Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
The story of National Security Adviser Mike Walz’s unbelievable SNAFU in adding an Atlantic journalist to a Signal group chat where top government officials spelled out their live-action war plans actually seems to be breaking through.
Some combination of the utter buffoonery, text screengrabs and the 21st century of it all has given the story staying power. It’s showing up in polls, data, even online ad campaigns.
The ephemeral news cycle got prolonged life, too, when the Trump administration both attacked the journalist and dismissed the contents of the conversation as unimportant and unclassified, prompting The Atlantic to call the officials’ bluff and release the texts in a followup story.
For Democrats, it was manna from heaven, falling right into their laps. Some, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), called for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to be fired. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) trolled Republicans with a blown-up version of emojis Walz used in the chat held aloft at a committee hearing. Unelecteds got in on the action too, Pete Buttigieg making a viral TikTok lambasting those involved.
Democrats, much to the base’s chagrin, haven’t failed to make stories of Trump’s malfeasance break through as much as they’ve shied away from trying. Shrugging at the callousness of the American people and the speed of the news cycle, they haven’t put themselves in the driver’s seat of a Trump scandal.
Democrats lack committee chairmanships and an enormous media apparatus dedicated to spreading their PR and propaganda. But that does not make them powerless. They could try to put a Benghazi-like tail on this thing, holding shadow hearings, campaigning for firings or resignations, making Republican-like hay out of the administration’s endangerment of the troops. As this story proves, Democrats are as bad as the rest of us at knowing which particular story will resonate outside of political circles.
Will they sink their teeth into this one, using what power they have to sling it around the administration’s neck? Or will they content themselves with a glancing blow, hoping, as the news cycle trudges on, that Trump will again screw up in a salient way, freeing them to just sit back and wait?
— Kate Riga
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
- Hunter Walker weighs in on Ivanka Trump’s Brazilian Jiu Jitsu skills and the sport’s recent association with the Trump family and, more generally, Trump-adjacent right wing politics.
- Emine Yücel reports on Elon Musk’s often unwanted forays into other countries’ politics, which this week saw him turn toward Turkey.
- In light of Trump’s new elections-related executive order, Khaya Himmelman reminds us of the ways in which Trump and his allies have elevated the myth of widespread non-citizen voting in the past year, claiming a virtually nonexistent problem is endemic.
Let’s dig in.
Grappling With The Trumps
Ivanka Trump has apparently learned a multitude of ways to make you submit to her.
The president’s daughter and former adviser participated in a video where she showed off her Brazilian Jiu Jitsu skills. Those include various arm bars, throws, takedowns, and joint locks. The clip was released on social media last Friday by Trump and her jiu jitsu academy, Valente Brothers, which is based in Florida.
In the footage, Trump participates in a series of staged drills that include striking and knife defense. While it’s a bit hard to gauge her talent from the video, Trump is sporting a blue belt, which typically takes about two years to learn.
(Your humble TPM correspondent is also a blue belt. It is a fun and tough sport. I am currently nursing a broken pinky toe after having a slight mishap on the mats Monday).
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which has gone by a few names, was created after a Japanese Mitsuyo Maeda traveled to South America. He began training students in Brazil including Carlos and Hélio Gracie, who eventually developed their own self defense system based on his lessons. Their art, which they first dubbed “Gracie jiu jitsu,” is focused on ground fighting including choking and various locks designed to incapacitate opponents.
Trump, who did not respond to a text message from TPM inquiring about her skills, has been studying at the Valente Brothers school in Florida. The brothers and their family have a long history in the art that stretches back to Hélio Gracie himself. Incidentally, Trump is not the only famous student at the academy. Supermodel Gisele Bündchen has also studied with the brothers and began a romantic relationship with one of them, Joaquim Valente, soon after her divorce from former NFL star Tom Brady.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has recently been associated with Trump-adjacent right wing politics. Participation in the sport was a major feature of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s image makeover that preceded his post-election re-engineering of the social media platform to make it more friendly to the right wing. BJJ is also a prominent part of the Donald Trump-friendly podcasting boom, an association that, in part, stems from Joe Rogan’s roots as a broadcaster in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Ivanka is not the only member of the Trump family who has been practicing jiu jitsu. Her brother Eric sends his children to another academy in Florida and one of them, Luke Trump, has participated in competitions. In interviews, Ivanka has also said that her children and her husband, former White House adviser Jared Kushner, train as well.
Kushner did not respond to a text message asking about his belt level.
— Hunter Walker
The U.S. Is Not Enough For Him: Musk Continues To Throw His Weight Around In Other Countries’ Politics
Billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, suspended several accounts belonging to opposition figures in Turkey amid widespread protests and demonstrations sparked by the arrest of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
İmamoğlu was arrested just hours before he was nominated to be the presidential candidate for the main opposition party, CHP.
The majority of the accounts suspended belonged to grassroots activists, sharing basic information on the demonstrations, including locations for gatherings, protesting the arrest.
It’s quite an ironic move from the self-proclaimed protector of free speech — but it certainly is not the first time the richest man in the world injected himself into the politics of countries beyond the U.S.
Several European leaders have also accused him of interfering in their countries’ politics, and promoting dangerous figures through his social media platform.
Musk has recently waged a personal campaign online against the British government and rallied for far-right activists in that country to be released from prison. He also endorsed and promoted the far-right AfD party in Germany, though it has been associated with a string of scandals relating to some of its members’ views on the Nazi era. He even appeared virtually at a campaign event for AfD in January.
We at TPM, of course, have been closely covering him and the Trump administration’s purge of the U.S. government and federal workers. But his involvement in U.S. electoral politics also hasn’t ceased: He is spending big and even coming up with new, questionable schemes to elect his preferred candidate to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court next week.
— Emine Yücel
Trump Resurrects Myth Of Non-Citizen Voting
President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on elections revives a longtime Republican myth about voter fraud that the MAGA movement deployed in the lead up to the 2024 election as a way to prepare to cry voter fraud if Trump hadn’t won: the false claim of widespread non-citizens voting.
In a 12-page executive order, which experts have described as an overt overreach of presidential power, Trump is trying to mandate that voters provide documentary proof of citizenship in federal elections — something that he does not have the authority to do.
“…in recent years, the Department of Justice has failed to prioritize and devote sufficient resources for enforcement of these provisions,” the EO reads. “Even worse, the prior administration actively prevented States from removing aliens from their voter lists.”
The requirement to provide proof of citizenship, however, is not only outside of the president’s purview, but it also perpetuates the conspiracy theory that non-citizens vote en masse on behalf of Democrats in federal elections. As previously reported by TPM, it is extremely rare for non-citizens to vote in elections, it’s already illegal, and there is no evidence of any kind to suggest that it’s a problem.
In an interview with TPM, David Levine, Senior Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, described the non-citizen voting narrative and this documentary proof of citizenship requirement as “a solution in search of a problem.”
States already have safeguards in place to protect against non-citizen voting and there are steep penalties in place for non-citizens who did attempt to cast ballots. A proof of citizenship requirement serves to sow seeds of distrust in the election system, and could also have the effect of disenfranchising eligible voters who do not have documentary proof of citizenship readily available.
— Khaya Himmelman
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