DEMOCRATS SHOULD TRY LANDING THE FIRST PUNCH

Here's an important difference between our two major parties, according to Brian Beutler:

... Republicans exploit media aggressively, at every juncture, to smear, savage, and blame their opponents, while Democrats tend to steer away from collective character attacks....To use less fancy language, Republicans say Democrats are shitty people; Democrats don’t return the favor.

[Republicans] place themselves in the shoes of lower-information voters, try to see the world from their perspective, and then ask: How can I make people like this develop a low opinion of Democrats? How can I instill hatred in them?

Paul Waldman agrees:

[Republicans] work every day to convince voters that they should distrust, resent, and despise Democrats, irrespective of what those voters might think about any policy issue or turn of events.

Waldman notes that this appears to be an ideal moment for Democrats to try to win over Americans who've been voting Republican but now think the country is going in the wrong direction. But Waldman doesn't agree with the approach recommended by centrist Democrats:

The professional centrists in the Democratic Party look at a moment like this one and say “Now those moderate voters will finally be open to our apology! We can go to them and say ‘We know you think we suck, and you’re right, we do suck, but we’re going to try to do better.’”

He's right. That's a terrible message. In broad outline, I agree with what Waldman recommends instead:

... Democrats have been lectured endlessly about how they need to apologize and listen to Trump voters so that they might make them feel more warmly toward Democrats, while barely anyone acknowledges how absolutely vital it is that they work to change how these voters feel about Republicans.

But I don't think this is the right approach:

... at least part of the solution has to be for Democrats to say the following to everyone who voted for Trump and is now feeling glimmers of doubt, wherever they live:

Republicans think you’re stupid.

Not “You’re stupid for voting for Republicans,” but “Republicans think you’re stupid.” Which they absolutely do. They tell you that tax cuts for the rich will help you. They tell you when they lose it’s because of voter fraud. Trump tells you rising prices aren’t real, and this is a “golden age,” and that immigrants are the source of your problems, and that liberal protesters are all paid, and that we already won the Iran war, and that he cares about you. They pick your pocket and laugh at you behind your back.

Trump thinks you’re stupid, and so do all the other Republicans you elect, the ones who don’t do a damn thing to improve your community and then come around every four years and say you should be angry about a trans middle schooler playing softball or some other story they came up with so you won’t hold them responsible for what they’ve done.

This approach touches on some terrible things Republicans are doing, but it's rooted in a professional politico's worldview. Waldman is recommending that Democrats describe to voters how the Republican approach to politics works on them. I'd skip over the part where Democrats say, Look at how Republicans are manipulating you into supporting their policies, which are fucking awful, and go straight to: Republican policies are fucking awful. I'd say, This is what they're focused on when you can't afford to buy a home or buy gas. Maybe I'd say that Republicans always try to distract you with issues like DEI and trans athletes that have nothing to do with your life. But the issue isn't Republicans are showing you disrespect. It's Republicans make your life worse.

Beutler looks at Republican attack politics -- for instance, on James Talarico's support for trans people. Beutler notes, for instance, that "Texas Republicans are running an A.I. generated ad that depicts James Talarico wearing a dress, singing a song about how much he loves transing children." The ad, by the way, is quite nasty:

NEW: The Trump-aligned org Citizens for Sanity is dropping a six-figure ad buy in the Texas Senate race.

The ad is a 15 second clip of AI-generated James Talarico singing a "trans kids" rendition of “Favorite Things."

Obtained first by @DailyCaller: pic.twitter.com/JNY8vxYueG

— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) June 9, 2026

Beutler disagrees with the standard Democratic response to attacks like this ("Ignore the smears, and race to higher terrain"). So do I. But I don't like his alternative:

[Democrats] could try to make Republican deception a liability in itself. I don’t mean correcting the record. I don’t mean citing fact-checkers. I mean telling stories about how today’s GOP professional class is defined by putrid, morally corrosive dishonesty.

Sorry, but that's way too meta. It's about the business of politics, which is of interest to people like Brian Beutler (and me), but not to normie voters.

Also, Democrats tried this once and it was an utter failure. In 1988, when the Willie Horton ad and other pro-George Bush attack ads were doing tremendous damage to Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign, Dukakis responded with a series of ads called "The Packaging of George Bush." The ads were a flop.

Singled out for particular criticism is Dukakis’ elaborate series of ads called “The Packaging of George Bush,” in which a group of political handlers is depicted discussing strategy--an attempt to make political hay out of the perception that Bush is a carefully managed candidate.

“An utter waste of money,” [politcal science professor Larry] Sabato said flatly. “They are too subtle, and they land with a thud because they tell voters what voters have always known, that they are being manipulated. The problem is that most voters believe they are manipulated by both sides, which they are.”

I've cued up one of the ads below.



It's astonishing that Democrats thought Republican slicksters are manipulating you with TV ads would be an effective counterweight to Vote for the Democrat and scary Black men will brutalize you and your family.

*****

What's my alternative?

First, Democrats need to stop hating themselves. Roughly 60% of Americans despise what's happening in America on Republicans' watch. Disgruntled Democrats and independents are normal; people who still support Trump are the weirdos. Democrats should talk about Republican ideas -- never raise the minimum wage, let AI and crypto billionaires do whatever they want, cut needed domestic programs while starting expensive and pointless foreign wars and giving more tax cuts to the rich, attack abortion, ban books -- as if they're obviously wrong. Democrats shouldn't focus on what they should say (or not say) in response to Republican attacks -- they should go on offense, launching attacks of their own, trying to land the first punch.

Beutler dismisses the idea that Texas Democrats should "start making AI-generated ads depicting Ken Paxton’s actual sins and crimes." But what if they'd done that first? What if they were the first ones out of the gate with an ad that used ridicule to attack their opponent's vulnerability? What if they set the terms of the debate?

(Whatever you think of Graham Platner, he's trying to do this, tying Susan Collins to the closure of rural hospitals and, through her support of Brett Kavanaugh, to the end of Roe v. Wade. Even with all his baggage, he might actually succeed in making that race a referendum on Republicans rather than himself.)

I think Democrats should attack long-standing Republican policies that are unpopular, specific Trump policies on important issues that are rejected by voters (the war in Iran, the tariffs), while also portraying the Republican Party as weird and ridiculous. Trump gives them many openings -- Greenland! The ballroom! -- and so do Republicans who treat Trump like a demigod. See, for instance, Texas congressman Troy Nehls:

Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls outdid his colleagues in heaping praise on Donald Trump with reporters on Thursday....

"Donald Trump is the best thing to happen in this country in 100 years," he insisted. "He was born, he was born a very special baby."

"I bet you the doctor said, I can tell this is a very special baby, right?" he added.

Run against the party that talks this way! They're weird!

Whenever a Republican does something that normal people would find either immoral or laughable, it's an opportunity for Democrats. Attack. Attack. Attack.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE GOP'S CALIFORNIA ELECTION CONSPIRACY THEORIES

It's clear that the Trump Justice Department wants to charge somebody with election fraud in connection with the California primaries. It's also clear what the nature of the charges might be, as I'll explain below.

Anyone who pays attention to the right-wing noise machine could tell you what the Feds are likely to say about California. But Devlin Barrett of The New York Times, like most mainstream media journalists, appears to have no idea what the right is alleging. He seems baffled by the Justice Department's promises of future indictments, and appears much more concerned with how the Trump Justice Department is violating pre-Trump norms.

Speaking to a conservative radio host on Monday, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles made an unusually pointed prediction that cast doubt on the results of California’s primary races, even as votes were still being counted.

“We will be charging some people,” the prosecutor, Bill Essayli, told the host, Glenn Beck, delivering a promise that would most likely have been considered a violation of Justice Department policy under decades of past practice. “It will be election fraud charges in the next — I hate to put timelines on things — one or two months I believe. We need some of these results to be certified so we can prove some of the allegations.”

Barrett quotes an expert who assumes that Essayli and the Justice Department have got nothing:

The administration is “throwing everything against the wall that they can find, and nothing is sticking,” said David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer at the Justice Department who is now the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

“Almost all of their work is going back over conspiracy theorists’ allegations that were debunked five years ago,” he added. “They are running out of tools in their toolbox.”

But I think I know what Essayli has in mind, and Barrett should know, too, because it's right there in the New York Post.

First, there was this Post story, on Tuesday morning.

Thousands of homeless voters were registered to vote at LA shelters — despite many not living there or the facilities not having any beds.

And as Spencer Pratt was eliminated by Nithya Raman in the mayor’s race on Monday night, it can be revealed that one drop-in center that received $600,000 from the socialist candidate had 185 registered voters at the address but offers no accommodations.

The revelations have prompted US Attorney Bill Essayli to say he will investigate the concerns uncovered by The Post and “follow the evidence” to see if the law has been broken.

A review of records shows 7,600 voters tied to homeless shelters and service providers.

As far as I can tell, California registers homeless people at shelters because it believes homeless people are citizens who deserve the right to vote just like the rest of us, and because if they're going to be registered, they need to be registered at some address. I understand why critics of this policy might believe it's ripe for abuse, but the potential for abuse is not proof of abuse. Also, it's appropriate for city council members to try to obtain funding for social service providers.

And as for that suspicious-seeming "7,600 voters," I'll remind you that Raman now leads Pratt by nearly 30,000 votes.

But there's more. On Tuesday evening, the Post reported this:

A series of shocking videos show homeless residents on Los Angeles’ Skid Row claiming they were paid to vote for Mayor Karen Bass and councilwoman Nithya Raman....

The footage, recorded near 7th Street and Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday morning, has since been provided to the Department of Justice.

The clips were posted by a TikTok account called laneedsspencerpratt. They were also promoted on Twitter:

The video on X shared by @WallStreetApes has amassed nearly 700,000 views with over 1,000 comments from users.

(In April, Nate Silver reported that Wall Street Apes was the Twitter account with the ninth-highest engagement rate.)

The Post produced a convenient supercut:



This story apparently proved so popular that a follow-up appeared yesterday in the Post:

Homeless people living on LA’s Skid Row claimed they’d been told to sign multiple registration forms, forge signatures and offered cash to fill out voter information by people working for “political partners.”

A series of videos published Thursday by TheVoiceofLA, an Instagram account known for interviews on Skid Row — the center of Los Angeles’ largest homeless community — laid out the shocking allegations.

TheVoiceofLA actually appears to be a Spencer Pratt fan account, for what it's worth.

How plausible are these claims? Not very:



The first woman claims she's asked to fill out and sign multiple ballots, but she doesn't seem to know what story she's supposed to tell.

INTERVIEWER: So, and they get you to vote for the same person.

HOMELESS WOMAN #1: No, they want us to vote for whatever the ballot is.

What does that even mean?

The second woman makes even less sense:

INTERVIEWER: ... you get "Sign these petitions, sign this ballot."

HOMELESS WOMAN #2: Yeah. Do this. And I've been, I've been propositioned with bank fraud, phone fraud, voter fraud, um, PayPal fraud, you name it. They've came at me every [bleep]ing which way down here. There ain't no end to the fraud down here.

She might be describing the tactics of people circulating petitions to get initiatives on the ballot, but she certainly doesn't seem to be describing anything to do with the mayoral election.

Maybe all these people are telling the truth. Maybe they've been paid to vote. Or perhaps they've been paid to say they've been paid to vote.

*****

I've believed for many years that the manistream media should look at stories like this that spread virally on the right and take them seriously -- seriously, but skeptically. Over and over again, right-wingers have concocted pseudo-scandals that were ignored by the mainstream press. ACORN. The so-called Ground Zero mosque. "Weaponization" of the IRS against right-wing non-profits. Right-wingers get worked up while the mainstream media looks the other way, which means that all the coverage of these stories has a right-wing bias. By the time the mainstream press wakes up and weighs in, much of the country believes the right-wing/GOP version of events, even if the truth doesn't match the GOP narrative.

I think non-right-wing journalists should look into this series of claims. Is there any evidence that the registrations mentioned in the first Post story are illegal or fraudulent? Is there any evidence that these people who claim to have been paid to vote actually were?

If, as I suspect, the claims are false, that's a story: the right is spreading fraudulent claims of fraud.

Yes, I know: the mainstream press might assume that agents of the Republican Party like the New York Post are operating in good faith. There's a risk that mainstream journalists will fall for the fake news.

But I'm imagining a better world, a world where the press is on to the GOP's bullshit, and catches Republicans in the act of spreading falsehoods before those falsehoods become a narrative even middle-of-the-road voters believe -- especially now, when the federal government wants to put political enemies in prison based on right-wing narratives alone.

FOX'S BRIAN KILMEADE: OBJECTIVELY PRO-POGROM

i dont think the us government should be legitimizing and promoting racist pogroms in foreign countries

[image or embed]

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 9:44 AM

I don't want to defend a Trump administration official, but Fox's Brian Kilmeade is the greater hatemonger here. Mullin is there to praise the president and his push to fully fund the glorious war on immigrants; Mullin is also there to attack Democrats and (as you can see in a fuller version of the segment on the Fox website) accuse ICE critics of being paid Antifa agents.

But Kilmeade takes this a step further, praising the mobs who are attacking innocent people. His full quote:

When I watch Belfast, how they're standing up because their leaders have let them down, in their own streets, trying to take their country back. They want to label them as racist, or xenophobic. All they want to be is Irish. They want Ireland back. And that is what we've been saying for the longest time. So when you see their fight in the streets -- and I've never been to Northern Ireland -- I see a lot of the same fights here, as they almost beheaded a guy for being Irish by another guy that came from another country, from Sudan, who felt as though they hadn't beheaded someone lately, so he thought he'd start then.

To make the obvious point: there's no "they" who "almost beheaded a guy." An individual named Hadi Alodid is charged with that crime. There's no blood guilt. But the logic of the pogrom -- a logic Kilmeade is endorsing -- is that entire ethnic groups are responsible for all bad acts by individuals from their ethnic group.

Here's a description of the response Kilmeade is defending:

On a residential street draped in loyalist flags near Belfast’s Shankill Road, the masked men approached a house with a boarded-up window and a security camera stationed outside.

As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down. With the air thick with smoke from fireworks, they attacked the downstairs windows with bricks.

As they stormed the property, some claimed to be “liberating” it. Graffiti nearby demanded “local homes for local people”. A woman in the crowd said to her friend: “There’s wee girls inside.”

Nearby, a car was set on fire. As the chaos unfolded, a man in a skull face mask told people to put their phones away. Helicopters circled overhead, and two police officers looked on from their car as smoke billowed towards the sky – but appeared to conclude that it was not safe to intervene.

By the time reinforcements arrived in four police vans, most of the hundreds-strong crowd had melted away, leaving only a few stragglers in their wake....

In a unionist area of east Belfast, masked men set bins alight and pushed them into a bus on the Newtownards Road, prompting bus services to be suspended until further notice. Some wore balaclavas and waved flares. Several explosions were heard in the space of a few minutes.

Several hundred people lingered to view the burnt Glider bus and at least three homes that had been torched.

“It was a Romanian gypsy family in that one,” said one woman, indicating a gutted terrace house that still smouldered.

Families with young children mingled with men wearing masks and young couples. Some exuded a carnival atmosphere, posing for pictures and drinking beer.

One man hoisted up his son, aged around seven, for a better view of another destroyed house. “Get a duke at that,” he said. “Wow,” the boy replied.

Sirens punctuated the night. Near the wreckage of the Glider bus, graffiti on a wall said “fuck Islam”.

Please note Kilmeade's ignorance. The violence described here is taking place in unionist parts of Belfast. These are areas where the majority of people absolutely don't want to be Irish -- they want to be British. What matters most is that they're white and their targets aren't.

There are a couple of moments in the full Fox clip when Mullin argues that sinister global forces are behind the anti-ICE protests ikn America. Mullin says:

We're going after these criminal gangs, we're going after the cartels, and we're going after the funding stream, because of our cooperation with DOJ, Kash Patel at the FBI, we're -- and, by the way, Scott Bessent with Treasury -- we are moving together as a unified force, tracking the money, tracking the social media posts that are a lot of times from foreign actors, and we're going after the paid protesters. And when we're going after the paid protesters, by the way, we're going after the people that fund those paid protesters, because I think they can be held reliable -- liable for it, and so does Todd Blanche. And so we're going after the whole network.

It's hilarious that Mullin says this in a segment that also includes praise for the Belfast rioters, because his description fits the events in Belfast better than it fits the anti-ICE movement, particularly the part about "social media posts that are a lot of times from foreign actors." The Guardian reports on the social media spread of footage showing the Belfast stabbing:

By Tuesday, the clip had become the latest transnational “trigger event” – in the mould of the Southport killings and the case of the murdered 18-year-old student Henry Nowak – as far-right activists from Britain and beyond seized on it.

Those playing a pivotal role in the spread of the footage on Elon Musk’s X included the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, fresh from a meeting this week at a sumptuous Moscow hotel with the billionaire’s father....

Robinson posted details of planned demonstrations across Britain and Northern Ireland on the platform, which Elon Musk shared to his 240 million followers....

It didn’t take long for the international far right to seize on the apparent opportunity too. Dominik Tarczyński, a Polish MEP who was one of the people banned by the British government from coming to the UK earlier this year to attend a rally organised by Robinson, sought to link the attack in Belfast and the death of Nowak.

“Europe 2026 in two pictures. Mass deportations NOW!” tweeted Tarczyński, sharing an image of the knife attack in Northern Ireland and one of Nowak handcuffed.

Brian Kilmeade didn't ask Mullin about any of that, but I'm sure they'd both spprove.

REFS, SUCCESSFULLY WORKED

During the 1992 presidential campaign, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Rich Bond, explained why Republicans incessantly accuse the media of liberal bias, using a sports metaphor.

"There is some strategy to it [bashing the ‘liberal’ media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one."

Republicans don't just use this strategy to fight the media. They howl in outrage about anything in politics that doesn't go their way, suggesting that dark conspiracies are depriving them of the political dominance to which they're entitled.

They've been doing this on the California vote count, because an entirely predictable "red mirage" created the illusion that Spencer Pratt, a Republican candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, would qualify for the general election despite the fact that the city overwhelmingly votes Democratic. The ed board of The New York Times has now been successfully worked on this issue. It has responded to the GOP pressure campaign with this editorial:

Taking a Week to Count Votes Is Doing It Wrong

... There is no good reason that California takes so long to count votes....

With California refusing to change its system and a few other states having similar problems, the appropriate remedy is a federal law. That law should establish Election Day as the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive and set basic standards for efficient vote counting.

Improving the efficiency of vote counting in California would be a good thing, but why can't the state allow voters to mail ballots by Election Day if it chooses? Why do we need a federal law to prevent that?

The editorial never tells us, apart from saying this:

It creates needless uncertainty about results (as has been the case with several races this year). It confuses ordinary voters and serves the interest of conspiracists, including President Trump, who spread lies about election fraud that is in fact virtually nonexistent.

So the reason California's deadline is bad is that Republican crackpots say it seems bad. There's no other reason. Yes, the ed board says the process "confuses voters," but it would be more accurate to say that Republicans take advantage of the process to deliberately and cynically confuse voters.

This editorial appears as the Times is reporting results from Maine's primaries, which took place yesterday. In the most newsworthy race, Graham Platner won the Democratic Senate primary with more than 70% of the vote, but in other key races -- the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries, the Democratic congressional primary in Maine's 2nd District -- candidates are tightly bunched, with no clear winner. In each case, the Times tells us that the race

will be decided by ranked-choice voting, a process that usually takes a week or two.

But ... but ... but the ed board told me that having to wait a week or more for definitive results in California was a massive crisis for American democracy! Will there now be an editorial denouncing Maine's voting process?

Nahhh, for one simple reason: Unlike California, Maine has partisan primaries. Democrats and Republicans run separately. It's just as likely that candidates in Maine who seem to be leading on Election Night will lose their races when the process is completed, but the loser won't be a Republican in an all-parties primary, so Republicans aren't whining about Maine. Republicans aren't whining, so the Times isn't tut-tutting.

*****

Much of the Times editorial is devoted to the notion that Democrats should include an Election Day deadline in electoral reform legislation.

Congressional Democrats have long supported promising election reform bills, but they have generally opposed sensible deadlines for the arrival and counting of ballots. That is a mistake. Electoral reform is a natural issue for Democrats as they plan a legislative agenda for a possible House majority in 2027 and beyond....

The solution can start with Congress establishing a national deadline of Election Day for the arrival of mail-in ballots....

A federal election reform bill should also make it easier for people to vote in advance. It should set national standards for access to early voting and mail-in voting. Previous bills supported by Democrats — such as a 2022 bill named for John Lewis, which passed the House but failed in the Senate — contained these provisions.

This is delusional -- sure, in a better America, an election reform bill that becomes law might include provisions favored by both Democrats (ease of access to early voting) and Republicans (an Election Day deadline). But we don't live in that fantasy world. If you give Republicans some of what they want, they demand more and still condemn Democrats as radical-left extremists. We saw that when Democrats tried to compromise with Republicans on immigration in 2024 -- Democrats backed a bill full of Republican proposals, but Republicans rejected the bill anyway, then ran successfully on the slanderous charge that Democrats support "open borders."

It's likely that the Supreme Court will soon take this issue off the table by ruling, in a Mississippi case, that it's unconstitutional for states to allow ballots to arrive after Election Day. So what's the point of this editorial? The point is that Republicans believe that "Democrats are rigging elections -- look at California" is a potent argument right now, and the Times ed board, in a "moderate" way, is catapulting that propaganda.

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.