On May 25, Donald Trump will give his first party convention speech of 2024. It will be at the Libertarian National Convention, not the Republican National Convention.  In a statement released by the Libertarian Party, Trump urged Libertarians to join ally with him: “We all have to remember that our goal is to defeat the Worst President in the History of the United States, BY FAR, Crooked Joe Biden. If Libertarians join me and the Republican Party, where we have many Libertarian views, the election won’t even be close.”  Trump will speak at the party’s convention at the Washington H ..read more

I’m sure you’ve read, or at least read about, the Time magazine interview with and cover story about Donald Trump that has dominated the news for the last week.  What you might not know is that the reporter who scored the interview and wrote the Time  cover story, Eric Cortellessa, was, until two years ago, the investigative editor at the Washington Monthly, where he broke multiple big stories on antitrust, Larry Hogan, and Trump’s efforts to crush vote-by-mail.    In addition to deploying his hustle and ..read more

In the Washington Monthly today, Steve Kettmann, a journalist with a long history covering steroids in sports and the ghostwriter of Jose Canseco’s memoir, makes a convincing case that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a steroid user. That is relevant information to know about a presidential candidate. As Kettmann argues, “You don’t want roid rage to be an issue if, say, China invades Taiwan.” Kettmann’s article comes on the heels of The New York Times report that Kennedy admitted “I have cognitive problems,” in a 2012 deposition during divorce proceedings, as a ..read more

At first, it seemed like a sight gag, possibly AI-generated. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was at Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, California, in June 2023. His stretched mask of a face, wincing in a weird, imagined grievance, is rendered invisible by unveiling his ridiculously and obscenely developed chest and shoulders. More than a few fans of The Simpsons had flashbacks to Homer’s annoying, pious neighbor, Ned Flanders, pulling off his shirt to reveal a surprisingly chiseled physique. RFK Jr. wanted the world to know he was ripped, and here was the straight-faced disclaimer: He got this body without ju ..read more

The threat far-right hysteric Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene issued six weeks ago to force a vote to oust mild-mannered House Speaker Mike Johnson from his chair ended with a whimper Tuesday afternoon.  Early on, she had a chance to get it done in the more-chaos-the-merrier House Republican Conference that took down Kevin McCarthy after less than a year in the Speaker’s chain. But as the weeks went by, Greene kept screaming about Johnson being weak and outfoxed by Democrats. In the interim, other members had begun to lower their voices. Johnson quietly passed legislation, delaying ..read more

No, this account is not about Stormy Daniels’ wildly entertaining testimony. You’ll get the full story on that tomorrow. Friday, May 3, was deadly boring in the courtroom—but also deadly for Donald Trump’s defense team, which had hoped to prevent a mound of highly incriminating documentary material from being entered into evidence. By the end of the day, the former controller of the Trump Organization and the current accounts receivable supervisor—both still on the reservation with their legal expenses paid by Trump—authenticated the checks, ledger entries, and invoices that make up the 34 co ..read more

Democrats Just Took the Lead In This Poll Average and No One Noticed In last Tuesday’s newsletter, charting Joe Biden’s clearest Electoral College path, I noted his recent improvement in national and some swing state polling averages from Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight since March. While Biden has made modest gains, he still doesn’t lead in any of those averages. However, there is another poll average where, on April 22, Democrats took the lead for the first time in five months: The Real Clear Politics generic congressional ballot test ave ..read more

Most media outlets have settled on the moniker “hush money trial” to describe Donald Trump’s most immediate legal entanglement. (The Monthly uses this familiar tagline, too.) This makes sense on one level: Trump is facing 34 indictments for “falsifying business records in the first degree” in a scheme to violate campaign finance laws by paying for the silence of those who could have derailed his 2016 campaign without having to call them campaign expenses. But Trump’s transgressions go beyond conspiring to lie to voters and falsifying financial documents around those lies. He allegedly conspir ..read more

If Donald Trump is convicted and loses the election, “The Cry” may become shorthand for why.  It’s reminiscent of how “The Scream” was viewed as ending Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign even though the truth was more complicated.  To stipulate: Trump’s fate in this trial depends on the jury’s assessment of the evidence, not on an emotional moment that no one other than Hope Hicks (likely in a book) can fully explain. And Trump could lose to Joe Biden for many reasons, though it seems to me that it would harm Trump to have to admit in a debate that as a convicted felon in the ..read more

This account of Day 10 is two days late, but I have a good excuse. On Thursday, May 2, 2024, at around 10:15 p.m., Louisa Catherine Chiusano was born at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, the daughter of Charlotte Alter and Mark Chiusano. Louisa is the younger sister of Rosie Chiusano, now nearly two and a half. I went to the hospital last evening and found Charlotte and Louisa doing great. My wife, Emily Lazar, and I are thrilled to have our second grandchild. Day 11, when Hope Hicks took the stand, was a terrible one for Donald Trump, but you will have to read about that tomorrow ..read more