ON THE CALIFORNIA VOTE COUNT, DEMOCRATS SHOULD GO ON OFFENSE

California is counting ballots slowly, as it always does. Mail-in ballots are largely from Democrats, as is the case in most states, because more Democrats than Republicans prefer to vote by mail. In California a ballot counts if it arrives up to a week after Election Day as long as it was postmarked by Election Day. This is similar to the Internal Revenue Service policy of requiring that mailed tax forms be postmarked by April 15. It's not what every state does, but it's not weird or suspicious.

This year's California primaries have led to a predictable outcome:

1. GOP in-person voters drive an election-night "red mirage."

2. Democratic mail ballots produce a "blue shift."

3. MAGA treats the late swing as proof of fraud.

Two narratives are emerging from this. One is that the predictable "blue shift" is proof of fraud. The other narrative doesn't go that far, but it's dangerous, too.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declared Monday that the results of the California primary election “stinks to high heaven,” but stopped short of backing Trump’s claim that Democrats are cheating or have rigged the results.

“They are counting votes weeks after the election,” Johnson said at the Capitol. “I’m not saying it’s rigged. I’m saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that.”

Johnson actually said a lot more than that to CNN's Manu Raju. He said,

Let's remove the appearance of impropriety. Let's have votes -- what a concept -- the day of the election. That's what many states are able to do. I think California is playing around with this.

And:

RAJU: But what evidence is there to prove the California election is rigged? MIKE JOHNSON: Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it's impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here.

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 8, 2026 at 3:56 PM

And a Republican strategist, Brian Darling, said this to The Hill:

“If we have a bunch of elections where votes are being counted a week and two weeks after the election’s closed out, I think that’s going to be a problem,” he said.

“If you have a repeat of what’s happening in the LA mayor’s race, if that happens nationwide, it’s going to feed into the idea that our elections are broken,” he added.

The two Republican messages are that the election is rigged and, for those who think that's a bit extreme, that the election may not be rigged exactly, but the slow count is a sign that elections in Democratic strongholds are being mismanaged, at great peril to our democracy.

That's bullshit, and Democrats should say it's bullshit. They should go on offense and defend the process.

Democrats have an advantage: The argument that's being made the loudest, the fraud argument, is being advanced by Trump, whom 60% of the country recognizes as a whiny toddler who thinks anything that doesn't go his way is rigged. Late-night comics understand this, as they demonstrated in their response to Trump's walkout during an interview with NBC's Kristen Welker, after Welker challenged Trump's claims of fraud in California this year and in the presidential election six years ago:

“Now, you could view this as the hissy-fit of an incredibly fragile man-baby, whose paper-thin skin can’t handle venturing out of the sycophantic embrace of his tongue-bathing acolytes. Or, uh, actually, I don’t know how else you can view it. It really is just that.” — JON STEWART

“President Trump stormed out of an interview over the weekend with ‘Meet the Press’ after host Kristen Welker disputed his claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Though I’m not sure you can call this a storm. That’s more like a slow-moving fog bank.” — SETH MEYERS

Democrats, your main antagonist is an object of national ridicule! Use that!

Defend the process. Say it's slow because it's careful. Say that if Trump thinks there's fraud, he needs to put up or shut up -- Democrats should use those exact words. Demand evidence,. Remind Americans that Trump went to court dozens of times after the 2020 election, and when judges then demanded evidence of fraud, he had nothing. He had his ass handed to him in court after court.

Right now, in the L.A. mayoral race, Trump's candidate, Spencer Pratt, trails the #2 candidate, Nithya Raman, by nearly 22,000 votes. Democrats should demand that Trump show us the fraudulent votes that would overcome that margin. And when Trump or Mike Johnson or any other Republican says, "Oooh, but Democrats are so diabolical that we can't find the fraud," the correct response is, "Donald Trump, you're the president of the United States! You control the Justice Department -- oh, and by the way, you controlled the Justice Department after the 2020 election! You couldn't find fraud then and you won't find it now. You want to prove me wrong? Go ahead and try -- and if you fail, you should shut the fuck up."

And as for the Republicans pushing the "lite" version of Trump's argument -- this may not be fraud, but it's terrible for democracy -- Democrats should say, "Why is this a problem? The general election is nearly six months away. You don't even live in California. Unless you find fraud -- which you haven't -- why is this any of your business? Do you have money on this election? Do you have a bet on Polymarket and you need the cash now?

"If the state is doing something wrong, take the state to court. If not, let the process play out. It's not a crisis for democracy just because the results hurt your feelings."

Go on offense, Democrats. Challenge every Republican argument. The process is working just fine, and you should say so. Don't let Republicans create a "cloud of suspicion" out of nothing.

ON ALLEGED ELECTORAL FRAUD, EVERY REPUBLICAN'S STANDARD OF EVIDENCE IS ABOUT AS RIGOROUS AS TRUMP'S

In an interview with NBC's Kristen Welker that was aired yesterday, President Trump proclaimed, once again, that his 2020 loss to Joe Biden was rigged, and that this year's California primaries are also rigged. Welker challenged Trump to provide evidence. He responded with a temper tantrum and a walkout.

Trump's fraud assertions are based on his usual rigorous evidentiary standard:

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: The election was rigged. It was a dirty election.

KRISTEN WELKER: Mr. President –

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: And it’s happening again right now in California.

KRISTEN WELKER: — you’ve never presented evidence –

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s happening right now in California.

KRISTEN WELKER: – that the 2020 election was rigged.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Right now, it’s look at what’s happening in California.

KRISTEN WELKER: Where’s the evidence to that?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s four days –

KRISTEN WELKER: The Republicans are doing well in California.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: In California, it’s, no they’re not. They’re dropping fast because it’s a rigged election. Let me tell you, it’s four days and they aren’t even close to coming up with the –

KRISTEN WELKER: That’s how they count the votes in California.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.

KRISTEN WELKER: There’s — What? Do you have evidence to support that?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s-- all I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.

Trump's additional evidence: "And I listen. And I listen to people." "You have more evidence, there’s more evidence than ever presented." "Your elections in this country – we’re like a third world country." That's an open-and-shut case!

But every Republican's evidence standard is approximately as rigorous as Trump's. In Los Angeles, Republican demi-celebrity Spencer Pratt was in second place in the Los Angeles mayoral primary based on votes counted on Election Night. However, many mail-in votes were still uncounted, and vote counting in California tends to be quite slow, primarily because the state allows mail ballots to trickle in late as long as they're postmarked by Election Day. It's widely known that Democratic voters vote by mail more than Republican voters, so it's no surprise that Nithya Raman, a Democratic Socialist who was in third place on Election Night, has surged into second place.

Pratt himself, who undoubtedly has a brain full of Fox News talking points just like Trump, thinks he's identified the fiendish trick the Demonrats have pulled on him. Last night, local news reporter Matt Seedorff provided a vote-count update:

On election night, Pratt led Raman by about 40,000 votes—roughly a 10-point advantage.

As of tonight, Raman now leads Pratt by about 3,100 votes, a net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday.

Pratt replied:

"A net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday.."

43,000, huh? Where have I seen that number before...?

Probably nothing. 🤷 https://t.co/W2E3k6PHyR pic.twitter.com/ZfzHCy9enb

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) June 8, 2026

Let's take a deep breath and try to understand what's being alleged here. The Demonrats, as every Fox viewer "knows," cheat routinely (though they somehow lose many elections). When they're not arriving at the border and registering every border-crosser and asylum-seeker as a Democrat, or counting fake ballots made of Chinese bamboo, they're rounding up homeless people to provide fake Democratic votes.

Apparently they got nearly every homeless person in L.A. to vote Democratic -- because, you know, homeless people are well known for being docile and cooperative, and for doing whatever authority figures ask them to do. Or maybe the Dems just filled out fake ballots with homeless people's names, carefully matching each of the 43,000 fake ballots to the name of a homeless person (because no homeless person ever slips through the cracks and is unknown to the government). Democrats did this evil thing -- but they didn't deploy the 43,000 fake votes until the actual returns came in and, by astonishing coincidence, it turned out that they needed precisely that number to beat Pratt. (Somehow, it never occurred to them to include these fake ballots in the Election Night vote count.)

And all this assumes that Democrats wanted Pratt out of the runoff. If he'd survived, he'd be a Republican running in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. He'd be toast. Now, however, the Democratic Establishment's candidate, incumbent Karen Bass, might get a real challenge from an actual Democrat who is to her left. Wouldn't the party have preferred to run Bass against Pratt?

To Trump, this is a sign of rigging -- even though the rigging doesn't seem to extend to the governor's race, in which Republican Steve Hilton still seems likely to make the runoff (although he's slipped from first to second place as late votes have been counted). Apparently the Demonrat cheaters want Pratt out but don't want Hilton out, for some mysterious reason.

No one in the GOP can find actual evidence of fraud in these vote counts, but for Republicans who believe elections are rigged, it's feelings that matter, not facts. Here's an excerpt from an opinion piece published by Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and new California Post. It was written by Joel Pollak, the former Breitbart editor in chief who's now the California Post's opinion editor.

Half of America is watching LA count its votes with a sense of déjà vu: The spectacle of a candidate who is leading on election night, suddenly falling behind when mail-in ballots are counted, is what caused many to regard the 2020 election as fraudulent.

There was no proof of fraud then, just as there is no proof in LA; but the process does not inspire confidence. The fact that we are being told — by incumbents — that everything is OK only deepens the suspicion.

It was always possible — as I had said before Election Day — that socialist Nithya Raman would take second place, ahead of Pacific Palisades fire survivor Spencer Pratt.

I used an analogy from auto racing: Raman was “drafting” off Pratt, letting him do the tough work of attacking incumbent Karen Bass, and take all the attacks in return, then scooping up voters who decided they could not reelect Bass, but would not vote for a Trump-like Republican.

Yet, assuming that Raman does qualify for the general election ahead of Pratt, it would have been better to know that on election night — not several days after the fact.

If there were, in fact, fraud, this is exactly what it would look like. Again, there is no proof of fraud — but there is also no proof that there isn’t.

So let's sum up Pollak's argument:

* We can't find any fraud in the L.A. mayoral race.

* We couldn't find any fraud in the 2020 presidential election either.

* But as votes were being counted in both elections, the vote totals changed in ways that made Republicans feel bad.

* Therefore, the results seem fraudulent to us, even though

* we can't find any fraud.

Pollak admnits that Raman seemed poised to do well, then says the fact that she did do well looks like fraud, because it took a couple of days for us to realize that she did as well as ... um, Joel Pollak predicted she might do.

Republicans are butthurt. That's their evidence of fraud.

This is how the right-wing media makes Republican voters -- and politicians, including Trump and Pratt -- stupider.

DOES J.D. VANCE EXIST?

Back in March, we learned this about J.D. Vance:

Vice President JD Vance, the country’s most powerful Roman Catholic politician, will publish a memoir about his conversion to the faith, his publisher, HarperCollins Publishers, announced on Tuesday.

The book, titled “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” will be released on June 16 and will detail Mr. Vance’s return to Christianity after leaving the loosely evangelical practice of his childhood and his eventual conversion to Catholicism.

... The announcement comes as many Republican strategists, officials and voters look to Mr. Vance as the early front-runner in the 2028 Republican primary race to succeed President Trump.

So how are Vance and HarperCollins promoting this book about Vance's Catholicism? By publishing a 1753-word excerpt in The Wall Street Journal about the late Charlie Kirk, Vance's evangelical Protestant friend, and a shorter excerpt in USA Today about the beginning of Vance's relationship with his Hindu wife, Usha.

It's not surprising that a man running for president would want to soften his image by praising his wife, although J.D.'s memories of his budding interest in Usha are a bit awkward:

I called my buddy Mike, who asked about law school, the classmates, the vibe, and the girls.

“Dude, I think I’m obsessed with this chick in my small group. It’s unhealthy.”

The small group, I explained, was the collection of sixteen students with whom I shared all of my first-year classes.

I told him all about her: That she was smarter than everyone. That her smile could light up a room. That she had the most amazing posture.

Posture?

“She doesn’t even walk like normal people. Normal girls seem kind of unstable in high heels,” I told him. “Not her. She glides across the room in whatever shoes she wears. And her laugh, man. Whenever she laughs it’s, like, the most wonderful thing. She’s super reserved, but she has this chortle that is the best sound I’ve ever heard.”

Chortle?

Okay, J.D., whatever. I guess it's geekily genuine. But the Charlie Kirk excerpt leads me to believe that Vance is trying to say, Don't think of me as J.D. Vance. Think of me as a loyal follower of the beloved Charlie Kirk. Vote for me in 2028 because I promise to carry on his legacy.

Charlie perhaps came to be my best friend and closest confidant in the world of politics.

He was one of the few people I talked to regularly about the stresses national politics placed on our family. He stood in the front row during my 2024 Republican National Convention speech—the biggest moment of my life in the public eye—smiling and cheering the whole way. Because he was incapable of envy, he was everyone’s biggest cheerleader.

Politics is a dirty business sometimes, one where you have to make compromises and shape the public narrative in order to achieve the best possible—rather than the perfect—outcome. Charlie served as my sounding board and strategic partner.

When Kirk died, the Vances raced to absorb the reflected glory.

Usha and I flew the next day to Utah to escort his body back to Arizona. It was the least I could do.

Yes -- for your career.

Near the end of the Journal excerpt, Vance creepily ascribes his wife's decision to have a fourth child to Kirk's assassination.

As my wife held Charlie Kirk’s widow on the first day of her terrible sorrow, Erika told Usha between sobs that she regretted having only two kids with Charlie.

For years I had asked Usha to have another baby, and for years she had told me she was done—especially now that public service had elevated us into the national spotlight.

But something changed for Usha, and not long after we buried my friend, she became pregnant with our fourth child, a boy.

One life was stolen from us, but another was given.

Vance appears to be suggesting that his own child will be the reincarnation of Charlie Kirk. That's weird.

Is J.D. Vance a real person, or is he just a series of mentor-mentee relationships pretending to be a person? At Yale Law, he was a protégé of Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld. In Silicon Valley, he became one of Peter Thiel's favorites. Then there was Donald Trump.

I've argued that if Trump dies in office, Vance will consolidate GOP voter support by becoming the leader of a posthumous Trump cult.

The key thing J.D. Vance will do if he becomes president after Trump's death is wrap himself in Trump's mantle and act as the great preserver of Trump's legacy. He'll keep all the tacky gold decorations in the Oval Office. He'll continue planning the ballroom, which he'll call the Trump Ballroom. In fact, he'll preside over a massive campaign to name paractically every inanimate object in America after Trump -- airports, roads, schools, military bases, maybe even the White House. (The Trump House?) He'll urge the Nobel committee to give Trump a posthumous Peace Prize, even though Nobels are never awarded posthumously.... he'll begin the process of allocating funds to put Trump on Mount Rushmore.

This might not be what Vance will want to do as president, but it's what he will do.

Vance is trying to ascend to a position of alpha dominance in American politics by always being someone's beta -- in the case of Kirk, a dead guy who was nearly a decade younger. Will it work? Well, his main competition is Marco Rubio, someone who's equally inclined to subordinate himself to whatever the current thing is in right-wing politics. The real leader of the post-Trump right will be whoever tells Republican voters what to hate, but that person might not want to run for office. (Rush Limbaugh didn't in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan's presidency, and Tucker Carlson didn't in the Barack Obama era.) So the leading politician in the GOP might not be the party's overall leader. It might be a lickspittle like Rubio or Vance.

AND BY "AMERICA FIRST" WE MEAN "WHITES FIRST EVERYWHERE"

Why is J.D. Vance, the second in command to our "America First" president, weighing in on a British murder case?

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has hit out at people “trying to interfere in our democracy” after US Vice President JD Vance waded into a national controversy by blaming “mass migration” for the recent murder of a student.

The killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old White student, sparked a national outcry after it emerged that police officers had handcuffed him as he lay dying from stab wounds inflicted by Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh man, in an attack late last year.

Digwa, who at the time falsely claimed to police that he had been the victim of a racist attack, has since been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, but the case has been co-opted by the far-right to accuse British institutions including the police of being biased against White Britons.

This is a terrible story. What the police did can't really be defended. But Nowak's family has said, “We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension.” Also: “This is not a case about Sikhism. This is not a case about racism. This is a case about murder.”

Vance wants Nowak's death to stir division and hatred. His tweet is one of the most Nazi-like statements I've encountered from a member of the Executive Branch not named Trump or Miller:

Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.

Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life, and I fear he won’t be the last. Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger. One of the most important things the Trump administration has proven to the world is that stopping the flow of mass migration and defending national sovereignty is a matter of political will and leadership. Anything else is an excuse.

It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children. And nobody—nobody—should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died. May God comfort those who loved him, and may God rest his soul.

I want to focus on a small detail here. In the final paragraph of this tweet, Vance says, "We love our country." Who is "we" here?

If "we" means "members of the Trump administration," then what does love of America have to do with weighing in on another country's affairs? But if it means "those of us who care about the civilization of the West," then why the singular "country"? Unlike President Trump, Vance knows how to use the English language. He (or whichever staffer proofreads and copyedits his statements) could have changed "country" to "countries" -- which would also have suggested that the U.K.'s separation from Europe was good and that all European nations should follow that example, something I assume Vance believes.

Maybe it's just the kind of grammar mistake that even articulate people make. Maybe Vance means, "You love your country and we love our country." But he never mentions America or Britain, and in a 209-word statement, he mentions "the West" twice. This tells me that Vance sees "the West" (white Europeans, white Americans, white Russians) as one country -- call it Whiteistan -- that's at war with dark-skinned people everywhere.

(No, I don't know where Vance's wife and children fit in all this.)

Remember that Vance went to Hungary and asked a crowd of Viktor Orban supporters, “Will you stand ... for truth and for the God of our forefathers?” Prior to this, he met with the leader of Germany's far-right, anti-immigrant AfD party, defended Elon Musk's open embrace of the party, and attacked European leaders on immigration, telling them,

The threat that I worry most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.

It's not just Vance, of course. Earlier this year, Marco Rubio told the same European leaders,

we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it.

And just today, Pete Hegseth played the white supremacist card at a D-Day event in Paris:

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned on Saturday that Europe faced what he called an invasion of dangerous ideologies arriving by sea, linking immigration to the legacy of the D-Day landings in remarks in Normandy....

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive,” Hegseth said in a speech at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not,” he said.

None of this is surprising. We know these people are fascists. But please note that they're not America First fascists. They're whites first fascists. They want this ideology to spread. They want to meddle in European politics to promote the leaders and ideology they favor.

In this way, they're as globalist as the liberals and moderates they despise.

PLATNER'S REPUBLICAN-OPERATIVE EX IS A SORE WINNER

I don't have anything constructive to add after reading the big New York Times story about Graham Platner's toxic behavior in past relationships, but I'll direct you to this story, from which we learn that the political operative who is the story's main source is reacting to it in a quintessentially Republican way:

Graham Platner accuser calls NYT article 'a gift' to his Senate campaign

The woman who was quoted extensively in a New York Times article accusing Graham Platner of abuse during their past relationship is now claiming she was "set up" by the journalists who spoke with her.

In her first public messages since the article was published Thursday, Lyndsey Fifield, Platner's ex-girlfriend, posted a series of messages on X detailing how she initially "resisted her conservative bias" and decided to "fully trust the Times journalists."

... Fifield is a conservative activist whom the Times reported has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns....

"It dawned on me that this really was a set up all along," Fifield wrote Friday morning. "The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life."

I believe what Fifield said about Platner's anger and toxicity -- she might have embellished details, but it's consistent with what a couple of other women say in the story, and it's consistent with other bad behavior we know about. I know that Fifield is a GOP operative. I still largely believe her account.

But Republicans are so spoiled by having been the dominant political party in America for nearly half a century -- Fifield's entire life -- that this particular Republican can look at highly damaging story published at nearly the worst possible time for Democrats and think, The media is still displaying liberal bias.

Maine's primary is on Tuesday. The only rival to Platner who's shown any vote-getting ability dropped out of the race more than a month ago. There isn't enough time for Maine Democrats to coalesce around an alternative candidate. And a large number of Democratic voters don't want to.

So what's likely to happen is that Platner will win the primary and limp into the general election, weakened and probably highly beatable.

Fifield's two long tweets in response to the story are here and here. She says she went on the record reluctantly, provided diary screenshots that the Times never used, and offered names of people who could corroborate her story. She says she was told that other women had similar stories, and was put in touch with them while the story was being put together.

After the story went up I began to ask them ... wait, where are the stories from the other women? Where are their accusations of sexual assault? Why am I the focus? Why are there 11 paragraphs dedicated to detailing my work history (more than has been published about Graham’s by far)?

(What? Is she saying that Platner's work history hasn't been reported anywhere?)

Why does it say “nobody could corroborate” when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate?

(I can only assume that the friends didn't say to the Times what she thought they'd say -- perhaps because they remember the relationship differently, perhaps because they didn't want to get involved in the story to that extent.)

It dawned on me that this really was a set up all along. The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life.

This story is an invitation to every ambitious reporter in America: Find more dirt on Platner. Fairly soon, for instance, someone will report on Platner's behavior during his overseas postings, and the stories probably won't be pretty.

Fifield set this in motion with stories like this:

... she said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.

During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was “calm.” Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning.

And this:

He had what she described as a “warrior ethos” and would fantasize about killing people he deemed a threat, she said. She said he told her that rape was about power.

It was something that stuck with her through the years, Ms. Fifield said.

“He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” she recalled, saying that he added that it would not be in “a sexual way, not in a gay way.”

“He was like, I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant,” she said.

Is it all true? I don't know. Has it damaged his campaign? Undoubtedly. Lyndsey Fifield should understand that. Take the win, Lyndsey.

As for me, I'm with Lauren Mae:

There are a lot of lefties on social media scolding anyone who's supported Platner. Fuck that. People supported his platform. They thought he was a good messenger, and they wanted to believe he was working on not being a bad person. Some still feel that way. They're not the enemy. They're not like Republicans, who wallow in Donald Trump's evil.

WHEN TRUMP DOES BIZARRE THINGS, THE MEDIA ISN'T AGHAST -- IT'S IN AWE

Stephen Robinson asks, yet again, why the bizarre words and deeds of the aging Donald Trump aren't covered the same way Joe Biden's "senior moments" were:

This past weekend, Trump’s social media feed was a wellspring of lunacy. He posted more than 50 times on Saturday alone, hurling personal attacks at Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Rosie O’Donnell — one of whom was never actually president. He shared an absurd AI-generated image of himself as a New York Knicks player dunking on Gov. Kathy Hochul. He boasted about defeating “disloyal” Republicans in their primaries. He continued picking fights with the Pope. He attacked the judge who ruled that he couldn’t illegally deface the Kennedy Center with his name....

Yet Trump’s unhinged posts last weekend weren’t the stuff of front-page coverage at the New York Times or Washington Post....

The rate of Trump’s manic posting on social media accelerated in May.... He resumed his unprecedented threats against a US ally with two Truth Social posts that depicted his massive face looming sinisterly over Greenland. He posted an AI image of Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna in a sheep costume with vampire teeth, witing, “A Dumocrat! Don’t allow this lying sleazebag on FoxNews!”

Trump posted an image of a fighter jet seemingly about to drop a bomb with the words “Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter” written on its side. He shared an image of himself holding a shotgun over a slain rhinoceros with the menacing caption “NO RINOS”

On the subject of Trump and his predecessor, Robinson writes:

... Trump and Biden simply don’t belong in the same conversation about a president’s deteriorating mental state. As amply covered in the press, Biden was in fact old and thus experienced age-related decline, but the worst-case scenario with him at the wheel was not a potential nuclear holocaust....

Biden on his worst day was emotionally stable. Trump, on every day, is outright sadistic, and his resulting behavior is increasingly reckless. Biden’s diplomacy united allies against Russia after Putin invaded Ukraine. He successfully negotiated bipartisan bills in Congress. But Trump has blown up longstanding alliances while purging dissenters and weaponizing government against his foes.

Robinson says:

... unfortunately, the mainstream media covers [Trump's] disordered thinking as a colorful “quirk” — Trump being Trump — rather than a serious, escalating threat to the nation.

No, it's worse than that.

The press doesn't think Trump's disordered thinking is a "quirk." The press thinks Trump's disordered thinking is a superpower. The press doesn't cover Trump's behavior the way it covered Biden's because Biden wasn't trying to impress his base with his shuffling gait and verbal stumbles. Trump clearly wants to be praised for all his late-night Truth Social shitposting. He wants likes and "re-truths," and he gets some. The press, still unable to comprehend how a man as impolitic and unhinged as Trump won two elections, simply assumes that Trump's rage and blather add up to a peculiar form of political genius.

In the past, it was understandable that the press might think Trump had invented a new kind of political charisma. (It wasn't new, really -- it was basically Bill O'Reilly's assholism plus an infomercial pitchman's aura of fake financial expertise, all of it married to a Perez Hilton-style posting addiction.) But his poll numbers are plummeting now, and he's failing in everything he's doing as president.

And yet the press still believes in his alleged genius. I think that's for a few reasons.

First, his party hasn't collapsed. Trump is admired by perhaps 35% to 38% of Americans, but he leads the party that gets approximately half the votes in America, so he seems more popular than he is.

Second, he's still good at grabbing eyeballs. Journalists want to do good work, perhaps, but perhaps more than that, they want to do work that gets attention. I think they envy even the aging, unpopular Trump because he still knows how to go viral. They wish they were as good at it as he is (at his age!).

And finally, after decades of ref-working by the GOP, I think they feel that his habit of regularly abusing them to their faces is a punishment they deserve.

Trump attacking Kaitlan Collins: Be quiet. You should be ashamed of yourself. You used to be conservative from Alabama. CNN does such false reporting, but now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it out. It’s hard to straighten garbage out.

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) June 3, 2026 at 4:36 PM

Getting to 0:28 in this video and seeing all those reporters watching raptly as he rambles on and insults them makes me sick. Fuck him. Don't show up anymore. Let him ramble to the Fox reporter and no one else. You're literally giving him lifefuel by meekly standing by as he insults you.

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— Steve M. (@stevemnomoremister.bsky.social) June 3, 2026 at 6:13 PM

I'm serious when I say that reporters shouldn't participate in these Oval Office gaggles. They should boycott them as a group in response to Trump's insults, or they should walk away as a group the second he insults one of them. Obviously, there'd be consequences -- but Trump would be limited in his ability to impose consequences if every top-tier non-right-wing media outlet participated in the boycott.

But they won't, because they think taking his punches reveals their toughness. It does, but it also turns their relationship with him into an abusive marriage. The abuse makes him happy, and his base is also happy to see reporters abused. That's a gift he and his base don't deserve. These reporters and their bosses need to recognize that and stop giving him what he wants.

IF DEMOCRATS AREN'T CLOSING THE SALE, IT'S FOR A GLARINGLY OBVIOUS REASON

In nearly every poll this year, disapproval of President Trump's job performance has been much greater than the Democratic advantage on the generic House ballot. However, until now I haven't seen a poll with a gap this large:

A new Marquette Law School Poll national survey ... finds that Trump’s overall support continues to decline....

In this May poll, 38% approve of how he is handling his job as president, while 62% disapprove, a net approval of -24 percentage points....

Looking ahead to the November congressional elections, among registered voters, 46% say they would vote for the Democratic candidate and 45% would vote for the Republican, with 7% saying they would vote for neither and 1% who say they would not vote. The slight Democratic advantage is also seen among likely voters, i.e., those who say they are certain they will vote, with 49% saying they would vote for a Democratic candidate and 48% for a Republican candidate.

The congressional vote has tightened substantially from April when, among registered voters, 48% backed Democratic candidates and 44% supported Republicans, and there was a large Democratic advantage among likely voters, 53% for Democrats and 43% for Republicans.

So Trump is at -24, but Democrats are only at +1. Among likely voters, Democrats were at +10 in April, but that advantage shrunk by 9 points. We're told:

Some of this shift is due to an increase in likelihood of voting among Republicans and a decline among Democrats. In April, 56% of Republicans said they were certain to vote in November, which rose to 59% in May. Among Democrats, those certain to vote declined from 67% in April to 58% in May.

It's just one poll, and maybe it's an outlier -- in the Real Clear Politics average, Democrats have an advantage of 6.8 points. But Trump's job approval is at -16.7 points.

Why the gap? The Marquette poll makes this fairly obvious:

Among nine issues, the Republicans are seen as considerably better able to handle three issues than Democrats and slightly better on two issues. Democrats are seen as slightly better on two issues and substantially better on two issues.

After sixteen months of Trump and a GOP House and Senate, Americans are disgusted at the state of the country -- but they still prefer Republicans on five of nine issues.

Republicans have substantial advantages on crime, immigration and border security, and national defense, and a have a slight advantage on the federal deficit and taxes. Democrats have slight advantages on the economy and on inflation, and have large advantages on the topic of Medicare and Social Security and on health care.

I understand why voters might back Republicans on immigration and border security -- polls suggest that voters want a tighter border and deportations, though they don't approve of Trump's heavy-handed approach. And it seems to be impossible to persuade Americans that crime has been falling since the 1990s, and is low in many Democratic-led cities.

But national defense? Do poll respondents understand which party refuses to intercede to stop Trump's unpopular and ruinous war with Iran? Do they understand which party won't challenge Trump's attacks on allies and organizations meant to sustain global peace?

And on taxes, do respondents know which party voted for the very unpopular One Big Beautiful Bill, which was a giveaway to the rich?

We know they don't know who's running up a massive federal deficit right now, because they were asked: While 72% of respondents say they've "heard or read a lot" about the war with Iran, only 28% say the same about news that federal debt is now greater than U.S. GDP.

Why don't voters link these governing failures to Republicans? Democrats blame Trump, but they don't blame the GOP, and they need to start.

On the campaign trail, individual Democrats will link their opponents to Trump. That will be effective -- but they need to do more. The Republican Party needs to be thoroughly discredited. It needs to be portrayed as a party that always blows up the deficit in order to make billionaires richer, while slashing programs for ordinary people. It needs to be discredited as a party that always gets America into ill-advised wars. Add that to the abortion restrictions, the refusal to raise the minimum wage, the deep health care cuts, and dozens of other failings, and you might start building a case for why the GOP and not just Trump needs to be opposed, and needs to be opposed in every election for the foreseeable future, not just while Trump is in the White House.