Quotes and Links

A week in review

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris are interviewed by CNN’s Dana Bash at Kim’s Cafe in Savannah, Georgia, on August 29, 2024. | CNN

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of various notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”

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• “How The Hell Was Trump Allowed To Use Arlington National Cemetery As A Campaign Prop?” — Esquire headline. Trump attended a ceremony honoring the 13 service members who died in the botched Afghanistan withdrawal three years ago Monday, joining families of three of the fallen. The families invited him.

• “Voting for Kamala after living under Biden is like shitting your pants and changing your shirt.” — YouTuber Blair White

• “I’ve decided I’m going to donate a dollar to the Trump campaign every time someone calls me a sexist/racist/transphobe/Putin-lover. Time to start adding cost to this activity.” — Matt Taibbi

• “The current composition of the Supreme Court stands, in my view and in my view alone, as a stain on America’s claim to the world that it is a democracy.” — MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell

• “I’ll admit I used to kind of roll my eyes when people claimed that President Trump was being ‘persecuted.’ I was looking at it through the distorted filter of the media. Well, I just completed my first cross-examination in our second New York Ballot Access case, where the DNC-aligned PAC attorneys questioned me like a criminal. OK, I get it now. Our justice system is clearly being co-opted and abused by nefarious people with malevolent political agendas.” — Nicole Shanahan, RFK Jr.’s running mate

• “This was in fact the expected outcome. And what’s so tragic about it, there are those folk who are reading this outcome as an example of what happens when ‘merit’ is taken as the principle deciding factor, when in fact this is proving the opposite.” — MSNBC political analyst Eddie Glaude Jr., on the data released by MIT showing that all racial and ethnic minority groups had a decrease in enrollment except for Asian Americans following last year’s SCOTUS ruling “that gutted affirmative action”

• “Summer COVID surge shows we may have to return to 2020 pandemic measures” — The Hill headline

• “Anyone who thinks a former courtroom prosecutor needs notes to speak has never been one. The ultimate training ground for thinking on your feet. Trust me there is no script.” — MSNBC’s Claire McCaskill

• “The climate crisis is real that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.” — Kamala Harris, in her Thursday night interview with CNN’s Dana Bash

• “She joins herself at the hip with Walz, probably in part to assuage fears about a female president, non-white president, etc. I can’t remember any of the male candidates doing this to this extent.” — Majority Report co-host Emma Vigeland, on why Tim Walz joined Kamala Harris during her first media interview

• “Kamala Harris bringing Walz to her first interview is like the young job candidates who bring their parents to their first interview. I wouldn’t hire either.” — Carol Roth

• “You know what Covid taught me? That we have enough. For everybody. Overnight we printed $6 Trillion. We had universal health care. We had universal basic income. Covid proved it’s possible.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones, founder of the 1619 Project and winner of a MacArthur Genius grant

• “Remember, kids, Donald Trump is responsible for every page of Project 2025, which he did not write, is not on his campaign page, and has explicitly disowned, but Kamala Harris [is] not responsible for ANYTHING HER OWN ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE WHILE SHE IS VICE PRESIDENT.” — Ben Shapiro

• “I’m sorry but you simply cannot use ‘Trump says X’ as a citation in a *fact check*. He says a lot of things! It doesn’t mean squat.” — MSNBC’s Chris Hayes

• “When a lifelong Democrat, from an iconic Democrat family, who tried to run as a Democrat, and who’s running mate was a Democrat, warns you about the dangers of voting for the Democrat in this election, you should probably listen.” — Dan Bongino

• “But if you take a look at that [Kamala Harris] ad, the one thing that I found striking is, if you look — and I think we have the images here — there are at least three points in that ad that show the border wall, Donald Trump’s border wall.” — ABC News host Jonathan Karl, regarding the Harris campaign ad claiming that she’s “tough” on the border

• “Kamala Harris’s proposed price-gouging ban might irritate academics, but it makes sense to everyone else.” — The Atlantic’s Zephyr Teachout

• “Professional Dog Walkers Aren’t Sure JD Vance Has Ever Walked—or Even Met—His Dog Before” — Jezebel headline

• “I think that as [Trump] plans for the debate, he has to appreciate that she is charismatic and charming on television in a way that he fancies that he is. The camera loves Kamala Harris.” — The Washington Post’s David Ignatius

• “When a minority rises above tough inner-city circumstances, the state religion deifies him as long as he advocates for and identifies w/his people. When someone like J.D. Vance rises above equivalent tough circumstances, he is deified only if he disavows and betrays his people.” — Podcaster Darryl Cooper

• “It is absolutely patriotic to burn an American flag.” — Democratic strategist Keith Boykin, during a CNN panel discussion

• “Kamala Harris made me feel like it’s finally morning in America. Everyone who cares about the rule of law and America’s indispensable role in the world should vote for Harris and Walz. I will.” — Former FBI Director James Comey

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• A City Journal piece on the staggering amount of money New York City is spending on illegal migrants.

• “Real Estate Shopping for the Apocalypse,” from The New Yorker.

• GQ: “How To Make Millions As a Professional Whistleblower”

• A New York Times story about an abolish-the-police nonprofit founder who took advantage of post-George Floyd fundraising largesse to enjoy a lavish lifestyle while producing nothing.

• Quillette: “Preventing the Next Wave of Progressive Radicalism—Before It Arrives”

• American Affairs: “Should We Save Newspapers from Google?”

• An Atavist story about how “Klamath County, Oregon, is the perfect place to go if you don’t want to be found—and the worst place to be if someone threatens your life.”