It’s Monday, September 9, and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large.
Today: The media can’t decide who is winning the election, the keys to victory in the Keystone State, River Page asks: Is “Reagan” being trashed for being conservative—or is it just plain bad? And more. But first: H.R. McMaster on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump—and the dangers we face.
From America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to the October 7 massacre, the last four years have brought more than their fair share of humiliations and setbacks for the United States and its allies.
Sometimes the headlines give the impression of a whole world spiraling out of control. And sometimes that chaos reveals itself to be something more sinister.
Not a disorienting blur of random chaos but a coordinated effort by the West’s enemies to undermine America and its allies. The latest tell: the news that Iran has sent hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia. Ukrainian officials fear the shipment of the short-range missiles means that Russia’s long-range hypersonic missiles will be freed up to strike targets deep in Ukraine.
Cooperation like this is presumably what Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Christopher Cavoli had in mind when he warned in April that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea make up an axis of aggressors that are “more cohesive and dangerous than any threat the United States has faced in decades.”
How did the threat become so acute? And, faced with these threats, how safe are we given the obvious decline of our commander in chief? These are the questions answered in The Free Press today by General H.R. McMaster.
While many prominent figures are taking sides ahead of Election Day, McMaster isn’t carrying water for either candidate. He’s just published a book about working for Trump (it is not flattering to his old boss). McMaster argues that the rising threat from this axis of aggressors did not occur in a vacuum. It happened because of a White House biased toward “containment,” “de-escalation,” and the wrongheaded assumption that war and violence are based on “miscalculation” rather than aggression. “Never have I been more concerned about the fate of my nation—and of the free world,” the general writes.
Read H.R. McMaster on the weakness of the commander in chief.
The Critics Hate Reagan. The People Love It. Who Is Right?
Reagan, the new biopic of the former president starring Dennis Quaid, has a cavernous “Rotten Tomatoes” gap: a critics’ score of just 20 percent, but a 98 percent score with the moviegoing public. Is this a case of sneering critics missing the point of a movie with a conservative message? Or is Reagan just bad? We sent River Page to his local multiplex to investigate. Read his review here.
With the all-important first presidential debate between Harris and Trump just a day away, the vice president is hunkered down in Pittsburgh preparing for the showdown—and making the occasional run to the store for an extensive array of seasonings. Donald Trump’s camp, meanwhile, says he doesn’t need to do too much prep. He does “dozens of unscripted interviews and can stand with reporters unscripted for hours at a time,” one adviser told ABC. “He doesn’t need staff cheat codes to go into a debate.” Trump himself told Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week that his plan was to let Harris talk.
The White House is reportedly reassessing its strategy after months of failed attempts to broker a hostage release and cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. "It’s a rough period. People at the White House are sad, upset, and frustrated. We are still working but we are not about to present anything imminently,” one U.S. official told Axios. The target of much of the frustration is Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who, per Axios, officials “feel. . . doesn’t want a deal right now.” Exactly what it is about the fundamentalist sociopath that makes him such a tricky negotiating party remains unclear.
Dick Cheney, following his daughter’s lead, has endorsed Kamala Harris. Not long ago, Cheney endorsing a Democrat for president would have been unimaginable. It’s a reminder of the astonishing breadth of the anti-Trump coalition: Rashida Tlaib and Dick Cheney support the same presidential candidate. It is also the latest example of the “establishment versus rebels” dynamic that lurks beneath the surface of so much in this election. Establishment Republicans backing Harris, like the Cheneys, are the mirror image of those misfit former Democrats who have endorsed Trump: figures like RFK Jr., former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, and the likes of the singer M.I.A. and the quasi-canceled comedian and actor Russell Brand. One person who says he won’t be taking a side: former president George W. Bush. His office said he has no plans to endorse anyone this time around.
Morale is low and desertion is on the rise in Ukraine’s military. CNN spoke to six Ukrainian commanders and officers who are, or were until recently, fighting or supervising units in the area. “All six said desertion and insubordination are becoming a widespread problem, especially among newly recruited soldiers.”
The BBC has breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, a new study has found. The report concluded that the BBC had “repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism,” and its authors reserve the harshest criticism for the BBC’s Arabic channel. One contributor, Mayssaa Abdul Khalek, is said to have called for “death to Israel” and defended a journalist who tweeted “Sir Hitler, rise, there are a few people that need to be burned.” One former BBC executive said there was now an “institutional crisis” at the UK’s state-funded broadcaster.
Italian world number-one Jannik Sinner beat Taylor Fritz, the American with the Instagram girlfriend, in straight sets to win the U.S. Open Sunday. Fritz’s defeat extends the 21-year major title drought for American men.
Who’s Winning? The Media Isn’t Sure
Kamala Harris’s brat summer appears to be over. A New York Times/Harris poll (one of the most respected surveys out there) published yesterday showed her trailing Trump by one point nationwide. It was the latest sign that the Democratic candidate’s momentum has stalled.
Also harshing Harris’s vibe: Nate Silver’s election model, which continues to tick toward Trump, and now gives the former president a 67 percent chance of winning. A week ago Trump’s chances were at 56 percent. (If you’re not already subscribing to the election guru and our independent media brother-in-arms, fix that here.)
In an interview with The New Yorker, elections analyst David Wasserman said he thought that after a month and a half of favorable coverage for Harris the race was “very, very close” but that he’d “probably rather be Trump than Harris.”
But in much of the media, the narrative hasn’t caught up with reality. Over the weekend, Politico described the upcoming debate as Trump’s “best chance to regain his footing in the presidential race”—a framing that completely ignores Harris’s stalled momentum. Meanwhile, the Associated Press seems determined to keep things strictly vibes-based:
Some Democrats are aware of—and worried about—the disconnect between “vibes” (surely the most overused word of the summer) and reality. In an interview with Puck’s John Heilemann, former Obama strategist Dan Pfeiffer said that “if you polled the press corps and most Democrats who are not working for the Harris-Walz campaign, 85 percent would say that Kamala Harris would win if the election were held today. If you ask the people who are actually deep in the numbers and paying really close attention to what’s happening in the battleground states, it’s closer to 50-50. And I think it’s very possible that if the election were held today, Trump would win.”
Trump underestimated by hubristic and complacent Democrats lulled into a false sense of security by a sympathetic media? Where have we heard that story before?
All Eyes on Pennsylvania
Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia—when Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will meet for the first time—will be the most important moment in the presidential election since the Biden-Harris switcheroo. And it will take place in the most important state in this election. The road to victory gets a lot twistier for either candidate if they lose Pennsylvania. But the Keystone State is especially key for Harris. No Democrat has won the White House without Pennsylvania since 1948. And things couldn’t be closer there: The RealClearPolitics average has the race tied.
I asked Charles McElwee, editor of RealClearPennsylvania and the go-to guy on all things PA-related, to break down the electoral dynamics in the state for me. Here’s what he said:
Pennsylvania’s political map is a chiaroscuro, an uneven contrast of voting demographics that keep it persistently unpredictable. The state has changed dramatically since 2016, when Trump won here thanks to disillusioned voters who often voted Obama twice, held no love for the GOP, but embraced his message on economics, immigration, and foreign policy. Since that election, the state has grown more suburban, fueled by the healthcare sector, with new town-like developments rising in cornfields in places like the Harrisburg area and Chester County, once a GOP stronghold but now bluer than ever. Meanwhile, statewide GOP voter registration has surged since Biden’s presidency, and has even flipped counties, such as suburban Philadelphia’s Bucks County and Luzerne County, which will have a GOP majority in voter rolls as soon as this week.
Biden wasn’t popular here, and enthusiasm for Harris isn’t exactly palpable when traveling outside of Philadelphia. It comes down to a margins battle between those suburbanites who have punished Republicans since Trump’s 2016 victory and especially post–Dobbs, versus working-class voters living in regions—including pockets around Philadelphia—now shaped by warehouse jobs but also small businesses that first endured Covid shutdowns, then the labor shortage, and then the struggle of sole proprietorship in an inflationary economy. Both voting groups harbor their own sense of discontent.
Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman.
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