Good morning. It is July 29th. It is a gray morning in New York City, opening what's supposed to be a week of more or less unbroken humidity. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Venezuela's election results are in. The incumbent president, Nicolas Maduro, reportedly won re -election with 51 .2 % of the vote, to the opposition's 44 .2%. Local and international observers reported irregularities in the balloting and the reporting of results. At moments like this, it's useful to have news reports that aren't shaped by a long -term investment in the Venezuelan right, the way the New York Times' coverage is. So where the Times online story has the headline, "Venezuela's autocrat is declared winner in tainted election," The Washington Post goes with a more judicious and persuasive, "world leaders cast doubt on Maduro's claim of victory in Venezuelan election." The story explains, "in a statement early Monday, Maduro claimed without evidence that the electoral council had been hacked from an unnamed country, causing a delay in the publication of the full results of Sunday's election. 'The demons and the devils did not want the total to be counted,' Maduro said." The post continues. "Latin American leaders across the political spectrum cast doubt on the results. Colombia's foreign minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, called for an independent verification and audit of the vote count as soon as possible. Left of center Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, described the official results as 'difficult to believe,' demanding that independent international observers be given access to the full results. 'From Chile, we will not recognize any result that is not verifiable, he wrote on X early Monday.' On the other end of the political spectrum, Argentine President Javier Mele also said he would not recognize a fraud, posting on X that 'Venezuelans chose to end the communist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro.' The far -right South American leader called on Venezuela's armed forces to defend democracy and the popular will." So let's go with yeah, the election results sound shaky. 

In the paper New York Times this morning, five columns across the top of the front page are taken up by a picture of mourners surrounding the coffin of Druze children who were killed in Israeli controlled territory by a rocket from Lebanon over the weekend. The accompanying lead news story is "diplomats race to reduce risk of a wider war." Israel blames Hezbollah and retaliates for at least 12 deaths. Hezbollah denies responsibility for the missile. The Times reports that "the Iranian foreign ministry warned Israel unforeseen consequences of any Israeli escalation while Israel's education minister Yoav Kisch called for a strong response even if it means entering into an all -out war." Inside the paper there's a report on the missile strike which hit a children's soccer field leaving a small crater about halfway between the goals. 

Back on page one the campaign desk tries to stay busy and win back some of the tone of authoritativeness that it lost by totally missing the ascension of Kamala Harris, by writing about the field of contestants who might become her vice presidential nominee. The device to make this sound heftier and more meaningful than sports mock draft analysis is to talk about how just as Kamala Harris was a state attorney general, so some of these other officials were also state attorneys general, as politicians tend to be on their way up. "Of the five or six vice presidential options currently seen as the most serious contenders," the Times writes, "two of them, governors Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Andy Beshear of Kentucky directly overlapped with Ms. Harris as attorneys general. Now governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania came into the job as she was leaving her post." So two or two and a half of the five or six people under consideration share this unremarkable background fact with presumptive presidential nominee. If you don't pay any attention to stories like this, you can just think about one vice presidential nominee, when she goes ahead and makes the pick. But somehow the test of political savviness is filling up your brain with information about four or five other people who won't matter. Over from that, "rail mogul cloaked in mystery spends millions to back Trump." It's a write -around profile of Timothy Mellon, of the attenuated but not at all impoverished Mellon Railroad dynasty, who has given 75 million dollars in support of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and 25 million in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and who the story makes clear is batshit nuts. "In the 1970s," the Times writes, "his charitable giving supported feminist and ecological causes and Native Americans. By 2014, he was posting comments in an online chatroom, comparing climate change scientists to ISIS and worrying that terrorists could attack America using donkeys coming over our southern border." Also, the Times writes, "he sued a group of explorers he had helped finance, claiming they had deliberately overlooked the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's long lost plane so they could keep raising money for their expeditions. Mr. Mellon was convinced he had seen Earhart's head on the seafloor in a cellophane bag." The Times adds he lost the case, appealed, and lost again. 

There is your ruling class. One educational part of the Trump era has been learning that old money or new money or newest money, they're all like that. 

And below that, JD Vance is getting bullied by Democrats and Jonathan Weisman and Shane Goldmacher are on it. "In less than two weeks," they write, "Mr. Vance has found himself on the defensive and his struggles have dented the sense of invulnerability that only a week ago seemed to be the overriding image of the Trump campaign." The Times can't bring itself to write about the false rumor that JD Vance wrote in his memoir about having sex with a couch, and so they're left filling space with grand nonsensical stories about imaginary pundit things. "Mr. Vance's stumbles," they write, "have come after a remarkable two weeks that saw Mr. Trump survive an assassination attempt and then rally the Republican Party and even some skeptics behind him." No, he didn't. He did not rally any skeptics behind him. Only credulous idiots and nihilists thought that his fist -bumping photo meant anything. They continue, "the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee began with calls for national unity. And though those calls were at times undercut by Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, the ticket vaulted out of the convention with an expanded lead in the polls."

Just complete bullshit end-to-end. Trump didn't undercut the unity messaging "at times," Trump was his usual jabbering vicious self. He was presented by Hulk Hogan and the cage -fighting impresario and known wife beater Dana White, and the ticket didn't go vaulting anywhere. The only noticeable convention effect in the polls was that people who hadn't heard of JD Vance before, saw JD Vance and decided they hated him and the gains met the Republican ticket did enjoy in the polls were just the continuing effects of the terminal implosion of Joe Biden's candidacy. Later on, in case you still harbored any hope that these reporters had any ability to describe simple events in terms of causes and effects, they write that Rupert Murdoch didn't want JD Vance as vice president, but Tucker Carlson did, and then elaborate, "Mr. Carlson was among Mr. Vance's fiercest behind -the -scenes boosters in the vice presidential sweepstakes. In a twist, it was some of Mr. Vance's old comments on Mr. Carlson's show that have gotten him into the most trouble." That's not a twist. Tucker Carlson likes him because he went on Tucker Carlson's show to be a pig with Tucker Carlson about the same things that Tucker Carlson is a pig about. A deeply ironic political journey from point A to point A. That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.