When Charlie Kirk was shot, according to Regime Change, participants in a Signal chat that included Kirk, Trump’s failson, and top Trump officials asked Kirk whether he was okay — which is either a testament to how continuous this Signal group was, or the participants’ own inability to imagine harm to anyone on it.
Around 2:30 p.m. in Washington, on Wednesday, September 10, a group chat on Signal buzzed with some vague but unsettling news. Andy Surabian, a close friend and advisor to both the vice president and the President’s oldest son, shared a link about a shooting at a Turning Point USA event in Utah where Charlie Kirk was speaking. Charlie was their friend. The replies came in fast.
Hey Charlie, is this true? Charlie, are you OK?
The group included not only Kirk and Surabian, JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr., but several senior White House and administration officials and other influential operatives. Kirk was normally a chatty participant. Now he was silent, and his friends felt a knot in their stomachs.
Trump, true to form, at first responded with the grief of a sociopath who had lost someone useful to him.
Man. Charlie,” Trump said. “He’s such a good guy. He really helped me out in 2024. He got the youth vote.”
Then Trump turned to paranoia.
Nobody knew anything about the gunman at that stage, but Trump was already describing the assassination as a group effort, using the pronoun they. “We need to be looking at these people,” he told his aides. “They’re killing our people. They tried to kill me.”
The rest of that chapter describes how Stephen Miller used the murder as a convenient excuse to criminalize leftists (while, in several places, the authors exhibited a stunning inability to distinguish propaganda from reality themselves).
Slogging through this book made me realize something I had been puzzling: Trump’s schedule this week, starting with a stand-in event for 9/11 at which Trump told lies so shameless they might actually garner more than a day of criticism.
Trump and his flunkies paid their tribute to 9/11 three days early.
One reason he did a stand-in event is obvious. Trump will attend the Irish Open this weekend, which will be at Doonbeg, an hour from my house (I won’t be there, or here).
His presence will create significant difficulties for the event, both for security reasons and protests, which sucks for the actual golfers.
But Trump won’t be at Doonbeg on the 11th, the actual 9/11 anniversary. He’ll be in Dublin, among other things, meeting with Irish President Catherine Connolly, a leftist whose sister was snatched from a flotilla to support Gaza this spring. Taoiseach Michael Martin sounded … unconvincing when claiming this would all be very “grand” (which can have a connotation like, “bless your heart” does in the South).
The trip to Dublin is likely cover; until fairly recently he was still considering appearing at the 9/11 commemoration, until he learned he could not give a speech.
President Trump is not planning to attend a ceremony in Manhattan for the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, in part because he wanted to deliver a speech and the annual event has long barred remarks, according to four people with knowledge of the events.
Mr. Trump’s team had conducted advance visits at the site and had initially signaled to officials in New York and in Washington that the president intended to visit the memorial space known as ground zero, two of the people with knowledge of the events said.
[snip]
There are other considerations that led to Mr. Trump honoring the day in Washington, including that he will depart the next day for his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, where the Irish Open tournament will take place. Leaving from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, or from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, would snarl air and motor traffic to a much greater extent than with Mr. Trump leaving from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland
But then there’s the question of the Convention, which will be in Dallas today and tomorrow. It turns out an unpopular lame duck is not a great draw for a big grift, so now the GOP is giving seats away.
The Republican National Committee is giving seats away.
Two days before Donald Trump’s midterm convention opens in Dallas, Texas, the party that promised the largest such gathering in a decade has been running a public lottery for free tickets, dangling front-row seats and VIP treatment to whoever enters.
The RNC has found itself in a tricky spot after building the event around Trump, whose approval rating is the lowest of his political career. A number of Republicans have also decided to skip the convention rather than be seen on camera celebrating an unpopular president who could drag down their prospects of re-election.
[snip]
A text message sent to party donors as recently as last week encouraged them to ask for “FREE TICKETS,” while some GOP operatives were told last week that there are still seats available for the event. Donors who click on the text message link were entered into a lottery that would also bestow a front-row seat upon one lucky winner.
And for those willing to pay, $250,000 will get a donor a seat at a roundtable with Trump —and a commemorative photo if they want to shell out another $88,600.
For $20,000, donors get to be “honorary delegates” and receive a Texas shirt and cowboy hat.
But many of the higher-profile potential attendees have already made public plans to skip the entire thing, with some balking at the $25,000 cost of attending and others annoyed at the prospect of spending days away from the campaign trail for what will amount to a multi-day rally for someone who will never appear on a ballot again.
Then there’s the problem that the unpopular lame duck has scheduled himself to compete with the first NFL football games.
Driving the news: The GOP’s Sept. 9-10 convention in Dallas will go head-to-head with the two opening games of the NFL season, which are expected to draw huge audiences each night.
- Some GOP operatives are privately incredulous that a convention designed to draw attention to the party’s fall candidates was scheduled opposite the NFL.
- They fear the GOP will struggle to persuade voters — particularly men, who powered President Trump’s 2024 comeback — to choose politics over football.
The convention’s opening night will overlap with the New England Patriots playing the Seattle Seahawks in a Super Bowl rematch. It will be on NBC and its streaming platform, Peacock. In Dallas that night, Vice President Vance will deliver the convention’s keynote speech.
- The convention’s second night will coincide with a rivalry matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams, which will be streamed on Netflix. Trump is the keynoter in Dallas that night.
Maggie Haberman attributed the timing conflict to inattention.
These people are busy. But they’re not too busy to consider this detail (from Axios, above).
Organizers also are planning dramatic moments, with planned commemorations to mark the one-year anniversary of pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The one way this schedule makes sense is that Trump prioritized golf and Charlie Kirk over 9/11.
That’s not remotely surprising, mind you.
But don’t be surprised if Trump goes full Horst Wessel again.
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