#Ron Filipkowski

[contemplatingoutlander]

Biden was working today on a multinational agreement on Israel, while the GOP was lying about him

Ron Filipkowski@RonFilipkowski: While Republicans were are screaming on Twitter that Biden called a lid on public events at noon, it was because he was busy hammering out a multinational aid agreement with our allies, among other things. While Republicans were doing important things like posting click bait.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[bhodi-anjo-daishin]

Well said Ron!

[porterdavis]

How's that VP auditioning going Kristi?

[aunti-christ-ine]

🙄

Ugh.

Apartheid Clyde strikes again! 🫣

[misfitwashere]

The Big Reason Why Hunter's Pardon is Justified: Kash Patel

I've listened to hundreds of interviews of Trump's FBI Director nominee

Ron Filipkowski

Dec 02, 2024

I awoke this morning after a three day unplugged trip to Montreal to learn that in the previous 24 hours, two things had happened - Trump named Kash Patel as his FBI Director and then Joe Biden pardoned his only surviving son, Hunter. Neither one of these things were especially surprising since it is clear to me the two things are connected, but I was surprised by some of the reaction from those in the media, the Never Trump (former) Republicans, and a few Democratic elected officials.

Most of the criticism has taken the form of three primary arguments: 1. Trump will now have justification to make egregious pardons because of this; 2. Joe Biden lied and Dems who support the decision are hypocrites who claim to believe in the Rule of Law but really don’t; 3. Critics of the critics who cite Trump’s previous pardons are wrong because his awfulness doesn’t justify Joe’s awfulness.

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None of these things address the REAL reason for the pardon - Trump’s appointment of Patel, who has ranted and raved for the past four years on every right-wing podcast in America that he was going to get Hunter Biden for things he has never been prosecuted for. Joe takes that threat seriously. Apparently, the critics either do not, or are ignorant and unaware of exactly who Patel is and what he has pledged to do specific to Hunter.

I have spent the last 4 years covering right-wing shows, channels, conferences and podcasts. Some very fringy, conspiratorial and obscure. I am aware from time to time a legacy media journalist will dip their toe into that world by spending a week watching Steve Bannon or Charlie Kirk, write an article, and give their expert analysis. That has not been me. I have been immersed in their world - day after day, week after week, year after year. One person I have watched hundreds of times at all of these places is Kash Patel.

Patel first caught the attention of Trump while serving as an aide to Devin Nunes’s staff during the 2017-18 RussiaGate investigation. That led to an appointment by Trump late in his Administration to a post that Patel has no business ever being in - interim Chief of Staff to interim DOD Secretary Chris Miller. An interim to an interim. I have also heard Patel lie about and exaggerate his resume and accomplishments on an almost daily basis to the point of absurdity.

In these hundreds of Patel interviews there was always a central theme: That Trump was going to win, Patel was likely going to be appointed CIA or FBI Director, then he was going to use that appointment to go after Trump’s enemies from the Russia investigation, members of the media who supposedly lied about Trump, eliminate thousands of career civil servants (the Deep State), and go after Hunter and Joe Biden with a new criminal investigation.

I have posted many clips over the years of some of Patel’s most outlandish threats and statements. Some of them have been resurfaced by legacy media outlets, but only the ones where Patel vows to go after them, or to clean out government agencies. They never play the clips I posted where he obsesses on Hunter Biden, and boy, was he obsessed with Hunter Biden.

This is what Patel said last year in just one of the clips I posted:

Steve Bannon to Kash: “Do you feel confident when you go back as a senior member of this Administration starting in 2025 that you will be able to deliver the goods? That we can have serious prosecutions? That the people who did evil deeds will be held accountable and prosecuted? Can you deliver this in the first couple of months so we can get rolling on criminal prosecutions?”

Kash Patel: “Yes. We will find the conspirators not just in government but in the media. We are going to come after the people in the media who helped Biden rig the presidential election - we’re putting you all on notice.”

I should also emphasize that when he is talking about media “rigging” the election, he is talking about their refusal to cover the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop - Rudy Giuliani’s October Surprise in 2020.

Patel claimed in one interview after another that Hunter had gotten away with numerous felonies in connection with his business dealings in Ukraine and China, and that Joe Biden was also guilty and complicit in those crimes. James Comer spent two years investigating those allegations. He took dozens of depositions. Held numerous hearings. It was a disaster with one touted claim after another getting debunked when people actually had to present evidence under oath rather than on the internet.

Patel also said this in a separate interview specifically about Hunter:

“Hunter Biden is guilty of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Hunter Biden was shown to have been in bed with criminals from Ukraine and China to lobby the US government through the laundering of money that Hunter Biden received and leveraging his relationship with his dad. This DOJ should charge him, but they won’t. So I think that is where we need to focus (when we get in).”

The congressional investigation was so bad that Comer refused to even bring an impeachment case to a vote in his own committee, knowing that he didn’t have the votes from members of his own party. Democrat Jared Moskowitz repeatedly taunted him to call for a vote in committee on impeachment. Comer refused. That’s because Kevin McCarthy told him not to do it. Then Mike Johnson told him the same. They knew it was nonsense, they had no case, and many Republicans would vote against it.

But Patel claimed that Comer was simply weak and incompetent, and when Trump returned to power they would take over the investigation. That means a whole new round of subpoenas, grand juries, potential indictments, where many of Joe Biden’s family members and himself - not just Hunter - would likely be prosecuted.

When Trump nominated Patel as his FBI Director, Joe Biden already knew it was coming because it had been rumored for weeks. JD Vance let the cat out of the bag in a quickly deleted tweet two weeks ago where he disclosed that they were going to fire current Director Chris Wray despite the fact that he still had three years left in his term.

So it is important to emphasize, as nobody in the media seems willing to do, that this pardon is much more about protecting the Biden family from a deranged, vindictive Kash Patel than it is about Hunter’s BS gun charge that he was already convicted of.

I will give the critics in the media and some Dems who have chimed in some benefit of the doubt on the grounds that I don’t think they are aware at all of the things Patel has been saying about Hunter on the right-wing podcast circuit over the past four years. But I’m not sure even if they were aware it would’ve prevented them from clutching their pearls on their moral high ground. It’s far too important to them to feel like everyone is dirty, hypocritical and corrupt except them.

I have read the summary of every single pardon Trump granted during his term. Hundreds of them. It is a horror show. It is a litany of convicted Republican politicians, Trump donors, millionaires, drug traffickers, violent criminals, fraudsters, con artists, and just generally repulsive people. Trump also refused to use DOJ’s pardon office for any input - requests for pardons were screened by his son-in-law Jared Kushner in an obvious pay-for-play scheme. To suggest that there is any equivalency or justification for these things, or Trump’s future promise to pardon J6ers or commute the sentence of drug trafficker Ross Ulbricht, because of the Hunter Pardon is utterly absurd.

Joe Biden said many months ago in response to a question that he would not pardon Hunter. But the election was still months away. The circumstances have changed dramatically since that interview. Trump was elected. He first attempted to appoint Matt Gaetz as his Attorney General. Then replaced him with Pam Bondi, who isn’t much better on substance or future intent. Then he appointed a psycho obsessed with prosecuting Hunter as his FBI Director. That would change anyone’s minds about the landscape - especially a father who has already lost a wife, son and a daughter.

But the critics don’t seem to want to take any of that into account while calling Joe Biden a “liar.”

Joe Biden doesn’t want to spend his remaining few years after five decades in public service being hauled into courtrooms by Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. That is why he did this. So many of the critics still don’t fully understand what is about to happen with these unstable, vengeful lunatics being appointed to the most senior positions of the US government. I do because I have listened to them for the past four years, and I believe them when they promise revenge and retribution.

Or maybe the critics do have a pretty good idea about what is coming, but they just don’t really care as long as what they are criticizing doesn’t directly impact them.

Either way, I’m tired of their sanctimony, false piety, and weakness. Many of them have made millions from their roles as Trump critics and become prominent on cable news shows. Now maybe they’ve decided to flip the script.

Count me out.

[roninkairi]

Kevin is a very forgiving person for all the wrong reasons apparently.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Adam Wren at Politico Magazine:

NEW YORK CITY — Brian Glenn was about to go live. Amid the hundreds of reporters crowded outside a Manhattan courthouse on the first morning of Donald Trump’s criminal trial last week, Glenn, the director of programming for Right Side Broadcasting Network, would be delivering the news from the circus straight to hundreds of thousands of faithful MAGA viewers. Glenn looked like a typical television newscaster, but a bright blue and white pin he wore on the lapel of his suit set him apart from others in the press corral: It featured a big, bold “47” — a nod to Trump’s possible return to the presidency, which was gifted to him by the Trump campaign. Surrounded by Trump fans, Glenn cut the figure of a former homecoming king navigating the crowd at the big game. People wearing red caps kept coming up asking to be interviewed, a request he repeatedly obliged. In between, he pulled out his iPhone and flashed me photos from when he had shown up at this same spot to cover Trump’s arraignment last April. Pointing to one image, he singled out his girlfriend, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. (He calls himself the other half of “MAGA America’s favorite couple.”) He recounted how his crew had to cut their coverage short that day after Greene was mobbed by press and onlookers. “I probably physically bulldozed a dozen people getting her out of there,” Glenn said.

As Glenn spoke, he stopped mid-sentence, a voice breaking through his AirPods. “30 seconds?” I heard him say. He quickly returned to his mark and began to broadcast to an audience of what would soon blossom into more than 200,000 RSBN viewers spread across YouTube and Rumble, the right-coded video service. “This is Biden’s witch hunt,” Glenn told his viewers. “This is what this is. This is Biden’s trial. This is his ability, or effort right now, to take President Trump off the campaign trail.” Right Side Broadcasting Network dates back to 2016, when stay-at-home dad Joe Seales launched the online channel in order to live stream Trump rallies. Eight years later, RSBN has grown into a full outlet that employs roughly a dozen people and features a website full of stories. RSBN is like NFL RedZone for Trump rallies, covering them hours before any speakers approach the dais. Now, as Trump’s general election campaign kicks into high gear, it has also cemented itself as the pro-Trump media outlet of record for the MAGA base. The network boasts 1.64 million subscribers on YouTube (a larger subscribership than One America News Network) and another half a million on Rumble.

Glenn is the star who Seales has largely handed control over to. He is the Trump rally gameday host who plumbs the depths of MAGA America in the crowds wherever Trump goes. Glenn is fast becoming one of Trump’s favorite reporters, likely racking up more one-on-one interviews with Trump in the last year than any other journalist. During gaggles, Trump often singles him out for positive-slanted questions after entertaining a series of hardballs from other reporters. Christina Bobb, one of Trump’s revolving cast of attorneys, is a regular guest alongside Glenn on RSBN’s coverage of the trials.

[...]

RSBN has developed a reputation for going nearly everywhere that Trump ends up. Thanks to that flood-the-zone mentality of documenting Trump’s every move, it’s likely your favorite mainstream media reporter’s go-to method for keeping tabs on Trump on days that they’re off the campaign trail. Filipkowski and Glenn have formed an unlikely friendship online over direct messages that have spanned years, something I did not expect when I reached out to Filipkowski, a prominent X personality who made his name by spending almost every waking moment dunking on Trump and the MAGA movement. “I actually have found them to be the most valuable resource over the last four years to understanding MAGA — more than any other source,” Filipkowski told me. “I’ve probably posted 50 or 100 Brian Glenn interview clips of Trump, probably even 200. I find those clips incredibly valuable, because you’re getting it unvarnished. That’s when [Trump] lets his guard down a little, when he’s got a friendly face.”

What Filipkowski and many reporters most appreciate about Glenn’s coverage is a simple open-ended question he asks MAGA stans: What is it that you love most about Donald Trump? “If you say ‘I’m from the New York Times,’ his fans at rallies say ‘you’re fake news’ and don’t talk to you,” Dave Weigel, a Semafor politics reporter who relies on the site, told me. “That’s obviously less interesting than somebody saying, ‘We love you guys. Let me explain to you all my views in an interesting way,’ which is what Right Side Broadcasting does.” RSBN has “replaced mainstream media in the needs of your average Trump supporter: Why would you turn on Fox where they’re going to cut away when you can watch this website, and they’ve also got more access,” Weigel said.

Politico Magazine reports on Brian Glenn, the boyfriend of far-right extremist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Glenn is a host for far-right MAGA propaganda outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN).

[midnightfunk]

[cynicalclassicist]

Makes one question how popular he is really.

Notice a pattern.

[wat3rm370n]

No, I don't want the Trump administration to succeed in terrible plans.

I'm in Pennsylvania and I'm a constituent of US Senator John Fetterman, who recently said that he wants Trump to succeed and all Americans should want that. Trump & Trump admin connected people have spelled out their various agendas - including in Project 2025, and in all those podcasts and on social media, they've all said all sorts of plans. Aside from the fact that "dissent is patriotic", I think it's a little creepy to try to assert that everyone should be MAGA and not raise any opposition. It makes no sense to wish myself to be subject to swatting raids by deputized anti-vaxxers, so no, I don’t want the Trump administration to succeed in allowing that, or any of the many other bonkers and detrimental things they’ve been proposing.

I’m compiling a list of verifiable asserted plans that lots of us don't want to succeed, so I can write John Fetterman about all the plans I do not want to succeed, and I will start posting them on my substack & tumblr, etc, so others in PA can join me in writing Fetterman, or people elsewhere can write representatives about these things that no, we don't want the Trump administration to succeed at.

Please send me suggestions of the undesirable goals you don’t want to succeed, with any reference links you have where they’ve stated this is the goal, where to see a video clip, or the page in Project 2025 or whatnot. Thanks!

Here’s a mixed bag simple list of proposals Trump has reportedly made “in writing, on video and in interviews and rally speeches” compiled by Ron Filipkowski:

Meidas+ Trump's 93 Campaign Promises Every promise made on video. Ron Filipkowski Nov 07, 2024

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[cynicalclassicist]

And I don't think much of that interviewer either, fawning all over that fascist conman.

[latestnewschronicle]

Analyzing the Impact of the Ron Filipkowski and Laura Loomer Partnership

In the dynamic world of Florida politics, a surprising union has captured the spotlight. Laura Loomer, the provocative far-right activist, and Ron Filipkowski, a former staunch Republican turned vocal critic, have joined forces in a remarkable partnership.

Loomer’s notoriety knows no bounds, from handcuffing herself to Twitter’s doors in protest to amplify her conservative voice, to Ron Filipkowski’s journey, shifting from right-wing loyalty to progressive advocacy. Together, they share a common mission: challenging Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

But what does this alliance mean for Florida politics? It means a broader, more diverse opposition to DeSantis. It means amplified media coverage through their social media prowess. And it might mean legal battles, adding fuel to their fiery activism.

Yet, public reception varies widely, with some celebrating their activism while others decry it as extreme. Keep an eye on this dynamic duo; their collaboration promises to reshape the Sunshine State’s political landscape.

Source: Economic Insider

Also Read: OpenAI ChatGPT Facing Financial Troubles, May Go Bankrupt

[arthropooda]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris Smith at Vanity Fair:

On a sunny afternoon the views from Joe Biden’s campaign headquarters in downtown Wilmington, Delaware are so clear that if you squint hard you can almost see the White House, 100 miles to the south. The floor plan is open and the windows run just about floor to ceiling, so all 200 staffers share in the sweeping vista.

With the striking exception of probably the most important person on the premises. That Jen O’Malley Dillon sits at the very center of the office is appropriate, symbolically: She is a hub of the reelection effort’s leadership infrastructure. It also means that O’Malley Dillon, officially the campaign chair, is the only person on the team who occupies a dimly lit cubicle. Four years ago, J.O.D., as most everyone in Bidenworld knows her, became the first woman to manage a winning Democratic US presidential campaign, and the first person of any gender in three decades to knock off an incumbent. O’Malley Dillon, 47, has shunned credit and most interviews since. So her nondescript current workspace—blank walls, a tiny desk strewn with papers, a small bookshelf holding a jumble of binders and framed family photos—fits her no-nonsense approach. O’Malley Dillon is ferociously focused on reelecting Biden. Gazing out the window would be a useless distraction. “You have to keep in perspective what’s at stake because every second I waste is a second that we could lose the thing that matters most to me, which is a future for my kids,” she tells me.

Her relentlessness is a good thing, because her candidate is running uphill. For months polls have shown Trump beating Biden nationally, though the race remains tight; more important, thanks to our genius electoral college system, is Trump’s advantage in six of the seven battleground states that are likely to be decisive. Things look equally rugged for Biden when you go deeper than the horse race: A majority of Americans believe economic conditions were better under Trump—despite Biden delivering record-low unemployment numbers—and inflation remains stubbornly high. In March the share of voters strongly disapproving of Biden’s job performance reached a new peak, according to a New York Times survey. Many voters under 35 are angered by the administration’s support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. And voters of every age group think Biden, 81, is too old to bid for a second term.

The leaders of his reelection team aren’t in denial; they understand they’re facing daunting challenges. The coalition that elected Biden in 2020 has splintered. “We believe that Joe Biden has an important story to sell and has been a historic president,” a senior campaign strategist says. “But that doesn’t mean to say that everyone is going to love him perfectly.” Which may not make for the most stirring political rallying cry. But it underlies the campaign’s methodical drive to raise tens of millions of dollars to assemble a sophisticated operation that will press the fight in both conventional and innovative ways. The plan stretches from boosting Latino turnout in Arizona to winning Michigan—despite the state’s much-hyped “uncommitted” Democratic primary voters—to flipping North Carolina to wooing a meaningful number of Nikki Haley-Republican-primary voters to aggressively educating potential Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voters about his beliefs. For months the campaign has quietly built infrastructure in key states—a foundation that is now allowing it to capitalize on Republican gifts, like the Arizona supreme court’s approval of a near-total ban on abortion. “We know exactly the voters we need to turn out,” a senior campaign operative says, “and we’ve got a plan to do it.”

That confidence flows from data research that assigns probabilities to individual voters. It is also based on a deep roster of human political intelligence, like Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager, who was a top aide on Raphael Warnock’s winning Georgia senate reelection campaign over Herschel Walker in 2022, and Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the 46-year-old campaign manager who is a granddaughter of pioneering labor leader César Chávez. “We wanted to make sure we had strong campaign experience, but also really strong lived experience for the communities and voters that we want to reach. So it’s not by default that it’s myself and Quentin running this campaign. That was extremely intentional,” Rodríguez says. “And being able to prioritize our base targets, it’s not the way that most presidentials have been run. They don’t usually invest in doing outreach to communities of color early.”

Yet much of the work of piecing together the strategy and the machinery has occurred in Wilmington, outside the national media spotlight, which has contributed to a perception among many Democrats that the Biden campaign is eerily, delusionally calm. “What scares me to death is they think they’ve proven everyone wrong every time,” a senior Democratic insider says. “They have this outward posture of, ‘We came from nowhere in the 2020 primary, we’re the only ones who beat Trump in the general, so trust us.’ But remember, in the fall of 2020, they sent Biden to Ohio and Kamala Harris to Texas where they had no chance, when they could have been in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. So let’s not get on too high of a horse.”

Maybe so—though Biden visited and won those four key states four years ago. And up close, it’s clear no one is resting on their horses, or their laurels. The 2024 campaign’s activities are intense and far-reaching, permeated by a deep sense of urgency. “I can certainly feel the weight of what we’re doing,” says Dan Kanninen, who leads the battleground-state effort. “But to be in it gives a measure of purpose that is different than just allowing your anxieties to take you somewhere else.” Biden’s lieutenants have forceful, detailed, logical pushbacks to every possible criticism of the campaign. There’s only one part of the reelection operation that feels unnerving: so much of the victory calculus hinges on voters, once they’ve heard the relevant facts, behaving rationally. That worry is compounded by the stakes. “If we lose this election,” a national Democratic strategist says, “we might not have another one.”

Rob Flaherty rates a private corner office. One of its walls is decorated with images of Biden’s trademark aviator sunglasses in a repeating pattern of green, blue, black, and orange. The opposite wall is dominated by a banner, its black background contrasting with large white letters reading “NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.” Flaherty had better know something. His title, deputy campaign manager, doesn’t even hint at the magnitude of his responsibilities. The 32-year-old oversees two crucial aspects of Biden’s campaign: digital strategy and relational organizing. The first role means not simply figuring out how to target a multi-million-dollar pro-Biden online ad campaign, but trying to fight off a fire hose of right-wing attacks and disinformation. Flaherty did this craftily for Biden during the 2020 campaign, particularly in steering an effort to identify “market moving” issues—separating things that had the potential to actually influence voters, like concerns about Biden’s mental fitness, from mere noise, like the Republican obsession with Hunter Biden. In some respects—most notably Gaza and inflation—there are new substantive challenges this time. One major concern hasn’t changed: Biden’s advanced age. “The way you combat the age issue,” Flaherty says, “is, one, he gets out there and addresses it. What you see him doing in his paid [media] right now. And it’s by fighting on the issues that people care about. If we address the fact that they want to see him go and fight for them, the issue goes away pretty quick.”

Yet the online landscape has changed dramatically in four years, with media consumers fractured into ever-more-personalized content silos, many of them hardened against campaign messaging, a shift that seems to benefit Trump. “Voters who do not want to hear about politics never have to,” Flaherty says. “People who are not hearing about politics, they are not trusting of politicians, they’re not trusting the media. So it becomes incumbent on the campaign to think about, how do we reach those people where they are? You have to diversify the way you do paid media, right? You can't just spend 70% on linear broadcast television and hope you’re going to reach folks.”

One of Flaherty’s priorities is reaching tuned-out potential voters. “The voters who we think are pretty much the difference makers in this election, these voters, you have to persuade them to participate,” he says. “This is going to be a back-loaded election for when people start to pay attention. They are largely a younger, more diverse set of people who voted for us last time, who lean Democrat. They hate Trump. They are really hard to reach. And there’s just more of those this time.” A related task is neutralizing the deluge of Republican disinformation. “At the close of any campaign, I know my candidate is in trouble if key parts of the electorate are awash in more negative than positive information about my candidate,” a top Democratic strategist says. “And right now, particularly younger voters of color on social media, they’re hearing more negative than positive information about Joe Biden. How do they turn that?”

Massive spending is part of the answer. But the campaign believes the cash must be spread on a wider array of formats than ever before and in creative ways. So when Biden visited a North Carolina home in March, Flaherty’s team enlisted the family’s 13-year-old son to post a video on TikTok, generating more than five million views across a range of sites, the kind of reach a conventional rally doesn’t produce. The White House has bolstered the president’s online presence by encouraging the work of independent liberal influencers, including Aaron Rupar and Ron Filipkowski, who have driven news cycles by circulating video clips of Trump’s stumbles and incendiary comments. Biden’s team is also investing heavily in first-person testimonial ads from ordinary Americans. “Having elected officials give speeches or be on Sunday talk shows is important,” says Roger Lau, who was Elizabeth Warren’s campaign manager in 2020 and who now works closely with the Biden effort as deputy executive director of the Democratic National Committee. “But finding that nurse in Nevada who can talk about why capping the cost of insulin at 35 bucks a month is important to their families because Filipinos have a much higher rate of type two diabetes than other communities—that kind of video, digital, and social content, it just cuts through in a totally different way.”

Flaherty comes across as ebullient and exhausted, which is understandable given that he’s crafting in-real-life organizing plans at the same time he’s trying to counteract the Laura Loomers of the world online. His digital turf overlaps with his more experimental turf, relational organizing. “You have to get people to share content through their friends and family, trusted messengers,” Flaherty says. “This is important because of what I think is the second trend that is different from ’20. In 2022, half of the content shared on Instagram was in private. So if you’re running a digital strategy that is aimed just at reaching people in their feeds, you’re missing where a lot of conversation on the internet is happening.”

[...] While Biden’s Gaza-fueled problems with younger voters have likely been overstated, the conventional wisdom has been understating the damage the war could cause the president with swing voters—and not because of their allegiances to Israel or Palestine. The conflict itself fueled a sense that the world remains volatile, though it was still happening at a distance, literally and politically. Now campus skirmishes have made the mess domestic, and the president’s brand is all about delivering calm. “Biden has got to be seen as the reasonable guy who gets shit done, where Trump is a madman,” a top Democratic strategist says. “You can’t do that when you’ve got chaos on the southern border or chaos on campuses.”

The Biden administration has put together a compelling record in some big-picture ways, including the revival of the economy, the defense of Ukraine, and advances in the battle against climate change. The campaign’s challenge is to translate the president’s record into gains that voters recognize in their everyday lives. “If we’re able to frame the president’s accomplishments in the face of Republican extremist obstructionism,” Tyler says, “you actually have a fantastic story to tell. I mean, I’ll talk about Black folks, for example, right? Since before the pandemic, Black wealth is up 60%, highest rate of small business growth for Black-owned businesses in a generation, cutting Black child poverty in half through the child tax credit before MAGA Republicans ripped it away, which Joe Biden is going to bring back in a second term to make permanent.”

There are also large vulnerabilities in Biden’s first-term record: the suffocatingly high price of housing and the immigration crisis, to pick two. But presidential elections are weird, unique animals that more often turn on personality than on policy, on what Americans are feeling they need in the White House as much as what might objectively be best for the country. Mood is a powerful force in national elections, and the Biden campaign has identified an intriguing, and ominous, headwind. “We don’t like to talk about the fact that COVID still has an impact,” a senior strategist says. “It’s easy to kind of be nostalgic for a time before COVID, to remember, ‘Oh, well, the economy was better, or I felt like prices were better.’ And you don’t hear Trump every day. People are not viscerally feeling how they felt when he was a leader, because he’s been silent for lots of reasons. So we have a lot of work to do. Now, it just so happens that Trump says such crazy stuff all the time that we have ample opportunity.” Everyone at Biden HQ is well aware of the possible consequences, both for the country and for themselves, of Trump winning and turning the craziness into policy. “The people behind him are very well organized,” a Biden campaign operative says. “It can feel like an abstraction, but actually there are people I know, and myself, who would be targets.”

Vanity Fair has a story on the Biden campaign’s re-election team that is navigating tough headwinds to get Joe Biden re-elected.