The Editorial Board
@johnastoehr
Followers
69K
Following
37K
Media
8K
Statuses
244K
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. Subscribe @ https://t.co/gZmN6OyN4Y. On Bsky @ https://t.co/KHt7ySToFk
New Haven
Joined January 2010
A rapist for AG. A spy for DNI. A zealot for Defense. An antivaxer for Health. A criminal for president. This is what Orwellian means.
7K
21K
107K
Admit it. Trump has dementia. The coverup is the tell. A THREAD.
977
6K
64K
Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps. She learned from Biden’s fatal error. A THREAD.
1K
8K
46K
I might not show up for dinner either if my dad openly called my beliefs a mental disorder but what do I know?
4K
3K
52K
The Harris campaign figures out how to wound Trump’s ego. His greatest asset has been his greatest liability. THREAD.
142
3K
41K
Trump reveals his dementia in an interview with Bloomberg, as Harris puts his fascism in the context of his dementia. A THREAD.
157
4K
32K
The Biden-Harris admin bailed out the Teamsters to the tune of 36 BILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS and the Teamsters decide to stay neutral in this election. What does that tell you about the Teamsters?.
5K
5K
25K
Trump can’t adjust, won’t adjust, to the reality of Kamala Harris. His smear job against Joe Biden climaxed prematurely, and now that the vice president has taken over, he doesn’t know what to do. THREAD.
128
2K
26K
Trump is losing his audience. Gibberish is boring. A THREAD.
120
2K
25K
The biggest story no one’s telling? Trump’s broken brain.A THREAD.
243
3K
22K
After DOJ indictment, it’s clear: years and years of Russian propaganda made the Republicans weird. A THREAD.
154
3K
22K
Jamie Raskin: "This was not a coup directed at the president. It was a coup directed by the president against the vice president and against the Congress.".
69
4K
15K
Never again say that no man is above the law. It's a lie now.
2K
5K
18K
Holy Jesus, the former Republican gov is Bob Taft. The Taft family is a dynasty in Ohio.
The former governor of Ohio, a lifelong Republican, says he's voting for Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown for Senate. "I will be joining most voters who make judgments about candidates based not just on party affiliation but, often more importantly, on the candidate and his or her.
94
4K
14K
All them white men married to immigrants are in for the shock of their lives. It didn’t have to be this way. Judge strikes down Biden administration program shielding immigrant spouses from deportation (from @AP)
1K
5K
14K
Wow, a lot of people telling me they canceled their Times subscription in the last 48 hours.
1K
1K
13K
By not talking to the Washington press corps, Harris is not giving what are now faithless actors the power to arbitrate her reality. She is defining it, not them and not Trump. She's taking power, not waiting for it to be given.
454
2K
12K
In her economics speech, Harris went farther than any Democrat in my lifetime, including Joe Biden, to revive Franklin Roosevelt’s spirit of the fighting liberal. A THREAD.
150
2K
13K
It is really OK for Harris to avoid talking to reporters. She's talking to voters. That's what matters.
2K
2K
12K
1. I would like to congratulate every member of the Washington press corps who decided to play along with Donald Trump’s campaign. By doing so, you helped normalize a liar, fraud, rapist, felon, and traitor, making him seem to voters just like any other politician.
916
4K
15K
1. There’s an argument I want to discuss. It goes something like this: Donald Trump’s policies are going to alienate some of the people who voted for him.
437
2K
13K
10. It didn’t matter what Joe Biden did – pull the country out of a pandemic, dodge a recession, tame inflation, grow jobs, revive every single one of the “left behind” counties that voted for Trump in 2016 because of “economic anxiety” – it *didn’t matter* what Joe Biden did.
42
1K
10K
1. It takes time for things to stick properly, so please bear with me while I say again that Kamala Harris did not lose the election because of things she said. She lost because of things Donald Trump said she said.
2K
2K
13K
30. I will repeat myself till I burst. This is a democracy. Harris is obliged to talk to Americans. That’s the end of her obligation. She’s not obliged to talk to the press corps, as if it were a constituency. If she stopped talking to voters, that would be disqualifying.
139
1K
9K
Holy fuck, Zelensky ordered Ukrainian forces out of Donbas. Folks, we need to read the entire July 25 call. Trump may have forced Zelensky to cave. IOW, our president may have helped Putin take eastern Ukraine.
412
4K
9K
Trump’s *habitual incoherence* caught top CEOs by surprise. How is that possible? A THREAD.
174
2K
10K
18. This press corps made the election about vibes and it’s going to remain an election about vibes, and if those vibes now grind against the instincts of this press corps, tough shit. You reap what you sow.
42
1K
9K
9. There are exceptions, of course, but this press corps is generally not equipped to scrutinize candidates on matters of fact and substance. I say this because this press corps has conspicuously traded matters of fact and substance for vibes.
48
947
9K
With pardon of son, Biden shows a way forward for Democrats. Use the power you have when you have it. Don’t hold back.
2K
2K
11K
I don't know why any Democrat would follow Biden's example. He turned the economy around. He reversed years of destructive consensus. His agenda brought in A TRILLION DOLLARS in investment. But working class white voters, *unions households*, voted for Trump.
Axios: Biden agenda attracted $1 trillion in private sector investment
449
1K
11K
12. Vibes are this press corps’ forte, not fact and substance. If fact and substance were its strength, there would have been a different reaction to The Disaster Debate during which Biden talked about policy and issues while Trump didn’t bother.
27
981
8K
11. The press corps decided nothing was more important than his age, and lo! 2024 became an election about vibes and vibes ended his candidacy.
41
748
8K
13. Trump was incoherent and false, but he came off as confident and strong, and he came off as that way, because the press corps’ forte isn’t fact and substance.
25
747
8K
Why isn't Harris talking to the press? I don't see why she should. Reporters watched The Disaster Debate and only saw Biden. They watched Trump's disastrous presser yesterday and saw nothing unusual. Why would she trust a press that can't or won't see what's so obvious?.
418
2K
8K
14. If fact and substance were important, there would also have been a different reaction to Biden’s NATO press conference last month. He did it after the Disaster Debate to show he still had what it takes. He talked for an hour about foreign affairs, international laws and war.
14
759
8K
8. Even if I agreed that candidates who want to be president should be regularly subjected to media scrutiny, I don’t think this press corps, as it is currently organized, is able to.
29
680
8K
23. By contrast, the Harris campaign is not letting the press corps wedge itself between her and voters. She is not allowing the news media to mediate her message. She’s preventing the press corps from speaking for her and she’s preventing it from exercising a veto on her speech.
33
934
7K
3. I don’t think I’m overstating things. Her lead, the millions she’s bringing in, the thousands who are signing up to help, the big big mo’ – I think all of it comes directly from her campaign’s decision not to give the press corps too much access too fast.
19
532
7K
1. The first thing you need to know about the vice president’s approach to the Washington press corps is look how well she’s doing as a result. Kamala Harris is now leading Donald Trump in some national polling averages as well as in some swing-state polls.
46
580
7K
7. He laughed, without joy – malice, actually. It’s that kind of thing that makes you think he’d totally have sex with a couch.
13
266
7K
So the guy running for GA governor is the guy managing GA's voter rolls, who's also the guy purging GA's voter rolls in order to win the race for GA governor. Got that?.
195
4K
7K
Not even ‘Fox and Friends’ can hide Trump’s dementia. Neither can it protect him from Kamala Harris. A THREAD.
43
1K
7K
20. The president believed voters would reward him for the substantial things he has done, and he trusted – indeed, he depended on – the press corps to inform voters, as it’s supposed to.
20
679
7K
4. I think that decision comes directly from the fact that Harris saw firsthand what the press corps did to Joe Biden’s campaign.
29
521
7K
The October Surprise is Trump’s "obvious mental incapacity.". But only because Kamala Harris is insisting on it. A THREAD.
50
1K
7K
Prediction: Trump will give a presser that's a hot mess, but somewhere in there, he'll accuse Harris of hiding, and the press will make that accusation headlines news without ever referring to Trump being a hot mess.
197
1K
6K
17. But after this press corps made a fetish of Biden’s age, I don’t see any more room for the benefit of the doubt – and there’s no going back.
19
525
6K
15. But this press corps didn’t hear any of that after Biden said “Vice President Trump” by mistake. There’s no grace for the old in Washington, nor is there interest in anything but vibes in the Washington press corps.
24
472
6K
A decade of nonstop Russian information warfare against the US has made the Republicans, well, weird -- so weird as to appear virtually foreign to mainstream Americans. A THREAD.
66
1K
7K
Biden bailed out the Teamsters pension fund by the tune of 36 billion United States dollars. Then the Teamsters president decided it was a good idea to deliver a speech at the RNC. The fuck does a Democratic president have to do?.
296
1K
6K
1. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Donald Trump is going to abuse the power of presidential pardons no matter what. That Joe Biden pardoned his son is beside the point.
684
1K
8K
25. This decision leaves the press corps on the outside looking in. She’s sustaining a conversation with voters directly, on her own terms, and she’s doing well as a direct consequence of that decision.
16
597
6K
1. Joe Biden ran for president as Mr. Normalcy. During the pandemic, with the body count rising and the economy teetering, he looked pretty good next to a lying, thieving, philandering sadist who refused to lead the nation or take responsibility for it.
109
1K
6K
1. I think the American people, especially those who supported the second candidacy of Donald Trump, deserve an explanation.
197
1K
8K
Reminder: the Times could crusade against Trump’s old age the way it crusaded against Biden’s old age , and it would be justified in doing so in the name of balance and fairness. That the Times is not doing so tells you what the Times thinks about balance and fairness.
120
2K
6K
For a moment let’s forget about the debate’s effect on the election. Harris did something to a Trump no one has done. She minimized him, put him in a box, made him look small. She shattered his ego. Let’s recognize that accomplishment.
100
1K
6K
28. He’s being coy but, in essence, he’s saying that Harris is violating some kind of taboo, or worse, that she’s hiding something of great importance from voters. This, of course, is favorable to her opponents, but let’s be clear: she’s violating *nothing*.
17
513
6K
1. Donald Trump doesn’t believe in anything. We know this. The one exception is him. He believes he’s big and strong and tough and fully grown, and he believes the rest of us should believe that, too.
26
288
6K
10. He said he can’t wait to debate Vance “that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”.
14
256
6K
24. In that, she is *taking power* – defining her campaign as well as Trump’s. She is turning the narrative about Biden’s age (81) back against Trump’s (78), such that whatever he says in self-defense is seen as proof of the allegations against him.
8
519
6K
Biden is holding on, because *Democratic voters* want him to hold on. He wasn't wrong when he said elites are trying to push him out of the race.
362
1K
6K
5. Some members of the press corps have noticed how well Harris is doing without them, and apparently, it doesn’t sit right. Here’s Chris Cillizza with a representative sampling.
17
429
6K
2. True, her lead is within the margin of error in most cases, but that’s an improvement from where the Democrats were before Joe Biden dropped out of the running and orchestrated instantaneous unification around his second-in-command.
18
340
6K
21. But where he saw fact and substance, the press corps saw only vibes. And in depending on the press corps to get his message across to voters, Biden effectively handed over power that was rightfully his.
14
501
5K
It seems to me a good idea for Biden and the Democrats to propose legislation to repeal taxes being taken out of Social Security checks. That was a Ronald Reagan thing and Joe Biden should undo it. Thoughts?.
477
1K
5K
Saying that Trump is a threat to democracy is not an incitement to violence. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
215
1K
5K
19. In the future, we might look back and see the most important difference between the Biden and Harris campaigns is their level of trust in the press corps.
9
403
5K
30. Harris, Walz and the rest of the Democrats are finally hitting his soft underbelly. They have figured out that Donald Trump’s greatest asset, his ego, is his greatest liability. /end.
54
384
5K
29. There is no lawbook declaring that candidates shall talk to reporters. There is a playbook, if that’s what you mean, but not a lawbook. The vice president could go the whole time without talking to one reporter and she would not have done anything morally wrong.
18
467
5K
2. When we don’t, he gets quite upset. Instead of using his time on the campaign trail to win over voters, he uses it to moan and pule over the fact that some of us don’t see him as big and strong and tough.
15
213
5K
27. That’s why some are busy manufacturing a phony moral standard by which to scam Harris into playing by their rules. That phony moral standard goes something like this, courtesy today of Chris Cillizza:
67
532
5K
9. What evidence? The coverup. The coverup is the tell. He knows he’s acting weird, so he covers it up by saying he’s not weird. He knows he’s rambling, so he covers it up by saying he’s not rambling. This is what people with dementia do.
34
386
5K
7. Look, I don’t know about you, but this is familiar. I witnessed firsthand the mental decline of a close family member. Trump is showing the same signs.
28
278
5K
Some people are still saying anti-vaxxers are injecting *sheep drench* because they don't trust the CDC. I'm telling you, friend, trust has nothing to do with it. They are *choosing* this, because they'll be damned if they're gonna be wrong and let the enemy be right.
120
969
5K
4. There’s nothing to the rumor. (Even the Associated Press fact-checked it before taking down the story.) However, the point was never that it was true. The point was that it *could be true*, given that JD Vance seems like the sort of man who would have sex with a couch.
30
161
5K
6. The former Post writer said the vice president has been “almost entirely” ignoring the media since she launched her campaign, and that’s bad, he said.
21
274
4K
Trump’s trash-talk isn’t alienating swing voters. His gibberish is. Don’t give him too much credit. A THREAD.
45
718
4K
6. Vance could have given the most boilerplate of all boilerplate answers, like my kids make me smile or serving the American people makes me happy, but no. He said, “I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media.”.
9
152
5K
22. He allowed the press corps to be the principal arbiters of his reality, rather than reserving that right for himself. You could say Biden was waiting for power to be given to him and he suffered gravely for it.
10
351
4K
9. His was the most oblique of jokes, meaning it was funny only to people who’d heard the rumor, who dislike Vance and who are tired of Republicans getting away with insulting "the Democrat Party.".
4
136
5K
My latest. Lemme know what you think. Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps
225
881
4K
1. I was wrong about this election. Maybe I erred largely on the side of hoping too much. I hoped that most people in America understood that Donald Trump was the worst candidate of our lifetimes.
141
591
5K
11. There’s a reason for that. We’re not the intended audience. He is. He’s telling himself the ultimate story – that what’s happening to him isn’t happening or if it is, no one can see it, especially his enemies.
13
259
5K
2. He couldn’t answer simple questions. He sure-as-hell couldn’t answer complex ones. He failed to show basic knowledge and understanding of economics and business, especially tariffs, not even after the host, John Micklethwait, patiently explained how they do and don’t work.
7
368
5K
7. Cillizza: It “bypasses the argument that the media is a critical part of our political system and any candidate who wants to be president — whether they are winning or losing — should be regularly subjected to scrutiny from the press.”.
102
279
4K
26. Then, Monday, her campaign posted her schedule, with six rallies in six swing states, next to Trump’s, with one event Friday in the friendly deep-red state of Montana. In the post, her campaign called Trump “low energy.”.
16
343
4K
1. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea for Donald Trump to do an interview with the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, but I do know he hates his boss. I mean, could anyone buy better proof of his dementia? That’s how bad today’s event was.
14
323
4K
I think liberals and Democrats need to admit that they let the Times etc make them doubt themselves. Biden is a good president. You all know this. But you're doubting yourselves. Let's just say what needs saying.
230
710
4K
26. But being on the outside looking in feels bad to people who see themselves as the adjudicators of American politics. They have incentive to turn attention back to where they think it belongs.
5
290
4K
16. There was a time when liberals and Democrats would have nodded in agreement with Chris Cillizza on the merit of candidates being regularly subjected to scrutiny.
8
266
4K
1. Donald Trump is in the habit of accusing his enemies of pretty much anything, even eating dogs and cats, in order to draw attention away from his scam. In response, liberals and Democrats have developed a habit of their own.
101
1K
5K
9. In reality, the weave is what happens when an aging brain flits from topic to topic without any apparent reason for doing so. Trump, however, wants us to believe that cognitive decline is extraordinary.
21
368
4K
Can we please use the right word for this, which is extortion? And can we please start reporting this pattern of behavior as criminal, please?
88
2K
4K
Here's Biden, *leading* the response to Hurricane Milton. He's *leading* us out of this natural disaster in the same way he led us out of the covid pandemic, also a natural disaster. Now ask yourself: .Do you remember how Trump led? .It wasn't like this.
162
1K
4K
32. Reporters like Cillizza have a bad habit of presenting themselves to voters as if they operated in their interest and we know nothing could be further from the truth. We should not only stop tolerating this bad habit. We should be hostile towards it.
29
601
4K
34. He tried to meet the press corps’ phony moral standard, only to have it move around, beyond his reach, thus surrendering his power. In the end, his dependence on the press corps made it so he had to ask for permission to campaign. Harris isn’t asking. /end.
104
397
4K
6. Let’s recap. In Wisconsin, he said, “I’m not weird.”. In Pennsylvania, he said, I’m not rambling.
7
201
4K