Evil clown Trump
I had another sleepless night last night. It seems as if I have insomnia every 2-3 days; then I end up feeling exhausted for a couple of days and having to take naps to make up for the lost sleep. Of course it’s Trump’s fault. I didn’t sleep well during his first term, and now that I know what to expect–chaos, drama, and malevolence–I’m pretty sure my sleep will continue to be disturbed. Anyway, I don’t have much energy today. I just hope I don’t fall asleep on my computer keyboard.
Here’s the latest on Trump’s nightmarish Cabinet picks.
Josh Gerstein at Politico: Vance says Trump is interviewing FBI director replacements.
President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to end business-as-usual at the Justice Department apparently include replacing FBI Director Christopher Wray, Vice President-elect JD Vance indicated in a social media post on Tuesday.
Vance revealed he and the president-elect were conducting interviews for the crucial FBI position in a since-deleted post on X. The post was responding to criticism the vice president-elect received for missing a Monday Senate vote that confirmed one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees to the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“When this 11th Circuit vote happened, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director,” Vance wrote. “I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45. But that’s just me.”
Trump nominated former federal prosecutor and Justice Department official Christopher Wray as FBI director in 2017 after abruptly firing his predecessor, James Comey.
However, in recent years, Trump and many in his orbit have soured on Wray, alleging that he hasn’t done enough to root out alleged corruption and political bias at the law enforcement agency. They also fault Wray for allowing his agents to participate in the court-ordered search at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 that led to Trump’s prosecution on charges of hoarding classified documents and obstruction of justice.
It’s looking like Trump will nominate Kash Patel as FBI director. Patel is the guy who defended Trump in the stolen documents scandal, claiming that Trump could declassify any document by just thinking about it.
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump loyalist Kash Patel in contention to be named FBI director.
Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up….
Trump has a special interest in the FBI, having fired James Comey as director in 2017 over his refusal to close the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then complaining about perceived disloyalty from Wray.
Clown Torture by Bruce Nauman
Patel’s continued position as a top candidate for the role makes clear Trump’s determination to install loyalists in key national security and law enforcement positions, as well as the support Patel has built up among key Trump allies.
The push for Patel – who has frequently railed against the “deep state” – has come from some of the longest-serving Trump advisers, notably those close to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, a faction that got Trump’s personal lawyers picked for top justice department roles.
That faction has also suggested to Trump in recent days that if Patel gets passed over for the director role, he should be given the deputy FBI director position, one of the people said – a powerful job that helps run the bureau day to day and is crucially not subject to Senate confirmation.
Click the link to read more about Patel. Basically, he’s a whack job and utterly loyal to Trump.
As everyone knows Trump has nominated Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. Here’s the current drama over the pick.
NOTUS: Trump Is Calling Senators on Behalf of Matt Gaetz. It’s Not Going Well.
As Republicans circle the wagons around Matt Gaetz and his nomination to be attorney general, Donald Trump and his surrogates have started calling GOP senators to feel them out on the confirmation battle.
The calls are not going well.
According to three sources familiar with the conversations, Trump and his team are receiving an overwhelmingly negative reaction with regard to Gaetz. One of the sources told NOTUS that multiple senators have even told Trump and his team they won’t be voting to confirm.
There has been a healthy amount of skepticism about Gaetz becoming attorney general since the moment Trump announced his nomination. But the recent controversy over an Ethics Committee report that Gaetz dodged by resigning from Congress has only compounded the problems.
“This fake news will age poorly when Matt Gaetz is sworn in as the Attorney General,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a Trump transition spokesperson.
Given the conversations, there’s growing doubt that Gaetz can actually be confirmed — either by the Senate or through a recess appointment.
“Matt Gaetz is toxic among House Republicans. Among Senate Republicans, he is radioactive,” one of the sources told NOTUS.
GOP senators themselves have intimated that Gaetz will have to go through the normal confirmation process and they have expressed that to Trump.
Will Steakin at ABC News: Gaetz sent over $10K in Venmo payments to 2 women who testified in House probe, records suggest.
The House Ethics Committee obtained records, including a check and records of Venmo payments, that appear to show that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who were later witnesses in sexual misconduct probes conducted by both the House and the Justice Department, according to documents obtained by ABC News.
The Venmo records show that between July 2017 and late January 2019, Gaetz — who was first elected in 2016 — allegedly made 27 Venmo payments totaling $10,224.02 to the two witnesses, who were over the age of 18 at the time.
Scary Clown, by Jennifer Anthony
The payments, which sources said were displayed during closed-door testimony, ranged from $100 to more than $700 each….
ABC News previously reported that House investigators had subpoenaed Venmo for Gaetz’s records and had been showing them to witnesses, asking if they were for sex or drugs. The Venmo records totaling over $10,000 in payments were shown to the witnesses, who testified that some of the payments were from Gaetz and were for sex, a source familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
Gaetz, who was tapped last Wednesday by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as attorney general in the incoming administration, resigned from the House immediately following Trump’s announcement, just days before the House Ethics Committee was to set to consider releasing a report on its investigation into the Florida congressman, according to sources.
Michael Kaplan at CBS News: “Unknown and unauthorized third party” has gained access to Matt Gaetz depositions, source says.
An “unknown and unauthorized third party” has gained access to two dozen depositions of witnesses tied to the various investigations into former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, CBS News has learned.
The leaked materials are part of a civil defamation case filed by Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist who is close to Gaetz. These materials include the sworn deposition of the minor with whom Gaetz allegedly had sex.
According to a source familiar with the matter and an email viewed by CBS News, the person who gained access went by the name “Altam Beezley.” [….]
Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and Justice Department, though federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against him last year. The Ethics panel was looking into allegations the former congressman engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other accusations….
An “unknown and unauthorized third party” has gained access to two dozen depositions of witnesses tied to the various investigations into former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, CBS News has learned.
The leaked materials are part of a civil defamation case filed by Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist who is close to Gaetz. These materials include the sworn deposition of the minor with whom Gaetz allegedly had sex.
According to a source familiar with the matter and an email viewed by CBS News, the person who gained access went by the name “Altam Beezley.” [….]
Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and Justice Department, though federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against him last year. The Ethics panel was looking into allegations the former congressman engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other accusations. But Gaetz resigned his seat in the House last week after President-elect Donald Trump announced he had selected the Florida Republican to serve as his attorney general….
Because Gaetz is no longer a House member, the Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction over him has ended.
At The New York Times, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have a theory about why Trump is offering so many insane candidates: Gaetz May Not Be Confirmed, Trump Admits. He’s Pushing Him and Others Anyway.
In his private conversations over the past few days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has admitted that his besieged choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, has less than even odds of being confirmed by the Senate.
But Mr. Trump has shown no sign of withdrawing the nomination, which speaks volumes about his mind-set as he staffs his second administration. He is making calls on Mr. Gaetz’s behalf, and he remains confident that even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington.
Clown, by Rosy Fernandez-Diaz
Mr. Trump’s choice to lead health and human services has made baseless claims about vaccines. His selection for defense secretary is a former Fox News host whose leadership experience has been questioned. His nominee for the director of national intelligence is a favorite of Russian state media.
Presidents do not normally approach cabinet selections this way. Historically, they work with their teams to figure out in advance what the system will tolerate, eliminating the possibility that skeletons in the closet of a nominee might emerge during Senate hearings.
Mr. Trump largely followed this risk-averse approach at the start of his first term. He appointed people like the four-star general Jim Mattis, who was confirmed with a 98-to-1 bipartisan vote to be Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary.
But this time, emboldened by victory and the submission of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump is innovating. He is using an approach that has been discussed in the past for judicial nominees, which is nominating so many extreme choices that they cannot all be blocked. The strategy has never been used for cabinet picks.
It is possible that enough Republican senators are willing to risk their careers to oppose Mr. Gaetz, although it is unclear what the backup plan would be should Mr. Gaetz falter. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and pick for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, is seen as a possibility.
For a deep dive on Trump’s plans for the DOJ, check out this post by Liz Dye at Public Notice: Trump’s corruption of the DOJ goes much deeper than Gaetz.
Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is a giant middle finger to anyone who believes in the rule of law. But his nominees for other key Justice Department positions may be both more consequential and potentially more dangerous for democracy.
That’s partly because Gaetz is a lazy fool who never tried a federal criminal case and is functionally a “liberal tears” meme made flesh. It’s not that he’s too stupid to be dangerous — he’s clearly going to do his damnedest to prosecute Trump’s enemies. It’s that he’s exactly the kind of venal wastrel who publicly Venmos women for sex. He’s not the type who is going to hunker down and do the hard work of overturning democracy.
Gaetz is the polar opposite of Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, Trump’s first-term AGs, both of whom felt at least some fealty to civic institutions and the rule of law. Sessions had been a US attorney in Alabama, the Alabama AG, and and US senator. Barr was attorney general in the first Bush administration and a consummate DC insider. They were stalwart Republicans willing to do terrible things, but each man reached a point when their own personal ethics prevented them giving Trump what he demanded — for Sessions it was refusing to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, for Barr it was overturning the 2020 election — and both eventually found themselves exiled from the garden.
Perhaps Gaetz’s fecklessness may protect us in the same way that the institutionalism of Sessions and Barr protected us the last time. It’s hard to imagine someone so internet-pilled having the deftness to bury a special counsel report. But this will certainly not be the case with Trump’s personal lawyers, three of whom have already been named as high-ranking Justice Department officials….
These are men (of course they’re all white men) who have some prosecutorial experience, but not a long career of public service. They understand how institutions work, but lack any interest in ensuring that they continue to do so.
Like Gaetz, their loyalty is to Trump. But unlike Gaetz, these guys are smart enough not to make stupid mistakes.
Read the rest at Public Notice.
Clown Group, 1975, by S.J. Mulak
Trump’s outrageous nominee for Secretary of Defense may be a bridge too far for the Trump gang, after he turned out to have a sordid history with women, including sexual assault.
Nia Prater at New York Magazine’s The Intelligencer: What We Know About the Sexual-Assault Allegation Against Pete Hegseth.
Last week, Donald Trump announced that he had nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator and Army National Guard officer, to serve as secretary of Defense in his incoming administration. Hegseth’s selection was immediately met with skepticism with critics pointing to his lack of traditional military-leadership experience as well as his public push for pardoning servicemembers accused of war crimes and against women serving in combat roles.
But in the days since his nomination, it’s emerged that the conservative TV host was accused of sexual assault many years prior. Though Trump appears to be standing by his nomination, the news added another bump to Hegseth’s already rocky path to confirmation. Here’s what we know so far….
Vanity Fair reported last week that the Trump transition team had received word that Hegseth had been accused of sexual misconduct back in 2017. A source told the outlet that Trump attorneys and his newly appointed chief of staff, Susie Wiles, asked Hegseth about the incident, which he characterized as a “he-said, she-said.”
The incident allegedly took place during the 2017 California Federation of Republican Women conference in Monterey, where Hegseth was in attendance. Per the Washington Post, the transition team received a four-page memo detailing an alleged assault by Hegseth of a 30-year-old female staffer for a conservative organization at the hotel, written by a friend of the victim in question. The friend claimed that the woman, whom she only identified as “Jane Doe,” attended the conference with her husband and children, and the woman has since signed a nondisclosure agreement with Hegseth. Adds the Post:
One of [the woman’s] responsibilities at the conference was to make sure Hegseth made it back to his room and left in time the next morning for the 90-minute drive to the airport, the memo said. At some point in the evening, the complaint alleged, Jane Doe received a text from two women at the bar who told her that “Hegseth was getting pushy about his interest in taking them upstairs to his room.” Jane Doe, who was nearby, came over and talked to those two women, and after they left, she “remembered sensing that Hegseth was irritated,” the memo said.
The woman allegedly couldn’t remember everything that happened after that:
According to the memo, Jane Doe “didn’t remember anything until she was in Hegseth’s hotel room and then stumbling to find her hotel room.” The memo said that her memory of six to nine hours “was very hazy,” and that her husband was searching for her and was relieved when she finally showed up. The following day, the woman returned home and “had a moment of hazy memory of being raped the night before, and had a panic attack,” the memo said. The woman then went to the emergency room, where she received a rape-kit examination that “was positive for semen,” the memo said. The woman gave county authorities a statement about what happened, according to the memo sent to the transition team.
In a statement, the City of Monterey confirmed that the local police department investigated an “alleged sexual assault” that occurred in 2017 between 11:59 p.m. on October 7 and 7:00 a.m. on October 8 at 1 Old Golf Course Road, the location of the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel.
There’s more at the link, if you can get past the paywall.
And then there is Hegseth’s “Christian Nationalism.”
Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch: Pete Hegseth’s Plan To Create A Christian Nationalist ‘Educational Insurgency.’
When Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense, concerns were raised immediately about Hegseth’s undisguised Christian nationalism.
Hegseth, who has admitted that his multiple crusader tattoos got him “deemed an extremist” by his own National Guard unit, has deep ties to misogynistic Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson.
Clown, by Bernard Buffet
On Monday, Hegseth appeared on the “CrossPolitic” podcast, which is hosted by Toby Sumpter and Gabe Rench, both of whom are closely tied to Wilson and his church.
During the discussion about Hegseth’s book “Battle For The American Mind,” Hegseth said that he is working to create a system of “classical Christian schools” to provide the recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an “educational insurgency” to take over the nation.
“I think we need to be thinking in terms of these classical Christian schools are boot camps for winning back America,” said Sumpter.
“That’s what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation,” Hegseth agreed. “Policy answers like school choice, while they’re great, that’s phase two stuff later on once the foothold has been taken, once the recruits have graduated boot camp.”
“We call it a tactical retreat,” Hegseth continued. “We draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like, because I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan and kind of the phases that Mao [Zedong] wrote about. We’re in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate, and reorganize. And as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way.”
Rhian Lubin and Katie Hawkinson at The Independent: Trump transition team ‘quietly’ looking at alternatives to Pete Hegseth after he ‘wasn’t honest’ about past.
Donald Trump’s transition team is said to be “upset” with Pete Hegseth because he “hasn’t been honest” about the sexual misconduct allegation from his past – prompting insiders to consider other options to lead the Pentagon.
Hegseth was tapped last week to become Trump’s defense secretary but now those in the president-elect’s inner circle are “quietly preparing a list of alternative” candidates, Vanity Fair reported.
“It’s becoming a real possibility,” a source told the outlet’s special correspondent Gabriel Sherman.
The source said that the Trump team was taken by surprise after a serious sexual assault allegation against Hegseth came to light, which led Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles to question the former Fox News host on a call last week. Hegseth was never charged with a crime and denies the allegations.
“People are upset about the distraction. The general feeling is Pete hasn’t been honest,” a second source told Vanity Fair.
Maybe he can give the job to Kash Patel if he doesn’t get the FBI directorship.
Perhaps the scariest nominee so far is Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Tulsi is a flat out Russian asset, and she’s also close to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk.
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated former Representative Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created after 9/11 to remedy what American policy makers believed was a lack of coordination among the various national-intelligence agencies, and the DNI sits atop all of America’s intelligence services, including the CIA.
Gabbard is stunningly unqualified for almost any Cabinet post (as are some of Trump’s other picks), but especially for ODNI. She has no qualifications as an intelligence professional—literally none. (She is a reserve lieutenant colonel who previously served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, with assignments in medical, police, and civil-affairs-support positions. She has won some local elections and also represented Hawaii in Congress.) She has no significant experience directing or managing much of anything.
Scary Clown, Tony Rubino
But leave aside for the moment that she is manifestly unprepared to run any kind of agency. Americans usually accept that presidents reward loyalists with jobs, and Trump has the right to stash Gabbard at some make-work office in the bureaucracy if he feels he owes her. It’s not a pretty tradition, but it’s not unprecedented, either.
To make Tulsi Gabbard the DNI, however, is not merely handing a bouquet to a political gadfly. Her appointment would be a threat to the security of the United States.
Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, attempting to position herself as something like a peace candidate. But she’s no peacemaker: She’s been an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Her politics, which are otherwise incoherent, tend to be sympathetic to these two strongmen, painting America as the problem and the dictators as misunderstood. Hawaii voters have long been perplexed by the way she’s positioned herself politically. But Gabbard is a classic case of “horseshoe” politics: Her views can seem both extremely left and extremely right, which is probably why people such as Tucker Carlson—a conservative who has turned into … whatever pro-Russia right-wingers are called now—have taken a liking to the former Democrat (who was previously a Republican and is now again a member of the GOP).
On the Putin connection:
Gabbard’s shilling for Assad is a mystery, but she’s even more dedicated to carrying Putin’s water. Tom Rogan, a conservative writer and hardly a liberal handwringer, summed up her record succinctly in the Washington Examiner today:
She has blamed NATO and the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again, to the celebration of both Russian and Chinese state media), has repeated Russian propaganda claims that the U.S. has set up secret bioweapons labs in that country, and has argued that the U.S. not Russia is wholly responsible for Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship.
When she appeared on Sean Hannity’s show in 2022, even Hannity blanched at Gabbard floating off in a haze of Kremlin talking points and cheerleading for Russia. When Hannity is trying to shepherd you back toward the air lock before your oxygen runs out, you’ve gone pretty far out there.
A person with Gabbard’s views should not be allowed anywhere near the crown jewels of American intelligence. I have no idea why Trump nominated Gabbard; she’s been a supporter, but she hasn’t been central to his campaign, and he owes her very little. For someone as grubbily transactional as Trump, it’s not an appointment that makes much sense. It’s possible that Trump hates the intelligence community—which he blames for many of his first-term troubles—so much that Gabbard is his revenge. Or maybe he just likes the way she handles herself on television.
I was born soon after World War II, in 1947. I grew up in a culture with plenty of flaws, but we were patriotic, proud of our country. The notion that one day the United States would become a satellite of Russia would have been impossible to believe. And that is what has happened. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy, Jr. are Russian assets.
If they have their way, we will lose Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare. We will live with massive numbers of immigrants–both undocumented and documented–being rounded up and sent to concentration camps. We will become a nation of fascist bullies gloated at our leaders hatred and cruelty.
I guess I should be grateful that I’m old and on the way out. But I was cursed with empathy. I don’t want to live with the ugly hatred, and discrimination that is coming for my fellow Americans. As I wrote above, my early experiences led me to be a proud and patriotic citizen–even though I could see so many flaws in our culture.
I also internalized the idea that we are citizens of the world as well. I thought national security was important and alliances with other countries were imperative to the survival of our democracy. But now I know that a majority of my fellow Americans don’t care about democracy or our long-time foreign allies. A majority of Americans apparently wants our country to be allied with Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and North Korea. The majority of voters in this election appear to have no problem with the U.S. leaving NATO and Russia taking over Ukraine and then marching on through Europe if they can pull it off.
Finally, I have been reminded for the umpteenth time that a majority of my fellow Americans hate and fear women and are enraged when an “uppity woman” dares to try to win the U.S. presidency.
Well, I’m not going back. I’m almost 77 years old. I’ve had a decent life. I’d like to hang on for a few more years, but I don’t want to live in the Fourth Reich. I don’t want to live in a world without vaccines in which children once again get polio, measles and all the rest of the childhood diseases that I lived through. Hey, maybe Bobby Jr. will even bring back smallpox. Wouldn’t that be nice? If I sound bitter, it’s because I am.
Will Elon Musk really be given the power to cut government programs and fire long-term employees? He has been warning that there is going to be a period of austerity–but of course that will just be for the “little people.” Trump has promised to extend his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Will Musk and his pals succeed in replacing America’s official currency with cryptocurrency? That apparently is his goal. I know almost nothing about cryptocurrency, but that doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.
We’ll see what happens in the coming days, weeks, and months until Trump and his thugs take over. I certainly have no clue. I actually thought Kamala Harris would win and that we’d finally have a woman president. But now I know that may never happen, because Americans hate women–and the haters include plenty of self-hating women.
I’m just an old woman, and I realize that I don’t belong in today’s United States. I’m just a relic of the past, a throwback to the 1950s and 1960s. I’m just old and in the way.
Three articles, and then I’m going to go back to protecting myself emotionally and getting through this day without going insane.
This is by Jessica Valenti at Abortion Every Day: It’s Not Okay. The country may have failed us, but we won’t fail each other.
I lied to my daughter last night. As I put Layla to bed, I promised her that everything would be okay—even though I knew it wasn’t true. Of course, of course, it’s not okay. But I’m a mom, and my honesty was easily outweighed by my desire to comfort her.
Here’s what I should have told her:
It is an awful thing, how much this country hates women. It is painful, soul-crushing and impossible to understand. The knowledge that America would rather elect the world’s worst man—a racist and liar, rapist and bully—than even consider letting a woman lead is a heavy, horrible load.
I wish none of us had to bear it. But we do, and we will.
We will take the next few days to feel the full weight of that pain. To ignore or avoid it would be a mistake; glossing over grief does your body and mind a disservice, and we all need to process in our own way.
But we can’t sit with the horror for too long. We can’t let it overtake or immobilize us—because that is exactly what they want. The men who want to put us in our place, keep us in the home and humiliate us into subjugation need us to be paralyzed with fear and sadness. They are desperate for us to give up, or to bury the reality of what they’ve done in a small corner in our mind. They want us to decide that it’s easier not to put up a fight….
Women are taught our whole lives to direct that fury inwards, to quash or internalize it. We’re not going to do that today, or ever again. There are people who deserve the full scale of our outrage, and they will get it.
That’s why you’ll get up, alongside me, and do what it takes to fight back. You’ll remember that we are in the right, and that they are in the obvious, awful wrong. You’ll refuse to let them steal one more moment of your joy and hope, and decide that living your life with purpose in a country that wants you to fade away is a radical act.
I know what you’re going to say: That’s what you’ve already been doing! You’ve cared so much and worked so hard. You’re tired—I am too. How can we possibly continue on when the country fails us again and again?
We just do. Because the alternative—that we pretend this isn’t happening and let the most vulnerable among us suffer first and worst—is unthinkable.
Read the rest at the link.
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: Democracy Is Not Over. Americans who care about democracy have every right to feel appalled and frightened. But then they have work to do.
An aspiring fascist is the president-elect, again, of the United States. This is our political reality: Donald Trump is going to bring a claque of opportunists and kooks (led by the vice president–elect, a person who once compared Trump to Hitler) into government this winter, and even if senescence overtakes the president-elect, Trump’s minions will continue his assault on democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution.
The urge to cast blame will be overwhelming, because there is so much of it to go around. When the history of this dark moment is written, those responsible will include not only Trump voters but also easily gulled Americans who didn’t vote or who voted for independent or third-party candidates because of their own selfish peeves.
Trump’s opponents will also blame Russia and other malign powers. Without a doubt, America’s enemies—some of whom dearly hoped for a Trump win—made efforts to flood the public square with propaganda. According to federal and state government reports, several bomb threats that appeared to originate from Russian email domains were aimed at areas with minority voters. But as always, the power to stop Trump rested with American voters at the ballot box, and blaming others is a pointless exercise.
So now what?
The first order of business is to redouble every effort to preserve American democracy. If I may invoke Winston Churchill, this is not the end or the beginning of the end; it is the end of the beginning.
For a decade, Trump has been trying to destroy America’s constitutional order. His election in 2016 was something like a prank gone very wrong, and he likely never expected to win. But once in office, he and his administration became a rocket sled of corruption, chaos, and sedition. Trump’s lawlessness finally caught up with him after he was forced from office by the electorate. He knew that his only hope was to return to the presidency and destroy the last instruments of accountability.
Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not counseling complacency: Trump’s reelection is a national emergency. If we have learned anything from the past several years, it’s that feel-good, performative politics can’t win elections, but if there was ever a time to exercise the American right of free assembly, it is now—not least because Trump is determined to end such rights and silence his opponents. Americans must stay engaged and make their voices heard at every turn. They should find and support organizations and institutions committed to American democracy, and especially those determined to fight Trump in the courts. They must encourage candidates in the coming 2026 elections who will oppose Trump’s plans and challenge his legislative enablers….Patriotic Americans and their representatives might now make a similar commitment, but for better aims: Although they cannot remove Trump from office, they can declare their determination to prevent Trump from implementing the ghastly policies he committed himself to while campaigning.
The kinds of actions that will stop Trump from destroying America in 2025 are the same ones that stopped many of his plans the first time around. They are not flashy, and they will require sustained attention, because the next battles for democracy will be fought by lawyers and legislators, in Washington and in every state capitol. They will be fought by citizens banding together in associations and movements to rouse others from the sleepwalk that has led America into this moment.
Brian Beutler: Reflections On America’s New Autocracy.
The United States and the world will soon be in the hands of mercurial, vindictive, greedy men with scores to settle and few checks on their power.
Perhaps there’s some solace in that word “mercurial.” Who knows what Donald Trump, the 78 year old former president and current president-elect, will choose to do with his time and authority? Maybe some semblance of stability can be salvaged through the fact that he mostly just wants to be the center of attention.
But I don’t take much solace at all. First, the people who’ve attached themselves to Trump know this about him, and they are ambitious. They have already reasoned that they’ll be empowered to fill all the gaps in his attention, and their ranks include corrupt oligarchs, conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, religious extremists, and fascists. Think Trump might ultimately not care that much about abortion? Well, the people serving under him do, and he won’t be checking their work….
We should do our best to accept—serenity-prayer style—that he got away with trying to overturn the 2020 election, and with his mass theft of government secrets at the end of his first term. Those cases will disappear very soon. And we can infer from experience what he’ll do about the other, relatively limp efforts, to hold him accountable under the law.
He is meant to be sentenced in New York later this month for almost three dozen felony convictions. Do we really think a state trial-court judge will order Trump to prison? Will he sentence Trump to anything at all? Defer sentencing for four years? And what if Trump decides he wants that case—and all the state-based legal jeopardy he faces—to go away? Will he demand clemency from Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY)? Will she give it to him? If she does not, will he promise to retaliate against the state of New York with abuses of federal power?
Just like that—before he’s sworn in, before he can pardon the January 6 insurrectionists—we’re tumbling down the slope. Because we live in an autocracy now.
Just how repressive and lawless ours is remains to be seen. Things won’t always feel completely hopeless. Some vestiges of checks and balances, equal justice under law, and the old rules of political backlash will pop up now and again to stymie Trump. There’s at least some uncertainty surrounding his stamina for further conflict—I mean, he won, right? Isn’t that enough?
But Trump has never rested on his laurels, and I suspect these inhibitions will melt away. The elites and institutions who might wish to resist him will find themselves bedeviled by a collective action problem. It is in their common interest that Trump not transform the United States in to a fascist kleptocracy, or even just an Orbanist one, but it’s in their individual interest to let someone else stand in his way. They are atomized and overpowered and perhaps they can make out well if they go along with him.
Media, tech, and other corporate behemoths are all likelier to succumb to these bad incentives than they are to push back, giving Trump de facto control over much more than the federal government. Do they want tariff relief or a free hand in their markets? Their competitors hobbled? Better pay tribute!
And so on. I think we all know what is likely to be coming our way in 2025.
I’m usually optimistic, but I’m not feeling that way today. I just hope that everyone who has been part of our blogging community over the years is hanging in there and taking care of themselves. I love you all.
“I seen it on Fox News so it must be true.” John Buss, @repeat1968
It’s finally here, and I’m so ready, but I would feel safer if I knew the outcome. I’m pretty sure the women of America have got this. I also know anyone who values their freedom, and the girls and women in their lives are doing their best, too. This headline caught my attention. It’s from The Daily Beast. “Teary-Eyed John Oliver Begs Reluctant Voters to Back Kamala Harris. The late-night host sent an emotional message to viewers in a passionate monologue days before the election.” My Discord Kamala volunteer channel has been beeping constantly with requests to call just a few more folks in the Swing States. I think everyone is trying to help in their own way because we all remember how awful DonOld and his cult can be. Sean L. McCarthy writes about John Oliver’s teary plea. I think it’s likely he’s higher up on the Project 2025/DonOld’s revenge list than I am.
Fighting back tears, John Oliver choked up Sunday night while urging undecided and reluctant voters to turn out Tuesday to elect Kamala Harris as president.
“What am I going to be feeling on Wednesday? And is there anything I’m going to wish I’d said right now?” Oliver said at the start of his impassioned 10-minute closing monologue on Last Week Tonight.
Oliver said he supports Harris’ proposals to expand Medicare for long-term elder care, as well as expanding reproductive freedoms and boosting incomes for poor Americans. He also acknowledged that several episodes in this 11th season of his late night HBO show already have warned of the danger of a second Trump term and the policies spelled out in Project 2025. “All of that is why a bunch of our stories this year have ended with me telling you to vote against Donald Trump,” Oliver said. “But to be clear, I am voting for Kamala Harris. And I think you should, too.”
Oliver directed his Sunday night plea to those voters “rightly furious” about the Biden administration’s “indefensible” policy toward the war in Gaza. “Look, I get why this is so difficult, and I know there are some who won’t vote for Harris under any circumstances because of this issue,” he said, adding: “I wish Harris had done more to reach out to you, beyond sending Bill Clinton to basically scold you this week. That didn’t seem remotely helpful to me, and honestly, felt a bit like bullying.”
But he also pointed to Muslim and Arab voices “who have also wrestled hard with this question and arrived at the conclusion that despite their pain, to vote for Harris.” Such as Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, one of the Palestinians who had hoped to speak at this summer’s DNC but was rebuked. Oliver played a TikTok from Romman where she explained her reasons for sticking with Harris and the Democrats. “It’s honestly worth watching the whole thing,” Oliver said.
I know what it feels like to think you should’ve done something more when you had a chance. I don’t like being in that place.
Some signs show things moving in the right direction, even though the big pollsters call this race a toss-up. It’s why we can’t afford to sit this one out. This NPR report has me breathing easier. “Meet the conservative women who are keeping their votes for Kamala Harris a secret. It played on Morning Edition today with Sarah MacCammon. It’s a 4 minute listen if you go to the link.
In political ads and campaign speeches, supporters of Vice President Harris have a message for Republican women: Your vote is private, and no one will know if you secretly vote for Harris.
“No one gets to know how you’re going to vote,” Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin said last week during a campaign stop in Michigan. “No one gets to check it. It’s not available online. Right? Your vote is your choice. You don’t have to tell anyone.” Slotkin, who’s running for Senate, was campaigning with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who’s also crossed the aisle to endorse Harris.
Their message is aimed at conservative-leaning women like T, whom we’re calling by her first initial. T, who is in her 60s and lives in Wisconsin, asked for anonymity to discuss how living in a politically divided household is affecting her marriage of more than 40 years.
“He’s frustrated with me that I won’t listen to him plead his case. I can’t and I won’t,” she explained.
T says she mailed her absentee ballot from another family member’s home to avoid a confrontation with her husband over her support for Harris.
“It’s not that he would ever stop me or anything, it’s just I just can’t deal with that animosity,” she said with an audible sigh.
There was some sad news today. Quincy Jones has gone home to the elders at the age of 91. His influence on my life as a musician cannot be overstated. He was the “it” man. An interview with the great man in 2018 on DonOld and his family is something I pass along because you’ll see how strongly he was disgusted by the man. This is from Newsweek. “What Quincy Jones Said About Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump.”
In the interview, Jones mentioned knowing Ivanka’s father and didn’t hold back his opinions about him, expressing a strong distaste for Trump and referring to him in disparaging terms. Jones described him as “crazy” and criticized him as being “limited mentally,” calling him “narcissistic.”
“I used to hang out with him. He’s a crazy motherf***er. Limited mentally – a megalomaniac, narcissistic. I can’t stand him,” Jones said.
During the no-holds-barred interview, Jones expressed frustration about Trump’s political career and business practices, implying that he lacked leadership skills and didn’t know how to bring people together.
“A symphony conductor knows more about how to lead than most businesspeople – more than Trump does. He doesn’t know s***. Someone who knows about real leadership wouldn’t have as many people against him as he does. He’s a f***ing idiot,” Jones said.
Referring to Trump’s supporters, again Jones didn’t hold back, saying: “It’s Trump and uneducated rednecks. Trump is just telling them what they want to hear.”
Trump didn’t respond publicly to the claims. The following year, in March 2019, Jones donated $2,800 to Kamala Harris‘ primary campaign.
Jones had six daughters and publicly stated he was proud of every one of them. I’ve always voted in honor of my grandmothers, who could not vote until they were well into middle age. Tomorrow, I will vote for my daughters and granddaughters and every woman in the country who needs autonomy to make decisions about her life. I will vote for me, my sister, and all the other adult women who deserve their own moral authority. None of us are chattel, nor should we be under the law or the decision of a bunch of weird old men on the Supreme Court. And with that, I will shame Nikki Haley, who wrote this in the WSJ. “Trump Isn’t Perfect, but He’s the Better Choice. If you like his policies but are put off by his tone or his excesses, consider the cost of the past four years.” That is all you will see here. You have to deliberately confuscate the US economy, jobs, and business growth of the last few years for that conclusion.
After SNL on NBC gave Harris some fun time on the show Saturday night, the Orange Dotard demanded equal time. Fortunately, I didn’t see it because there would be no way I would be watching either of these shows. This is from, of all places, The Hollywood Reporter. “NBC Gives Donald Trump Campaign Time During NASCAR Race, ‘Sunday Night Football’ in Response to Kamala Harris’ ‘SNL’ Appearance. Trump appeared in spots that aired during Sunday’s coverage of both sporting events on NBC, speaking directly to the camera.”
On Sunday, NBC broadcast a NASCAR playoff race, but some viewers noticed toward the end of the broadcast (technically right after the race ended but while coverage was still ongoing) that Trump appeared in an unusual ad, speaking directly to camera while wearing a Red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, and claiming that electing Harris would cause a “depression” and that viewers should “go and vote.”
A source familiar with the matter says that the spot during the NASCAR race was connected to NBC giving the Trump campaign equal time.
During NBC’s Sunday Night Football coverage, Trump was given 60 additional seconds of campaign time. While the game was already over, the spot — which was the same one that aired during the NASCAR coverage — aired during the post-game coverage (and shortly after a paid campaign ad).
It is not clear whether it was the Trump camp or NBC that suggested the NASCAR and SNF placements.
It is also not clear if any other campaigns have requested equal time. If they do, however, NBC will likely need to find time for them, given the FCC rules. SNL creator Lorne Michaels previously cited the rules in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter as a reason why the show hadn’t had Trump or Harris on during this cycle.
Harris appeared on SNL in a “cold open” sketch alongside Maya Rudolph, who portrays the vice president for the late night comedy show. The sketch saw Rudolph’s Harris seeking a pep talk from the real Harris, with the pair ending the bit by saying “Keep Kamala and carry on-ala.”
However the sketch drew a rebuke from FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, who is seen as a potential FCC chair if President Trump is re-elected. Carr wrote that the sketch was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” because it came just two days before election day, within the seven-day window the FCC gives campaigns to request equal time.
I suppose none of these folks know that economists worldwide have indicated that it’s Trump’s stated economic policies that would immediately throw the US and the world into a recession. This is an Op-Ed in the Business Standard from a few weeks ago. “US elections: 23 Nobel laureates can’t be wrong about Donald Trump. Economists, from Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Daron Acemoglu, released a letter endorsing Kamala Harris for US president.”4
Economists mostly shun politics in favour of policy. We prefer to be aloof soothsayers giving voice to data and research rather than our own beliefs. A luminary in the profession once told me that “the only political party economists support is whichever is willing to be smart,” before adding, “and a smart economist would never join a political party.” And yet, in a stunning turn — at least for us in the profession — 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists, from Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Daron Acemoglu, released a letter endorsing Kamala Harris for US president.
“Simply put, Harris’s policies will result in a stronger economic performance, with economic growth that is more robust, more sustainable, and more equitable,” the Nobel laureates wrote in the letter. Donald Trump’s policies, they added, would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.” As for Ms Harris, they wrote that she “has emphasised policies that strengthen the middle class, enhance competition, and promote entrepreneurship.Individuals can struggle to sort out the nuance of their own economic experience over the past eight years in weighing Ms Harris versus Mr Trump, but professional economists of all stripes have little to be torn about.It’s not a toss-up:Mr Trump’s policy agenda gives much for economists to condemn. Any one of these policies on their own would be enough to disqualify a candidate, but that Mr Trump has proposed them all is a clear enough indicator of just how much the economy would be at risk if he were reelected.
The latest Biden/Harris economy accolades have come from the U.K.’s The Economist.
The American economy
The envy of the world
Special reports –
The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust. Expect that to continue, argue Simon Rabinovitch and Henry Curr
Special report: The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust
Economic output: American productivity still leads the world
For richer and poorer: Is higher inequality the price America pays for faster growth?
Energy: The shale revolution helped make America’s economy great
The dollar: China’s yuan is nowhere close to displacing the greenback
Now, compare that to what Trump said yesterday. “It’s gonna be so much fun. It’ll be nasty… at the beginning in particular… You’re gonna see things that you’re not gonna believe.” Does that sound like Happy Days are here again? This is from Maddow Blog at MSNBC. “Trump warns voters that his second term would get ‘nasty’ at times. According to Donald Trump and his allies, his second term would be “nasty,” “bloody,” and filled with “hardships” for much of the population.” Steven Benen reports on this gloom and doom rally.
When Donald Trump uses the word “nasty,” he tends to target those who have the audacity to criticize him or stand in his way. In 2016, for example, the Republican referred to Hillary Clinton as a “nasty woman.” Eight years later, the former president whined about Michelle Obama’s campaign appearances, complaining that the former first lady became “nasty.”
Last year, during a town hall event on CNN, Trump described moderator Kaitlan Collins as a “nasty person.” About a year later, he accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of having a “nasty” mouth. (If you’re noticing the gender similarity here, it’s not your imagination.)
But once in a while, the GOP candidate uses the word in a very different kind of context. NBC News reported:
After a meandering and at times hostile speech [Sunday] morning in Pennsylvania, Trump delivered a more subdued and on-prompter speech to a Georgia crowd at his third and final rally today. As he depicted a second-term Trump administration, he said: “We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. … It’ll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning in particular.”
The report added, “He didn’t elaborate on what would be ‘nasty.’”
At face value, this isn’t the kind of rhetoric American voters generally hear from presidential candidates. On the contrary, White House hopefuls tend to tell the public that if they’re elected, the country will be vastly safer, stronger, more prosperous, and more secure.
But Trump wants voters to prepare for something qualitatively different: a country where conditions will get “nasty.”
This comes roughly two months after the Republican nominee also told an audience that he and his team intend to pursue a mass deportation policy, and the process of removing immigrants already in the United States “will be a bloody story.”
It also comes a week after conspiratorial billionaire Elon Musk, a prominent Trump surrogate and megadonor, said during a virtual town hall event that Americans will need to endure “temporary hardship” if Trump wins a second term. As the world’s wealthiest man explained, much of the public will feel a real pinch as GOP officials work on “tackling the nation’s debt,” but those who suffer should take comfort in the hopes that the country will eventually enjoy “long-term prosperity.”
How is any person voting for this? WTF is wrong with these people. That’s a Drink the Koolaide message if I ever saw one!
You might know that I spent most of my young years in Iowa. It was not the same then as it later turned into when Pat Robertson rolled through an Iowa Primary and awakened the Beasts within. The Des Moines Register has always been an award-winning paper. It was the paper of choice back then. The October Surprise might have come from the paper’s well-respected pollster who gets the pulse of the Iowa electorate fight with admirable accuracy. Her name is Ann Selzer. This one must’ve hit a nerve because now the Orange Koolaide Vendor is attacking her. Her poll results caught a surprise shift! This is from The Daily Beast. “Pollster Behind Shock Iowa Poll Hits Back at Trump’s Attacks. The former president called J. Ann Selzer one of his “enemies” after results showed him falling behind Harris in the state.” Dan Ladden-Hall has the analysis.
Revered Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer on Monday responded to the attacks Donald Trump made against her after her bombshell poll showed him trailing in the state.
The Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll conducted by Selzer and published Saturday showed Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points—47 percent to 44 percent—in Iowa, a state he won comfortably in 2016 and 2020. Although the result differed from that of other Iowa polls, the figures were potentially concerning for Trump given Selzer’s track record of accurately forecasting results in the Hawkeye State.
Trump was sufficiently concerned by the poll to post about it on Truth Social, claiming that all polls “except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater” showed him in the lead. “I’m 10 points up in Iowa,” he said during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Sunday. “One of my enemies just puts out a poll—I’m three down.”
“They just announced a fake poll,” he went on. “Hey, think of it—right before the election—that I’m three points down. I’m not down in Iowa.” Trump’s campaign separately released a memo calling Selzer’s poll “a clear outlier” and pointed to Emerson College polling released the same day that gave Trump a 10-point lead over Harris.
During an appearance Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Selzer acknowledged that the result of her poll was a “shock.”
“I’ve been shocked since Tuesday morning last week,” Selzer said. “So I’ve had the time for this to sink in because no one, including me, would’ve thought that Iowa could go for Kamala Harris.”
Co-host Willie Geist specifically asked Selzer about Trump’s criticisms, inviting her to respond to the claim that her poll is just an outlier.
“I give credit to my method for my track record,” Selzer said. “I call my method ‘polling forward.’ So I want to be in a place where my data can show me what’s likely to happen with the future electorate. So I just try to get out of the way of my data saying this is what’s going to happen.”
“A lot of other polls, and I’ll count Emerson among them, are including in the way that they manipulate the data after it comes in, things that have happened in the past,” she continued. “So they’re taking into account exit polls, they’re taking into account what turnout was in past elections. I don’t make any assumptions like that. So it’s in my way of thinking, it’s a cleaner way to forecast a future electorate, which nobody knows what that’s going to be. But we do know that our electorates change in terms of how many people are showing up and what the composition is.”
Notice the role women are playing in this election season? The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last recognizes it. “The Valkyries of Democracy. In praise of three extraordinary women. Trigger warning: Emo JVL is here. I’ve got a lot of feelings and I’m going to share all of them with you. Sorry. But that’s where I’m at.” There certainly are a lot of men who are getting all wet-eyed and emotional during this election.
By the time you read this Sarah will have concluded moderating a conversation between Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney. If you missed it, you can watch it here. And in a few minutes, I’m going to sit down with Sarah and have her unload on what this moment was like. It’ll be on the site the minute she’s able to get on camera.
Before that, though, I want to say a personal word about these three extraordinary women.
On Liz Cheney: I was wrong. I can’t say this often enough. When Cheney broke with Donald Trump after January 6, I was dismissive. I didn’t understand why it took her so long, or how she could have stayed on-side during COVID and the 2020 campaign.
But as she methodically blew up her own career in order to defend our democracy, I realized I’d underestimated her. This was a woman of real conviction, who was willing to put it all on the line.
Liz Cheney has been a workhorse. She’s been willing to do as much as anyone, and more than most, in the service of elevating country over party.
On Kamala Harris: I am not in the Yass Queen camp. My view is that Kamala is a standard-issue, ambitious politician and that she might be a good president, or a bad president, or a middling president. There’s no real way to know ahead of time. I do not have any illusions about her being a savior.
But I also do not believe that any sane person would want to be the Democratic presidential nominee in the Year of Our Lord 2024.
The stakes are too high; the pressure too great.
I believe that for all her political ambition, Kamala Harris is carrying this burden for us. She’s not Barack Obama, basking in the warmth of a cultural moment en route to becoming a cultural icon. She’s more like Frodo Baggins, walking toward Mordor while carrying a millstone around her neck, in an attempt to save all of Middle Earth from a dark fate.
Here are two things I truly believe: (1) Kamala Harris has wanted to be president for a long time; and (2) Kamala Harris never wanted to run for president with the fate of democracy on the line.
When Howard Stern interviewed Harris, he asked her about the pressure and she answered that she literally loses sleep over it. That she goes to bed every night wondering, “Is there anything else I could have done?”
I cannot imagine that burden. And I am grateful—in my heart—to her for bearing it.
Finally, there’s Sarah Longwell.
I cannot properly convey the depth of my affection and admiration for her. I would run through walls for Sarah. I’d take a bullet for her.
When the Harris campaign called and asked Sarah to come to Pennsylvania today and sit down with Harris and Cheney, I kvelled.
Knowing that other people see the same things in Sarah that we see? Absolutely bursting with pride.
But it’s not just pride.
It’s relief. Look: None of us wants to be living in this moment.
But history chose us. It is our burden and the burden is, itself, a form of privilege.
And there is no group of people I would rather fight through this moment with than those three women: Liz, Kamala, and Sarah.
As Coach D’Amato once said, the inches we need are all around us. And when I look at these women, I see people who will go that inch with us. Who have been willing to sacrifice for that inch. Who are going to fight for every inch.
And I’m ride or die with them. I hope you will be, too.r
So, my birthday is today. I just turned 69, and there’s a party at the bar on the corner, so we can have some fun, make silly references to my age, and ignore things for a bit. Tomorrow, I will walk down the street to the Rec Center and greet my Poll Workers! I will vote. I’m counting on women and a few good men to do the right thing.
This may not be over quickly, but we must keep Calmala and Carry-on-ala. This is from The Hill‘s Alexander Bolten. “GOP primed to back Trump if he contests election.” All the court cases to date have been big losers. You can always follow them on Democracy Docket. This fight described below in Bolten’s piece may finally end the Republican Party once and for all.
The Republican Party is now more primed to back former President Trump if he contests the results of the 2024 election than it was four years ago, when his efforts to overturn President Biden’s victory fell flat in courts and Congress.
Trump’s unwavering claims about the nation’s election system being “rigged” have steadily gained more acceptance among rank-and-file Republican
svoters over the past four years, and his biggest Republican critics in Congress have either retired, will retire soon or have lost sway.Additionally, Trump allies around the country have worked to gain more influence over state and local election boards, which will be in charge of tallying votes and certifying the results.
Republicans are feeling increasingly optimistic Trump will win the election, but they are girding for an intense battle if Vice President Harris is declared the winner.
“The strength of the cult of Trump amongst voters is strong so members are reflecting what their constituents want them to do,” said a Republican strategist and former Senate leadership aide.
“The other angle is there are a lot of concerns about how elections are being conducted and the power of social media and our partisan news,” the strategist said. “Republicans watch a lot of Twitter and Fox News, and they see voting irregularities,” they continued, pointing out a recent Detroit News report that a Chinese citizen attending the University of Michigan voted illegally by absentee ballot, and election officials weren’t able to retrieve it.
Four years ago, Trump’s claims that Biden and his allies “stole” the election struck many Republicans in Washington as outlandish, though most of them extended the 45th president the courtesy of letting him pursue his claims in court, where they failed.
So we are all in this together. Just keep telling people to go vote and make sure you vote. You can always ask for a provisional ballot as is your right if anything goes wrong. It’s important we do this!
“Voting can stop it.” John Buss @repeat1968
It was a dark and drizzly night, not one to make the rounds to all the Halloween parties in the hood. So, I settled into watching a friend from around Flagstaff, Arizona, stream a set of Horror Movies on Discord to a bunch of us who play a Zombie survival game together. It was like a pajama party with the girls, except my girls are all furry, and everyone else was scattered all over the country. I retwisted my ankle last night which was still hurting from a Tuesday mishap and feeling really old. The live Oaks of New Orleans’ Avenues drop acorns that rapidly become a coffee ground-like mess everywhere. That was the trick. I was glad that I stocked up on treats and wine earlier because I just missed the fog and the mist rolling in over the city. A very apt setting for Interview with a Vampire. I was hurting, traumatized by the DonOld Garbage Truck Cosplay spewing from the News Channels, and thought settling down to some movies would be a good break.
I saw a new version of Children of the Corn and was treated to several movies, including two of the “The Hills Have Eyes” franchises. It was hard to believe that the original version by Wes Crave had come out when I was at university. The fact the newest version of Children was centered in Nebraska was not lost on me. The original of that one came out when I was finishing my Masters. Back then, I’d take out the Beta tapes of the old Vincent Price horror movies that I recorded off the few cable channels back then.
The more I watched the Hill films, the more I could see Trump supporters in all the cannibal zombies in the Hills. Seriously, right down to their caps, their messy English, and the way they treated the two women in that National Guard Unit, I could swear I was watching a MAGA ambush. The creepy preacher in Children of the Corn and his implied “sin” against the little girl Eden was like the perfect metaphor for all those white Christian nationalist men whose arrest mug shots for crimes against children keep popping up on my X feed.
I had watched the news earlier and the meltdown that MAGA husbands are having at the idea their wives might get in the voting booth and vote their conscience instead of the will of their Patriarchal captor. One dude on Fox likened it to committing adultery, at which point the women on the panel laughed, and then he looked straight at the camera and told his chattel Emma that it would be finished if he found she’d done that. I thought she should get a lawyer to get her share, then Run Emma, RUN!! That and go have some fun with some young men that know what they’re doing! Just don’t bring them home or marry them.
This is from Vanity Fair. The analysis is provided by Bess Levin. “Fox News Host Says He’d Divorce His Wife for Voting for Kamala Harris. “If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair.” If you’d like, I can reference the part from the Hill movie where the mutant grabs a woman National Guard soldier, starts grabbing and raping her, and says, “You make nice babies!” Who among us can’t see DonOld in his prime doing that same thing?
How much respect do Donald Trump’s male supporters have for women? So much that at least one of them has said he’d end his marriage if his wife exercised her constitutional right to vote for Kamala Harris.
On an episode of The Five this week, Fox News host Jesse Watters told fellow panelists that if he learned his wife, Emma, cast her ballot for the vice president, after letting him think she was voting for Trump, he would consider it a betrayal on par with having an extramarital affair and it would be “over.”
“If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” Watters said. “That, to me, violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What else has she been lying about?” Asked by cohost Jeanine Pirro, “Why would she lie to you? Have you threatened her?” Watters responded, “Why would she do that and then vote Harris? Why would she say she was voting…. And I caught her and then she said, ‘I lied to you for the last four years—’”
“So you admit you intimidate people,” Pirro interjected. “It’s over, Emma!” Watters said. “That would be D-Day!”
Watters and co. were discussing an ad put out in support of the Harris campaign that reminds women, “You can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know.” Which is apparently a necessary point to make to women who are married to extremely fragile Trump-supporting men.
I know that once they think they’ve got you, they show their true colors, but seriously, who could stand to live like that? Salon has this great article up with an even more wonderful headline. “”It is so disastrous”: MAGA men are freaking out that wives may be secretly voting for Kamala Harris, “That’s the same thing as having an affair,” Fox News host argues as women fuel early vote in key states.” The entire concept of Control Freak is not hyped enough for these guys. Charles R Davis takes them on.
When you’re a star, Donald Trump has said more than once, women will let you do whatever you want to them. As president, that meant putting three right-wing justices on the Supreme Court and stripping half the country of a constitutional right, enabling people like him — their self-proclaimed “protector” — to have the final word on what any woman does with her body.
“I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,” the former president asserted at a campaign stop on Wednesday. “I am going to protect them.”
Women, it turns out, do not care for this — a large majority of them, at least. While millions will still vote for the Republican candidate, perhaps hating immigrants more than they love reproductive rights, the only certainty at this point is that many millions more will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll, the Democrat enjoyed a 14% advantage with women over Trump; among women with a college degree, that number rose to 23%; among women voters under 40, it rocketed to 34%.
According to the Brookings Institution, Harris’ strength among women angered by the 2022 Dobbs decision could explain why Democrats, for the first time in forever, are polling better with older voters than Republicans. The think tank’s Michael Hais and Morley Winograd noted that, per the ABC News/Ipsos survey, there has been a 10-point swing to Harris among voters over the age of 65 compared to 2020.
“Some observers think this shift is driven by the ‘revenge of Boomer feminists’ among the women of that famous generation, all of whom are now over 65 but who cut their political teeth in the battle for equality when they were much younger,” Hais and Winograd wrote. Younger voters may be angry over losing a right they had never lived without, but older people have seen hard-fought progress rolled back. They are also the most reliable group of voters — and they tend to vote early.
In battleground states, that appears to be exactly what’s happening. According to an analysis of early-voting tallies by Politico, women account for 55% of all ballots cast thus far in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
That, in turn, is causing some MAGA commentators to break from their usual posture of feigned confidence to outright panic.
“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA and helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort, posted on social media. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.” (Kirk, seeking to motivate these voters, offered Orwellian misogyny: “If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever.”)
I feel seen for once, hopefully, not by the Children of the Garbage Bags and AR-15s. DonOld really has gone over the edge. During his rally in New Mexico, he made a loosely veiled threat at former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. This is from the Bulwark, as written by Bill Kristol. Don’t Horror shows make allies out of the strangest folks? That’s what happens when your very life is on the line.
Donald Trump’s two strongest personality traits each had a moment on the campaign trail yesterday.
At a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the buffoon: “I’m here for one very simple reason. I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic and Latino community.”
And later, on stage with Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, the menace. Here he was on former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
U.S. News has this headline. “Trump Says Liz Cheney Might Not Be Such a ‘War Hawk’ if She Had Rifles Shooting at Her. Donald Trump is calling former Rep. Liz Cheney, who’s one of his most prominent Republican critics, a “war hawk” and he’s suggesting she might not be as willing to send troops to fight if she had guns shooting at her.”
Donald Trump is suggesting that former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should have rifles “shooting at her” to see how she feels about sending troops to fight. It was his latest suggestion that his rivals should be targeted with violence.
Cheney responded by branding the GOP presidential nominee a “cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
The Republican presidential candidate has been using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of “enemies from within” undermining the country. Some of his former senior aides and Vice President Kamala Harris have labeled him a fascist in response.
At an event late Thursday in Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked whether it was strange to see Cheney campaign against him. The former Wyoming congresswoman has vocally opposed Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris, joining the vice president at recent stops as they try to win over Republicans disaffected with Trump.
Trump called Cheney “a deranged person” and added, “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries.”
The former president continued: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.
The results of Donald Trump’s first reign of Terror are killing women. The Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have the blood of innocents on their hands. ProPublica has once again followed the trail of deaths left in Texas by the hypocrites who scream they are “pro-life.” “A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms. It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.”
Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.
Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.
The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.
Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.
By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.
Hours later, she was dead.
Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.
But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.
“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.
Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.
In states with abortion bans, such patients are sometimes bounced between hospitals like “hot potatoes,” with health care providers reluctant to participate in treatment that could attract a prosecutor, doctors told ProPublica. In some cases, medical teams are wasting precious time debating legalities and creating documentation, preparing for the possibility that they’ll need to explain their actions to a jury and judge.
Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, said patients are left wondering: “Am I being sent home because I really am OK? Or am I being sent home because they’re afraid that the solution to what’s going on with my pregnancy would be ending the pregnancy, and they’re not allowed to do that?”
There is a federal law to prevent emergency room doctors from withholding lifesaving care.
Passed nearly four decades ago, it requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients in medical crises. The Biden administration argues this mandate applies even in cases where an abortion might be necessary.
No state has done more to fight this interpretation than Texas, which has warned doctors that its abortion ban supersedes the administration’s guidance on federal law, and that they can face up to 99 years in prison for violating it.
ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain’s medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.
Puerto Rican Americans continue to speak out about the horrible racist slurs spoken by #DonOld about their Island home and their presence on the mainland. Does he understand that Puerto Ricans are Americans and that they live everywhere in this country? This is from The Daily Beast. “J.Lo Claps Back at Trump Rally Puerto Rico Jab: ‘We Are Americans’, “Our pain matters,” the singer said at a Las Vegas event for Kamala Harris.” This is reported by Claire Lampen.
As promised, Jennifer Lopez took the stage at Kamala Harris’s rally in Las Vegas on Thursday night, responding to racist statements about Puerto Rico made at one of Donald Trump’s recent events.
“I am an American woman. I am the daughter of Guadalupe Lupe Rodríguez and David Lopez, a proud daughter and son of Puerto Rico. I am Puerto Rican,” Lopez said, restating the final point in Spanish. “And yes, I was born here. And we are Americans.”
In his much-maligned comedy routine at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” His comments, Lopez said, should offend “anyone of decent character.”
“It’s about us, all of us, no matter what we look like, who we love, who we worship, or where we’re from,” Lopez said. “[Harris’s] opponent, on the other hand, doesn’t see it that way. He has consistently worked to divide us. At Madison Square Garden, he reminded us who he really is and how he really feels.”
Trump‘s rally featured a parade of extremist speakers, though it was Hinchcliffe’s act that really dominated headlines. In it, he claimed Latinos “love making babies,” a riff whose anti-immigrant punchline fell flat, and threw in some racist stereotypes about Black people as well.
Although the Trump campaign has since attempted to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s set—Trump trotting out a classic “I don’t know her” defense—it garnered criticism from all sides, even from his own party.
Trump’s enablers cannot stop him from his hate-filled speeches and comments.
“It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans who were offended that day,” Lopez added. “It was every Latino in this country, it was humanity.”
J.Lo went on to say that, “with an understanding of our past, and a faith in our future,” she‘s proud to vote for Harris. “You can’t even spell American without Rican,” she said. “This is our country, too, and we must exercise our right to vote.”
Towards the end of her speech, Lopez appeared to fight back tears. “I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional,” she told the audience. “But you know what? We should be emotional. We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged, we should. Our pain matters. We matter. You matter. Your voice and your vote matters.”
“This election is about your life,” J.Lo continued. “It‘s about you, and me, and my kids, and your kids. Don‘t make it easy; make them pay attention to you. That’s your power. Your vote is your power.”
“Your vote is your power” is the line I want everyone to remember today. Another one is a quote from the late Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota. Five Days until we get the opportunity to never hear that man or his zombie cultists again.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
“The End Times are nigh. The Prodigal Son returns to Madison Square Garden.” John Buss @repeat1968
I was lucky that working with students last night interfered with any attempt to turn on the Fascist Rally at the World’s Most Famous Arena. This wasn’t exactly Ali against Frazier or Holyfield vs Lewis. This was more like #DonOld vs the Majority of the country. The opening bouts were lame.
My short take on this is it was basically a Crazy Old Cult Leader warming his brood up for the Ultimate Kool-Aid moment. Unfortunately, we previewed that on January 6, so I hope that law enforcement agencies are prepared. The Ultimate Chaos Agent is making his play for a coup
This brings me to this dangerous conspiracy theory making the rounds. To think, I was simply walking the dog around the block! I got told a conspiracy theory by a short-order cook at a local bar who has said crazy things before, so I thought I’d look into it to prove him wrong. His favorite spiel is that the right wing and the left wing are the same, and the government is corrupt. Which is partially correct. Look at Jill Stein and Robert Kennedy hooked up with the Fascists and Putin. If you take populism to its furthest corners of the right and the left, they eventually bump butts with each other. However, the left wing and the right in the United States do not wield the same power, and they are not of equal size. There’s no real leftist power in this country. The billionaire class has been funding the extreme right-wing for decades now, and it shows. Polls on issues show that most Americans agree on the major things. The problem is that the political system does not play towards consensus.
This guy insisted the DOD is sneaking a policy to Congress to approve the use of military force on civilians. Now, if DJT was in power, I believe he’d try that, although it would take a lot more than a policy of the DOD or an act of Congress to amend the Constitution. Even when I came back to show him the actual act to show him it says nothing of the kind, he insisted he’d read it, and that’s what he said. But when I invested it, I thought, wow, that looks like the will of the Ultimate Chaos Agent!
This link leads to DOD DIRECTIVE 5240.01 (DOD INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLIGENCE-RELATED ACTIVITIES, AND DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE COMPONENT, ASSISTANCE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES AND OTHER CIVIL AUTHORITIES.) It’s short, and the language is easy to comprehend. So, I did some research, and now I think it’s important enough of the conspiracy theory in light of the Prepare for War rally in Madison Square. Here’s what I found with a little dank rabbit hole exploring. “Far-Right Suggests Military Just Authorized Lethal Force Against Americans Ahead of the Election. It Didn’t. As Trump warns about an “enemy from within,” a Defense Department directive set off a firestorm on alt-tech social media. But the Insurrection Act is the real threat, experts say.” This is from a Blog Called The War Horse and it’s written by Sonner Kehrt.
Just as former president Donald Trump told Fox News last week that he wanted to use the U.S. military to “handle” what he called the “enemy from within” on Election Day, an obscure military policy was beginning to make the rounds on social media platforms favored by the far right.
The focus? Department of Defense Directive 5240.01.
The 22-page document governs military intelligence activities and is among more than a thousand different policies that outline Defense Department procedures.
The Pentagon updated it at the end of September. Although military policies are routinely updated and reissued, the timing of this one—just six weeks before the election and the same day Hurricane Helene slammed into the Southeast—struck right-wing misinformation merchants as suspicious.
They latched onto a new reference in the updated directive—“lethal force”—and soon were falsely claiming that the change means Kamala Harris had authorized the military to kill civilians if there is unrest after the election.
That’s flat-out not true, the Pentagon and experts on military policy told The War Horse.
“The provisions in [the directive] are not new, and do not authorize the Secretary of Defense to use lethal force against U.S. citizens, contrary to rumors and rhetoric circulating on social media,” Sue Gough, a Department of Defense spokesperson, said Wednesday night.
But as Trump doubles down on his “enemy from within” rhetoric, DOD Directive 5240.01 continues to gain traction among his supporters as ostensible proof that Harris, not Trump, wants to use the military against American citizens.
By early last week, “5240.01” began to spike on alt-tech platforms such as Rumble, 4chan, and Telegram, as well as on more mainstream platforms like X, according to an analysis by The War Horse and UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center.
On Ron Paul’s Liberty Report, a YouTube show, the former Texas congressman told viewers that the policy meant that the country is now a “police state.” Republican Maryland congressman Andy Harris told Newsmax host Chris Salcedo last Wednesday that he was concerned the Defense Department was pushing through policies without congressional oversight.
“This is exactly what the Democrats said Trump would do. And they’re doing it,” he said. “This means that after an election, they could declare national emergency and literally call out the Army in the United States.”
Former Trump national security adviser and retired Army Lieutenant Gen. Michael Flynn tweeted the policy update out to his 1.7 million followers, just as he shared the week before a video suggesting the military had manipulated the weather to focus Hurricane Helene’s deadly fury on Republican voters in the South.
“Republican election fraud season is in full swing.” John Buss, @repeat1968
I really see this as a way to ensure their well-armed militia shows up at the local courthouse or state house well-armed when the vote count starts meaningfully leaning towards a Harris/Walz Administration. The ACLU has had this policy firmly in its FOIA grip since 1982. The documents are out there with no commentary or urgent lawsuits filed. You would think they’d be interested.
The Center for Informed Policy at the University of Washington is more interested in those conspiracy theories. “Rumors rapidly spreading about reissued Department of Defense Directive 5240.01” explains the right wing’s angst on this one in its 2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG.
Key Takeaways
- Early last week, rumors started to spread between multiple social media platforms and across political communities online about a recently reissued Department of Defense Directive 5240.01 that documents procedures when there is a potential use of lethal force.
- Some online communities have speculated that the directive’s changes are timed with the upcoming election, with some suggesting without evidence that the intent behind the change is that the government is planning to use force against Americans.
- The viral spread could be exploiting a data void – a situation where there is no reliable information about a topic in search results — given there are no published fact-checks or traditional journalist coverage of the directive’s changes.
Just Security calls it “Much Ado About Nothing.” Oddly enough, this was an article my neighborhood weirdo was about to show me when he read the title and then suddenly closed it, and just as I said oh, Just Security is a reliable source. They conclude with this, which is similar to a thought in The War Horse. That’s the real danger is the Insurrection Act that Trump used to go after George Floyd Protestors with the National Guard. His stated goal was to support local law enforcement in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., on May 30, 2020. You probably will remember this culminating with the upside-down bible event. The ACLU is very interested in that event.
To be sure, there are good reasons to be concerned about the federal government’s power to use the armed forces domestically against Americans, but the new language in Directive 5240.01 is not one of them. The Insurrection Act represents a far greater danger. It gives the president broad discretion to use the military as a domestic police force and contains virtually no safeguards to prevent abuse. The Brennan Center for Justice, where we work, has put forward a comprehensive proposal for reforming the Insurrection Act, and a bipartisan group of former national security officials convened by the American Law Institute has similarly called for Insurrection Act reform. Those who are currently sounding the alarm about Directive 5240.01 would do well to refocus their energies on that critical task.
I just messaged it off to one of the MSNBC Anchors I chat with on occasion, so I’m about to see if I can get someone serious journalism on it with the hope of getting rid of the data void.
So, before I tackle the main event, I have one more nerdy article to suggest. This is about the odds makers. This is from Good Authority. The analysis is provided by Josh Clinton. “Poll results depend on pollster choices as much as voters’ decisions. Simple changes in how to weight a single poll can move the Harris-Trump margin 8 points.”
There is no end of scrutiny of the 2024 election polls – who is ahead, who is behind, how much the polls will miss the election outcome, etc., etc. These questions have become even more pressing because the presidential race seems to be a toss-up. Every percentage point for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump matters.
But here’s the big problem that no one talks about very much: Simple and defensible decisions by pollsters can drastically change the reported margin between Harris and Trump. I’ll show that the margin can change by as much as eight points. Reasonable decisions produce a margin that ranges from Harris +0.9% to Harris +8%.
This reality highlights that we ask far too much of polls. Ultimately, it’s hard to know how much poll numbers reflect the decisions of voters – or the decisions of pollsters.
The 4 key questions for pollsters
After poll data are collected, pollsters must assess whether they need to adjust or “weight” the data to address the very real possibility that the people who took the poll differ from those who did not. This involves answering four questions:
1. Do respondents match the electorate demographically in terms of sex, age, education, race, etc.? (This was a problem in 2016.)
2. Do respondents match the electorate politically after the sample is adjusted by demographic factors? (This was the problem in 2020.)
3. Which respondents will vote?
4. Should the pollster trust the data?
To show how the answers to these questions can affect poll results, I use a national survey conducted from October 7 – 14, 2024. The sample included 1,924 self-reported registered voters drawn from an online, high-quality panel commonly used in academic and commercial work.
After dropping the respondents who said they were not sure who they would vote for (3.2%) and those with missing demographics, the unweighted data give Harris a 6 percentage point lead – 51.6 % to 45.5% – among the remaining 1,718 respondents.
You may read more details about those factors at the link. I try not to put my students to sleep during statistics lectures, so I certainly won’t do it to you. The reporting and clips on the Madison Square Garden Rally kept me up most of the night. I felt like the child in grade school watching the teacher thread the film through those blue projectors only to see things my Dad didn’t want to remember about World War 2. I don’t know about you, but my school district did not hold back on the World War 2 experience. One of my high school teachers wrote a book on his experience as a prisoner taken during the Battle of the Bulge. I was surrounded by friends’ parents and my parents’ friends who were Veterans. We watched the films of the 1936 Olympics and heroes like Jesse Owens and, of course, all the Hitler and Mussolini public speeches. If you were like little me, I couldn’t understand who could fall for any of that.
I also saw films of the United States turning away Jewish people in ships fleeing Europe and films of the internment of Japanese-Americans. All of these seemed surreal to me at the ripe old age of 11.
Now, I know more. Now I can identify people that just love to goosestep with whom I would not share the location of any modern day Anne Frank.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
CNN Analyst Stephen Collinson has this analysis. “Trump unveils the most extreme closing argument in modern presidential history.” The MAGA movement is about hating and eliminating everyone who isn’t like them.
Donald Trump anchored his bid to win a second White House term next week on searing anti-migrant fear at a rally at Madison Square Garden, doubling down on his promise for a massive deportation program on Day 1 to reverse an “immigrant invasion.”
As the ex-president’s allies defend him against Democratic claims he is a “fascist” and an authoritarian in waiting, based in part on warnings by his ex-chief of staff John Kelly, Trump on Sunday delivered a screed that may augur the most extreme presidency in modern history if he beats Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on November 5.
“The United States is an occupied country,” Trump said, as Democrats projected messages on the exterior of the storied New York City arena, reading “Trump is Unhinged” and “Trump praised Hitler.”
The huge rally was billed as the launch of the final stage of Trump’s bid to pull off one of the greatest comebacks in American political history after trying to overturn the result of the last election and leaving office in disgrace in 2021. Before he spoke, some of the ex-president’s top supporters flung race-based and vulgar rhetoric. Former congressional candidate David Rem called Harris the “antichrist” and “the devil,” while others lashed out at Hillary Clinton, “illegals” and homeless people. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
This is from Politico. The analysis is by Andrew Howard. “Fallout spreads from racist rhetoric at Trump’s MSG rally. “What you saw last night is a divisive America. That’s race-baiting. It’s all the things that we were doing in the ‘30s and ‘40s,” former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Monday.”
Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday evening was supposed to provide his closing argument against Kamala Harris. Instead, Trump and his supporters are being forced to answer for hateful and racist rhetoric delivered from the podium Sunday night with just eight days left in the campaign.
The comments, while reminiscent of many made by Trump in the campaign’s final weeks, were made by a comedian early in the night’s schedule and were supposed to be jokes. Now, they are dominating the news cycle and putting Trump’s campaign on the backfoot with just under a week until the election.
Longtime Trump adviser Peter Navarro is calling the comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, “the biggest, stupidest asshole that ever came down the comedy pike” after he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of hot garbage” during his often-vulgar opening set.
And Trump’s opponents are using the rally as proof of the former president’s divisiveness, going as far as likening the rhetoric from Sunday’s rally to the sinister 1939 Nazi rally that took place in the same venue.
“My reaction is that was a combination of 1933 Germany, 1939 Madison Square Garden last night,” former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday morning. “What you saw last night is a divisive America. That’s race baiting. It’s all the things that we were doing in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.), called Sunday night’s event a “hate rally.”
“This was not just a presidential rally, this was not just a campaign rally. I think it’s important for people to understand these are mini January 6 rallies, these are mini Stop the Steal rallies,” she said on “Morning Joe.”
Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds blamed the media for the backlash surrounding Sunday’s rally during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, saying the media is too focused on “fear-mongering” and not “the facts and the substance.”
“So to the New York Daily News, is it a racist rally if you have a Black man from Florida who’s originally from New York speaking at the rally? I don’t think so,” Donalds said. Still, Donalds distanced himself from Hinchcliffe’s comments.
“I didn’t agree with what the comedian said. None of us did,” Donalds said. “When it came out, we were all like, ‘Wait what? Who? Did that get out? No, no, no.’ Nobody agreed with that. Nobody.”
Last night, Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, up for reelection this year in a state heavily populated with Puerto Ricans, wrote on social media that the “joke bombed for a reason,” and “Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans!”
Yet another Floridian, GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar, was also quick to condemn the comedian. “This rhetoric does not reflect GOP values,” she wrote in a post on X Sunday evening.
Early Monday morning, the Harris campaign was quick to jump in, highlighting headlines in 17 newspapers, eight clips from TV shows, and 29 other statements from politicians, celebrities and journalists.
Famous Puerto Ricans rushed to bolster Harris, including pop-phenom Bad Bunny, along with Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin.
Hinchcliffe’s backlash-inducing comments were not limited to Puerto Rico. The comedian also made a crude remark about “carving watermelons” after seeing a Black man in the audience. Another opener, businessman Grant Cardone, likened Harris’ advisers to “pimp handlers.”
And Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who has shaped many of Trump’s immigration policies, said Americans are having their jobs “looted and stolen from them” and sent to foreign countries.
I always turn to Historian Heather Cox Richardson for the final thoughts.
I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.
It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight.
There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.
Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.
Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024.
On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump.
Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.
We could see the signs that he knew he probably wouldn’t win the minute Biden backed out. We could taste the panic in the air. We know his campaign is already spending more time in the Court trying to fuck with elections than with the ground game he delegated to Musk, who is out there basically running a personal game show with a million-dollar giveaway for attention.
Marc Elias and his team have been in court for the Harris/Walz campaign, which has been fighting Trump’s legal team that is “flooding the zone” with lawsuits and election tricks. #DonOld is clearly not physically or mentally capable of carrying on a campaign that requires giving cogent speeches and long hours. The only thing he excels at is creating chaos. “Marc Elias, Voting Rights Attorney, joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with a look at the work that Trump allies and attorneys are doing ahead of the 2024 Election in order to create doubt and confusion which will enable Donald Trump to deny the results of the 2024 Election should he lose again. ”
Here are the arguments for the Ultimate Chaos Agent in the Wallace/Elias interview.
The question is, will creating chaos be enough to bring the Republic and the voting and judicial systems to their knees? Can he knock out the Constitution, or will We the People knock him out on November 5th. We need the KO. These things keep me awake at night with my stomach churning and jumping like a kid about to take his ACTs.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Memeorandum Crooks and Liars Democracy NOW The UK Guardian
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