Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Is Donald Trump’s Save America Joint Fundraising Committee selling $34 t-shirts featuring the former president’s mug shot? Yep.
* With Trump refusing to participate in this week’s Republican presidential primary debate, there was some speculation about whether there’d be a robust viewing audience, but the ratings for Wednesday night’s event were quite good: Fox News said 12.8 million people tuned in.
* Eight Republican presidential contenders qualified to participate in this week’s primary debate. It’s likely that fewer contenders will make the stage for the second debate: With tougher standards, only six candidates of the eight candidates who took the stage on Wednesday night have met the thresholds for the next event, which is scheduled for Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.
* Last fall, the Republican National Committee filed an odd federal lawsuit challenging Google’s email spam filters. Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta dismissed the case. “This case is not over,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement, which went on to complain about “Big Tech’s anti-conservative bias” that doesn’t appear to exist in reality.
* Republican entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy appears to have gotten a bit of a fundraising boost in the wake of Wednesday night’s debate: His campaign told the Associated Press that the candidate took in $450,000 the day after the event.
* Speaking of Ramaswamy, he said at this week’s debate that the U.S. Constitution was responsible for us winning the American Revolution. That obviously didn’t make any sense, and it was an unfortunate error for someone recommending young voters pass a civics test before they’re permitted to cast ballots. * In Pennsylvania, the latest poll from Franklin & Marshall College found Trump leading his GOP rivals, but not quite by the same margins as other recent surveys elsewhere. The former president had an 18-point advantage over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the poll, 39% to 21%, followed by Ramaswamy at 9%, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott at 6%. * For what it’s worth, the same poll found President Joe Biden narrowly leading Trump in Pennsylvania in a hypothetical general election match-up, 42% to 40%. * And at Wednesday’s debate, DeSantis twice boasted that he served in Iraq “alongside U.S. Navy SEALs.” One of his former Republican congressional colleagues, Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger, wrote via social media soon after, “Ron DeSantis was a [member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps]. Nothing against JAGS, but quit trying to make people believe you were a navy seal.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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