The Front Page: Truth and Lies on the Campaign Trail. Plus. . .

Good morning. It’s Thursday, August 15, and we are 82 days from the election (personally, I think we’ve had enough politics for the year and I would like to vote tomorrow, but the Founders didn’t factor in my feelings, apparently.) We have a lot for you on today’s Front Page, including big news out of Columbia and UCLA, Eli Lake on the damning revelations about Hunter Biden—and what they say about the justice system, plus details of our next live show, and another video from a Free Presser. 

But first, the election. 

Bullshit.

That’s what the American people are being force-fed during this campaign season. And neither party has a monopoly on it.

First, there’s Donald Trump. Obviously. Here’s a random sample of the nonsense he has claimed over the past two weeks:

• Images of huge crowds at Kamala Harris’s rallies have been AI-generated, making them appear larger than they truly are;

• He had “more people” at the January 6 rally than the number that assembled to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; 

• Kamala Harris “happened to turn black” a number of years ago; 

• Biden is going to be reinstalled as the Democratic candidate. (He wishes.)

But while Trump’s BS is mostly a sin of commission, Kamala Harris’s is generally a sin of omission. Or evasion. Abandoning policy positions without explanation, memory-holing her duties as vice president (border czar? What border czar?), dodging interviews, and coasting into a polling lead on vibes and memes alone. And all of that was preceded by the biggest Democratic lie of all: that Joe Biden was fit to serve another four years as president. In a brilliant essay over the weekend, my colleague Eli Lake described all of this as part of “the election of laughter and forgetting.” (Read it here and listen to the accompanying Honestly episode if you haven’t already.) 

But now, Team Harris is distorting the truth in arguably the most sinister way yet. On Tuesday, Axios reported that the Harris campaign “has been editing news headlines and descriptions within Google search ads that make it appear as if the Guardian, Reuters, CBS News, and other major publishers are on her side.” The ads are labeled as “paid for” by the Harris campaign, and the links take readers to real news stories. But the headline for the ad—which paints Kamala in glowing terms—is written by the Harris campaign, not the outlet in question. 

And when you look at the result, you can see why this is so misleading:

This is the textbook definition of misinformation (albeit with a tiny disclaimer slapped on it). And it comes from the party that has spent almost a decade fretting about the dangers of “post-truth” politics. 

Meanwhile, the people who are supposed to help sort the truth from the bullshit—the media—have blown their credibility. Americans don’t place their trust in the press because the press has proven to be unworthy of it.

Take this clip from Stephen Colbert’s Late Show on Monday. In it, Colbert says to CNN host Kaitlan Collins, “I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.” The audience bursts out laughing. 

“Was that supposed to be a laugh line?” asks Collins. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be, but I guess it is,” says Colbert.

For the latest example of why the audience laughs at lines like that, check out this week’s fawning cover story on Kamala Harris in Time magazine, complete with a hagiographic image of the candidate: 

Harris did not make herself available for an interview for the piece. And that, it seems, was the right call. Even without access to the vice president and no original quotes, Time’s Charlotte Alter painted a picture of a stateswoman ready to meet “her moment.” 

Ahead of this election, we were warned of the rising threat of AI deepfakes. Thanks to artificial intelligence, we were told it would be next to impossible to sort the truth from the lies. But this election season proves that America’s political-media complex needs no technological help when it comes to blurring the lines. 

Today we bring you three pieces about truth and fiction on the campaign trail—the lies we are told, and the stories we choose to tell ourselves. 

First, Francesca Block and Joe Nocera get to the bottom of whether Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz lied about his military service. They look at the claims both for and against and ask: “Is Tim Walz Really Guilty of ‘Stolen Valor’?” 

Second, Kat Rosenfield argues that our election is like a superhero movie, complete with Easter eggs, story arcs, heroes, and villains. In the end, she says, there is no plot or big reveal, just the inane babbling of the candidates, and we are starting to hallucinate patterns where none exist. Read Kat on why “The 2024 Election Is a Marvel Universe.” 

Finally, River Page asks how a satirical post on X, including a lurid joke about J.D. Vance and a couch, morphed into something like a half-truth winked at by the Democrats. Read River’s piece: “The J.D. Vance Couch Thing Was Funny, Until the Harris Campaign Co-Opted It.” 

1. Polling shows Harris leading or tying Trump in all but one of the seven battleground states. (Swing-state polling taken in May showed Trump ahead of Biden by three points overall and leading or tied in every swing state.) Harris is also winning over the “double haters” (voters who say they dislike both candidates) by a whopping 30-point margin in a head-to-head with Trump. (The Cook Political Report) 

2. Is Palmer Luckey, the founder of disruptive defense company Anduril Industries, one of the most interesting men in America? Quite possibly. He’s also one of the most important. Those are two takeaways from this brilliant profile by Jeremy Stern of the man trying to revolutionize defense and save the West. (Tablet) 

3. Three years ago today, President Biden greenlighted the U.S. Afghanistan withdrawal. On August 15, 2021, Taliban forces seized Kabul which, less than two weeks later, resulted in the deaths of 11 U.S. Marines and 170 Afghan civilians in a suicide bombing. “The legacy of Biden’s chaotic exit lives on” in the minds of America’s friends and foes alike, writes Samuel Ramani. (The Telegraph)

4. Wednesday brought some good economic news. The Consumer Price Index rose 2.9 percent in the 12 months through July, dropping below 3 percent for the first time since 2021. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 3.2 percent—the smallest increase in three years. Things still look rough in the housing sector, however, where prices have kept “upward pressure” on inflation. (Axios) 

5. Meanwhile, in the Big Apple, the migrant crisis continues to burden the taxpayer. New York City has spent nearly $5 billion on services for migrants through fiscal years 2023 and 2024, official figures show. Mayor Eric Adams has warned the cost is on track to double, reaching $10 billion over the three-year period ending next summer. By comparison, the annual budget for the entire NYPD is $5.75 billion. (New York Post) 

6. During the pandemic, parents relied more on screens than they ordinarily would to keep young children occupied. The “digital pacifier” is a tempting parenting tool but with serious downsides, new research suggests. Preschool children logging more than 75 minutes of daily screen time display more anger, frustration, and trouble regulating their emotions. (JAMA Pediatrics) 

7. Americans don’t want businesses to be involved in politics, according to a new Gallup survey. Just 38 percent say companies should take public stances—a fall of ten points in two years. I, for one, was heartened when Jamba Juice emailed me to say they stood with BLM. (Gallup) 

8. Consider the mighty English: their victory over the Habsburg Empire and the Spanish Armada; their defeat of Napoleon and Hitler. Even Americans, who fled to the New World, “never convulsed themselves in a general social rejection of their British heritage.” Tragically, though, Brits today are doing just that. (Armas)

9. Have we reached peak dating app? The likes of Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, which all gained popularity in the 2010s, soared to new heights during the pandemic. But download rates are slipping and users, fed up with the male-skewed gender imbalance in the case of Tinder and Bumble, are getting cold feet. “I’m kind of over it,” says one 27-year-old, after years of unsuccessful swiping. He’d rather try his luck the old-fashioned way. (The Economist) 

10. Brat summer is out, goat summer is in—at least for journalist Tim Carney, who hired 44 goats and a llama to tame his overgrown suburban backyard. “By the time the goats finished devouring the leaves and most of the vines, along with some small trees, we discovered a car tire, a drone, and massive sections of tulip poplar,” he writes. “More importantly, we also learned something about our hooved friends—and maybe even about ourselves.” (Washington Examiner) 

Last Thursday we brought you our first official live show, co-hosted by Michael Moynihan and Batya Ungar-Sargon. (If you missed it, you can catch up here.) Michael and Batya are back tonight with this week’s installment of The Free Press Live. Joining them to help make sense of the week’s news will be our very own Peter Savodnik and comedian and writer Bridget Phetasy. 

Tune in here at 7 p.m. ET to catch it live. 

Columbia president is out, report Jonas Du and Elias Wachtel. Columbia president Minouche Shafik resigned Wednesday evening, just three weeks before the start of the new academic year. Shafik, who was appointed to the role only last year, is the third Ivy League president to resign amid backlash over schools’ handling of student protests and campus antisemitism.

The departure comes in the wake of numerous controversies on Columbia’s Manhattan campus since October 7, the biggest coming after anti-Israel protesters set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the campus’s main lawns and later occupied Hamilton Hall, sparking similar encampments and occupations across the country. Last week, three Columbia administrators resigned after leaked texts between them showed one had suggested Jewish students were using the campus moment for “fundraising potential.”

Both pro-Israel Jewish students and pro-Palestine students had called for Shafik’s resignation over her handling of the protests: in April, Jewish students, joined by numerous congresspeople including Speaker Mike Johnson, said she had failed to combat widespread antisemitism or enforce university rules in her handling of the encampment. Pro-Palestine protesters, meanwhile, criticized her for calling the NYPD to restore order on campus. In May, protesters swarmed Shafik’s personal home, chanting: “Minouche Shafik, we know you, you’re a fascist pig, too.”

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik said in her resignation. “Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”

After Shafik’s resignation, the co-chairs of Columbia’s trustees announced that Katrina Armstrong, CEO of Columbia’s Irving Medical Center, would take the helm as interim president of the university.

On Twitter, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the groups behind the encampment, said Shafik “finally got the memo” after months of protests. However, they warned that future presidents must “pay heed to the Columbia student body’s overwhelming demand for divestment” or “end up exactly as President Shafik did.”

Meanwhile, Eden Yadegar, president of Columbia Students Supporting Israel, told The Free Press that Shafik’s resignation “is not going to be a golden ticket to a magically repaired institution.” She added: “This culture that now we’re seeing bubbling over the surface has been allowed to fester because of years and years of weak moral leaders like President Shafik.”

And in other campus news. . .  

Madeleine Kearns: Judge issues scathing verdict on UCLA’s failure to protect the rights of Jewish students. As readers of The Free Press will know, America’s colleges haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory with their response to the anti-Israel protests that have roiled campuses ever since October 7. 

Across the country, schools have failed to protect Jewish students from both verbal and physical abuse.

Last week, a Massachusetts judge ruled that Harvard had “failed its Jewish students.” (Read former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr on that case here.) Now, a ruling from a federal judge in California yesterday has laid out the shocking extent of that failure at UCLA, where anti-Israel protesters blocked Jewish students from accessing class and other parts of campus this spring. 

In court, the university argued that it bore no responsibility for the fact that Jewish students could not move freely around their own campus “because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters.” The judge disagreed and issued a preliminary injunction preventing UCLA from providing any programs or activities unless they were “fully and equally accessible to Jewish students.” 

U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi was scathing in his decision. He began his judgment as follows: “In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.” 

Scarsi ruled that if the university could not ensure the availability of its programs, activities, and campus areas to Jewish students, they are constitutionally required to stop providing them to any students. 

A spokesperson for UCLA told the Associated Press the ruling “would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground.”

But the decision came as welcome news to the three Jewish students who filed their lawsuit in June. “No student should ever have to fear being blocked from their campus because they are Jewish,” Yitzchok Frankel, one of the three, said in a statement. “I am grateful that the court has ordered UCLA to put a stop to this shameful anti-Jewish conduct.”

Eli Lake: Now we know—Hunter Biden was lobbying for foreign companies. One of the MAGA movement’s most persistent criticisms of the justice system in recent years is that there is one standard for Trump supporters and another for his opponents.

Call it “Trump law.” When Democrats, like former attorney general Eric Holder, ignore a congressional subpoena, nothing happens. When Trump supporters like Steve Bannon ignored the summons of the January 6 committee, the Justice Department prosecuted him. Today Bannon is serving a four-month federal prison sentence, while Holder was put in charge of Kamala Harris’s VP search. The selective enforcement of the law should be a problem for all Americans no matter their political preference. And yesterday The New York Times, of all places, provided an even more persuasive example of this double standard. 

The paper reported that Hunter Biden, the sitting president’s son, was an unregistered foreign agent while Joe Biden was vice president in 2016. He lobbied on behalf of a Romanian developer and Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm whose board he sat on. 

These facts suggest on the surface an open-and-shut violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, a law that dates back to 1938 and was originally meant to force Nazi, and then later Soviet, agents of influence to register as such with the Justice Department. And yet Hunter was not punished at the time of his lobbying, or later when the Justice Department investigated his tax evasion and gun charges during Trump’s term in office. 

The lack of enforcement against Hunter Biden’s lobbying on behalf of foreign entities would not normally be such a big deal. Between 1967 and 2018 the Justice Department prosecuted only 13 total cases for criminal violation of the law. Most of the time, FARA violators were fined or forced to register retroactively with the Justice Department. 

But after Robert Mueller began his probe into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, his office resurrected the FARA statute in an effort to flip former advisers and hangers-on to turn on Trump. Mueller’s attorneys initially used this pressure to persuade Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, to cooperate with the investigation. Flynn and his son were threatened with the prospect of jail time for failing to register under FARA for their foreign lobbying on behalf of Turkey. (Flynn had initially registered this work under a less cumbersome law known as the Lobbying Disclosure Act.) Mueller also went after Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, for FARA violations. Manafort pleaded guilty to those violations as well as bank and tax fraud in 2018 and was pardoned by Trump in 2020. 

One of Mueller’s deputies, Andrew Weissmann, acknowledges how rare FARA prosecutions were before he started using it to pressure Trump associates to rat on their boss. “There is little incentive for these lobbyists to register under the law because the law virtually never is criminally enforced or results in civil penalties,” Weissmann wrote in his 2020 memoir. 

Weissmann believed he was using the threat of FARA prosecution to expose a Trump-Russia conspiracy. But that conspiracy was never proven or even alleged in court. Mueller’s report found no evidence that any Americans conspired with Russia’s plans to influence the 2016 election. In pursuit of that phantom, Weissmann invented a new enforcement standard for FARA. 

Now that the current president’s son seems to have engaged in a FARA crime spree only a year before Weissmann started his FARA crackdown, it’s fair to say Trump and his supporters have a point when they complain about a politicized, two-tiered justice system.

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

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