F**king Mondays: Musk Suppressing Speech, Geraldo Rivera and the Haley Vote, Harris's Early Surge, and Trump's Medical Mystery!
It's that time of the week again!
Note: apologies for the late post today, I spent all night in urgent care with my six year old so am running behind on pretty much everything!
Welcome to another edition of “F**king Mondays!”. In the roundup today:
Elon Musk is using X to manipulate the election
The New York Times reported late last week that Elon Musk has been coordinating with the Trump campaign to suppress negative stories about Donald Trump. The New Republic breaks it down:
As the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), Musk has been able to propagate conspiracy theories about the election, immigrants, and Democrats freely without pushback to his 201 million followers and the platform’s 500 million monthly active users. As the Times pointed out, since he endorsed Trump in July, Musk has posted at least 109 times about the Republican candidate and the election.
But the Times also confirmed something not previously known: Musk is coordinating with the Trump campaign to suppress negative stories about Trump.
Last month, X deactivated a reporter’s account after he shared leaked information from the Trump campaign about JD Vance. X blocked links to the findings and the journalist remains banned from the platform. The Times reported that X did so after the Trump campaign “connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events.”
Musk has used X to help Trump in other ways as well. Most recently, Musk took over the @America handle on the website to promote his America PAC, which now aims to mobilize nearly one million voters to cast ballots for Trump in November.
It is common knowledge that Musk is doing everything in his power to elect Trump, but the use of X to suppress speech and manipulate public perception goes against the promise he made to keep it politically neutral when he bought it:
Combatting X’s toxic effect on this election is one of the biggest challenges Democrats have. The site is filled with conspiracy theories and disinformation, and Musk routinely does his best to spread it if he believes it works in his interest. Because Musk is not accountable to anyone, there are no limits on his behavior. He can lie about FEMA during devastating hurricanes, he can spread pro Trump disinformation, and he can suppress stories he believes will hurt Trump before November.
X is fast becoming the Fox News of the internet, and the left needs to figure out how to fight it — and fast.
Geraldo Rivera and the Nikki Haley Republicans
Long time Trump supporter and personal friend of the former president Geraldo Rivera has announced that he is voting for Kamala Harris. While not exactly earth shattering news, it is an indicator that Trump could struggle badly with moderate Republicans and independents on election day. Rivera explained his reasoning for ditching his friend on X:
If you are a Republican, Donald Trump has made a liar of you. He has coaxed and intimidated tens of millions into pretending he was reelected in 2020, and that the election was stolen. In furtherance of that Big Lie, on January 6, 2021, Trump incited and unleashed the violent attack on the center of democracy, the U.S. Capitol for which he was Impeached. As his followers trashed that sacred space, he was on the phone urging Vice President Mike Pence essentially to overturn the will of the American people. Pence refused to put Trump ahead of the Constitution. Trump stabbed the Constitution in the back. Maybe you are inclined to vote for the former president anyway, because he says he will cut your taxes or build the border wall or pull out of NATO or put tariffs on China. However, you justify voting for Trump, adopting his big lie about the stolen election makes you a liar. Better to admit he lost last time but that you don’t care because a Harris presidency would be a disaster, or you admire his defiance in the face of an assassin’s bullet. Just don’t pretend that he got robbed in 2020. That is a lie. Former President Trump is a sore loser who cannot be trusted to honor the Constitution. That is why I am voting for Kamala Harris to be our 47th President.
Many moderate Republicans and independents backed Nikki Haley in the Republican primaries, and there is good reason to believe that Kamala Harris can peel away a significant portion of them. A new TIPP poll has Harris leading Trump by a whopping 16 points with independents, and high quality polling has shown Harris has a very good chance of getting a sizable chunk of Haley supporters.
If Geraldo Rivera is turning on Trump, expect moderate Republicans and independents to follow.
Early voting patterns are a good sign for Democrats
While there is a lot of doom and gloom in the news about Kamala Harris’s declining poll numbers, if you look at the numbers above, you’ll notice something quite interesting. The numbers show that early voting numbers for Democrats are up in 2024 from 2020 and 2022. That includes vote share and total turnout. It is important not to read too much into early vote numbers, but it does tell us something very important about this election: Democrats are highly motivated to vote. If the numbers were down, Democrats would be right to sound the alarm, but the early vote surge is an excellent sign that they are fired up to beat Trump in November.
It is also worth remembering that Kamala Harris is still up in the popular vote, ahead in all the swing states she needs to win in November (PA, WI and MI), and just raised a billion dollars.
(NOTE: Banter Members can read my deep dive on all of this here):
Where are Trump’s medical records?
In line with every president in modern history, Kamala Harris released her medical records over the weekend. Her doctor Joshua SimmonsHarris wrote that she "remains in excellent health".
Despite two assassination attempts, getting shot, obvious signs of mental decline, and being 78 years old, Donald Trump has still not released his medical records. We have no idea what the next potential president is in good enough physical condition to do the job, and almost no one seems to care about it. Harris has challenged Trump to release his records, but the former president responded by demanding Harris take a test on “Cognitive Stamina and Agility” (whatever that is). Given Harris’s spectacular performance in the debate last month, this is obviously a moot point, but Trump’s efforts to distract the public is telling.
What is Donald Trump hiding?
Have a great week!
Listen to the latest episode of The Banter Roundtable Podcast:
For Banter Members:
All that matters at this junction is that your son is doing OK and on the road to recovery. Having been to the ER with my daughter a half dozen times, I know how intense it can be. Today on the View, I think it was Ana Navarro who put my mind at ease a bit saying the one good thing about Harris's poll numbers being low or tight is that it motivates fence voters to get off their keesters and vote. I remember the final SNL before the 2016 election, it was all about Hillary's swagger as her victory was all but certain. So many voters sat it out thinking she had it in the bag.
Ben, I hope your son is OK. Needing urgent medical care is always stressful, even when it turns out well. And I hope it has.