A Scandal That Could Meaningfully Widen Harris’ Path to the Presidency
Slate's guide to the most important figures in politics this week.
Welcome to this week's edition of the Surge, a newsletter that has never had an intimate texting relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. We don't have his number!
First, an important public service announcement: Surge Enterprises is expanding and will soon take over all media. Each Friday through the election, the Surge will join host Mary Harris on Slate's What Next podcast for 15 minutes of gabbing about the most important political nonsense of the week. That means: More stray gags and polling analysis, only this time, in spoken form. Exclusive to Slate Plus subscribers.
There was so much politics this week. We look at where and whether Vice President Kamala Harris' debate performance helped her and how Donald Trump reacted to the gunman on his golf course. The House is undergoing its usual ritual of elaborate self-flagellation before funding the government. And Melania Trump's memoir marketing has worked, as she's landed a spot on the Surge.
Let's begin with the North Carolina porn man.
A Nazi sex (sex Nazi?) scandal of presidential proportions.
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, whose support from Trump guided him to the state's Republican gubernatorial nomination, was already well established as a fringe kook who'd likely cost Republicans a winnable race. New revelations this week, though, fully toxified him—and could have a costly effect on the presidential race. A CNN investigation found a history of comments he made between 2008 and 2012 on the message board for Nude Africa, a porn site. Robinson, CNN reported, referred to himself as a "black NAZI!" and declared himself a "perv," writing of his love for "watching tranny on girl porn! That's f*cking hot!" (Robinson's campaign rhetoric has been sharply transphobic. ) He reportedly referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as a "f*cking commie bastard" and said "slavery is not bad," adding that he might like to " buy a few ." And on and on and on. Robinson denied making any of the comments and said he wasn't "going to get into the minutia of how somebody manufactured this, these salacious tabloid lies." Despite some last-minute pressure from Republicans to drop out of the race, though, Robinson stayed in past a key Thursday night deadline for withdrawing. If Robinson's position in the race tanks much further, he threatens to drag Trump down with him—in a state that the Harris campaign was already targeting in large part because of Robinson's weakness. The presidential race in North Carolina is one of the closest in the country. If it moves even another point or so in Harris' direction, it meaningfully widens her path to the presidency.
Not even attempting the New Tone this time.
For the second time in the past couple of months, there was an apparent assassination attempt on the former president—and for the second time, it doesn't quite get him to the top slot on the Surge. (If he can present proof that he also had a Nude Africa account, we'll amend this ranking—fair is fair.) When a bullet grazed Trump's ear in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, Trump's reaction was relatively measured. That was only two days before the start of the Republican National Convention, and Trump didn't link arms with conservative commentators and politicians who'd blamed Democratic rhetoric for inspiring the shooter. He was almost silent about it, in fact. (Until his convention speech five days later, when he ranted about his enemies for 90 minutes.) This time, after a gunman was found stalking the bushes of Trump's Palm Beach golf course, Trump didn't take long before blaming Democrats. "Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric," Trump posted about Democrats and the media, "the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!" The Surge sees a few paths forward here to prevent these attempts from becoming a regularity, which would be an unfortunate development in civil society. One would be to get the campaigns to not attack each other sharply in the last six weeks of a presidential election. This seems unlikely. Another is for the authorities to be more forthright about seizing guns from unstable, radicalized people. This also seems unlikely. Throwing more resources at the Secret Service through the election is probably the only practical option.
A bump where it matters.
All available statistical evidence, as well as the naked-eye test, shows Harris "won" last week's debate against Donald Trump. But presidential elections are not directly decided by debate performances, and the polling trends since the debate have been generally pro-Harris, albeit inconsistent. Poll whisperer Nate Silver noted this week that Harris' performance in post-debate polls overall was enough to bring her back to parity with Trump in likelihood of winning the Electoral College. There's some noise in national polling—some polls show Trump and Harris breaking even, others show Harris expanding her lead —but the best sign for Harris has to be in the make-or-break state of Pennsylvania. Prior to the debate, Harris' numbers in the state had been sluggish, and they've ticked up noticeably. On the day of the debate, Harris was leading Trump in the state by 0.5 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight polling average; by Sept. 18, it was 1.9 points—including a 4-point lead for Harris in the well-regarded New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll. So while Harris may have used the debate to arrest the modest slide she was showing once the post-DNC Democratic euphoria died down, it's still worth zooming out here: The race, according to the polls, is ludicrously tight, and much tighter than it was in 2020. That's unlikely to change too much down the stretch. In the end, we'll find out whether pollsters finally figured out how to properly capture Trump voters.
Can we just skip ahead to the end of this?
Congress returned after a lengthy summer in the sun with one job: to fund the government past its next deadline on Sept. 30. It's an election year, so the easiest possible course is just to extend funding for a few months at current spending levels. If everyone just accepted this, Congress could've taken care of its one piece of business in a day, and then returned home to eat slop at diners or milk goats or whatever it is they do to get reelected. But they have not accepted it. Specifically, the right flank of House Republicans has been obstinately huffy as usual since Congress returned. Speaker Mike Johnson's plan to bring them along, then, was to attach the SAVE Act—which would have required people to show a proof of citizenship to register to vote—to a six-month funding bill. This would've been instantly rejected in the Democratic Senate, but it didn't even make it that far. Fourteen Republicans still voted against the bill on Wednesday, mostly because they don't like funding the government, and the package failed. This looks an awful lot like a prelude to Johnson passing a straightforward, bipartisan funding bill in the end, now that he can prove that he had no other choice. Swing-district Republicans, after all, do not want a shutdown a month before the election. The only wild card here, though, is Trump, who's called on Republicans to shut down the government if they don't get the SAVE Act along with it. You'd think Trump would recognize that a Republican-caused government shutdown wouldn't help his chances in November, either. But he's not in a particularly lucid headspace right now.
A nonendorsement that speaks volumes.
For decades, Democrats have relied on a regular presidential endorsement from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents over a million workers. But on Wednesday, Teamsters president Sean O'Brien—in his first presidential cycle since taking control in 2022— announced that the union would not endorse either candidate this cycle. O'Brien said that neither candidate "was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business." Well, OK. What appears to have happened, though, was that O'Brien—who spoke at this year's Republican National Convention but was snubbed at the Democratic National Convention—read the room. The Teamsters released internal polling of its membership alongside the nonendorsement that showed 58 percent of membership supported Trump, compared with 31 percent who supported Harris. Things have gotten spicy in Teamstersworld since the announcement, with previous Teamsters president Jim Hoffa (not the one who disappeared, but his son) calling O'Brien's decision not to endorse Harris "failure of leadership" and a "critical error." The union shot back with a statement saying that "the Teamsters Union lost hundreds of thousands of members under Hoffa's failed leadership" and that "we will continue to support and respect all our members—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents." Sheesh. This is none of the Surge's business.
Closet K-Hiver?
This week, the Federal Reserve made its first interest rate cut since March 2020, a sign of confidence from the Fed that it had successfully beat back inflation. Soon, all mortgages will be free! But even though the Fed has been signaling this move for some time—and even took longer to get there than many had hoped—that didn't excuse chairman Jerome Powell from warrantless criticism that he's in love with Kamala Harris and is trying to influence the outcome of the presidential election on her behalf. When a reporter asked J.D. Vance about the cut at a rally this week, the crowd jeered, and chuckled when Vance observed that it came "in the midst of an election, by the way." Trump, meanwhile, said that the rate cut showed either the economy was "very bad" or the Fed was "playing politics." Powell—who, by the way, is a Republican who was first appointed to his position by President Donald Trump—said at a press conference that "this is my fourth presidential election at the Fed, and it's always the same," and added that "we're always going into this meeting in particular and asking what's the right thing to do for the people we serve." Sure, sure. Did anyone check if he was wearing a Kamala "brat" shirt under his suit?
