Good afternoon, Press Pass readers. We’re heading into the final sprint towards election day. Finish strong with your sanity still intact by subscribing to Bulwark+. You’ll get every edition of this newsletter plus lots of other extras. I’ve even included a 20 percent discount on annual subscriptions—use this link and see what you think: Today’s edition takes a look at the political turbulence caused by the stock market’s Monday nosedive—how it amped up Democrats’ election anxieties, and how Republicans greeted the prospect of bad economic news for the country with something approaching jubilation. We’ll then take stock of the narratives and lines of attack that Republicans are working up to use against Kamala Harris’s new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Lastly, the feds busted a menswear guy for his participation in January 6th. All that and more, below. Republicans Would Love for Bad Things to Start HappeningPlus: The GOP casts about for a Walz narrative
We’re now within three months of election day, and as we enter the final stretch, Democrats’ anxieties are growing about the possibility of an unexpected catastrophe changing the race in its final leg. You hear this when you talk to Democrats off the record: Worries about an economic disaster. About an outbreak of war. A sudden terrorist attack. Or something even harder to anticipate—a truly unknown unknown. And while Democrats have reason to be apprehensive about such events, the flip side of that dynamic is that, while Democrats are in the White House and Kamala Harris is the sitting vice president, Republicans are incentivized to criticize good news for the country and to quietly hope for bad news that makes the Democrats look bad—even the kind of bad news that could harm their own constituents, because it could create an opening for them to launch new attacks. That’s why Monday’s sharp drop in the stock market has stoked concern among Democrats and celebration among self-proclaimed patriots in the GOP. A major, sustained dip in the stock market can be taken to signal the country is heading towards a recession, even if that’s not actually what’s happening. So when the markets tanked—even if only to levels they were at eight weeks ago, which are still significantly higher than they were at the peak of the Trump administration’s economic achievements¹—it sent Capitol Hill into a frenzy. Trump immediately celebrated the market fall.
Other Republicans followed his lead. Within hours of Trump’s posts, the House Republican campaign arm had dubbed the market dip the #KamalaCrash, and many GOP lawmakers promoted the hashtag campaign Twitter, including Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Anthony D'Esposito (R-N.Y.), and Rich Hudson (R-N.C.). For MAGA to hold on to an idealized picture of the Trump administration’s economic achievements, it’s necessary to react with hysterics to any semblance of instability under Biden’s leadership—and, by extension, Harris’s—to create a narrative of decline. But it’s hard for that sort of narrative to survive an encounter with the economic realities, which don’t typically follow tidy arcs described by politicians. Case in point, the morning after Monday’s 12 percent dip, the Japanese Nikkei rebounded 10 percent. Meanwhile, U.S. markets showed a mostly jittery response to what happened Monday, but they didn’t give signs of a larger crash. Naturally, GOP jubilation at the prospect of a market crash and follow-on recession quickly dissipated. As Republicans raised flags and shot flares, Democrats remained largely silent on the issue. That’s because there’s no political upside to drawing any attention to a market event like this, regardless of whether it turns out to be a blip or a sign of larger problems to come. Insider baitingWhile Republicans have done a lot of kayfabe panicking and scheming, the real reactions of the rich and powerful to Monday’s market turbulence will become apparent when members of Congress who regularly trade stocks eventually file their financial disclosures, which must be submitted within 45 days of each transaction. This is where members of Congress make their real money: millions of dollars every year, the result of lawmakers’ magical ability to trade more successfully than the S&P 500.² Obviously, there’s nothing actually magical about being privy to information that will move the market long before the general public, as members of Congress often are. In some cases, lawmakers can become catalysts for major market shift through their own words or actions, which makes it all the shadier that lawmakers often trade stocks in industries that are connected to their committee work. This naturally results in some remarkable, ah, coincidences. A recent example is a transaction by Rep. Michael Burgess, the top Republican on the powerful House Rules Committee and a longtime member of the committee on Energy and Commerce. On July 22, Burgess sold up to $15,000 in stock for multinational shipping company United Parcel Service (UPS). The following morning, UPS experienced its single largest tumble in company history. Fortuitous timing! Not everyone in Congress is a financial whiz. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) purchased up to $15,000 in cybersecurity company CrowdStrike at the end of June. Less than a month later, the value of that purchase fell by over a third after the company almost single-handedly crippled the air travel industry with a flawed software update that almost bricked computer terminals across the country. Greene is an exception that tests the rule, however, and the rule generally holds. If you’re wondering how all this speculative trading on the part of lawmakers whose work directly influences markets is legal, well, join the club. Under the Constitution, Congress makes its own rules, and none of 118 Congresses we’ve had so far has seen fit to limit members’ ability to trade stocks on any industry, even ones they directly oversee as part of lawmakers’ legislative duties. That said, members of Congress do occasionally get caught doing actual insider trading. Former New York Rep. Chris Collins is one example; he was convicted and later pardoned by Trump, who wasn’t about to leave the first Republican member of Congress to endorse him in 2016 out to dry. Previous bills to ban members from trading stocks have faltered, but there has been some new movement recently. In July, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed a bipartisan stock trading ban brought forward by Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and a handful of other Democrats. While opposition to a congressional stock trading ban is quiet, Ossoff and Hawley’s congressional colleagues will almost certainly not move forward with it. Many lawmakers make a lot of money playing the market. While the bipartisan Senate bill is a major step, the likelihood that the bill makes it all the way to the president’s desk this year is slim to nonexistent. Land of 10,000 takesVice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate this morning, finalizing the presumptive Democratic ticket to face off against Donald Trump and JD Vance this November. Republicans are scrambling to craft a narrative around Walz. Early indicators suggest they will frame him as a lover of crime, anarchy, and general lawlessness. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley dubbed the duo the “most radical, far-left ticket in the history of our country.” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) mused that Walz “sounds like he should be running for VP of Venezuela,” while Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) made clear to his followers that his name has a differentiating “T” before listing the reasons he believes the former command sergeant major in the Army National Guard would be a terrible vice president.
Republicans have also served up a handful of undercooked attacks, such as Vance’s suggestion that Harris passed over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro because of antisemitism, which doesn’t make very much sense, especially considering that Harris is already married to a Jewish man. Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt also issued a lengthy statement that included an attack on Walz for “embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote.” Perhaps they didn’t run that one by the top of the ticket. Walz is a pick that will satisfy nearly every corner of the Democratic party and base. For a campaign that’s capitalized on enthusiasm since its inception last month, that’s really all Democrats can ask for. From big fits to the big houseAnyone familiar with Pitti Uomo, the semi-annual menswear trade show in Florence, Italy, will know about the “Pitti Peacocks,” those hoards of flamboyantly dressed lotharios wandering the grounds in the hope of getting snapped by a street style photographer. Well, a thirsty and fashion-conscious man can’t be too careful around cameras, it turns out. Recently, an individual named Tristan Sartor, whose style of dress fits the Pitti Peacock description almost to a T, was arrested by federal authorities who were able to close their investigative file on him after spotting his unique boots in footage taken during the events of January 6, 2021. As Law and Crime reports:
Read the whole thing, and remember: Don’t try to get a fit off when you’re committing crimes. 1 The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell on Monday to about 38,000. In January of 2020—before COVID-19 ravaged the global economy—it was at about 28,000. 2 There’s even an app that allows users to tether a brokerage account to Nancy Pelosi’s transaction disclosures, automatically making the same trades she does. (There’s a slight delay built in, of course, but Pelosi does tend to file her disclosures within a few days of each transaction.) The name of the app, fittingly, is “Autopilot.” You’re a free subscriber to Bulwark+. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and ad-free and member-only podcasts, become a paying subscriber. Did you know? You can update your newsletter preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here.
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