Is Kamala Harris ‘Brat’? Plus. . .

But first: brats, Hulk Hogan, and the most important divide in our politics—sex. 

This presidential race is fast shaping up to be a battle of the sexes. 

On Sunday, after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, the KHive came out in full force. One of them was British pop star Charli XCX. “Kamala IS brat,” she tweeted, referring to the title of her latest album. To be “brat,” according to Charli on TikTok, is to be “that girl who is a little messy and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown but parties through it. It is honest, blunt, and a little bit volatile.”

Soon afterward, the Harris campaign rebranded its X account with a brat theme—copying the chartreuse tones and fuzzy lowercase font of Charli’s album cover. (Kat Rosenfield calls brat the “living embodiment of feminism as imagined by Gen Z.” Read her column all about that here.)

Up against Kamala the Brat, we have Trump the Macho Man. 

Trump—an egotistical billionaire who boasts about “grabbing them by the pussy” and was found liable for sexual assault by a New York jury—has long been synonymous with “toxic masculinity.” 

But after an assassination attempt on July 13, his undeniably badass reaction—raised fist, blood on his face, yelling “fight”—demonstrated some less toxic virtues and resonated with American men. “Hardest edit of all time,” commented Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports and tribune of the American bro, when he posted a video of the attack soundtracked by 50 Cent’s “Many Men (Wish Death)”—a song about surviving being shot. 

The two candidates embody many of the divides in American politics—young vs. old, progressive vs. populist—but none as important as the gender gap. This divide has been growing for years. In February, Gallup showed that young American men tend to be conservative while their female counterparts are becoming increasingly left-wing. Women between the ages of 18 and 30 are now 30 points more liberal than men their age.

Both candidates need to find a way to close this gap in November. Trump consistently polls poorly among women and much better with men. For example, even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, in which Trump presented himself as more composed and competent, one poll showed he opened up an astonishing 27-point lead among male voters. But Biden still led among female voters by eight points.

Despite this challenge, both candidates seem to be embracing the divide rather than courting the opposite sex.

At the RNC, Trump leaned into his increasingly male voter base. On Thursday, retired professional wrestler Hulk Hogan (real name, Terry Bollea) ripped off his shirt, flexed his biceps, and exclaimed: “Let Trump-a-mania run wild, brother!” UFC president Dana White also spoke. Kid Rock delivered a testosterone-fueled assault on our eardrums. And the previous night, Trump walked onto the stage to “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown. 

Meanwhile, as she embraces her “brat” status, Harris reportedly plans to become the first woman in the White House by focusing her campaign on abortion rights. Back in April, she appeared on daytime TV and nodded along as Drew Barrymore held her hands and told her viewers the nation “needs a Momala.” 

This gender divide presents opportunities and hazards for both sides. Get it right and you can fire up your faithful—as Hulk Hogan did last week. Get it wrong and you can look like a bit of a jackass—like J.D. Vance.

In a 2021 interview that resurfaced in the past few days, Trump’s running mate listed Harris as one of the “bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” 

Hey, J.D., don’t forget: cat ladies vote, too.

1. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned, admitting her agency “fell short” in its mission “to protect our nation’s leaders.” In yesterday’s Front Page, Madeleine Kearns argued that Cheatle’s Monday testimony was as bad as Claudine Gay’s. But perhaps that was an understatement. Gay hung on for a month or so; Cheatle was out in 48 hours. (CNN)

2. Kamala Harris has opened up a two-point lead over Donald Trump in the first Ipsos/Reuters poll since Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. She leads Trump 44 percent to 42 percent in a head-to-head race, and that lead widened to four points in a three-way contest that included RFK Jr. (Reuters) 

3. Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio dismissed the bump as a “Harris honeymoon.” With wall-to-wall positive coverage of the vice president, “that bump is likely to start showing itself over the next few days and will last a while until the race settles back down,” argued Fabrizio in a campaign memo. (The Hill) 

4. Black Lives Matter accused Democrats of being a “party of hypocrites” for “installing” Kamala Harris without a “public voting process.” “Delegates are not oligarchs,” said the group in a statement. (Fox News)

5. We’re all woke now. Or so argues Tyler Austin Harper, whose columns we never miss. He writes that “conservatives have taken to appropriating progressive rhetoric and strategies, giving them a reactionary reinterpretation.” (The Atlantic) 

6. Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have buried the hatchet in an agreement that calls for a unity government to oversee Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. In a sign of the times, the deal was brokered by China in Beijing. (South China Morning Post) 

7. “France has been the leading victim of jihadi terrorism in the West,” and French authorities are on high alert against attacks heading into the Paris Olympics. So, too, is Israel’s National Security Council, which urged caution to Israelis attending the games. (Foreign Policy) 

8. The brother of Carmel Gat, taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, had planned to fly with Netanyahu to Washington, D.C., for his address to Congress. He changed his mind. “I wanted to stand with my prime minister when he announced he had signed the deal that would bring my sister, Carmel, and the other hostages home,” writes Alon Gat. But Netanyahu’s uncompromising approach is prolonging the war and “abandoning Carmel and the 120 hostages who remain in Gaza.” (The Times of Israel)

9. When children say they’re transgender, families from all walks of life are affected. Even billionaires. Take Elon Musk, father of 12. Musk recently told psychologist Jordan Peterson in a live interview on X that the effects of puberty blockers were not explained to him and he was “tricked” into thinking they were necessary for his son Xavier. (Musk added that his son was gay and autistic, two indicators of gender dysphoria). “My son Xavier is dead—killed by the woke mind virus,” he said, speaking figuratively. (X)

10. Olympic athletes looking to get a good night’s rest before a big game will be snuggling up on beds made of cardboard. You read that correctly. Airweave, the Japanese company behind the furniture, says the “recyclable” beds will be sturdy enough to “support up to three or four people jumping, because after winning a medal, people are very happy.” The Covid-era sex ban in the Olympic Village was lifted earlier this year. (Wired) 

Ephraim Rinsky, 37, recently moved in with his girlfriend. He packed up a suitcase with paintings that his mother made, a few Hawaiian shirts, his passport, and “some gold.” Over the phone, I asked him how much. 

“The first rule of gold is never to tell anyone how much gold you have,” says Rinsky. “The second rule is never tell anyone where your gold is.” 

Rinsky fell down the “precious metals rabbit hole” during the pandemic—“audiobooks and cooking didn’t really catch”—but adds that the market hadn’t started “really popping” until recently. The price of an ounce of gold is at $2,408, having increased more than 22 percent since this time last year. Central banks in India, Brazil, Russia, and most notably China have been buying gold hand over fist, while selling their U.S. debt. Young Koreans are flocking to new vending machines that sell gold by the gram. Costco started selling 1-ounce, 24-karat gold bars last August, and is apparently selling $200 million worth per month.

What explains the gold rush?

I spoke to a financial adviser in the L.A. area who tells his clients to carve out 3 percent of their portfolios for gold. “Gold is interesting right now,” he tells me, because there’s no sign of the two “classic” conditions that usually increase its price: a weak dollar and falling interest rates. “Gold is doing great. It’s just not the normal things that are driving it.” What is driving it seems to be a deeper sense that the world is going sideways fast. We’re fresh off a pandemic and an attempted assassination, and last week’s mini-Y2K that saw power outages at banks, airlines, and hospital systems across the world because of a glitch in security firm CrowdStrike’s software. There’s a sense that you might be wise to keep a full tank of gas and some cash on hand. Also, inflation. Rinsky, a product manager at a tech company who has also taught economics and statistics says: “People are starting to feel the bullshit of dollars.” For more from Suzy on the new gold rush, click here. 

We are delighted to invite you to our next live debate in Washington, D.C., just two months before the presidential election.

Polls suggest that Americans have less confidence than ever in the future. In particular, they have lost faith in the idea that their children’s lives will be materially better than their own.

In partnership with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), we’re convening two teams of intellectual heavyweights to go head to head on an issue at the front of many voters’ minds: Is the American Dream Alive?

On Team Yes, we have Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University and Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor-in-chief of the libertarian Reason magazine.

On Team No, we have David Leonhardt, New York Times senior writer and Pulitzer Prize winner, and Bhaskar Sunkara, president of The Nation magazine and founding editor of Jacobin.

Free Press editor Bari Weiss will moderate.

The debate will be held in Washington, D.C., on September 10, 7:30 p.m. We can’t wait to see you there. Get your tickets here!

→ Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., on Bibi’s trip to Washington, D.C.: According to The New York Times, the only person interested in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington is Benjamin Netanyahu. Not surprisingly, the Times is dead wrong. 

While many Americans would be hard-pressed to name the prime minister of Great Britain or the president of France, a very large number can identify—despise or admire—Netanyahu. His arrival in the United States, even in the midst of political chaos, will certainly be noted and his messages widely received. 

In an address to a joint session of Congress (his fourth, breaking Churchill’s record), Netanyahu will certainly recall the horrors of October 7, along with the hostages’ continuing nightmare. He will describe northern Israel as a war zone rendered uninhabitable by Hezbollah. Most fervidly, the prime minister will return to his favorite theme: Iran. The world’s leading enabler of terror, he’ll say, Iran bears direct responsibility for the devastation of the past ten months. The same threshold-capable Iran, he’ll proclaim, is today only a decision away from producing nuclear weapons.

The speech, delivered in the shadow of Biden’s first public appearance since exiting the presidential race, might not attract the attention it might otherwise have garnered. But far greater attention will be focused on his three high-profile meetings—each for a different reason.

Sitting before the cameras with Netanyahu, Biden will have the opportunity to prove that he is still competent enough to complete his term. He can rebuff those calling on him to resign and allow Kamala Harris to run as an incumbent.

Should he receive Netanyahu, as planned, at Mar-a-Lago, Trump can smooth over his differences with him and reinforce the Republicans’ claim to be the true pro-Israel party.

Netanyahu’s most impactful meeting, though, will be with Harris. It will showcase her as a statesperson capable of interacting with a formidable foreign leader. It will facilitate her necessary movement from the progressive left to the moderate center. Ironically, one of Netanyahu’s most outspoken critics in Washington stands to benefit substantially from his visit.

The New York Times was wrong and so, too, was the State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol, which apparently failed to give Netanyahu a respectable welcome. No matter. His time in Washington will be nevertheless noteworthy and perhaps even fateful. —Michael Oren 

→ Porn professor one step closer to the axe: Last month, I profiled Joe Gow, who was ousted from his role as the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse last year for posting online porn videos he made of himself and his wife (and others). Now, a panel of peers is recommending he also lose his tenured teaching position for his “pattern of behavior demonstrating poor judgment.” 

Gow, who represented himself during the hearing on July 11, told me he’s “mystified” by the decision. 

“There’s people I worked with that I thought were good colleagues, and then to see some of them turn on me,” says communications professor Gow, 63, pausing. “That was the hard part.”

To his peers, the hard part was the content he was creating—and continuing to mention in countless interviews (like ours in The Free Press). One video featured him and his wife, Carmen Wilson, 56, a former university employee, pretending to house-hunt with India Summer, Adult Video News’ two-time MILF Performer of the Year, who seduces both of them in the master bedroom. Gow tells me what he does in his “private life” with his wife is protected by the First Amendment. 

“They’re treating me like a criminal. I mean, this kind of feels like Stalin’s Russia,” he says. 

In a statement, free speech advocacy organization FIRE agreed that the committee’s recommendation “clashes with the First Amendment and threatens the rights of all UW faculty.” Now, Gow says that he’s represented by an attorney, provided to him for free by FIRE, who will advise him on any communications with the university system and represent him in any future hearings. He tells me that his replacement in the chancellor’s office has until August 11 to decide if they’ll ignore the faculty committee’s recommendation or punt it to the statewide Board of Regents for yet another hearing. 

“I’m spending a lot of time reading books, getting ready to teach in the fall. And that’s what I hope will happen.” —Olivia Reingold

→ Candace Owens invited—then uninvited—to event with Don Jr.: On Thursday, Donald Trump, in his speech at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, called for “unity” and reminded his audience that “we are fellow citizens, we are one nation under God.”

Not a week later, Trump’s campaign announced that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, would host an event featuring antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.

By Tuesday evening, it appeared that Owens had been scrubbed from the event. But it was an eyebrow-raising moment—or misstep—nonetheless.

Owens parted ways in March with The Daily Wire, after having spoken of “secret Jewish gangs” in Hollywood; liked a tweet accusing Jews of drinking Christian blood; suggested Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire’s Jewish founder, cared more about money than God; and suggested Israel is committing a “genocide” in Gaza.

Even before she joined The Daily Wire, Owens had argued that the real problem with Adolf Hitler was that he wasn’t Germany First enough.

“If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well—okay, fine,” Owens, who was speaking at a conference in Britain, said in 2019. “The problem is he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German.”

It was bad then. 

Now? Well, here’s Owens on Nazi doctor Josef Mengele—infamous for performing barbaric experiments on concentration-camp prisoners—earlier this month:

“Why would you do that? Literally, even if you’re the most evil person in the world, that’s a tremendous waste of time and supplies,” Owens said, alluding to Mengele.

She added that the accusation that had been lodged against Mengele “just sounds like bizarre propaganda.” 

Owens’s invitation to the fundraiser, which is scheduled for Friday in Nashville, is a reminder of two things. 

First: Don Jr. appears to be the Trump with the most sway—or certainly the most visibility—right now. The president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, both of whom are practicing Jews, are mostly absent from this campaign. 

Second—and more importantly—this is a new kind of GOP.

As I reported at last week’s RNC, this GOP is one without guardrails—one that does not delineate between fact and mythology; one that makes room for serious people of varying viewpoints and backgrounds, as well as people like Candace Owens, who has built her audience by trafficking in medieval anti-Jewish tropes. —Peter Savodnik

Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman. 

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