Talking Points Memo

I have been in the absolute thick of it. As a campaign trail reporter and White House correspondent throughout Donald Trump's rise and presidency, I had a front row seat to the tsunami of paranoia, racism, and political violence that now threatens to consume American society as we knew it. The experience brought me back to TPM after nearly a decade away. 

As we are in the final stretch of our membership drive, I'd like to tell you the story of my back-and-forth journey with TPM and why I hope you will join me here. 

The best news coverage is, at its heart, confrontational. When dangerous situations arise, reporters — both literally and figuratively — run to the scene of the action. Even in less volatile scenarios, taking on those in power by investigating their life and work or asking the toughest questions we can is a fundamental part of what we do. However, in recent years, original, confrontational journalism has become all too rare. 

I first encountered TPM as a college student in the mid 2000s. It was an era defined by a court and GOP that actively resisted popular democracy. The end result was a president who launched a series of brutal foreign wars on false pretenses. On the media front, the internet explosion coupled with corporate consolidation helped contribute to the erosion of the local news ecosystem, particularly alt-weeklies like the Village Voice that were almost completely silenced. 

I wanted to be a reporter and earnestly believed it was a way to make a positive impact. I also knew, as the country hurtled deeper into war, that something was wrong. I was eager to get involved and searching for media that actually rose to the occasion. Naturally, in 2004, when the late, legendary Texas newspaper columnist Molly Ivins came to speak at my college, I eagerly jumped at the chance to attend.

For those who don't know her, Ivins was perhaps the pre-eminent chronicler of George W. Bush during his days as Texas governor. She was uniquely aware of his excesses and weaknesses and brought this unsparing understanding to her coverage of the White House. I rushed up to Ivins after the event to ask what I hoped was a smart question: which "blog" should I be reading? Back then, as quaint and ridiculous as this seems, blogs were seen as cutting edge. I hoped Ivins would be impressed by my query, but I also truly needed an answer. Ivins had one recommendation: a guy named "Joshua Micah Marshall" and his site, Talking Points Memo. 

I have read TPM ever since. The site had the confrontational approach I felt was lacking elsewhere. Just as importantly, TPM never lost its sense of humor when covering corruption and political chicanery. TPM has never been afraid to wallow in the worst of our politics, but it does so while maintaining high spirits, and, ultimately, hope. 

TPM's aggressive, honest, and irreverent ethos drew me in. After an early career that included work for some of the last gasps of some late, great local papers, I finally had a chance to join the team myself in early 2013. My first work for TPM included relentless coverage of the New Jersey "Bridgegate" scandal, a couple of campaign meltdowns, a memorable trip to Canada, strolls down congressional corruption memory lane, keeping an eye on the far right, and some of the earliest indications Donald Trump was about to blow everything up. 

I left TPM after about a year because I had opportunities to go to larger organizations that could put me out on the campaign trail. I even made it into the White House. However, getting inside the Washington press corps as the nation was gripped by Trump, a pandemic, and repeated shocks of political violence helped me see how most news organizations were ill-equipped to grapple with our new national reality. 

Throughout the Trump era, DC's political and media institutions have propped up an overhyped center. Hours of TV and miles of column inches are devoted to supposedly more traditional conservatives that are, we are told, so very different from Trump. It's a worldview that ignores how much Trump was firmly rooted in decades of xenophobia and militancy that was encouraged by the institutional right and the GOP. Most importantly, it also denies how much his MAGA movement has fully taken over the party. It's the kind of logic that fuels coverage treating the Jan. 6 plot as the product of a small cadre of hardcore Trumpers while largely ignoring the fact over a quarter of the U.S. Congress, including more than half of Republicans in the House — voted against a free and fair election.