Election

I’ve worked in the porn industry for nearly two decades — through the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. Yet this year, I have heard more porn stars than ever before vocalizing their support for former president Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. How did the industry of free-speech icons and Democratic donors Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner skew to the personality cult devoted to a man who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and screwed Stormy Daniels in more ways than one? The answer is complicated.  To understand, you have to grasp what happened in porn throughout the past eight years. Porn wasn’t always MAGA. “The Republicans are still the anti-porn party and the anti-reproductive freedom party,” Adam22, host of the podcasts No Jumper and Plug Talk, explains.

Nobody ever talks about this anymore, but there was a time when Democrats were floating Kamala Harris as a potential Supreme Court pick. Shortly after the death of Antonin Scalia, the Los Angeles Times published an article about how she may be on Barack Obama’s shortlist. Speculation reached a “fever pitch,” they reported. Harris said she was flattered by the consideration, even as she declined the opportunity. That’s a footnote in American history that’s worth revisiting, now that Election Day is almost here. Imagine the kind of people who would tell us, with a straight face, that Kamala Harris should replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. On the one hand, you have one of the leading legal minds in all of American history.

The latest wisdom from our tottering, angry president was to call Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage.” He was responding to the inexcusable “joke” by a warm-up comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, stepped all over what should have been Trump’s big story: his triumphant rally. Biden stepped all over what should have been Kamala Harris’s: her effective closing speech on the Ellipse, in front of the White House.  These disparaging references are loathsome, whatever their political impact. They cheapen our public life. But they are also political mistakes.

Who has better lawyers: Donald Trump or the Syndicate? The fate of the election, and hence the fate of the country, may well come down to the answer to that question.  By “the Syndicate” (what I sometimes call “the Committee”), I of course mean the shadowy board of overseers that controls the Democratic Party and, by extension, the administrative apparatus that governs us. No one knows exactly who sits on this board. I suspect that even those who, in retrospect, we can see have occupied senior positions in its ranks are often uncertain about their place in the hierarchy.  Elsewhere, I have invoked C.S. Lewis’s idea of “The Inner Ring” to explain the dynamics of this phenomenon.

Washington, DC Vice President Kamala Harris made her last stand at the scene of her opponent Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 address to his supporters: the Ellipse south of the White House on Washington’s National Mall. Her argument was reminiscent of her predecessor as the Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden: eschewing the nebulous “joy” that had characterized her anointing at the Democratic National Convention, Harris opted to intone about the grave threat a second Trump term would pose to America and western democracy. But can that approach work two presidential elections in a row? Attendees waved the Stars and Stripes, with backdrops reading “FREEDOM” and “USA” adorning the riders.

Dearborn, Michigan Leave Detroit and drive down Michigan Avenue, past the liquor stores, abandoned houses and weed-strewn fields; eventually you’ll hit Dearborn. You’ve undoubtedly read a lot about Dearborn these past few months, the Michigan city whose voters could sink Harris’s chances at the White House.   As you’ve been told, around 60 percent of Dearborn’s citizens are of Arab descent — it’s home to the largest mosque in the country and has the largest population of Muslims per capita in the United States. Overall, in Dearborn and in surrounding cities in Metro Detroit, the Arab-American community numbers over 200,000 people.

It’s easy to summarize the two sides’ closing arguments. For Kamala Harris, the closing argument is “Trump is really, really bad.” Asked to expand, it is “Trump will end abortion rights” and “Trump is a fascist.” For Trump, the argument is, “Things were great when I was president, and I will make them great again.” Asked to expand, it is “I will be better than Washington and Lincoln. Everybody says so.” And “Kamala is a left-wing nut job.”  After discounting the hyperbole (a gargantuan task), how is the final stretch going? Rocky for Democrats, encouraging for Republicans. That’s the message from polling trends and political betting markets. The polls are essentially tied in battleground states, but have moved slightly in Trump’s favor.

Can a single podcast episode change the outcome of a presidential election, and consequently, of history? If former president Donald Trump has his way, the answer may be yes. Trump joined Joe Rogan in Texas for just under three hours for a wide-ranging episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, the crown jewel of the podcasting universe; each episode nets millions of views, and its stats in coveted younger demographics are off the charts. If Trump was successful with the interview, he could motivate several thousand possible voters off their couches — and succeed he did.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMoPUAeLnY&ab_channel=PowerfulJRE Within hours, millions of people had tuned in across YouTube, Spotify and X.

A Pennsylvania order of nuns is threatening legal action over false voter fraud claims from a political operative with a scandalous history in Republican politics. The founder of a “ballot chasing” operation was seemingly unable to identify a very-online monastery of Benedictine sisters. With two weeks to go until the presidential election, a Republican door-knocking initiative claimed to have uncovered startling fraud in the up-for-grabs swing state: “BREAKING: A member of PA Chase discovered an address in Erie, PA today where 53 voters are registered,” Pennsylvania Chase founder Cliff Maroney wrote on X Tuesday evening. “Turns out it’s the Benedictine Sisters of Erie and NO ONE lives there. We knocked on the door because a Republican mail-in ballot is unreturned.

It’s official. Donald Trump is “like Hitler” and Kamala Harris — even though she does “pray everyday, sometimes twice a day,” can’t seem to answer questions. Her "joyful" campaign took a confusing turn in her CNN town hall in Pennsylvania Wednesday night. She opened with an attack on Donald Trump, in answer to Anderson Cooper’s question about John Kelly’s claims. Kamala says Donald Trump is “increasingly unstable,” “unfit,” “fascist to the core” and that “he himself has said he would terminate the constitution of the United States.” It wasn’t until much later that “joy” and “optimism” were mentioned. The audience at the Delaware County town hall consisted of undecided voters.

Small wonder that Donald Trump is dodging a new debate with Kamala Harris. If her latest television interview was anything to go by, she is a much smoother public performer than only a few months ago. She was quite steely, making her points with concision and snap.  Harris may like to talk about joy, but she displayed little of it in her interview with Hallie Jackson of NBC News. Instead, Harris, in fending off several pointed questions, ensured that what was on display was her formidably stern side. “I’m not going down that rabbit hole with you right now,” she snapped at one point.

When you look back on the 2024 presidential election and try to understand why it was that Kamala Harris lost, there are a few things to remember. The first is that the two most important issues for American voters were the border and the cost of living. By “the border” I do not just mean the incomplete physical barrier along our southern frontier. That structure is merely the objective correlative of a policy that has its roots in such lofty ideas as sovereignty, the meaning of citizenship and national identity. After her coronation as the Democratic candidate in late July, Harris began to squirm and prevaricate about her appointment by Joe Biden as the “border czar.” But we have the phrase in black and white in the record of the appointment.