European Nations Disrupted Trump/Elon Interview?, Ukraine Invades Russia (You Read That Right), Kamala Voted for the Tax on Tips She Claims to Be Against (The Five for 08/12/24)
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Well, the Tesla guy and DJT broke the internet last night (well, technically that was hackers, which we’ll get to in a moment). The offical stats, according to X:
Between 7:47 PM and 10:47 PM ET, President Donald Trump's Space post received 73 million views. During the same period, there were 4 million posts about Elon Musk and President Trump's conversation on 𝕏, generating a total of 998 million views.
For comparison, that is the largest live media event in the last 12 months, with the exception of the 2024 Super Bowl (123.7 million views), and dwarfs the Oscars (19.5 million), Emmy Awards (4.3 million) and Grammys (16.9 million viewers).
The whole thing started about 45 minutes late, due to a hacker attack, according to Newsweek.
A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is a common and disruptive type of cyberattack aimed at overwhelming a target's online service with excessive traffic.
In a DDoS attack, the perpetrator uses multiple compromised systems to send a flood of data requests to the target's server, overwhelming its ability to process legitimate requests.
Earlier in the day, the European Union posted an open letter to Musk on X, which you can go read…or you can just hit yourself in the face with a hammer, as both are equally blunt and stupid. Musk responded with a harshly worded meme that you probably don’t want up on your monitor at the office (not because it’s pornographic—just crass). So, it’s at least possible that the DDoS attack came from government actors within the EU.
Trump said Trump-y things, but perhaps the most consequential part of the conversation was Musk’s appeal to moderates:
“I’ve not been very political before… they try to paint me as a far right guy which is absurd because I like to make electric vehicles… I supported Obama. I stood in line for 6 hours to shake Obama’s hand… historically I was a moderate Democrat. But now I feel like we’re at a critical juncture for the country… For the people out there in the moderate camp, I think you should support Donald Trump for president.”
The Harris/Walz campaign hit back with the following, and included their dollar-store-brand logo at the bottom (seriously, what is up with that graphic monstrosity?)
…apparently Regina George from Mean Girls is writing the campaign’s press releases now.
Finally, the corporate press response to the event was…rather monochromatic.
[two]
But a grain of salt for Trump supporters…Frank Luntz, perhaps the best pollster in America (see his correct prediction of the 2020 race here), says Kamala is still winning with enthusiasm and “paycheck to paycheck” voters in an interview with CNN:
It's about commitment. Harris voters are even more eager to vote for her than Donald Trump voters are to him. We've not seen that in the entire campaign. Call that intensity. And her campaign is generating the intensity and the And another key component is exactly why this is happening. She's talking and emphasizing her persona, her attributes, her character traits, and that's where Donald Trump has been commenting.
And the fact is the American people do not want to hear the same kind of negativity, the same kind of attacks that he's been delivering. His strength is on issues. Most particularly the two issues that matter most. inflation and immigration. But instead of speaking about those two issues and talking about the failures of the Biden administration, he's been making these personal attacks, and it's frankly turning the voters off that he needs to reach.
That conversation happened on Sunday, so tt’s unclear if last night’s blockbuster conversation with Musk helped turn the tide at all.
Or, if Harris might just get elected by creating a political platform…of Trump policies (see next story).
[three]
Over the weekend, Vice President Harris held a rally in Las Vegas, where she copied Donald Trump’s “no tax on tips,” policy, which he rolled out June 9th at a rally in the same city (see the side-by-side video here).
Now, it’s come to light that Harris actually cast the tie breaking vote for the bill that led to the IRS hounding the service industry for taxes on tips. The video above is from Kamala’s official Facebook page. (Quick reminder-the Veep only votes in the Senate in the event of a 50-50 tie).
On August 7, 2022, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act that provided $80 billion in additional funding to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which then got to work cracking down on the service industry’s reporting of tips so that they could be taxed.
“Two years ago today, I proudly cast the tie-breaking vote to pass our Inflation Reduction Act,” Harris’s Facebook account reminded the public on Wednesday, sharing a video of the vice president voting to pass the legislation.
President Joe Biden’s White House also boasted that the Inflation Reduction Act “provided $80 billion in additional funding to the IRS.”
In February 2023, the IRS released a proposed revenue procedure known as the Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement (SITCA) program.
The agency described SITCA as “a voluntary tip reporting program between the IRS and employers in various service industries” that would include “monitoring of employer compliance based on actual annual tip revenue and charge tip data from an employer’s point-of-sale system, and allowance for adjustments in tipping practices from year to year.”
[four]
Well, I didn’t see this one coming. Ukraine just invaded Russia.
It is another coin-flip in a conflict punctuated with at least annual reminders of how frail Vladimir Putin’s Russia truly is.
Two months ago, as Russian troops poured into Kharkiv region, Kyiv was eyeing its borders, concerned at where else Russia might find vulnerabilities. Yet instead, Ukraine appears to have looked at the map, decided Russia was equally exposed, and turned Moscow’s gambit on its head.
A week in, and whatever the final outcome of Ukraine’s invasion of Russia, Kyiv’s initially perplexing, perhaps even rash, decision to send thousands of troops into the Kursk region and beyond is paying stark dividends. For the second time in just over a year, the Kremlin has a hostile force marching in its south, and very little it can do about it. Last June, it was the homegrown rogue mercenaries of Wagner, headed to Rostov and on, to decapitate Russia’s top brass. Now, it is Ukraine’s own military, scything off what they claim is 1,000 square kilometers of border territory.
Ukraine’s lightning advance is another example of their forces’ dexterity and mobility in warfare, over Moscow’s preference for slow, months-long grinding attacks on the same place. It is purposefully unclear exactly where Ukraine’s forces are. Videos pop up from towns far inside Russia, but without context. One overnight emerged from Lgov, about 26 miles from the border, with a soldier saying he promised his mother he would not go far.
Most experts are disputing the idea that Ukraine is actually holding 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory in just a few days.
[five]
BIAS CHECK: I’m somewhat friendly with a couple of members of the Ferguson police department, including one detective…not super close, but we know each other well enough that we would stop and say hello if we saw each other in the grocery store. This may bias my coverage of this story…but the fact that I’m generally against a mob bashing a guy’s skull in for no reason may bias it as well.
Finally, a tragic situation that happened just down the road from me.
A Ferguson, Missouri, police officer was critically injured outside the city’s police station during protests on the 10th anniversary of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a pivotal moment in the national Black Lives Matter movement, police said Saturday.
Ferguson police chief Troy Doyle said Officer Travis Brown suffered a severe brain injury Friday after being knocked to the ground.
“He is in an area hospital right now fighting for his life,” Doyle said.
Two other officers also were hurt, one sustaining an ankle injury and another an abrasion. Both were treated at the scene.
The team of officers went out to make arrests Friday for destruction of property at the police station, where protesters gathered to remember Michael Brown, the unarmed Black 18-year-old who was killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in 2014.
Ferguson Police Chief Trey Boyle did not hide his frustration at the situation:
“The Ferguson Police Department since 2014 has been a punching bag for this community,” he said, pointing out that none of the cops who were on the job when Michael Brown was killed were still with the department.
“So what are you protesting?”
He then described how the department has bent over backwards to deliver “everything the activist community has advocated for,” rattling off a list of departmental changes made in direct response to their feedback.
“Body-worn cameras, implicit bias training, crisis intervention training … we even changed the uniforms at this department because people said the old uniforms triggered them. What are we doing?” he asked.
Doyle said that he wanted people to be able to peacefully protest, but drew the line at acts of violence like what happened Saturday.
“We damn sure ain’t gonna allow you to destroy this city, and we ain’t gonna allow you to hurt none of these police officers,” he said.
Boyle is correct. As a local to this area (who regularly runs down to the grocery store in Ferguson, roughly seven minutes away), I can attest to the fact that the problems I read about with the department in 2014 do not appear to be present today.
Which means the protestors are protesting against…nobody. And for nothing, except to burn it all down. And because of that vague and barbaric goal, a man may still lose his life.
Until the next one,
-sth