the first time since it acquired the sports site in 2022.

The New York Times added roughly 260,000 paid digital subscribers in the third quarter of the year, the company said on Monday, crossing the threshold of 11 million total subscribers for the first time.

Nov. 3

New York Times, How Elon Musk’s Own Account Dominates X, Kate Conger, Aaron Krolik, Santul Nerkar and Dylan Freedman, Nov. 3, 2024. The billionaire has effectively become the star of his social media platform, transforming X into a reflection of his personal views before the election.

Days ahead of the presidential election, Elon Musk’s centrality to his social media platform, X, has become more pronounced.

Mr. Musk has posted more than 3,000 times on the site in the last month, according to a tally by The New York Times, campaigning heavily for former President Donald J. Trump. The tech mogul has also shared dozens of unfounded claims about the election, including that votes will be rigged against his preferred candidate.

All of his posts have traveled further and resounded more widely than ever as Mr. Musk’s X account has come to dominate the platform, effectively making him the host of his own social media site. His account is the most popular on X by a significant margin, with more than 202 million followers. It drives the platform’s daily conversation and nudges discussion to the right, according to independent research and an analysis by The Times. And engagement with his posts — including likes and reposts — has doubled over the past year, according to X’s metrics.

The repercussions of Mr. Musk’s pre-eminence on X — especially as he casts doubt on the integrity of the election — could be profound.

“It’s so consequential that someone who is such a partisan figure is inhabiting that piece of digital real estate,” said Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a group that studies online disinformation.

Mr. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment. Last month, Mr. Musk posted that X products were the “best thing on the Internet for truth.”

Here’s how his account has taken center stage at X.The Most-Followed by Far

Mr. Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022, vowing to make it a public town square. He swiftly became the most powerful super-user on the site.

Mr. Musk overtook former President Barack Obama in March 2023 to become the most-followed person on the platform, with 133 million followers. Since then, his count has risen 52 percent.

Mr. Obama’s following, in contrast, has decreased slightly, by about two million, to just over 131 million followers. (Bot accounts exist on X and may be a factor in some of the tallies.)

Alongside Mr. Musk’s ballooning follower count, engagement with his posts has mushroomed. During a two-week period in October, Mr. Musk’s 1,220 posts generated nearly 65,000 engagements on average, according to the Times analysis of Mr. Musk’s posts over the past year that tallied likes and reposts. In a similar stretch a year ago, his posts averaged around 30,000 engagements.

 

On Saturday evening, Nov. 2, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris unexpectedly headed to New York to appear alongside Maya Rudolph, left,  on “Saturday Night Live” (New York Times photo by Haiyun Jiang).

New York Times, Kamala Harris Joins ‘S.N.L.’ for a Pep Talk With Maya Rudolph, Katie Rogers, Nicholas Nehamas and Maggie Haberman, Nov. 3, 2024 (print ed.). Appearing in a mirror opposite her longtime impersonator, the vice president gave a little positive encouragement to her comedic reflection.

The vice president gazed into the mirror, reached out her hand and told her comedic reflection that she had this election thing in the bag.

“I’m just here to remind you — you got this,” the actual vice president said to Maya Rudolph, the comedian who has portrayed Kamala Harris for years on “Saturday Night Live.” She then added a jab about former President Donald J. Trump’s fumbled attempt to enter a garbage truck this week: “Because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors.”

It wasn’t cringe, which is the only bar that needs clearing for a high-risk live television appearance during the final hours of a breakneck presidential campaign.

And maybe it was not viral comedy gold, either. That is a feat more easily achieved by someone like the veteran comedian Dana Carvey, who played a rhetorically unburdened President Biden in the first minutes of the show’s cold open. Or by James Austin Johnson, who portrayed former President Donald J. Trump and joked about his tactile relationship with a microphone and his volatile relationship with his former vice president, Mike Pence.

But Ms. Harris’s appearance, which came later in the opening sketch and was delivered across a fictional dressing-room mirror from Ms. Rudolph, contained a solid riff that poked some fun at Mr. Trump. Her segment was also rife with puns designed to assist in the pronunciation of the vice president’s first name: mamala, palmala, rom-comala, pajamala … the list goes on and onala.

The Hill, FCC commissioner claims Harris on ‘SNL’ violates ‘equal time’ rule, Tara Suter, Nov. 3, 2024. A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner has claimed that Vice President Harris’s recent appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” commonly known as “SNL,” violates the “equal time” rule.

“This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” Commissioner Brendan Carr posted on the social platform X on Saturday in response to a post from The Associated Press about Harris being on the show that night.

“The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct — a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns,” Carr, a Trump appointee, continued.

The FCC’s “equal time” rules let rival candidates ask for equal air time.

Carr, the senior Republican on the commission, was appointed by former President Trump.

During her appearance on this week’s episode of “SNL,” Harris joined comedian Maya Rudolph, who often impersonates her, for a cold open sketch. While Rudolph was playing the vice president, Harris began her “SNL” debut on the other side of a mirror from the comedian.

“I’m just here to remind you, you got this, because you can do something your opponent can’t do — you can open doors,” Harris told Rudolph, seemingly referring to a video from earlier in the week in which former President Trump had a hard time grabbing the handle of a garbage truck door.

The executive producer of “SNL,” Lorne Michaels, had said in a past interview that neither Harris nor Trump would make appearances on his show during this election cycle.

“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” he said to The Hollywood Reporter two months ago. “You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states, and that becomes really complicated.”

In an emailed statement to The Hill, a spokesperson for the FCC said the agency “has not made any determination regarding [political] programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”

Harris joins former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Obama and former President Trump as one of the many politicians who have become guest stars of “SNL.”

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: MeidasTouch Hits 5 Billion YouTube Views – Fox Is Mad, Ben Meiselas, Nov. 3, 2024. Meidas Is Averaging 1 Billion Views Every 90 Days.

MeidasTouch Network has just surpassed 5 billion views on YouTube. Yes, that’s billion with a “b.” We’re now averaging 1 billion views every 90 days. No wonder Fox has been attacking our network and our Editor-in-Chief, Ron Filipkowski. With this momentum, MeidasTouch has become the most-watched network on YouTube – not just in news, but in any category, surpassing major channels like Netflix and the NBA. That’s right, we’re beating the NBA! And, of course, we’re dominating Fox in ratings. David vs. Goliath!!!

October

Oct. 28

Washington Post, Some billionaires, CEOs hedge bets as Trump vows retribution, Jeff Stein, Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey, Oct. 28, 2024. With the race tight, some business elites are toning down past criticism of the former president.

With the White House appearing increasingly up for grabs, and especially as polls have tightened, numerous billionaires and other leading executives have taken steps in recent months to stay out of the race — even if they had criticized Trump after the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, calling his encouragement of the riot a threat to American democracy. Others who previously backed Democrats have stayed silent this election, which some critics and Trump supporters alike have interpreted as a peace offering to the GOP presidential nominee

During his first term as president, Trump exploited the power of the federal government to try to punish a wide range of perceived enemies in the business community who he thought were defying him in various ways. He has also told some corporate figures that he would help them if he returns to the Oval Office — while urging them to donate to his campaign, as he did with oil executives during a private April meeting at Mar-a-Lago. And he has frequently talked about retribution during the campaign, telling TV host Dr. Phil in June that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”

“Trump has had no issue calling out political enemies by name and threatening to use the force of government for retribution, and apparently that is intimidating a lot of wealthy targets,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. “It is a very scary sign that government intimidation works.”

Two Trump campaign advisers, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations, said numerous executives have been trying to reach out to the former president’s team late in the race.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Democracy Dies in Their Wallets: When Oligarchs Buy the News, Thom Hartmann, right, Oct. 28, 2024. From Bezos to Musk, America’s richest are using media control to shape politics and grow profits…

The big mistake John D. Rockefeller made back in the day — that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk appear committed to not repeating — was not buying a media outlet like a newspaper. Had John D. had that sort of a vehicle to mold public opinion, American history may be very different.

By 1880, Rockefeller’s Ohio-based company controlled over 90 percent of the nation’s oil, owned 4,000 miles of pipelines, and employed over 100,000 people. As Rockefeller’s oil empire got larger and larger, eating alive hundreds of smaller operations, ruthlessly driving up prices, destroying his competitors, and throwing workers out of a job, public outrage grew.In 1887, Ohio sued him, arguing that he was operating in ways that were detrimental to the state and its citizens and businesses; in 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court ordered his company dissolved.

As I lay out in detail in Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People,” this led Rockefeller (shown at left in 1895) to move Standard Oil to New Jersey after that state changed its corporation laws to allow for his monopolistic behavior. Which brought in the federal government; in 1890, Ohio Senator John Sherman introduced and saw passed into law the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which provided not just fines but jail sentences against people like Rockefeller who were committed to destroying competition and owning entire markets.

The law was flawed with a few loopholes and ambiguities, so it was amended in 1914 with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.Nonetheless, in 1906 progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt’s administration filed an antitrust action against Rockefeller that went to the Supreme Court in 1911 during the administration of progressive Republican President William Howard Taft. The behemoth was broken up into 34 separate companies, an action that, like the breakup of AT&T by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, led to an explosion of competition in the marketplace and a dramatic increase in shareholder value.

But back to Jeff Bezos and his 2013 purchase of The Washington Post. It was reporters and editors for the hundreds of independent newspapers during the First Gilded Age (1880-1900) era that led the crusades against Rockefeller and his fellow monopolists. Investigative journalism was all the rage then, and it fed public demand for a return to competition and the de-throning of that age’s oligarchs.The vast majority of workers were struggling and they worked for a very small 10 percent of the population who controlled most of the nation’s wealth (a situation we’re at again).

The result was constant strife, strikes, and the murder of labor leaders; entire towns were in arms (and sometimes ablaze) with labor conflict. The “problem of labor”was the number one issue of the day.

As President Grover Cleveland — the only Democrat elected during that period — proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address: “As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

There was a broad consensus across American society that those “Robber Barons” were feathering their own nests at the expense of the American public, hurting both working class people and small businesses. The Supreme Court endorsed breaking up Standard Oil in 1911, and even broke up the Associated Press in 1944.

The law was so rigorously enforced — so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the “big boys” — that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because the new combined company would control a mere 5 percent of the shoe market.

Back in the ’60s every mall and downtown in America was filled with small, locally-owned businesses; there might be a Sears to anchor the shopping center or a retail part of town, but most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.

But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market.

It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and on and on. In virtually every industry, a handful of massive companies control 80 percent or more of the market.

The Biden administration is the first to seriously try enforcement of the nation’s anti-trust laws since Carter broke up AT&T, going after Google and blocking mergers in multiple industries. It’s led a bunch of American billionaires to demand that the Federal Trade Commission’s head, Lina Kahn, be fired.

Kahn and her FTC went after Bezos last year, suing Amazon for running a monopoly that price-gouges customers and blocks out competition. The trial is scheduled for 2026 if Kahn keeps her job; a Trump administration would fire her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is building on Harris to do the same.Bezos also must remember well when he got on the wrong side of then-President Trump because of the Post’s coverage of the orange oligarch’s lies and crimes; Trump, in a fit of pique, awarded a $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud computing to Microsoft, shocking analysts across the industry.

Bezos is also working for his Blue Origin spaceship company to get more billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts. He and his companies also own billions in Google and AirBNB stock as well as owning outright almost a hundred other companies. Might be a good time to own one of the two most influential newspapers in America, eh?

Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, in addition to apparently taking orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, is fighting numerous government efforts to regulate his companies (which exist in large part because Obama bailed out Tesla in 2010 with $465 million, and NASA is now pouring hundreds of millions into SpaceX):

— Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over union-related issues, with Musk taking a lawsuit to the Supreme Court alleging government protections of unions are unconstitutional.

— SpaceX is battling the NLRB over employee firings.

— The SEC is investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private.— The FTC is investigating X’s compliance with a $150 million privacy settlement.

— The Federal Communications Commission recently denied SpaceX’s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.

— The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.

— The FAA is in conflict with SpaceX over launch licensing and environmental reviews.

— The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.

— The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple investigations into Tesla’s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.

— SpaceX faces scrutiny over its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.

To avoid the Rockefeller mistake, Musk — with the apparent help of two Russian oligarchs and the leader of Saudi Arabia — purchased Twitter, the online digital equivalent of our nation’s largest newspaper.

And he’s now using it to try to get Trump and Republicans into office, presumably so they can gut the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and any other regulator that might take him on to protect workers, the public, and the national interest.We took on the superrich with success during the First Gilded Age, and our enforcement of antitrust laws lasted all the way to 1983, when Reagan blocked them, leading to the “merger mania” of the 1980s and bringing us today’s oligarchic business empires across multiple industries.

Now that we’re in America’s Second Gilded Age — with today’s billionaires vastly richer than Rockefeller’s wildest dreams — we confront a similar crossroads to that of previous generations.

Is it okay, for example, for billionaires to own media properties they can use to manipulate politics and government agencies to amplify their other business interests? Or that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that our morbidly rich plutocrats can own judges and politicians?

Most Americans would probably say “No” to both.At some point, America is going to have to confront its oligarch problem. And the sooner the better, if we don’t want darkness to entirely subsume our democracy.

The Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support its daily work to rescue America from fascists and the morbidly rich, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Bulwark, Journalism in an Autocratic Age, Jonathan V. Last, right, Oct. 28, 2024. How to build and protect media institutions robust enough to stand against fascism.

If you want to cancel your subscription to the Washington Post, that’s between you and your God. I’ll just tell you that I didn’t cancel my subscription. And I’d like to explain why.

The problem isn’t the Washington Post. It’s the owner of the Post. And realistically, there is no way to send Jeff Bezos a message about your disagreement with his choices for the simple fact that the WaPo is not a revenue stream for him. The Post’s operating losses/profits exist on a small scale: In 2023 the paper lost $77m. That same year Amazon’s net profits were $30b. With a “b.” Bezos himself is worth $205b.

If the Post simply stopped charging anyone for subscriptions, Bezos might not even notice it on his balance sheets.

What’s more: I suspect Bezos doesn’t want to own the Post anymore. It has proved to be more trouble for him than he expected. I suspect that if he could unload it tomorrow, he would.

The problem is that there’s no one to sell it to.Bezos bought the Post in 2013 for $250m. He didn’t pay that money because the Post was a thriving business. It was a rescue mission and $250m was a token payment—a sign of respect for the Graham family. The real purchase price was that Bezos committed to take on the Post’s liabilities and absorb its future losses.

Who in their right mind would take on such responsibilities today in the era of Trumpism? Anyone with enough money to float the Post will be either (1) a Trump crony or (2) vulnerable to pressure from Trump. As Timothy Snyder said over the weekend, “A problem with the very wealthy is that, alas, the least vulnerable have a tendency to think of themselves as the most vulnerable.”

2. The Business of MediaIn an autocratic age, journalism takes on heightened importance. But journalistic institutions cannot rely on billionaire benefactors, because, as Snyder says, those benefactors view themselves as vulnerable.

Which means that the only way to protect journalistic institutions is for them to be profitable. The catch is that it also matters how they achieve profitability. If revenues are dependent on advertising, then publications are driven not by ideas but an existential need for popularity. No, the only way to build a media institution robust enough to stand against authoritarianism is for it to be a profitable business supported primarily by its readers. That’s it. That’s the ball game

.A publication which is solvent and supported by a distributed network of readers—each contributing a relatively small amount of money—is the only way for a media institution to stand against the onslaught. ¹You may have noticed that this is how we built The Bulwark. It wasn’t an accident.

I have a number of thoughts about the intersection of journalism, business, and liberal democracy. One of them is that any institution which is not explicitly anti-authoritarian will eventually be coopted or conquered by authoritarians.

Another is that scale matters. The larger the scale of a media organization, the harder it is to maintain an anti-authoritarian ethos. But those are for another time.

Suffice it to say that if you look closely at the business of the The Bulwark you will notice that we are designed—from tip to tail—to resist authoritarian pressure. Again: This did not happen by chance. We built this place in the shadow of the first Trump administration and we knew what we were doing.

What I want to hammer home for you is something I believe in my bones: Community is the only way to resist fascism .This maxim means different things in different contexts. In the context of media it means:In an autocratic age, it is not enough to be a consumer of media. You must be a stakeholder in it. You must support the institutions you want to exist in the world. You must help build those institutions. And then you must participate in their defense. All of which is why we started The Bulwark. It’s also why I subscribe to a few dozen publications—from the Atlantic, to the New Yorker, to Plough. From Heather Cox Richardson, to Judd Legum, to the UnPopulist.

And it’s why I still subscribe to the Washington Post. I want the Post to be as financially strong as possible so that some day—hopefully soon—it won’t have to rely on Jeff Bezos. Your mileage may vary. But to my mind, making the Post more reliant on its billionaire underwriter only deepens the problem.

Obviously, not everyone has the time or money to support dozens of publications. I work in this space, which is how I justify it to myself. We all have to prioritize as best we can. So if you decided to cancel your WaPo subscription so that you could support, say, Arc Digital, I understand that. But my larger point remains: We no longer have the luxury to be passive consumers of media. We have to support the media institutions that we want to exist in the world. In an autocratic age, everyday acts of civic responsibility—like reading the newspaper or voting—take on out-sized importance and require commitment, intentionality, and courage.A nd the best way to foster those virtues is in community with others who remain committed to the liberal project.

Oct. 27

New York Times, How Donald Trump Is Making Big Promises to Big Business, Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Oct. 27, 2024 (print ed.). Crypto. Big Oil. Tobacco. Vaping. The former president has been making overt promises to industry leaders, a level of explicitness rarely seen in modern presidential politics.

On a Friday in late September, Donald J. Trump took time off the campaign trail for a closed-door meeting at Mar-a-Lago with officials representing the vaping industry.

The vaping emissaries talked about loosening regulations and told the former president he had “saved” the industry in the past. The group — including Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, and another 2016 campaign aide, Michael Rubino — showed him mock-ups of mailers they were sending out through Election Day. Mr. Trump asked for input on what he could say on social media about a complicated regulatory issue.

Within hours, Mr. Trump had posted about his allegiances to the embattled e-cigarette sector. “I saved Flavored Vaping in 2019,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “I’ll save Vaping again!”

The head of the Vapor Technology Association, Tony Abboud, who was also in the meeting, quickly declared he was “pleased” that Mr. Trump was “continuing to fight for vapers.” The vaping industry has not been a significant contributor in the presidential race, but the Vapor Technology Association has been quietly sending versions of those mailers to voters in battleground states warning that Democrats want “to steal vapes from freedom-loving Americans.”

As Mr. Trump seeks a return to the White House, he has come a long way from his 2016 campaign pitch that he was so rich he was incorruptible. Back then, he mocked the G.O.P.’s donor-lobbyist class and boasted in his announcement speech, “I don’t need anybody’s money.” Today, Mr. Trump is looking everywhere for cash: asking small donors online, pressing fellow billionaires over private meals in Trump Tower and lobbying for donations from industries regulated by the government.

As he does so, he is sometimes making overt promises about what he will do once he’s in office, a level of explicitness toward individual industries and a handful of billionaires that has rarely been seen in modern presidential politics.

The Bulwark, Opinion: Bezos, Trump, and the Failure of Democracy, Jonathan V. Last, right, Oct. 27, 2024. We are witnessing a watershed moment. Democracy is failing because the rule of law has been broken. And everyone is about to realize it. All at once.

People seem to be both misdiagnosing and underestimating what happened at the Washington Post. This isn’t about censorship or the media. It’s catastrophic failure of the rule of law.

This is a watershed moment that suggests we are in greater danger than we realized.

It’s time to get organized and get ready. To prepare for what’s to come. That’s what we’re doing at The Bulwark, every day. I hope you’ll join us. There’s power in community.

ON FRIDAY, after the Washington Post’s publisher announced that the paper was suddenly abandoning the practice of the editorial page endorsing presidential candidates, news leaked that—on the very same day—Donald Trump met with executives from Blue Origin.

Blue Origin, of course, is the rocket company owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

This was neither a coincidence nor a case of Bezos and Trump being caught doing something they wished to keep hidden. The entire point of the exercise, at least for Trump, was that it be public.

What we witnessed on Friday was not a case of censorship or a failure of the media. It had nothing to do with journalism or the Washington Post. It was something much, much more consequential. It was about oligarchy, the rule of law, and the failure of the democratic order.

When Bezos decreed that the newspaper he owned could not endorse Trump’s opponent, it was a transparent act of submission borne of an intuitive understanding of the differences between the candidates.

Bezos understood that if he antagonized Kamala Harris and Harris became president, he would face no consequences. A Harris administration would not target his businesses because the Harris administration would—like all presidential administrations not headed by Trump—adhere to the rule of law.

Bezos likewise understood that the inverse was not true. If he continued to antagonize Trump and Trump became president, his businesses very much would be targeted.

So bending the knee to Trump was the smart play. All upside, no downside.

What Trump understood was that Bezos’s submission would be of limited use if it was kept quiet. Because the point of dominating Bezos wasn’t just to dominate Bezos. It was to send a message to every other businessman, entrepreneur, and corporation in America: that these are the rules of the game. If you are nice to Trump, the government will be nice to you. If you criticize Trump, the government will be used against you.

Which is why Trump met with Blue Origin on the same day that Bezos yielded. It was a demonstration—a very public demonstration.

But as bad as that sounds, it isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is the underlying failures that made this arrangement possible.

My friend Kristofer Harrison is a Russia expert who runs the Dekleptocracy Project. This morning he emailed,

America’s oligarch moment makes us more like 1990s Russia than we want to believe. Political scientists can and will debate what comes first: oligarchs or flaccid politicians. 1990s Russia had that in spades. So do we. That combination corroded the rule of law there, and it’s doing so here.

Russian democracy died because their institutions and politicians were not strong enough to enforce the law. Sound familiar? I could identify half a dozen laws that Elon Musk has already broken without enforcement. Bezos censored the Post because he knows that nobody will enforce the law and keep Trump from seeking political retribution. And on and on. The corrosive effect on the rule of law is cumulative.

The Bezos surrender is our warning bell about entering early-stage 1990s Russia. No legal system is able to survive when it there’s a class not subject to it because politicians are too cowardly to enforce the law.

And that’s the foundational point. The Bezos surrender isn’t just a demonstration. It’s a consequence. It’s a signal that the rule of law has already eroded to such a point that even a person as powerful as Jeff Bezos no longer believes it can protect him. So he has sought shelter in the embrace of the strongman. Bezos made his decision because he calculated that Trump has already won—not the election, but his struggle to break the rule of law.

 

Everyone is entitled to my own opinion, Commentary: Washington Post endorses fascism, Jeff Tiedrich, Oct. 27, 2024. The useless press has already capitulated to Elderly Dictator.

Jeff Bezos, the gazillionaire….is not a newspaper guy — he’s a businessman. To him, the Washington Post is just a line-item on a spreadsheet. More importantly, Bezos is also a government contractor. He’s the founder of Blue Origin, the aerospace company behind those dick-shaped rockets (above right).

Hey, you know who else makes dick-shaped rockets? This dude. That’s right, Dickley McBezos and the Space Nazi (above) are competitors.

So he phones up the Washington Post and tells them that’s it, there will be no endorsement of Kamala Harris — and sure enough, twenty minutes after the announcement was made, this happened:

“Former President Trump met with leaders from the Jeff Bezos-owned aerospace company Blue Origin following his speech in Austin, Texas. The Republican had a short meeting with the aerospace company CEO David Limp and vice president of government relations Megan Mitchell, according to The Associated Press (AP).”

Is that a rat you’re smelling right now? Well, you’re in good company. Here’s former Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan, right, who quit his job after the news broke that the WaPo wouldn’t be endorsing Kamala.

“Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” he reportedly said.

“Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”

Bezos’s non-endorsement of Kamala Harris is actually a ringing endorsement of fascism. Capitulating in advance to a bully because you’re afraid of something that might happen is literally how fascism works.

Donny isn’t the president right now. There’s an excellent chance that Donny will never again be president — but Bezos is kowtowing to Donny as if he were already in power.

Here’s a super-fun story about what happens when your country becomes a kleptocracy. In the summer of 2000, good old Vlad Putin summoned 21 of Russia’s richest oligarchs to the Kremlin.

Putin offered the oligarchs a deal: bend to my authority, stay out of my way, and you can keep your mansions, superyachts, private jets, and multibillion-dollar corporations (corporations that, just a few years before, had been owned by the Russian government). In the coming years, the oligarchs who reneged on this deal and undermined Putin would be thrown into a Siberian prison or be forced into exile or die in suspicious circumstances. The loyalists who remained — and the new ones who got filthy rich during Putin’s long reign — became like ATM machines for the president and his allies.

One of the attendees, oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky, right, thought Vlad was just blowing smoke. He continued to criticize Putin, and even mused aloud about running against him for president. You’ll never guess what happened next.

In 2003, masked agents stormed Khodorkovsky’s private jet during a refueling stop and arrested him at gunpoint. Authorities charged him with fraud and tax evasion. They imprisoned him in Siberia, where he would languish for the next decade. The government took over his oil empire and handed the keys to one of Putin’s longtime associates, Igor Sechin.

Hey, Bezos, how you would you feel about the Space Nazi taking over all your dick-rockets? Oh, you wouldn’t like that very much? Well then keep your fucking mouth shut and toe the line.

Say what you want about New York Times’ nepo-publisher Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, right — and believe me, I’ve had nothing good to say about him — at least he’s a newspaper guy. He doesn’t have any penis-spaceship companies to worry about.

The Times is proudly endorsing Kamala.

It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline — that he most lacks.

Politico, Second Post columnist resigns while others defend publication, Greta Reich, Oct. 27, 2024. Backlash — and backlash to the backlash — keeps coming for The Post’s non-endorsement.

Michele Norris announced her resignation from The Washington Post in a social media post Sunday following the newspaper’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate this election cycle, making her the second columnist to leave after Robert Kagan.

Norris called the non-endorsement a “terrible mistake” and “an insult to the paper’s own longstanding standard of regularly endorsing candidates since 1976.” Norris has been connected to The Post since 1988 when she was a reporter. She was also the first Black female host for NPR and has been an opinion columnist at The Post since 2019.

However, other journalists inside and outside the organization have been coming to The Post’s defense — not for the editorial board or their decision, but for the reporters and editors who work at The Post and are suffering the consequences of canceled subscriptions and loss of trust.

Oct. 21

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary, Trump’s Putin Plan for American Democracy, Wayne Madsen, Oct. 21, 2024.

Introduction: Wayne Madsen, left, has authoredf 24 books after serving as a Navy intelligence officer for 14 years, including a year as an NSA analyst. He has been a frequent commentator of national security and privacy issues for U.S. broadcast networks and newspapers and their counterparts around the world. A major focus of Madsen’s recent investigative journalism has been to document longstanding ties between Russian intelligence operations and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and U.S. Republicans in the inner circle supporting Trump’s agendas.

In recent years, Madsen has written also extensively on the threat of Russian interference to other Western democracies and about internal autocracy within the Russian Federation, which he describes as neither “Russian” nor a “Federation” because of Putin’s autocratic rule over oppressed ethnic and religious minorities within the “Federation” borders.

His latest book, “A Parade of New Sovereignties,” to be released in an expanded edition this month, provides an encyclopedia-style guide to more than 400 such entities contained within the borders of larger nations (including major Western nations) with estimates of the likelihood of the entities gaining independence from their ruling nations.

In 2017, then-President Trump welcomed top Russian diplomats, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at Trump’s right, to the White House Oval Office in a ceremony on May 11, 2017, from which Western media were banned (Alexander Shcherbak photo for Tass).

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted 2016 Green Party Presidential Nominee Jill Stein, shown above right, at his table in early 2016 before her vote totals in key states exceeded the margin of victory for Republican Donald Trump, thereby helping enabled his defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton. Stein, who ran also in 2020 and again this year, was joined at Putin’s table by the Russian dictator’s communications director, Dimitry Peskov, and future Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (Photo via RT, formerly “Russia Today,” Putin’s state-run propaganda network).

By Wayne Madsen

It is clear from Donald Trump’s rhetoric that what he plans for America’s democracy is a carbon copy of what his mentor and chief influencer, Vladimir Putin, has done to Russia’s once-fledgling democracy. During the first six months of this year, Putin’s regime has sentenced a record number of Russian citizens for espionage, treason, separatism, and “extremism.”

Based on what Trump has said about what he perceives as America’s “enemy within,” a second Trump presidency will sink the U.S. Constitution as he proceeds to imprison his political opponents. Trump has already named those he intends to prosecute on spurious charges and jail: Former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and he husband, Paul Pelosi; Representative Adam Schiff, former Republican Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and many others.

Trump can be expected to copy Putin in another manner should be become president. Putin routinely bans anything that he does not like. On Putin’s hit list are public protests, media articles critical of his regime, independent judicial bodies, and proselytizing by religions other than the Russian Orthodox Church.

Just as Putin is restoring the symbolism of the Stalinist era throughout Russia, Trump will ensure that U.S. military installations revert back to being named for Confederate generals and that statues honoring Confederates like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, shown at left in an 1859 photo, are restored to pedestals in the town squares of cities and towns in the South. Trump’s affection for the Confederacy may see Confederate States of America flags restored to national parks, cemeteries, and national historical sites.

Trump can also be expected to restore the European names originally assigned to geographical locations that are sacred to Native Americans. This includes reverting to the name Mount McKinley for the Denali peak in Alaska and Clingmans Dome for Kuwohi mountain in North Carolina.

Trump will follow the lead of Putin, who recently renamed Moscow’s “Europe Square” to “Eurasia Square.” Putin has also reverted to using Russian names originally assigned in 1820 to locations in Antarctica, including Smolensk for Livingstone Island, Borodino island for Smith Island. Putin is also pressing the Russian city of Volgograd to revert back to Stalingrad amid popular opposition to such a move in the city.

On a much darker note, Trump will order loyal federal agents to carry out the type of defenestrations of his political opponents that are common in Russia for those who have had the temerity to challenge Putin and his regime.

Oct. 16

Steady, Commentary: The media is finally reporting on Trump’s mental decline, Dan Rather, right, and Team Steady, Oct. 16, 2024. It’s about time.

It is no secret to anyone who has been paying attention that Donald Trump is declining. He gives increasingly incoherent non-answers. He struggles to string words together to make a sentence. He regurgitates paranoid fantasies. He often appears to be downright unhinged.

Any regular reader of this newsletter knows we have been calling attention to this issue for months. Now other media outlets that previously disregarded it are finally doing their jobs and covering what is perhaps the most underreported story of this election.

Here are some headlines from this week:

• “Trump is 78 and barely coherent. Where’s everyone who questioned Biden’s age and fitness?” – USA Today (Where, indeed.)
• “Dancing Donald Trump Is Clearly in a Steep Decline” – Newsweek
• “Let’s Talk About Trump’s Mental Acuity” – The Washington Post

And then there is this from Sunday’s New York Times: “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age.”

The piece is excellent and well researched, if a bit late in coming. But I take exception to the headline. When was the question of age in play? With President Biden, surely. But by and large, much of the mainstream media hasn’t just ignored Trump’s deterioration, it has “sane-washed” it, meaning it has minimized Trump’s erratic behavior, including cleaning up his quotes so they make sense, to make him appear coherent. Sane-washing is a disservice at best, a dereliction of duty at worst.

It took a truly remarkable town hall meeting in Pennsylvania this week to push many in the media to finally report on this issue. After only a few minutes on stage, Trump stopped taking questions and decided to listen to music instead. For 39 minutes. Everything from “Ave Maria” (several versions) to “It’s a Man’s World.” He danced and waved as the music played over the sound system. He left the stage while “Memory” from Cats played on.

Not everyone thought this was incredibly strange behavior for a presidential nominee. The Wall Street Journal’s headline was “Trump’s Pennsylvania Town Hall Ends in Concert.” As someone on X commented, that’s akin to saying the Hindenburg landing ended in a light show.

Before Biden dropped out, most of the media harped on his age while basically giving Trump a pass. The blatant double standard is worth a look.

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2097-democrats-need-new-outreach-strategies-experts