Trump’s demonization of entire categories of immigrants is dangerous. But when he advocated for a Muslim ban during his first presidential run, he did not direct his followers’ anxiety and loathing toward worshippers at one particular mosque or community.
With this new smear, Trump and his running mate are fomenting hatred for a discrete group of 15,000 people in one location. This dramatically increases the risk that their campaign of dehumanization will lead to acts of violence. And indeed, on both Thursday and Friday, Springfield was forced to shutter its public schools and municipal buildings in response to bomb threats. Meanwhile, a Haitian community center in the city is getting threatening calls and Haitian families are keeping their kids home out of fear for their safety.
Alice in the Afternoon, by Catriona Millar
The juxtaposition between the victimization of such innocents, and Republicans’ gleeful dissemination of AI-generated cats that are purportedly imperiled by the existence of Springfield’s Haitians, is morally nauseating, at least to any person who believes in the equal dignity of all human life. And the fact that Vance has implored his social media followers to keep spreading such libelous memes, at the expense of his own constituents’ safety, is similarly disgraceful.
Why do Trump and Vance believe it is in their interest to advertise such moral bankruptcy and recklessness?
The Republican ticket’s foray into inciting ethnic hatred in a single municipality cannot be understood as unthinking or impulsive. Sure, Trump routinely makes demagogic statements that are inspired less by political calculation than whatever he happened to just witness on Fox News.
But Vance is nothing if not a ruthless and self-disciplined striver. One does not rise from his humble origins to Yale Law School without some ability to filter one’s thoughts or rationally pursue one’s goals. And a person capable of likening Trump to an opiate in 2016, and then becoming an apologist for his insurrection just a few years later, when that posture became politically useful, is plainly willing to do most anything in a calculated bid for power.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: September 14, 2024 Filed under: Donald Trump, Haiti, immigration | Tags: anti-immigrant discrimination, food and ethnicity, Haitian immigrants, JD Vance, Laura Loomer, slavery, Springfield Ohio 4 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
By Joan Gillchrest
This week, Trump has truly shown himself to be a fascist. To our everlasting shame as a country, this disgusting man, this convicted criminal–found guilty of rape and 34 counts of business fraud–is still permitted to run for president. If he somehow wins the election in November, he will be able to act with impunity, since the right wing Supreme Court has said that the president cannot be prosecuted for official acts. Thanks to this horrible creature Trump, our democracy hangs in the balance.
Now, as Dakinikat wrote in detail yesterday, Trump has been spreading an insane attack on legal Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio city, Springfield, creating a crisis there involving attacks on innocent people and bomb threats that have closed the city hall and two elementary schools on Thursday and Friday.
Trump’s VP candidate J.D. Vance was the first to spread the hateful rumors, and he has continued to do so even after they have been debunked. Vance also called attention to the event that began the anti-Haitian fervor in Springfield–a bus crash that killed a young boy. The bus driver was a Haitian immigrant.
As Daknikat also wrote, Trump has been hanging around with Laura Loomer, a hateful far right activist, and she may also have been a source of the anti-Haitian rumors. (FYI: Here is a very good Guardian article about Loomer) Trump has been taking Loomer with him on his plane to events such as the 9/11 anniversary commemorations in Shanksville, PA, and New York City and the debate with VP Kamala Harris on Tuesday. Loomer reportedly has been staying at Mar-a-Lago for at least the past week.
As you can tell, this is a follow-up to Dakinikat’s excellent Friday post. I want to add a little more background.
An Op-Ed by Lydian Polgreen at The New York Times: Trump Has Crossed a Truly Unacceptable Line.
When my family moved back to the United States from East Africa in the mid-1980s, one might have thought it was a peak time of compassion for people suffering in faraway places. A glittering group of music superstars had recorded “We Are the World,” a smash hit charity single to raise money and awareness for the victims of a brutal famine that had gripped my mother’s home country, Ethiopia.
But when I told my new grade school classmates of my origins, I was met with cruel taunts. I was awfully fat for an Ethiopian, one said with a snigger. Must be nice to be able to have access to so much food, another joked. At the time, this was puzzling and upsetting — I had moved from Kenya, not Ethiopia, to my father’s home state, Minnesota. But the facts didn’t matter. These unkind remarks did the job the bullies hoped they would: They made me feel like an alien, an unwelcome stranger.
We live in even crueler times now, with humanitarian catastrophes unfolding on several continents, but the response of the wealthy world has been to demand tighter borders and higher fences. There is no blockbuster charity single raising money for starving refugees from the civil war raging in Sudan. And now, the cruel taunts come not just from schoolyard bullies and cranks on the political fringes, but from the lips of a man who stood on the presidential debate stage on Tuesday, a former president who once again has a coin-flip shot at regaining the most powerful office in the world.
And so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by that lowest of moments at the debate, when Donald Trump repeated a vile, baseless claim that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio. This allegation appears to stem from viral social media posts and statements at public meetings. It was picked up by some of the most rancid figures at the fringe of the MAGA-verse, then quickly hopscotched from there to a social media post by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, and finally to the debate stage, sputtered by Trump himself.
There is a temptation to treat this as yet another Trump rant, a disgusting lie about immigrants like the ones he uttered as he began his presidential bid in 2015, describing migrants crossing the border with Mexico as rapists and criminals. He’s done it time and again since. He is the master of exaggerated and fabricated claims against the boogeymen, a skill he has used for decades to polarize public opinion and raise his profile and power at the expense of others.
But there is something particularly insidious about this claim, uttered at this time, from that stage. Food and pets are, to use a Freudian term, highly overdetermined symbols in our political life. They are capable of receiving and holding a multiplicity of very potent meanings, transmitting deep messages about identity and belonging.
What you eat is an instant way to communicate the most basic forms of human connection. There’s a reason American political rituals cluster around cookouts, clambakes and fish fries. The human need for sustenance — food and water to feed the physical body — is universal. But what is also universal is the meaning food carries. Everyone has a personal version of Proust’s madeleines, a food that immediately and ineffably names who you are, where you come from, the culture that made you. Food is a powerful signifier, of both belonging and exclusion.
Below is a gift link, if you want to read the entire article. It’s well worth the time.
At the Atlantic, Isabel Fattal provides a timeline for the spread of the ugly rumors: The Springfield Effect: Trump and Vance spread racist memes that turned into bomb threats and school evacuations.
To say that Donald Trump is reckless with his public comments is about as big an understatement as you could make. But this week, we are watching the real-world effects of that recklessness play out with alarming speed.
Consider the timeline. On Monday, Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, mentioned on X the claim—for which there is no verifiable evidence—that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “abducting” and eating pets. Vance was promoting a racist theory that had been circulating in certain corners of the internet in recent days, a manifestation of the anti-Haitian sentiment that has bubbled up in Springfield after roughly 15,000 Haitian migrants arrived in the town over the past few years. MAGA supporters quickly kicked into action, sharingcat memes referencing the pet-eating theory.
By Alice De Miramon
On Tuesday, Vance posted on X that his senatorial office in Ohio had “received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants.” Vance acknowledged in his post that these rumors may “turn out to be false” but went on to say: “Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.” And he egged on the internet trolls in a subsequent post: “Keep the cat memes flowing.”
Vance was referring to an 11-year-old who was killed when a Haitian driver crashed into a school bus last year. (The driver has since been convicted of involuntary manslaughter.) On Tuesday, the boy’s father spoke out against the politicization of his son’s death. “My son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti,” Nathan Clark said in remarks before Springfield’s city commission. “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.”
In 2020, the population of Springfield, Ohio, was nearly 60,000. The town had been losing residents because of declining job opportunities, but a recent manufacturing boom has brought in an influx of immigrants, who are mostly Haitian, as Miriam Jordan of The New York Times hasreported. Most of these immigrants are in the U.S. legally; local authorities and employers say that Haitian immigrants have boosted what was once a declining local economy, but such a mass arrival of migrants has also strained government resources.
Trump’s decision to bring up Springfield at the debate—in his now-infamous and bizarre “eating the pets” non sequitur—may have been his attempt to redirect attention to immigration, which he sees as a winning topic for his campaign. But it was also a reminder of his penchant for spreading conspiracy theories and his habit of fueling the fire of racism and hate in America. The days that followed revealed how a rambling Trump comment—with the help of Vance and the pair’s social-media faithful—can generate actual threats of violence.
JD Vance continues to spread disgusting anti-Haitian rumors. Christopher Wiggins at The Advocate: JD Vance now says Haitian immigrants are spreading HIV after bizarre pet-eating claim flops.
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, made a series of controversial, bigoted, and inflammatory statements during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Vance doubled down on debunked claims about Haitian immigrants abducting pets to eat them and falsely linked the migrant community to rising rates of HIV and tuberculosis in Springfield, Ohio. His remarks have since drawn widespread condemnation for their harmful, fear-mongering nature.
During the interview, Vance insisted on the veracity of a discredited conspiracy theory circulating in Springfield that claims Haitian immigrants have been abducting pets for food, a laughable claim Trump made during the debate. Local officials have already said that “no credible evidence” supports these allegations, but Vance continued to push the narrative. “We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground… saying this stuff is happening,” Vance said. When Collins pointed out that officials had found no evidence, Vance responded, “They’ve said they don’t have all the evidence.”
By Marek Brozowski
Collins pressed Vance on his responsibility as a public figure to avoid spreading misinformation. “If someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn’t mean they saw Bigfoot,” Collins asked. Vance, however, stood firm, responding, “Nobody’s calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot. What they’re calling and saying is we are seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats.”
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, made a series of controversial, bigoted, and inflammatory statements during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Vance doubled down on debunked claims about Haitian immigrants abducting pets to eat them and falsely linked the migrant community to rising rates of HIV and tuberculosis in Springfield, Ohio. His remarks have since drawn widespread condemnation for their harmful, fear-mongering nature.
During the interview, Vance insisted on the veracity of a discredited conspiracy theory circulating in Springfield that claims Haitian immigrants have been abducting pets for food, a laughable claim Trump made during the debate. Local officials have already said that “no credible evidence” supports these allegations, but Vance continued to push the narrative. “We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground… saying this stuff is happening,” Vance said. When Collins pointed out that officials had found no evidence, Vance responded, “They’ve said they don’t have all the evidence.”
Collins pressed Vance on his responsibility as a public figure to avoid spreading misinformation. “If someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn’t mean they saw Bigfoot,” Collins asked. Vance, however, stood firm, responding, “Nobody’s calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot. What they’re calling and saying is we are seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats.”
Wiggins discusses the history of false attacks on Haitian immigrants:
Vance’s comments tap into a broader, troubling pattern of discrimination that Haitian migrants have faced for decades. Historically, U.S. immigration policy has treated Haitians disproportionately, often in ways that are harsher than those directed toward other groups. According to a 2021 U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants report, Haitians have frequently been misclassified as economic immigrants rather than political refugees, even when fleeing violence during authoritarian regimes, stripping them of asylum rights and leading to mass deportations.
One of the most egregious examples of discrimination occurred in the early 1990s, when Haitians attempting to flee their country were subjected to HIV and AIDS screenings by U.S. authorities. Even as the HIV epidemic was waning, Haitians who tested positive for the virus were held to higher standards when seeking asylum. Many were sent to quarantine camps in Guantanamo Bay, where they lived in squalor and were denied proper medical care, the report notes.
This history of associating Haitians with disease resurfaced during the Trump administration, when Title 42—a public health measure aimed at stopping the spread of communicable diseases—was invoked to justify the expulsion of Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
This is a very good article by , , and How a fringe online claim about immigrants eating pets made its way to the debate stage.
“In Springfield they’re eating dogs,” the former president said, referring to an Ohio city dealing with an influx of Haitian immigrants. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating … the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
The extraordinary moment — the airing of a claim worthy of a chain email while participating in a prime-time presidential debate — probably puzzled most of the 67.1 million people tuned in for Trump’s clash with Vice President Kamala Harris. But the rumor, which has been criticized as perpetuating racist tropes, was already thriving in right-wing corners of the internet and being amplified by those close to Trump, including his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
No one involved in Trump’s debate preparations or in a position to speak for his campaign agreed to discuss the strategy on the record or answer questions abouthow it mutated from a fringe obsession to a debate stage sound bite….
While the fallout has been a combination of bafflement and outrage, the makings of the moment are rooted in grievances that have long defined and animated Trump and his followers — and on the platforms where those grievances blossom….
By Catriona-Millar
How the rumor developed and made its way out of the right wing fever swamps:
Blood Tribe, a national neo-Nazi group, was among the early purveyors of the rumor in August, posting about it on Gab and Telegram, social networks popular with extremists. While the group’s leader has taken credit for Trump’s indulgence of the claims, Blood Tribe’s reach is unknown; its accounts on those sites have fewer than 1,000 followers.
Some Blood Tribe members also planned a couple of events in the real world, like a small Aug. 10 march in Springfield protesting Haitian immigration and an appearance at a city commission meeting later that month.
The rumor soon crossed over to mainstream social media, like Facebook and X. NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation, traced the origins to an undated post from a private Facebook group that was shared in a screenshot posted to X on Sept. 5.
“Remember when my hometown of Springfield Ohio was all over National news for the Haitians?” the user wrote. “I said all the ducks were disappearing from our parks? Well, now it’s your pets.”
Around that time, other social media posts about the rumor sprouted and went viral, some of them based in part on residents’ comments at public hearings. On Sept. 6, there were 1,100 posts on X mentioning Haitians, migrants or immigrants eating pets, cats, dogs and geese, according to PeakMetrics, a research company. The next day there were 9,100 — a 720% increase.
The article says that many social media participants suspected Laura Loomer of passing the rumor on to Trump. Others blamed Vance. Anonymous Trump sources responded:
Loomer and Trump did not speak on the plane ride, a source familiar with the trip said. And a Trump aide noted that Loomer “is not a member of our staff.”
“The president is the most well-read man in America, and he has a pulse on everything that is going on,” the aide added.
Claire Wang at The Guardian: ‘A very old political trope’: the racist US history behind Trump’s Haitian pet eater claim.
People of Haitian descent say these xenophobic attacks are nothing new for their community, and experts say the “dog eater” trope is a fearmongering tactic white politicians have long deployed against immigrants of color, particularly those of Asian descent.
“The way white Americans have positioned themselves as culturally and morally superior, this is low-hanging fruit to rally xenophobia in a very quick way,” said Anthony Ocampo, a professor of sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
By Joan Gillchrest
Demonizing immigrants through falsehoods about their diet is a political tactic that originated in the late 19th century, during the height of anti-Chinese sentiment, said May-lee Chai, author and professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.
Before the 1888 presidential election, Grover Cleveland’s campaign published trading cards that featured cartoonish sketches of Chinese men eating rats, and smeared his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, as “China’s presidential candidate”, according to the book Recollecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History.
“It’s a very old political trope to dehumanize Chinese male immigrants and show them as a threat to white American workers,” Chai said. Chinese workers posed not only a “labor threat” in the restaurant industry but also a “civilization threat”, she added, as one rationale for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was that Chinese immigration would contribute to the “browning of America”.
An urban legend alleging that Chinese restaurants serve dog meat, cat meat or rats dates back to the beginning of Chinese immigration to the US. An editorial from a Mississippi newspaper in 1852, for example, laments that trade with China is “not what it ought to be”, then says, “and besides, the Chinese still eat dog-pie”.
Chinese people may have been the first immigrant group to be widely profiled as “dog eaters”, but the slur was soon directed at other Asian communities, said Robert Ku, author of Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA.
At the 1904 world’s fair in St. Louis, organizers reportedly forced the Indigenous Igorot people from the Philippines to butcher and eat dogs for entertainment – an event that cemented the stereotype against Filipinos.By the late 20th century, Ku said, groups including Koreans, Filipinos and Cambodians became “principally stereotyped as dog eaters”.
More recently, in 2016, the Oregon county commissioner and US Senate hopeful Faye Stewart accused Vietnamese refugees of “harvesting“ dogs and cats for food. And last May, a false claim that a Laotian and Thai restaurant in California served dog meat caused months of harassment and eventual closure of the business.
It’s not surprising that these claims have extended to other non-white immigrant groups.
At The Nation, Elie Mystal writes: White People Have Never Forgiven Haitians for Claiming Their Freedom.
I could tell you that the only ”evidence” for the baseless Republican claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, comes from an American-born woman charged with animal cruelty in Canton, Ohio. I could tell you that the Haitian immigrant community living in Ohio is made up largely of people who are in the country legally, under temporary protected status visas. I could tell you that Haitian immigrants, like those in all immigrant communities, are generally hard-working people who pay their taxes and commit fewer crimes, per capita, than native-born citizens.
But I can also tell you that none of these facts matter one jot to vile and racist Republicans like JD Vance and Donald Trump, who spread lies and misinformation about immigrants. The people pushing these falsehoods long ago abandoned any tether to facts or reality. The very online, white-wing MAGA movement has found another group of dark-skinned people to hurt. Today, it’s Haitians; yesterday it was Venezuelans, and tomorrow it will be some other group of Black or brown people.
By Marek Brozowski
The goal—their only goal—is to hurt people. It’s their kink. Hurting people of color titillates and excites them. It makes them feel powerful and important. When these small people see reports that Haitians in Springfield are afraid to send their children to school; when they read about the damage being done to immigrants’ property, it makes them feel strong. Imagine being able to contribute to a lynch mob raised against largely defenseless people from the comfort of your own home, simply by sharing a cat meme. That kind of power is intoxicating to some people, and what you see online is the real, honest thrill a racist experiences whenever they find someone to menace.
I hate to give these people the satisfaction of being hurt by them. I hate to acknowledge their lies and insults, and I’d like to pretend that I can’t even hear them. As a New Yorker of Haitian descent, I’d like to tell these people “Kou langett manman ou!” (which loosely translates to: “Have an inappropriate relationship with yourself, followed by your mother, posthaste”) and go about my day.
But the pain racist Republicans and their cult spokespeople are causing is too real to laugh away. It’s too familiar to ignore. And it’s entirely too consistent with how this country has always treated Haitians to pretend that it isn’t all happening again.
Haitians committed the greatest sin possible in the modern world: We took our freedom back from the white man. Haiti is the birthplace of the only successful slave-led revolt in the “New” or “Western” world. Like everywhere else in this hemisphere, enslaved Haitians asked for their freedom, agitated for it, and were willing to negotiate terms with the enslavers for their emancipation. Unlike everywhere else, when those negotiations and political dealings resulted in nothing more than the continuation of permanent chattel slavery, Haitians stopped talking and started rebelling—and by 1804 had liberated themselves from their suddenly-not-so-superior captors.
White people have never forgiven us for being free. The French demanded “reparations” from the Haitians for taking their property—that property being the formerly enslaved Haitians themselves—as the price for their freedom. And the Americans, under the presidency of inveterate slaver Thomas Jefferson, refused to recognize Haiti or its independence, and imposed a trade embargo on the fledgling nation. Remember that the next time someone calls Jefferson a lover of liberty: That man didn’t just enslave and rape Africans brought here against their will; he tried his best to snuff out the embers of freedom burning on his doorstep.
Please read the rest at The Nation.
One last excerpt from a piece by Eric Levitz at Vox: Republicans know exactly what they’re doing. The twisted political logic behind Trump’s attacks on Haitian immigrants.
Finally Friday Reads: MAGA and Domestic Terrorism
Posted: September 13, 2024 Filed under: MAGA Domestic Terrorism | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, immigration, MAGA Bigotry, MAGA Domestic Terrorists, Republicans against Trump, Springfield Ohio 9 Comments
“For those who missed it. The childless cat lady won.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve been out of the national news loop the last few days since I’ve been fixated on the local news station’s continuous reports on Hurricane Francine. My immediate neighbors and I were fortunate. The electricity/WIFI glitched as the eyewall came over the city like a CAT 1 hurricane. We actually had the city’s largest rain levels coming in at 6.8 inches per minute, but our pump had been fixed recently, the electric lines had been up-armored, and the main pipes on my street were replaced a few years ago. You may recall I called the Tom Joad Memorial Dust Bowl construction site. All that mess must have paid off, as the drains and pump cleared the water when I went out around midnight with Temple. There were a lot of leaves and a few small, dead branches around, but everything was lit up and standing. Others were not so fortunate.
Just think. Trump wants to get rid of the National Weather Service. He probably hates them since they shut down his little act with the black Sharpie. He wants to get rid of FEMA. He wants to get rid of the folks in the EPA working diligently to stop the encroachment of the Gulf waters, making the Louisiana coastline and the textbook Louisiana Boot impossible to see in reality because a lot of it is gone. I’d rather make him Impossible.
This morning’s check of social media, headlines in legacy media, and television news reporting in cities that usually do not garner headlines has led me to conclude that the MAGA movement is a Domestic Terrorist Organization as well as an Insurrection movement. You may recall in December 2022, that DonOld called for the termination of the U.S. Constitution in a Truth Social post. This was definitely a harbinger of things to come, including Project 2025. This is from the files of CNN.
Former President Donald Trump called for the termination of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and reinstate him to power Saturday in a continuation of his election denialism and pushing of fringe conspiracy theories.
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
Trump’s post came after the release of internal Twitter emails showing deliberation in 2020 over a New York Post story about material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Saturday that Trump’s remarks are “anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned.”
“You cannot only love America when you win,” Bates said in a statement. “The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country. The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it. It’s the ultimate monument to all of the Americans who have given their lives to defeat self-serving despots that abused their power and trampled on fundamental rights.”
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, an outspoken Trump critic, denounced the former president’s Truth Social statement on Sunday. Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, tweeted that Trump’s statement “was his view on 1/6 and remains his view today.”
“No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution,” she said.
“Dick Cheney has entered the chat.” John Buss, @repeat1968
That belief is shared by Cheney’s father and many of Trump’s former staff and an increasing number of Republicans who have announced they’re voting for the Harris/Walz ticket. DonOld has become increasingly unhinged after his sorry performance in the Debate on Tuesday. It also appears that the notorious Laura Loomer has become a major influence on him. She has been traveling with him everywhere and parked in his Florida Bunker. News film has shown hints of more familiarity than we’d think possible, given his physique and everything accompanying it. So, rumors now abound. But, it’s likely she has less venial interest in him than monetary ones. This is from The Bulwark, the major source of Never Trump Republican thoughts.
A failed congressional candidate with a penchant for conspiracies and pot-stirring, Loomer has long been viewed by a faction of Trump land as a Rasputin-like figure. Last year, Trump offered her a job on the campaign, but her internal critics ultimately persuaded him to withdraw the offer. At issue was the controversy that surrounds her. Loomer has called Kamala Harris “a drug using prostitute.” As for why Harris doesn’t have biological children, she once said: “I’m willing to bet she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.”
A more recent Loomer tweet said that the White House would smell of curry if Harris, who is of Indian-American descent, won the election. This week’s 9/11 commemorations led to the resurfacing of past posts made by Loomer in which she questioned whether the U.S. government had a role in, or forewarning of, the attacks on that day.
Loomer insists that she wasn’t questioning whether the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” noting that she never actually used that phrase (she shared a video in a lengthy post on X that did use the phrase). A self-identified Islamophobe (she was kicked off Twitter for it years ago before Elon Musk reinstated her), she re-stated her belief that al Qaeda was to blame for the attack.
But the rap sheet of Loomer’s controversial posts extends well beyond the aforementioned topics. And in comments on Wednesday and Thursday, Greene said that Trump was better off ditching Loomer, whose congressional campaign she had supported.
“I don’t think that [Loomer] has the experience or the right mentality to advise a very important president,” Greene said. “To me, many of the comments that she makes and how she attacks Republicans like me, many other Republicans that are strong supporters of President Trump, I think they’re a huge problem.”
Shortly thereafter, Graham weighed in too, telling HuffPost on Thursday that he believed Loomer was “just really toxic.”
Loomer was removed from Twitter in 2022 and other social media until Elon Musk bought the now-beleaguered social media platform. Her incendiary remarks, along with the Russian Limbaughs and other MAGA provocateurs led by Trump’s outraged public comments, have led to what can only be referred to as a massive Domestic Terrorist network. If you haven’t read the news about the terror inflicted on the small city of Springfield, Ohio, you will read about it here. If you’ve followed any recent rallies or appearances on FOX or News Max, you will observe that Trump is living on the Dark Web now. His talk is riddled with whacko, hateful conspiracy theories.
I know that it’s fun to watch these videos of cats and dogs attacking the TVs while Trump announces that Haitian immigrants in the small city are feasting on pets and park birds, but I’m not going to put up anything reinforcing the stereotypes. I’m also avoiding the memes and cartoons because we don’t need anything egging these folks on. It seems weird and funny to us, but it’s a full-on terror attack on that small town and everyone who lives there. It’s gone beyond making fun of a very damaged, aging, bigoted idiot whose biggest routine is angrily belittling others.
There’s a Bomber in Springfield. Public buildings and elementary schools have been shut down. The source of this untrue story is what NewsGuard’s Reality Check calls ” Triple Hearsay'”
In just days, a bizarre and baseless claim accusing Haitian migrants of eating pet cats in Springfield, Ohio, went from an obscure Facebook post in a private group to a talking point by Republican Donald Trump during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
The journey of the viral claim from vague, third hand gossip among Ohio neighbors to the presidential debate stage — where it was broadcast to 67 million people — is as stunning as the claim itself, according to those who started it all.
NewsGuard identified and tracked down the two people central to the claim: Erika Lee, the Springfield resident who wrote the original Facebook post, and Kimberly Newton, the neighbor who had provided her with a third-hand account of the rumor, making Lee’s social media post a fourth-hand account: the alleged acquaintance/cat owner; Newton’s friend; Newton; and Lee, who posted it on Facebook.
In exclusive interviews, NewsGuard spoke both with Lee, a 35-year-old hardware store worker who has lived in Springfield for four years, and Newton, her neighbor and a 12-year resident of Springfield. The interviews reveal just how flimsy and unsubstantiated the rumor was from the beginning — based entirely on third hand hearsay. Yet it quickly gained traction and, remarkably, found its way to Trump’s lips on a national stage.
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor, Lee, the Facebook poster. Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.”
That adds up to three people with no firsthand knowledge of the allegedly victimized cat: Newton’s “friend,” Newton, and then her neighbor Lee. Or perhaps it’s four people if we count the “source” that Newton says her “friend” relied on.
This is from the Washington Post. “Springfield bomb threat used ‘hateful’ language toward migrants, Haitians, mayor says. “Springfield is a community that needs help,” Mayor Rob Rue said in an interview with The Post, adding that national leaders should provide that help.”
The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, said a bomb threat Thursday that led to the evacuation of City Hall and numerous buildings “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community.”
“Springfield is a community that needs help,” Mayor Rob Rue said in an interview with The Washington Post. The mayor added that national leaders should provide that help and not “hurt a community like, unfortunately, we have seen over the last couple of days.”
The Ohio city recently gained national attention as it became the subject of dehumanizing and xenophobic conspiracy theories amplified by former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who claimed Haitian immigrants there were killing and eating people’s pets. Police officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence to support the claim, which Trump repeated in Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said at the ABC News debate between him and Vice President Kamala Harris that 67 million people watched. “And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
When moderator David Muir pushed back, saying that the city manager of Springfield has said there were no credible reports of such claims, Trump refused to concede.
“I’ve seen people on television. … The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food,” Trump said, interrupting Muir. “So maybe he said that, and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”
Earlier this week, White House national security spokesman John Kirby called the unsubstantiated reports Vance had pushed “dangerous” misinformation.
“Because there will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is. And they might act on that kind of misinformation, and act on it in a way where somebody can get hurt, so it needs to stop,” Kirby said Tuesday, ahead of the debate.
Even GOP officials have gotten into the act, exaggerating the tragedy unfolding in the small city. Ohio’s Republican Governor, Mike Dewine, responds like a responsible person. This is from the AP. “Ohio is sending troopers and $2.5 million to a city that has seen an influx of Haitian migrants.” The state’s Attorney General is inflaming the situation.
The governor of Ohio will send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants that has landed it in the national spotlight.
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday he doesn’t oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which some 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help impacted communities.
His news conference was held just hours before the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump, where the divide over immigration policy was sure to be an issue.
On Monday, Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost also drew attention to the crisis when he directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending “an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities.”
Thousands of temporary Haitian migrants have landed in the city in recent years, as longstanding unrest in their home country has given way to violent gangs ruling the streets.
…
DeWine’s family operates a charity in Haiti in honor of their late daughter, Becky, who died in a car accident. He said the Haitians who have moved to Ohio are generally hard-working people who love their families and who are seeking to escape the violence in their home country for good jobs in Ohio.
This article about the Ohio Attorney General comes from The Ohio Capitol Journal. “Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost defends conspiracy chorus about Haitians in Springfield. Springfield public buildings and a local elementary school had to be closed Thursday due to bomb threats,”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Wednesday did his bit to amplify a conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants legally present in Springfield, Ohio are stealing and eating pets, ducks and geese.
The conspiracy has been debunked by the Springfield mayor, city manager and chief of police, as well as by Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. Yost is looking to succeed DeWine as governor in 2026.
“Citizens testified to City Council,” Yost posted on X Wednesday. “These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”
Many of Springfield’s public buildings were closed for much of the day Thursday due to bomb threats after former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated a widely debunked conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were stealing people’s pets and eating them.
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said during a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
A day earlier, on Monday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, posted on X that “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Thursday, between 15,000 and 20,000 Haitians have migrated to Springfield over the past five years. Contrary to Vance’s claim, the great majority of them are legally in the United States, either as naturalized citizens or under temporary protected status due to the violent chaos in their home country. Earlier this week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced he would send state highway patrol troopers to Springfield to help, as well as $2.5 million to help with health care resources.
While resources in the city of almost 60,000 have been strained by the heavy influx, the New York Times last week reported that many there believe it also revitalized a community that had long been on the decline.
But Trump and his supporters have long been whipping up fears of immigrants — particularly those of color — even though multiple studies show that immigrants — particularly the undocumented — commit crime at substantially lower rates than the native-born.
The influx of thousands of immigrants had already brought hate groups to Springfield, with a neo-Nazi group marching there in August.
Some Springfield residents have begged politicians to stop promoting conspiracy theories about their community. And some Haitian immigrants are keeping their children home out of fear for their safety, the Haitian Times reported Thursday.
But last week, Yost’s campaign claimed that undocumented immigrants were “terrorizing” Ohio communities. As evidence, it pointed to a Fox News article about the situation in Springfield that made no such claim.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday, Yost continued to perpetuate assertions about Haitians in Springfield.
“There’s a recorded police call from a witness who saw immigrants capturing geese for food in Springfield,” Yost said in his X post. “Citizens testified to City Council. These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”
In other words, Yost, a former journalist, was criticizing the media for not assigning the same credibility to any claim made in a police call or council meeting as they would to the public declarations of the Springfield mayor, city manager, police chief, and the Ohio governor.
GOP Congressional members are creating more havoc. “Republicans seemed more disturbed by the moderators fact-checking Trump than they were with his false claims.” This comes from NOTUS. Haley Byrd Wilt provides the analysis.
If you’ve watched Donald Trump demonize immigrants to fuel his political rise over the last decade, the former president’s insistence that immigrants are abducting the cats and dogs of Americans and eating them shouldn’t come as a surprise.
It probably also shouldn’t come as a surprise that Republican lawmakers are not only indifferent to the former president making these claims; they largely support him spreading the conspiracy.
In interviews with more than two dozen GOP lawmakers this week, Republicans brushed off Trump’s allegation that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. They didn’t care that Trump’s claims during a presidential debate were, predictably, not true. They weren’t worried that, by blurting out “they’re eating the dogs,” he was elevating racist rumors — the most cited of which relies on a neighbor’s daughter’s friend — to the national stage.
They told NOTUS Trump was simply sharing something he believed to be true, that he was doing important work by raising the broader issue of immigration and that they weren’t concerned about the ramifications his rhetoric could have for Haitians living in their states.
Some even added their own allegations.
“Apparently there’s pictures of it,” Rep. Greg Steube of Florida said of Haitians eating cats. “The fact that you’re saying it’s not happening, it’s not true.”
Steube mentioned a woman — an American citizen who was arrested recently for allegedly killing and eating a cat during an apparent mental breakdown — as evidence for his claims. When told she was an American, Steube was undeterred.
“Well, apparently there’s reports that there are. In Ohio. Haitians are doing that,” he told NOTUS. “It’s just interesting that, like, you have news reporters that are taking one guy’s — some city manager or something — when there’s reports.”
Asked where he was getting these reports, Steube said, “From all over.”
He said he would have his staff send over the reports. And his team forwarded NOTUS a newsletter from a right-wing blog, which linked to a story alleging animal sacrifices are happening in New York — unconnected to Haitians in Springfield — and a local news story about the American woman who had been arrested. The blog falsely described her as “a hungry Ohio immigrant.”
“Pictures of Jamaicans and Haitians doing pagan sacrifices,” Steube told NOTUS, incorrectly summarizing the right-wing blog post. “In Ohio.”
Rep. Brian Mast was also dismissive. “The point of it is that we have a major problem with illegal immigration,” he told NOTUS.
Mast’s state has a large Haitian population, but he didn’t sound worried about how any of his own constituents might be affected by Trump spreading rumors and racist stereotypes.
“It’s not a stereotype that people eat different animals. I mean, it’s just a fact of the matter,” Mast said. “You go to different markets in different parts of the world, and you’re going to find horse on the menu, you’re going to find dog on the menu, you’re going to find cat on the menu.”
People in Florida often eat “chicken of the trees,” he said, referring to lizards.
Still, even if cuisines differ, Trump was saying something else entirely. He was saying immigrants are stealing household pets to eat. Pressed whether it was appropriate for the former president to make a claim like that, Mast sidestepped.
“I’d say this,” Mast said. “They’re stealing the taxpayer dollars.”
Haitians have received temporary protected status to live and work in the United States because of the dangers they face back home. As many as 15,000 Haitians have moved to Springfield in recent years, saying it’s where they found job opportunities or that they followed family members who were already living there. Some Haitians have said since the debate that they now feel unsafe in the community. Springfield’s city hall was also evacuated this week after receiving a bomb threat, according to local officials.
Let’s get back to the community itself, as reported by NBC News. “Bomb threats force second consecutive day of school closures in Springfield, Ohio. Several local leaders have also been targeted in the wake of baseless claims aimed at Haitian immigrants that have been repeated by former President Donald Trump.”
Bomb threats on Friday forced the evacuation and closure of public schools and municipal buildings for a second consecutive day, as the city continues to deal with sudden national attention due to false claims involving its Haitian population.
Students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary Schools in Springfield “were evacuated from their buildings to an alternate district location,” school district spokesperson Jenna Leinasars said.
Roosevelt Middle School had already been “closed prior to the beginning of the school day in relation to the information received from the” Springfield Police Department, Leinasars added.
In addition to those school evacuations, several city commissioners and a municipal employee were the target of an emailed bomb threat, city spokesperson Karen Graves said.
A second email threatened multiple locations that included Springfield City Hall, Cliff Park High School, Perrin Woods Elementary School, Roosevelt Middle School, the Bureau of MotorVehicles and the Ohio License Bureau Southside, Graves added.
“As a precaution, all affected buildings have been evacuated. Authorities, with the support of explosive detection canines, have conducted thorough inspections and cleared the facilities listed in the threats,” Graves said in a statement.
Local police and FBI agents based in Dayton are working “to determine the origin of these email threats,” the city official said.
The city just west of Columbus has been the focal point of a national political firestorm that has included false rumors that Haitian immigrants have been stealing and eating household pets. City officials and police have said there is no credible information to support those outlandish claims.
Reuters reports on the truth of the economic value of the Haitian Immigrants to the town’s previous frail economy. “How Haitian immigrants fueled Springfield’s growth.”
The arrival of Joseph, Oreus and as many as 15,000 other immigrants from Haiti over roughly the last three years has reshaped this city of 58,000, offering some promise of economic revival along with growing pains. It also has unwittingly thrust Springfield into the middle of a national conversation about immigration, the economy and race – with Republican candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance recirculating what local police and city officials say are false claims of crimes and atrocious acts being committed by Haitians.
After a half-century of decline, data show the rapid population rebound has had a notable impact in Springfield.
…
What didn’t happen, according to interviews with a dozen local, county and officials as well as city police data, was any general rise in violent or property crime. Wages didn’t collapse, but surged with a rising number of job openings in a labor market that remained tight until recently.In early July, days before he was tapped to be Trump’s running mate, Vance read aloud a letter from Springfield officials as he quizzed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at a congressional hearing on whether immigration added to inflation by increasing housing costs, and whether a rising supply of new workers hurt others by holding down wages.
What was happening in Springfield was “a very real example of this particular concern, straight from the horse’s mouth,” Vance said.
Powell responded that those effects might be apparent in some places, but overall the rising labor supply in recent years had helped grow the economy and slow inflation. And in the long run, he said, the impact was “kind of neutral” because markets adapt.
More recently, Vance and other Republicans have amplified false claims aired by some residents at weekly city commission meetings. City commissioners in their public comments have pushed back, noting that the vast majority of Haitians are in the country legally and have a right to live where they choose.
Springfield police also responded forcefully: “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” they said in a statement. “Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes.”
Still, Trump aired those falsehoods including the baseless claim that immigrants are eating pets in his debate Tuesday night with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Biden White House earlier on Tuesday condemned the viral misinformation, saying such remarks sought to divide Americans through lies and was based on racism.
If you delve into the world of academic research on trying to regenerate the viability of small-town America, you find that the solution is immigration. That link goes to a study by the Richmond Fed.
Rural areas, however, can also benefit significantly from immigration:
- Immigrants can bring skills not available in the local labor market.
- They can help fulfill seasonal labor shortages in industries like agriculture and tourism.
- They spend money and pay taxes in their local communities, which can help develop other businesses.
Business leaders have long held that immigration is essential to many industries. This link goes to the American Immigration Council.
The main findings of the report include:
- A total of 219 companies in the Fortune 500 list had immigrant roots: 102 of those companies were founded by immigrants, and 117 companies were founded by the children of immigrants.
- Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants employ more than 14.8 million people worldwide.
- The over $7 trillion in revenue generated by Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants is greater than the GDP of every country in the world outside the United States, except China.
- Immigrant-founded Fortune 500 companies drive 68 industry sectors across the American economy.
- 35 U.S. states are headquarters to at least one New American Fortune 500 firm, and seven of those states have at least 10 firms.
MAGA once again proves that it has nothing to do with economic prosperity, the U.S. Constitution, or anything linked to form a more perfect union. It is racist. It is misogynistic. It is xenophobic. It is homophobic and transphobic. It’s purely a terrorist movement made up of White Christian Nationalists who will do anything to maintain their beliefs that only they are the true Americans despite all evidence to the contrary.
So, let’s write about and create more memes about who they are. Let’s also ensure that their mean, bigoted viewpoints are identified and not presented as a set of alternative facts. Most importantly, let’s vote the ones that creeped into our political positions at all levels the hell out of office.’
Let’s hope the FBI and law enforcement in Ohio catch this MAGA terrorist before anyone gets hurt.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Wednesday Reads: Kamala Dominates Debate
Posted: September 11, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: conspiracy theories, Harris facial expressions, Harris Trump handshake, Joe Biden, presidential debate Sept 10 2024, Trump lies 2 CommentsGood Day!!
Kamala Harris completely dominated Trump in last night’s debate, and in the process made him look like a foolish, angry old man. She threw him off at the outset by forcing him to shake her hand after he stalked to the podium, obviously trying to avoid her. Trump never looked at Harris once during the debate and never said her name, but she looked at him and spoke directly to him.
The moderators gave Trump more time to rant and rave, but Harris made good use of that by using facial expressions to demonstrate her disdain for his stupidity and his many blatant lies. Every time she had the floor, she mocked him mercilessly. She never once lost her cool.
Trump, on the other hand, lost control early on after she mocked his rallies and his obsessions with Hannibal Lector and windmills and then noted that people leave his rallies early because they are bored stiff by his repetitive, nonsensical rants. After that, he flew into a rage and never recovered.
I’m going to share some media reactions to the debate–mostly from independent writers, because I’m personally fed up with the mainstream outlets–especially the NYT and WaPo.
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo: Kamala Harris Directly Confronted The Trump Menace In Our Midst.
Kamala Harris practiced a different kind of dominance politics in last night’s debate, confronting the menace of Donald Trump directly and taking him down a peg like you would a schoolyard bully.
After nearly a decade of Trump doing as he pleases with little accountability, a lot of appeasement, and very rare consequence, he was brought up short by an opponent who looked him in the eye, called him out, didn’t back down, and in the process threw him off his game and took command of the debate stage.
The emotional weight of her presentation was centered on confronting him with a combination of mockery, scorn, bemusement, disdain, and condescension. Yes, it got under his skin, Yes, he was rattled, Yes, it turned him into a fulminating old man. I’m less interested though in the stagecraft she used than in the catharsis it provided to viewers who have craved to see Trump get his comeuppance for so many years, only to be repeatedly and endlessly disappointed.
It was Joe Biden’s failure to confront Trump on this level during their debate in June that led to the existential crisis among Democrats. Biden failed in multiple ways in that debate, but the biggest letdown was his failure to stand up to Trump in a convincing fashion and instead let Trump run all over him.
In contrast, Harris confronted Trump repeatedly. She referred to him as a “disgrace” twice, as “dangerous and unfit,” as “confused,” and as lacking the right “temperament” to be president. She derided him to his face as someone dictators know “they can manipulate … with flattery and favors.” She often referred to him in the second person, a more charged and direct way of punching the bully in the nose. She called him out for warring against the rule of law and the Constitution and for his own criminally-charged conduct.
Kurtz posted a number of Harris’ facial reactions to Trump’s nonsense; click the link to see them.
From You Tube, Trump losing it and claiming immigrants are “eating the dogs.”
The Independent on Trump buying into this weird conspiracy theory: Bizarre debate moment Trump wildly claims Haitian migrants are eating pet dogs and cats.
Donald Trump’s false claim that immigrants in Ohio are abducting pets and eating them during Tuesday’s presidential debate was quickly slapped down by ABC News moderator David Muir.
While on the debate stage in Philadelphia, the former president asserted that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were “eating dogs” and “eating the cats” while pushing his anti-immigration policies.
“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country and look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States,” the former president said.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” the former president claimed.
As he spoke, Harris looked in disbelief at the former president before laughing.
There is no evidence that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets.
Muir corrected the former president, adding: “ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
Trump interrupted Muir and disputed him, claiming he saw it “on television.”
“Well, I’ve seen people on television. People on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food,’ so maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager,” Trump said.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast on Harris forcing Trump to shake hands: Trump Tries to Dodge Harris’ Handshake Before Debate Starts.
Who saw that coming?
In a shocking slice of professionalism, or perhaps mind games, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris shared an awkward handshake before Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
Harris initiated the greeting, walking to behind Trump’s podium for the brief moment after they each took the stage—Trump from the left and Harris from the right on TV broadcasts.
Trump gave Harris a strong handshake and told her “good luck” before Harris returned to her podium. In photos of the encounter, Harris appears to be smirking and giving Trump a side-eye.
It’s the first handshake before a presidential debate since Trump and Hillary Clinton met for the first time on stage in 2016.
Aaron Rupar’s assessment of the debate at Public Notice: Kamala Harris dogwalks Trump. She put on a debate masterclass, triggering Donald into a tailspin.
Kamala Harris walked right onto that stage in Philadelphia last night, approached Donald Trump as he tried to slink away behind his podium, and shook his hand.
That subtle show of dominance (watch it below) set the tone for a debate performance from the Democratic nominee that was everything Democrats could’ve hoped for and then some.
After a June debate that left me feeling catatonic and made the terrifying prospect of a second Trump presidency more palpable than ever, last night served as a morale-boosting reminder that he’s very beatable — especially considering who he’s up against now.
Kamala Harris won and did so convincingly. And a frazzled Trump doesn’t seem to have answers….
Trump started the debate off calmly, but it didn’t last long. Things really started slipping for him after Harris hit him where it hurts by bringing up the fact that his fans are in the habit of leaving his rallies early.
The facial expressions Harris made as Trump responded by spewing a bunch of angry lies were priceless.
Trump was off balance the rest of the night. He threw JD Vance under the bus while serving up a word salad about his views on abortion. He defended his call decades ago for a group of Black teens to be executed for a crime they did not commit by insisting “a lot of people agreed with me.” He repeatedly refused to answer a question about whether he wants Ukraine or Russia to win the war his dictator buddy started, though he did at one point suggest disconcertingly that Putin might nuke the United States.
One of Trump’s worst moments came during the healthcare discussion. Asked by ABC moderator Linsey Davis if he’s developed any sort of plan over over the past nine years, Trump made clear that he still hasn’t, lamely saying that “I have concepts of a plan.”
Trump was so bad that even Fox News couldn’t sugarcoat it, and CNN’s post-debate panel was openly talking about his obvious decline. And while some of Trump’s troubles were self-inflicted, Harris deserves a lot of credit for masterfully dogwalking him all over the stage….
In addition to triggering Trump over crowd size, Harris pulled no punches during the foreign affairs portion of the debate, saying “world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump” and military leaders think he’s “a disgrace.”
Trump then played right into Harris’s hands by touting his endorsement from Hungarian strongman Victor Orban.
Read more and see more videos at Public Notice.
At The Daily Beast, Lilly Mae Lazarus wrote about Harris’s hilarious facial expressions while Trump was talking: How Kamala Harris’ Face Told the Story of the Debate.
With mics muted during Tuesday night’s debate, there were few opportunities for cross-talk or clapbacks. (At least at the beginning of the night.) Kamala Harris didn’t need to say what she was thinking out loud, though. Her face did most of the talking for her.
The vice president abandoned any semblance of a poker face while Donald Trump rambled and rebutted. She cocked her brow, cringed, and served incredulous side-eye at her political opponent throughout the night. The GOP presidential candidate, meanwhile, did his best to maintain a stoic face.
Please check out the photos of the facial expressions at the Daily Beast link above.
Rolling Stone: Harris Does What Biden Couldn’t at Debate, Destroys Trump on Abortion.
When Donald Trump debated President Joe Biden in June, one of the most cringe-inducing moments was when Trump announced, unchallenged, the batshit insane lie that Democrats want to “kill” babies. “They will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth — after birth — if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this,” Trump said. “He said, ‘We’ll put the baby aside, and will determine what we do with the baby,’ meaning: We’ll kill the baby.’”
Biden couldn’t choke out a coherent sentence in response. On Tuesday in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris had the chance for a re-do after Trump again pushed the same lie. But even before she opened her mouth, ABC’s Linsey Davis — moderating the debate with her colleague David Muir — corrected Trump: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill the baby after it’s born.”
Harris went on to slam Trump for packing the Supreme Court with conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and detailed the horrific experiences of women living in states that have implemented strict abortion restrictions in the aftermath.
The vice president spoke of “Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest, calling on viewers to “understand what that means: A survivor of a crime of violation to their body does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral.”
She spoke of women bleeding out after miscarriages, afraid to get medical help, and children who are victims of incest being forced to carry pregnancies to term. She pledged, as she has repeatedly since becoming the Democratic nominee, to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade if she is elected with a Democratic majority. “If Donald Trump were to be reelected, he will sign a national abortion ban,” she added.
A representative for Harris campaign, which aid it was monitoring the reactions of groups of undecided voters via dial groups in battleground states, said those voters had a strong response during the debate when Harris talked about abortion: “This really was off the charts, we rarely see dials go this high.” The represented added that in the 9 p.m. hour during the debate, 71 percent of their grassroots donors were women.
One more reaction from David Frum at The Atlantic: How Harris Roped a Dope. She stayed human when Trump went feral.
Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the ABC News debate stage with a mission: trigger a Trump meltdown.
She succeeded.
Former President Donald Trump had a mission too: control yourself.
He failed.
Trump lost his cool over and over. Goaded by predictable provocations, he succumbed again and again.
Trump was pushed into broken-sentence monologues—and even an all-out attack on the 2020 election outcome. He repeated crazy stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and was backwards-looking, personal, emotional, defensive, and frequently incomprehensible.
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a presidential debate hosted by ABC with Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harris hit pain point after pain point: Trump’s bankruptcies, the disdain of generals who had served with him, the boredom and early exits of crowds at his shrinking rallies. Every hit was followed by an ouch. Trump’s counterpunches flailed and missed. Harris met them with smiling mockery and cool amusement. The debate was often a battle of eyelids: Harris’s opened wide, Trump’s squinting and tightening.
Harris’s debate prep seemed to have concentrated on psychology as much as on policy. She drove Trump and trapped him and baited him—and it worked every time.
Trump exited the stage leaving uncertain voters still uncertain about whether or not he’d sign a national abortion ban. He left them certain that he did not want Ukraine to win its war of self-defense. He accused Harris of hating Israel but then never bothered to say any words of his own in support of the Jewish state’s war of self-defense against Hamas terrorism. In his confusion and reactiveness, he seemed to have forgotten any debate strategy he might have had.
Something every woman watching the debate probably noticed: Trump could not bring himself to say the name of the serving vice president, his opponent for the presidency. For him, Harris was just a pronoun: a nameless, identity-less “she,” “her,” “you.” It’s said that narcissists cope with ego injury by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the person who inflicted the hurt. If so, that might explain Trump’s behavior. Harris bruised his feelings, and Trump reacted by shutting his eyes and pretending that Harris had no existence of her own independent of President Joe Biden, whose name Trump was somehow able to speak.
Hemmed, harried, and humiliated, Trump lost his footing and his grip. He never got around to making an affirmative case for himself. If any viewer was nostalgic for the early Trump economy before its collapse in his final year in office, that viewer must have been disappointed. If a viewer wanted a conservative policy message, any conservative policy message, that viewer must have been disappointed. When asked whether he had yet developed a health-care plan after a decade in politics, Trump could reply only that he had “concepts of a plan.”
Almost from the start, Harris was in control. She had better moments and worse ones, but she was human where Trump was feral. She had warm words for political opponents such as John McCain and Dick Cheney; Trump had warm words for nobody other than Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian strongman whom Trump praised for praising Trump. It was an all-points beatdown, and no less a beating because Trump inflicted so much of it on himself.
Frum has come a long way since the GW Bush days. And face it; the guy can really write.
Even Republicans admit that Harris won the debate.
HuffPost: ‘Trump Had A Bad Night’: Conservative Pundits Declare Kamala Harris Winner Of Debate.
Conservative pundits acknowledged on Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris got the better of former President Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia, citing her success in getting under his skin.
“Let’s make no mistake. Trump had a bad night,” Fox News host Brit Hume said. “We just heard so many of the old grievances that we all know aren’t winners politically.”
“She was exquisitely well-prepared, she laid traps, and he chased every rabbit down every hole,” added former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who often appears as a commentator on ABC News.
“Whoever prepared Donald Trump should be fired. He was not good tonight at all,” Christie said.
Trump lost his cool early in the debate, and never recovered.
Harris baited Trump by bringing up the attendance at his campaign events, saying people leave his rallies early out of boredom and exhaustion. She also got under Trump’s skin by bringing up his calls for the execution of the Central Park Five, the teens who were later exonerated in the 1989 rape of a jogger, calling him a weak person who is mocked by world leaders and questioning his mental acuity.
“We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible in the history of politics,” Trump shot back at one point, veering off his message on immigration.
Trump also got into trouble by again denying he lost the 2020 presidential election despite only days earlier acknowledging he lost “by a whisker.” But the most bizarre moment of the night may have been Trump bringing up false reports of migrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, which Republicans have seized on as a reason to crack down on migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Hill: House Republicans bemoan Trump debate performance: ‘Not good.’
House Republicans are bemoaning former President Trump’s performance in the first — and potentially only — debate against Vice President Harris, acknowledging that the Democratic nominee successfully got under her GOP opponent’s skin.
Several times throughout the more than 90-minute debate in Philadelphia, Harris appeared to try to bait Trump with attacks on matters that hit close to home — the size of his rallies, the magnitude of his family fortune, world leaders “laughing” at him — in an effort to thwart his composed posture. Some House Republicans say she succeeded.
“I’m just sad,” one House Republican who is supportive of Trump told The Hill. “She knew exactly where to cut to get under his skin. Just overall disappointing that he isn’t being more composed like the first debate.”
“The road just got very narrow,” they added. “This is not good.”
A second House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, said “many” in the GOP conference were “disappointed” that Trump could not stay on message throughout the debate.
“She talks to us like toddlers but is doing a good job provoking him. He [is] right on policy but can’t keep to a message,” the lawmaker said. “Many are disappointed he couldn’t stay focused or land a punch. Not sure much changes but it wasn’t a good performance.”
“Lots of missed opportunities so far,” a third House Republican told The Hill in a text message during the debate. “It’s not devastating – but it’s not good.”
The final insult for Trump came after the debate, when Taylor Swift announced she will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for president and vice president. The Guardian: Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president in post signed ‘childless cat lady.’
Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, in a post on Instagram published minutes after the US presidential debate, saying the Democratic candidate would be the “warrior” to fight for the rights and causes she believes in.
“As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can,” Swift wrote on Instagram to her 283 million followers late on Tuesday, adding: “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election”.
“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
In her statement, Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote….
Swift said she had watched the US presidential debate between Harris and Trump, and urged her fans to do their research on “the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most”.
She signed off “Childless cat lady,” a reference to comments made by Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. The picture that appeared with the post was of Swift with her cat Benjamin Button, one of three she owns.
I’m going to end there, but I have a couple more articles that I’ll share in the comments. If you didn’t watch the debate, You can read the transcript at ABC News and/or watch the full debate on YouTube.
Have a great day!!
Mostly Monday Reads: Say Hello to my Little Friend Francine
Posted: September 9, 2024 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign | Tags: #DonOld, 2024 ABC Presidential debate, @repeat1968. John Buss, Harris/Walz policy priorities 2024, Trump Troubles 10 Comments
“We must shut down the government to prevent this from happening.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m trying to get this post up while doing early Hurricane Prep. I’ve located the matches for my hurricane lamps and the range. I’m powering up the solar charger and all the little charge sticks I have left from Hurricane Ida. I’m not excited about this since the last few days brought some drips back into my usual spot over my bed. I need to go up and caulk between the roof on the addition and the side of the old house. That’s usually what solves it. At least the roof is relatively new. We’re on the edge of the cone, so we could get the dirtiest part of it or miss it. It’s always something, isn’t it?
One of the worst parts of the RNC, which I refused to watch but did see clips, was the utter hypocrisy of the crowds waving ‘mass deportation’ signs while Usha Vance reaffirmed the “GOP’s “good immigrant, bad immigrant” narrative.”
“Usha Vance talking about being a daughter of immigrants as the mostly white people at the RNC hold ‘Mass Deportations Now’ signs is quite the scene,” one person tweeted.
Throughout the evening, blue and red signs peppered the convention floor, reading “Mass Deportations Now” Audible chants of “Send them back” also reverberated multiple times when politicians like Usha Vance’s husband, former president Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick JD Vance, spoke about “illegal aliens” entering the country.
The bottom line is that if you’re not indigenous, your status as an American citizen is the result of being a colonizer or an immigrant. But this kind of xenophobia has worked well in the past, so no wonder we have to endure it again. DonOld has just hyped up a lot of people whose relatives were unwanted at various parts of our history, like the Irish, the Germans, or the Italians in recent history. This is a disturbing headline in The Guardian today. “Trump says his plan to expel millions of immigrants will be a ‘bloody story.’ The GOP’s plans for America after a Trump victory include aggressive immigration enforcement and mass deportations.”
Donald Trump has issued yet another ominous warning about his potential second term in the Oval Office, this time promising a “bloody story” for the millions of immigrants he intends to deport.
He made the comments at a campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin on Saturday, echoing the broader Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform. The GOP’s plans for America after a Trump victory include aggressive immigration enforcement and mass deportations.
That’s when Trump alluded to the blood.
“And ya know getting them out will be a bloody story,” Trump said. “[Undocumented immigrants] should have never been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”
Though Trump did not explain what he meant by “bloody story,” he has frequently — and falsely — insisted that many undocumented workers crossing into the US illegally are criminals released from Venezuelan prisons or other violent lawbreakers.
He told his supporters that “in Colorado, they’re so brazen they’re taking over sections of the state,” which is likely a reference to a fake story claiming that a Venezuelan gang took over an apartment building in the city.
The fearmongering and dehumanizing language used by Trump to describe immigrants may be intended to prime his base for more brutal ICE crackdowns, should he succeed in November.
As was previously reported by the New York Times, Trump’s vision for America includes mass deportations that will be so extensive that “huge camps” will be needed to detain people. To execute his vision, Trump has proposed the creation of a deportation force pulled from local police and National Guard troops volunteered by “Republican-run states.”
In other words, Trump wants an army of Republican-loyal racial purity troops and concentration camps.
“Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he told a crowd in Iowa earlier his month.
Suppressing rights: October 28, 2018
It’s hard to analyze this policy suggestion as being much more than hate and fear-mongering, racist, and inhumane. But that’s who he is and what his cult loves to hear. He’s unlikely to get a plurality of the vote. More of his former appointees and Republicans are announcing they will not vote for him. The latest to announce this is Trump’s Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. That also adds to the number of national Security Advisors who warn about him. Raw Story has an interesting take by Mark Chapman outlining how Tennesse has been gutting voting rights. “
Tennessee has become America’s most efficient state at stripping its citizens of voting rights, according to an analysis for The New York Times — to the point the Volunteer State has become a “master class in undermining democracy.”
The issue comes back to felony disenfranchisement laws, which became commonplace throughout Southern states following the end of slavery, since the justice system of several states for decades made it possible to essentially fabricate charges against Black Americans as needed, and then use that as pretext to eliminate voting rights.
In recent years, most states with these laws have rolled them back, making it far easier for most rehabilitated convicts to regain voting rights on completion of their sentence.
But in Tennessee, things are going backward: over 200,000 people are disenfranchised by such laws in the state, including 21 percent of Black adults. Among them is Sarah Bynum, a grandmother and local community advocate who runs her local homeowners’ association and has fought for many municipal improvements — but because she still has no right to vote, she says she feels like “I’m a foreigner in my own country.”
“The good news is, Tennessee has a path for reclaiming voting rights,” she added. “The bad news is, the process is absurdly complicated.”
It appears they may be relying heavily on voter suppression measures, given their campaign is sorely lacking on the ground in many states. This is from Hugo Lowell writing for The Guardian. “Trump’s voter turnout operation in swing states is too small, GOP worries. Republican officials see Trump’s campaign as comparable in size to a midterm election rather than a presidential.”
Republican officials are raising the alarm that Donald Trump’s campaign has invested far fewer resources for its voter turnout operation in battleground states than previous presidential election races, and attempts to bridge the gap with political action committees have come too late.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) once envisioned an extensive field operation for the 2024 election, including having about 90 staffers in the must-win state of Pennsylvania.
But the Trump campaign scrapped those plans when it took over the RNC in March, redirecting the focus on field operations to combating supposed voter fraud and pursuing a twin voter turnout strategy of relying on several political action committees and ardent Trump volunteers.
The result has been that the Trump campaign has put fewer resources into its ground game in battleground states, according to people familiar with the matter – and Republican officials have derisively said the Trump operation is more comparable in size to a midterm cycle than a presidential.
Also, the Harris campaign and the DNC are spending unprecedented levels of money to help down-ballot candidates. They have sent nearly $25 million to help states turn votes and advertise their local candidates. Trump is siphoning money from the Republican Party and his campaign to pay his massive law bills. He’s even asked candidates who appear with him to give to his campaign. The Washington Post has the numbers of the Harris fund-raising and fund-sharing. Michael Scherer has the analysis.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee plan to transfer nearly $25 million to support down-ballot Democratic candidates in state and federal races this year, a significant boost to those efforts following record fundraising for her campaign this summer.
“If we want a future where every American’s rights are protected, not taken away; where the middle class is strengthened, not hollowed out; and a country where our democracy is preserved, not ripped apart, every race this November matters,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement Tuesday. “The Vice President believes that this race is about mobilizing the entire country, in races at every level, to fight for our freedoms and our economic opportunity.”
The funds include $10 million transfers to both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which are leading the efforts to win Democratic majorities next January on Capitol Hill.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which focuses on winning control of state legislative bodies, will receive $2.5 million, while the Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will each receive $1 million.
The Harris Walz policy agenda will have a much more difficult time if the Democratic Party does not hold the Senate and retake the House. The ABC Debate is tomorrow. It is unlikely to bring whatever little best Trump has to offer. Kamala has dealt with big-time Criminals before, so she will be ready. But what about the press? Will they be ready? This is from Andrew Egger writing for The Bulwark. ” Trump Leans Into the Violence. Is our press corps up for this moment? Take the Ranting Seriously!”
Donald Trump’s rhetoric has only ever really been constrained by one thing: His lizard-brain sense of what he can get away with.
As the election draws near, he seems to believe he can get away with more than ever.
Trump’s policy promises are getting wilder and his flirtation with authoritarianism more brazen. At a rally in Wisconsin Saturday, he made a new pledge to slap a “100 percent tariff” on countries that adopt reserve currencies other than the dollar: “You leave the dollar and you’re not doing business with the United States because we are going to put a 100 percent tariff on your goods.”
“We’re gonna be a tariff nation,” he went on inanely. “It’s not going to be a cost to you, it’s going to be a cost to another country.”
He keeps promising to elevate kooks. He says he’s tapped Elon Musk to run a “government efficiency” task force. He’s left open the door to a cabinet appointment for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vax crank whose endorsement he secured last month. In Wisconsin, he extolled his plan to end the federal Department of Education and “send it back to the states so that Ron Johnson can run it.”
His diagnoses of what ails the country remain utterly untethered from reality, as with his repeated false assertions that public schools are performing transgender surgeries on minors: “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation,” he Saturday.
Most of all, though, he’s leaning into the violence. Trump, repeatedly and in open sight, is outlining two major initiatives involving large-scale, systematic arrests of groups of people.
His proposed mass deportations of millions of migrants, he warned Saturday, will be “a bloody story.” And he keeps pledging to redirect the Department of Justice against his own political enemies, calling for prominent Democrats to face “public military tribunals” and for members of the congressional committee who investigated January 6th to be indicted for treason. (For good measure, his promises to pardon January 6th rioters now explicitly include those who assaulted police during the insurrection attempt.)
On Saturday, Trump made clear that that enemies list won’t stop with national Democrats, promising “long term prison sentences” for anyone he deems to have cheated in the upcoming election in a baroque post to Truth Social:
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.
Emmy Martin of Politico reports that the Vice President has this prediction for the debate.“Harris says Trump is ‘going to lie’ during the debate, prepares for ‘untruths.’ The vice president said she expects Trump to revert to personal attacks during their match-up on Tuesday.”
Kamala Harris expects that former President Donald Trump is “going to lie” during their debate Tuesday and is prepping for those “untruths,” she said in a prerecorded radio interview released Monday.
“There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” the vice president said on “The Rickey Smiley Morning Show.” “And we should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth.”
Harris also said she believes the former president will revert to personal attacks during the debate, pointing to the “playbook” he used with former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Such an attack might have been just what the Harris campaign had hoped for if the candidates had unmuted microphones throughout the event. However, each candidate’s mic will be muted while the other speaks on Tuesday, limiting the time they can challenge each other to their allotted turns.
This coverage of the debate is from NPR. “Harris and Trump debate in Philadelphia tomorrow night. Here’s what you need to know.”
Harris has since made up the ground Biden lost in swing state polls and now stands virtually tied with Trump. Despite a groundswell of support and reportedly record-breaking fundraising amounts, her campaign’s honeymoon phase is likely to end, especially as Trump and Republicans look to ramp up attacks.
Here’s what you need to know about this second debate of the 2024 presidential election cycle.
The event will air at 9 p.m. ET for 90 minutes from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis are slated to moderate the debate, which will be broadcast by the network and streamed on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.
Follow NPR’s live blog for the latest updates, analysis, fact-checking and color; listen to NPR’s special coverage of the ABC News Presidential Debate Simulcast on many public radio stations.
S0, that’s it from me today. I’m back to getting the house ready for what could be a lot of wind and rain. I’m hoping it doesn’t develop too much since it does appear to be moving quickly.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: September 7, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: Dick Cheney, E. Jean Carroll, Economic Club of New York, fascism, Jeff Jarvis, Liz Cheney, media criticism, sexual abuse, tariffs 4 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
By Tetsuhiro Wakabashi
Yesterday we got some earth-shaking news: Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris for president. His daughter Liz had announced her endorsement a couple of days ago. Of course neither Cheney is announcing agreement with Harris’s policies, but they both see the danger that another Trump term would pose for our country and for democracy here and around the world. With just two months to go before the 2024 election, we the people are building a coalition of people with differing political views who will act together to save us from the forces of fascism.
AP: Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he will vote for Kamala Harris.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney, a lifelong Republican, will vote for Kamala Harris for president, he announced Friday.
Liz Cheney, who herself endorsed Harris on Wednesday, first announced her father’s endorsement when asked by Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic magazine during an onstage interview at The Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
“Wow,” Leibovich replied as the audience cheered.
Like his daughter, Dick Cheney has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, notably during Liz Cheney’s ill-fated reelection campaign in 2022.
Dick Cheney put out a statement Friday confirming his endorsement, which read almost entirely as opposition to Trump rather than support of Harris.
“He can never be trusted with power again,” the statement said. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” [….]
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’ campaign chair, released a statement saying, “The Vice President is proud to have the support of Vice President Cheney, and deeply respects his courage to put country over party.”
A bit more from Newsweek: Dick Cheney Reveals His Reason for Endorsing Kamala Harris Over Donald Trump.
Former Vice President and influential Republican Dick Cheney released a statement announcing his endorsement of Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris for President. Speaking out against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, Cheney said that he can “never be trusted with power again.”
“In our nation’s 248 year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney, 83, said in the statement shared on Sept. 6. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” he continued, referencing the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Cheney, who served as Vice President under President George W. Bush between 2001 and 2009 went on to say that American citizens have a “duty” to prioritize the nation over partisan politics.
Cheney’s endorsement marks the most high profile Republican politician to announce that they will vote for Harris over Republican nominee Trump, further spotlighting other former establishment Republicans who have yet to come out to endorse Trump during this run for the presidency—many of whom have been critical of Trump in the past—including his own former Vice President Mike Pence, former President George W. Bush, and former Republican nominee for President Mitt Romney.
Miroco Machiko, 1981-present
Liz Cheney also announced that she will vote for Democrat Colin Allred, who is challenging Ted Cruz for the Senate.
The Hill: Liz Cheney will back Allred in Texas Senate race.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said she would be backing Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) in the Texas Senate race, endorsing the House member over the Republican incumbent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
“I want to say specifically, though, here in Texas, you guys do have a tremendous, serious candidate running for the United States Senate,” Cheney said during her Friday appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, stopping as she was cut off by a raucous applause.
“Oh, well, it’s not Ted Cruz, but Colin Allred is somebody I served with in the House, and somebody who really, when you think about the kind of leaders our country needs, and going to this point about, you know, you might not agree on every policy position, but we need people who are going to serve in good faith,” she said.
“We need people who are honorable public servants and in this race that is Colin Allred so I’ll be working on his behalf.”
Allred, who is waging an uphill run to unseat the third-term Cruz, thanked Cheney shortly after on social media, saying the former No. 3 leader of the House Republican Conference is a “patriot who continuously puts country over party because she believes in the importance of protecting our democracy.
“I am so honored to have her support. In the Senate, I will work across party lines to get things done for Texas,” Allred said.
Naturally, the mainstream media is not treating this news with the seriousness it deserves. So far the NYT is AWOL.
Journalist, professor and media critic Jeff Jarvis at his blog Buzz Machine: The unprecedented grand coalition.
As Nicolle Wallace exclaimed on her show Friday, Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have all gathered together around a cause. That cause is democracy and its standard bearer is Kamala Harris.
This is a momentous time in the United States, unprecedented at least in this century and likely since long before the Civil War. It is the biggest story in my journalism career. The question is whether our national media will understand this moment — or whether they will continue to insist on their trope of a divided America.
By Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi
It is not a divided America. Patriots are gathering together and putting past differences aside to forestall a next civil war, to support and defend the Constitution. The movement that matters is not Trump’s and the Republicans’ fascist insurrection, which is the one that gets attention in news media. The movement that matters now is this one: the movement for democracy.
In recent days, in The Times, Nick Kristof scolded liberals, telling us why we should not demean Trump voters. A few days later in The Washington Post, Matt Bai rebutted, saying he understands Trump voters but asking why he should give them empathy. I say both framings are wrong, for each centers Trump and his fascists.
A much more profound phenomenon is growing — not on the “other side” of the fascists, but instead at the new and true core of American politics and governance. The question is not whether we should demean or understand or empathize with fascists. What we should be concentrating on instead is welcoming those who will stand for democracy in a larger movement.
Jarvis pleads with the both-sides-ing political press:
For God’s sake, political reporters, stop framing these two movements — one to tear down democracy, one to build it up — as equivalent sides across your imaginary continental divide. Stop your false balance. Stop washing the insanity of the fascist party’s leader — and the insanity of his followers for following him. Stop normalizing his and their patently abnormal and abhorrent behavior. Stop trying to predict (in this unprecedented moment, all your “models” and experience and presumptions are worthless). Stop hoping for bad news. Stop making the story about yourself — yes, I am looking at you, A.G. Sulzberger — and please try to understand the threats to democracy, liberty, and life from the perspectives of those who do not share the power and privilege of your platforms. Stop ignoring the rising chorus of critics who are trying to make you and your journalism better — to save journalism from your lapses of judgment. Stop your amnesia about what Trump and company have already shown us to be. Stop making up new white-gloved euphemisms for racism, misogyny, lies, insurgency, corruption, hatred, and grift — call these things what they are, otherwise you are not doing journalism, not informing and explaining reality to your publics.
Yesterday, Trump made a fool of himself again–what else is new? He attended a court hearing on his effort to appeal the jury verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Afterward he gave a “press conference” in which he for some strange reason described in detail some of the accusations against him by various women. Trump took no questions as this purported “press conference.”
The Hill: Appeals court weighs Trump’s bid to toss E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict.
Former President Trump appeared before a federal appeals court Friday where his attorney argued that he should get a new trial in writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing him of sexual abuse and defamation that ended in a multimillion-dollar jury verdict.
Cat and butterfly Woodblock print by Ohara Koson
The argument delved into whether Trump’s trial judge erred by allowing the jury to hear from two other women who accused the former president of sexual assault and the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump can be heard bragging about groping women without their permission.
“It’s very hard to overturn a jury verdict based on evidentiary rulings,” noted Circuit Judge Denny Chin.
The three-judge panel on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, all appointed by Democratic presidents, heard arguments for less than a half-hour, hewing closely to the allotted argument time….
Trump himself attended Friday’s proceeding after not attending any of the trial and later blaming his lawyers for the loss….
Much of the argument revolved around the former president’s claim that his trial judge erred in allowing the jury to hear from two women who accused Trump of sexual assault on a 1979 airplane flight and during a magazine interview in 2005.
Read more about the hearing at the link.
The Washington Post: Trump rants, resurfaces sexual assault allegations for 49 unfocused minutes.
Donald Trump railed against women who have accused him of sexual assault. He baselessly blamed the Biden-Harris administration for his legal difficulties. He appeared to criticize the physical appearances of some of his accusers. “She would not have been the chosen one,” he said of one, later adding that he would “not want to be” involved with another accuser, even as he acknowledged his advisers urged him not to make such a comment.
And those were only some of the ways he veered away from topics voters have said they care most about in what his campaign billed as a “press conference” Friday, with the first ballots to be cast soon in the presidential election. Trump took no questions from the news media.
It was yet another striking strategic choice by the former president, who is in a toss-up race with Vice President Kamala Harris in the polls and facing what could be a historic gender gap in November as he struggles to appeal to women voters. After attending oral arguments Friday morning in his appeal of the verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing advice writer E. Jean Carroll decades ago, he went before the cameras and repeatedly impugned his accusers. He dismissed a string of allegations as entirely meritless as he leaned into his core message that he is a victim of political persecution.
In a roughly 49-minute appearance that sometimes verged into a stream-of-consciousness rant that was hard to follow, Trump also reminisced about his early career as a real estate mogul and reality television star. (“I was,” he said, “a celebrity for a long time.”) He lamented his two impeachments, calling them “impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two.” And he mentioned Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern who had an affair with President Bill Clinton, at least three times.
“This is the weaponization of justice at a level that nobody’s ever seen in this country before,” Trump said, blaming the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department for his state and federal legal entanglements, even though there is no evidence that the White House has sought to influence any of Trump’s criminal cases. “You see it in Third World countries. You see it in banana republics, but you don’t see it in the United States of America. And it’s a very sad thing. And I think I’m doing a great service by having gone through it.”
“She would not have been the chosen one.” In other words, she was not attractive enough for him to force his sexual attentions on.
Analysis by Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: Trump’s sudden move to re-litigate sexual abuse claims goes off the rails.
Former president Donald Trump is near a crucial juncture of the 2024 campaign. Mail ballots are due to go out soon, his only scheduled debate with Vice President Kamala Harris is happening in four days and Trump is trying to reverse the momentum Harris has generated in her six-plus weeks as a presidential candidate.
By Kanoko Takeuchi
With that as the backdrop, Trump decided to spend nearly an hour Friday rehashing old grievances, offering a laundry list of false and debunked claims, criticizing his lawyers and going into great and seemingly ill-advised detail about the sexual assault allegations and verdicts against him.
Trump even acknowledged he was advised not to say some of what he said, either because it raised the possibility of yet more legal jeopardy or because it was obviously counterproductive politically.
Trump’s ability to go off-message and rant in ways that make his advisers — and, potentially, voters — squirm is unmatched. But even against that backdrop, this was on another level.
The impetus for the media event at Trump Tower was Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault and defamation civil verdict, which was argued Friday morning. (This is the $5 million verdict against Trump — compared to the later $83.3 million case in another Carroll defamation suit.)
Some examples from Trump’s insane rant:
Trump began by repeating many claims he has made before, including that he doesn’t know Carroll and never met her, despite a photo showing the two of them meeting at one point. He said she made up the story of his assaulting her. The claims closely resembled the ones that were found to be defamatory in both of his cases. Carroll could seemingly sue again, an option her lawyer has reserved in the past when Trump kept saying such things. Her lawyer raised the prospect again Friday.
But Trump actually took things a step further.
At one point, he suggested that the 1987 photo of him and Carroll showing them, in fact, meeting “could have been AI-generated.” (This is the photo in which Trump in a deposition mistook Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples.) This is as nonsensical as Trump’s claim that recent images of Harris’s crowd size were faked. The photo first circulated in 2019, when Carroll brought her allegations forward.
At another point, Trump echoed his previous claims about another woman who accused him of sexual misconduct, suggesting that she wouldn’t have been desirable enough — a theme he returned to repeatedly throughout the appearance.
“I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened,” Trump said of the other woman, Jessica Leeds, before adding that “she would not have been the chosen one. She would not have been the chosen one.”
The “chosen one” being the one he would choose to assault? Even the most generous interpretation of his bizarre comment makes it hard to conclude otherwise.
Trump has previously suggested he wasn’t attracted to the women who have accused him. But here he was casting assaulting women as something of a selection process.
Trump dwelled on that point, too, despite indicating that a lawyer had told him, “Please don’t say that I would not want to be involved with her.” He said at another point that his “people” told him not to say that, before saying it: “I would not want to be involved with her.”
There’s much more at the WaPo link.
By Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s embarrassing appearance at the Economic Club of New York and his bizarre response to a question about child care costs. Becky Quick of CNBC was present at the meeting. Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: CNBC Anchor: I Can’t Understand Trump’s ‘Crazy’ New Economic Plans.
Trump used a speech to the New York Economic Forum on Thursday to set out his fiscal plans, which included claiming that he would pay for child care by raising tariffs on imports—but left many who saw it confused and unable to explain it.
Among them were the co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box Becky Quick, who was on stage watching while Trump spoke for half an hour.
On Friday morning, she said she couldn’t make any sense of his plans for tariffs.
“The idea you are going to raise a lot of money through tariffs and not have it be inflationary does not make a lot of sense to me,” Quick said on Friday morning’s Squawk Box.
Quick added, “You are either changing behavior or raising money. If you are raising money from it, it is inherently inflationary. Your consumers are not getting low prices.”
Quick’s co-host, Joe Kernen—named in court papers as one of the people on Trump’s contact list when he was in the White House—was equally perplexed at how Trump planned to hike tariffs on foreign goods without sending inflation into overdrive. He called Trump’s plan a “bad, populist idea.”
Trump’s incoherent rant Thursday on tariffs came after—of all things—he was asked what sort of legislation he’d support to make child care affordable.
“If you win in November,” a nonprofit founder asked, “can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and, if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
Trump suggested that he’d bring down prices for parents by subsidizing it with money made from higher tariffs on countries like China, but offered no explanation on how that would actually work. His answer went on for two minutes and totaled 360 words, but was mocked by critics as an “absolute word salad.” [….]
I wish someone in the media would follow Lawrence O’Donnell’s suggestion to ask Trump to explain what a tariff is. He describes it as a “tax” on foreign countries, and either doesn’t understand or is lying about the fact that tariffs are simply added to price Americans pay for foreign goods and are obviously inflationary.
One more story before I wrap this up. We haven’t heard much about Ron DeSantis since failed miserably in the Republican primaries. But he is still down in Florida pushing his fascist agenda.
Tampa Bay Times: DeSantis’ election police questioned people who signed abortion petitions.
Isaac Menasche remembers being at the Cape Coral farmer’s market last year when someone asked him if he’d sign a petition to get Florida’s abortion amendment on the ballot.
He said yes — and he told a law enforcement officer as much when one showed up at the door of his Lee County home earlier this week.
Cat in Bamboo, Hiroshima, by Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani
Menasche said he was surprised when the plainclothes officer twice asked if it was really Menasche who had signed the petition. The officer said he was looking into potential petition fraud.
Though the officer was professional and courteous, Menasche, who has had little interaction with police in his life, said the encounter left him shaken.
“I’m not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion,” Menasche said. “I just felt strongly and I took the opportunity when the person asked me, to say yeah, I’ll sign that petition.”
The officer’s visit appears to be part of a broad — and unusual — effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day. The amendment would overturnFlorida’s six-week abortion ban by proposing to protectabortion access in Florida until viability.
Since last week, DeSantis’ secretary of state has ordered elections supervisors in at leastfour counties to send to Tallahassee at least36,000 petition forms already deemed to have been signed by real people. Since the Times first reported on this effort, Alachua and Broward counties have confirmed they also received requests from the state.
One 16-year supervisor said the request was unprecedented. The state did not ask for rejected petitions, which have been the basis for past fraud cases….
Menasche later posted on Facebook that it was “obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition.” He told the Times that the officer who showed up at his door had a copy of Menasche’s driver’s license and other documents related to him.Menasche said he does not recall which agency the officer was with.
I’m so glad I live in a blue state.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a nice weekend!
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