 | By Emilio Casalicchio | | Britain's outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivers a statement after his general election defeat outside 10 Downing Street in London on July 5. | Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images
| ‘GARBLED MESS OF CONSPIRACIES’ — Political reporting — like most reporting — is a similar game across all democracies, right? It’s just asking people stuff, then writing down their responses. It’s a matter of interrogating politicians, requesting comment or chatting with sources in the hope of scoring a tidbit that blooms into a big scoop. How different could it be elsewhere? Well, as it turns out, it’s actually quite different. I’m a reporter for POLITICO Europe based in the U.K., but I landed in Washington D.C. a month ago with a mandate to write about the American presidential election. I’ve spoken to people in the small Massachusetts town named after the political epicenter of the U.K., asked Donald Trump fans in Butler, Pa., for their thoughts on British mini-MAGA Nigel Farage, and more besides. And I’ve picked up a few observations en route about how political reporting in the U.S. differs from back home in England. Here are some of them, detailed for Nightly. Americans hate the media … but love to talk: In the U.K., around one-in-ten people on the street will talk politics with a reporter. Hacks need to hang around town centers for long periods (often in the British rain) before sufficient quotes can be gathered for a given project. In the U.S. the process is much easier, because people are so damn talkative. More like nine-in-10 are willing to chat — and that’s despite most of them banging on about the media being the root of all the nation’s problems. People are really into the presidential election: Another problem with (reporter jargon alert) vox-popping voters (interviewing random citizens on the street) in Britain is finding those who know the first thing about politics. Even right before an election, numerous voters have a stunning lack of knowledge, and even tell journalists straight out: “I don’t follow it.” Some might not even be able to name the prime minister (although we’ve cycled through a lot in short succession of late). In the U.S. on the other hand, most voters seem super engaged, with opinions to last all night — even if much of it is a garbled mess of conspiracies. Voters might hold a normal conversation for a while, then slip into claims about the 2020 election being rigged, the CIA plotting against Donald Trump or the government allowing the Capitol riot to happen to damage the former president. It’s unusual to find Brits on the street who believe out-and-out batsh*t theories about their own nation, or at least those who will gladly reel them off to a reporter. The odd “Pizza-gate” enthusiast lurks among us, however. The level of misinformation is stunning: The media landscape in the U.S. is the British media turned on its head. In the U.K., it’s the papers that are balls-to-the-wall partisan, with front pages outright dunking on the parties and waging aggressive campaigns to get their readers frothing while peddling the obsessions of their proprietors. The broadcast media is far more regulated than in the U.S., and as such is more moderate — despite some new channels pushing the boundaries. In America, however, it’s the TV stations broadcasting political realities at opposite ends of the spectrum (and further still). And because it’s video, in all its dramatic technicolor, with its cast of outraged characters and a social media shareability far outstripping text, there’s little surprise the polarization among American voters has become so extreme. The terms of engagement are different: Politicos in the U.K. use the same ground rules for conversations as in D.C. But no one in Westminster knows what “off the record” means. Some reporters will quote off-record chats with paper-thin attribution, from “a friend” of a specified politician, or similar. No one knows what “background” means. Deep background? Forget it. No one has gone so far as to define these terms on a government website. So reporters in England make up their own rules. And the sources know no better. What we do in the shadows: The U.K. has a default from-the-shadows reporting culture. In the halls of Capitol Hill, conversations are assumed to be on the record unless specified otherwise. In the corridors of the U.K. parliament, it’s the opposite. Reporters must ask permission to name the speakers, and the usual response is a flat no. Attribution in government offices outside parliament isn’t much better. Government spokespeople insist the most trivial remarks cannot be attributed, or must be attributed to “a source.” Not even a person. Just a source. A classic response to a reporter’s question is: “On background: no comment.” WhatsApp with this? British politics runs on the app known as WhatsApp. D.C. needs it. The now Meta-owned instant messaging service is the blood coursing through the corridors of power in Westminster. All political plotting is done via WhatsApp groups (and sub-groups, when not all participants in the wider group can be trusted not to leak screenshots). Political correspondents from across media outlets chat logistics for briefings via a 350-strong group, and share transcripts of interviews to encourage other outlets to write up their quotes. And the app can be used in an internet browser, so messages can be written and fired out much quicker. The Americans still seem to use standard SMS for phone messaging, meaning iPhone and Android users can’t be in the same groups, while photo and video messages don’t work on some platforms. Herd instincts: Political coverage in both the U.S. and U.K. adheres to the same journalistic fundamentals. Election campaign coverage is treated like a horse race. It’s shallow, herd-like, buffeted by party talking points that are usually just noise, and far too obsessed with polls that turn out to be wrong. It’s excellent fun for us journalists. And despite the protestations, the clicks and views suggest it’s exactly what the public wants. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at ecasalicchio@politico.co.uk or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @e_casalicchio.
| | VIRGINIA GOP VOTER SUPPRESSION! — Virginia officials ask Supreme Court to allow voter purge aimed at non-citizens: Republican officials in Virginia have asked the Supreme Court to lift a lower-court order that requires the state to halt and roll back a program to remove suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls. In a filing docketed early today, state Attorney General Jason Miyares requested a stay that would head off a deadline Wednesday to restore about 1,600 people to the voter rolls who were kicked off since Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order in August stepping up the computer cross-checks. — Washington’s top election official condemns ‘act of terror’ after ballot drop boxes set on fire: A ballot drop box was lit on fire early this morning in Vancouver, Washington, destroying hundreds of ballots in a battleground House district. The incident occurred in one of the most-watched congressional races in the nation, where first-term Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is going up against Trump-endorsed GOP challenger Joe Kent in the state’s 3rd District. Gluesenkamp-Perez shocked the country in 2022 by flipping the district blue after more than a decade under Republican control. Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs called the fire an “act of terror” in a statement, saying he “will not tolerate threats or acts of violence that seek to undermine the democratic process.”
WEIRD RFK JR! — Federal ocean agency closes RFK Jr. whale carcass investigation: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not face federal charges over allegations he transported the head of a dead whale from Massachusetts to New York decades ago and kept the animal’s skull at his home. A NOAA spokesperson confirmed the agency’s Office of Law Enforcement investigation of the claim, first made by Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy in a 2012 article published in Town & Country magazine, was closed Oct. 16 after authorities “determined the allegation to be unfounded.”
| | | Entrepreneur Elon Musk cheers for former President Donald Trump at Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. | Angelina Katsanis/POLITICO
| BAD THINGS HAPPEN IN PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia is suing tech billionaire Elon Musk for giving $1 million per day to randomly chosen voters who share their contact information with his political action committee and promise to support the Constitution. The endeavor, helmed by Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC, is “indisputably an unlawful lottery,” according to the lawsuit, filed by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner today. Pennsylvania regulates lotteries heavily and lets local prosecutors sue people who run illegal ones. The giveaways also run afoul of Pennsylvania’s consumer protection laws, according to the lawsuit, which says that while Musk claims winners are chosen randomly, he seems to favor people who attend Trump rallies. The lawsuit notes that Musk’s PAC says more than 280,000 Pennsylvanians have signed the petition that gives them a chance to win the money. STAYING AWAY — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp won’t be at Donald Trump’s rally in Atlanta this evening. The popular Republican governor has no plans to attend, according to a person familiar with Kemp’s schedule, speaking to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity to discuss scheduling plans. After Trump sought to bury the hatchet with Kemp in recent months, Kemp appeared beside Trump three weeks ago at a Hurricane Helene briefing in Valdosta, Georgia, and has helped raise money for the former president. However, he has not attended any Trump campaign events. REPUBLICANS PROFESSED OUTRAGE, BUT TOOK NO ACTION WHEN TRUMP WITHHELD $$$ FROM PUERTO RICO & TOSSED PAPER TOWELS! PHONY OUTRAGE BECAUSE THEY'RE UP FOR ELECTION! MSG BLOWBACK — Republicans moved quickly to distance themselves from remarks disparaging Puerto Rico made on Sunday by a comedian at the Madison Square Garden rally for Donald J. Trump, a reflection of growing party concern that fallout from the event could hurt Mr. Trump with a critical voting constituency in the final days of this campaign. Mr. Trump made no mention of the comedian who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” when he took the stage Sunday, following a long procession of warm-up speakers. DID TRUMP POST OUTRAGE ON HIS CRAPPY MEDIA? DEDICATED STAFF TRYING TO PROTECT DIAPER DON! After the event, Mr. Trump’s campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Trump did not approve of those remarks made at his rally. “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” said Danielle Alvarez, a senior campaign adviser. Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, told reporters today that the rally “fans the fuel of hate and division.”
| | RUSSIA-FRIENDLY — The pro-Russia bloc at the heart of Europe is forecast to grow in 2025. Kremlin-friendly Central European leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico are set to be joined next year by a familiar face: Former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who is surging again in national polls ahead of parliamentary elections. While Babiš, a billionaire political chameleon, is less ideologically rooted than Orbán or Fico, he has tilted his party firmly to the right and is echoing rhetoric by his counterparts in Hungary and Slovakia. Just like Orbán, Babiš says that if Donald Trump were U.S. president there would be no Russian war in Ukraine, and believes that an electoral victory by the Republican candidate in November would ensure peace. And like Fico, the Czech mogul has previously signaled a preference for reducing support for Ukraine as it resists the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion. IN THE BANK — The European Union has set aside hundreds of millions of euros to grow companies working on critical technologies, such as microchips and quantum technology. A new scale-up scheme is set to get the green light early this week, with a budget of €300 million for next year, according to a draft plan seen by POLITICO. The total budget for the next three years — until the end of the EU’s current budget — amounts to €900 million. With the fund, the European Commission aims to dissuade the bloc’s tech companies from tapping non-EU funds when they want to expand their operations significantly after their initial build-out. The United States, for example, is known to have far larger scale-up funds than Europe.
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10,000 The number of troops that the United States now says North Korea has sent to aid Russia, some of whom are already moving toward the front lines near the Ukrainian border, the Pentagon warned today. That’s up from earlier estimates of about 3,000. |
| | | TIME FOR SOME GAME THEORY — In the midst of the pandemic, a photograph went viral — a 93-year-old Korean woman, sick with Covid and Alzheimer’s, playing the game Go-Stop with her nurse, a 29-year-old woman in a hazmat suit to protect from infection. The photo, people argued, was another piece of evidence for one of the ways in which playing games can help people get into a routine or even maintain their mental acuity during stressful situations. That’s certainly one of their benefits. But games can also help people escape routine or think about something else other than the situation at hand. Tim Clare argues in The Guardian for the multiple ways, some contradictory, in which simple games can improve our lives.
| On this date in 2009: German Social Democratic Party faction leader Frank-Walter Steinmeier (left) and Free Democratic Party chairman and designated Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (center) congratulate German chancellor Angela Merkel (right) after she was formally re-elected as chancellor, a month after she won national elections. | Markus Schreiber/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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