“I seen it on Fox News so it must be true.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s finally here, and I’m so ready, but I would feel safer if I knew the outcome. I’m pretty sure the women of America have got this. I also know anyone who values their freedom, and the girls and women in their lives are doing their best, too. This headline caught my attention. It’s from The Daily Beast. “Teary-Eyed John Oliver Begs Reluctant Voters to Back Kamala Harris. The late-night host sent an emotional message to viewers in a passionate monologue days before the election.” My Discord Kamala volunteer channel has been beeping constantly with requests to call just a few more folks in the Swing States. I think everyone is trying to help in their own way because we all remember how awful DonOld and his cult can be. Sean L. McCarthy writes about John Oliver’s teary plea. I think it’s likely he’s higher up on the Project 2025/DonOld’s revenge list than I am.
Fighting back tears, John Oliver choked up Sunday night while urging undecided and reluctant voters to turn out Tuesday to elect Kamala Harris as president.
“What am I going to be feeling on Wednesday? And is there anything I’m going to wish I’d said right now?” Oliver said at the start of his impassioned 10-minute closing monologue on Last Week Tonight.
Oliver said he supports Harris’ proposals to expand Medicare for long-term elder care, as well as expanding reproductive freedoms and boosting incomes for poor Americans. He also acknowledged that several episodes in this 11th season of his late night HBO show already have warned of the danger of a second Trump term and the policies spelled out in Project 2025. “All of that is why a bunch of our stories this year have ended with me telling you to vote against Donald Trump,” Oliver said. “But to be clear, I am voting for Kamala Harris. And I think you should, too.”
Oliver directed his Sunday night plea to those voters “rightly furious” about the Biden administration’s “indefensible” policy toward the war in Gaza. “Look, I get why this is so difficult, and I know there are some who won’t vote for Harris under any circumstances because of this issue,” he said, adding: “I wish Harris had done more to reach out to you, beyond sending Bill Clinton to basically scold you this week. That didn’t seem remotely helpful to me, and honestly, felt a bit like bullying.”
But he also pointed to Muslim and Arab voices “who have also wrestled hard with this question and arrived at the conclusion that despite their pain, to vote for Harris.” Such as Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, one of the Palestinians who had hoped to speak at this summer’s DNC but was rebuked. Oliver played a TikTok from Romman where she explained her reasons for sticking with Harris and the Democrats. “It’s honestly worth watching the whole thing,” Oliver said.
I know what it feels like to think you should’ve done something more when you had a chance. I don’t like being in that place.
Some signs show things moving in the right direction, even though the big pollsters call this race a toss-up. It’s why we can’t afford to sit this one out. This NPR report has me breathing easier. “Meet the conservative women who are keeping their votes for Kamala Harris a secret. It played on Morning Editiontoday with Sarah MacCammon. It’s a 4 minute listen if you go to the link.
In political ads and campaign speeches, supporters of Vice President Harris have a message for Republican women: Your vote is private, and no one will know if you secretly vote for Harris.
“No one gets to know how you’re going to vote,” Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin said last week during a campaign stop in Michigan. “No one gets to check it. It’s not available online. Right? Your vote is your choice. You don’t have to tell anyone.” Slotkin, who’s running for Senate, was campaigning with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who’s also crossed the aisle to endorse Harris.
Their message is aimed at conservative-leaning women like T, whom we’re calling by her first initial. T, who is in her 60s and lives in Wisconsin, asked for anonymity to discuss how living in a politically divided household is affecting her marriage of more than 40 years.
“He’s frustrated with me that I won’t listen to him plead his case. I can’t and I won’t,” she explained.
T says she mailed her absentee ballot from another family member’s home to avoid a confrontation with her husband over her support for Harris.
“It’s not that he would ever stop me or anything, it’s just I just can’t deal with that animosity,” she said with an audible sigh.
There was some sad news today. Quincy Jones has gone home to the elders at the age of 91. His influence on my life as a musician cannot be overstated. He was the “it” man. An interview with the great man in 2018 on DonOld and his family is something I pass along because you’ll see how strongly he was disgusted by the man. This is from Newsweek. “What Quincy Jones Said About Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump.”
In the interview, Jones mentioned knowing Ivanka’s father and didn’t hold back his opinions about him, expressing a strong distaste for Trump and referring to him in disparaging terms. Jones described him as “crazy” and criticized him as being “limited mentally,” calling him “narcissistic.”
“I used to hang out with him. He’s a crazy motherf***er. Limited mentally – a megalomaniac, narcissistic. I can’t stand him,” Jones said.
During the no-holds-barred interview, Jones expressed frustration about Trump’s political career and business practices, implying that he lacked leadership skills and didn’t know how to bring people together.
“A symphony conductor knows more about how to lead than most businesspeople – more than Trump does. He doesn’t know s***. Someone who knows about real leadership wouldn’t have as many people against him as he does. He’s a f***ing idiot,” Jones said.
Referring to Trump’s supporters, again Jones didn’t hold back, saying: “It’s Trump and uneducated rednecks. Trump is just telling them what they want to hear.”
Trump didn’t respond publicly to the claims. The following year, in March 2019, Jones donated $2,800 to Kamala Harris‘ primary campaign.
After SNL on NBC gave Harris some fun time on the show Saturday night, the Orange Dotard demanded equal time. Fortunately, I didn’t see it because there would be no way I would be watching either of these shows. This is from, of all places, The Hollywood Reporter. “NBC Gives Donald Trump Campaign Time During NASCAR Race, ‘Sunday Night Football’ in Response to Kamala Harris’ ‘SNL’ Appearance. Trump appeared in spots that aired during Sunday’s coverage of both sporting events on NBC, speaking directly to the camera.”
On Sunday, NBC broadcast a NASCAR playoff race, but some viewers noticed toward the end of the broadcast (technically right after the race ended but while coverage was still ongoing) that Trump appeared in an unusual ad, speaking directly to camera while wearing a Red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, and claiming that electing Harris would cause a “depression” and that viewers should “go and vote.”
A source familiar with the matter says that the spot during the NASCAR race was connected to NBC giving the Trump campaign equal time.
During NBC’s Sunday Night Football coverage, Trump was given 60 additional seconds of campaign time. While the game was already over, the spot — which was the same one that aired during the NASCAR coverage — aired during the post-game coverage (and shortly after a paid campaign ad).
It is not clear whether it was the Trump camp or NBC that suggested the NASCAR and SNF placements.
It is also not clear if any other campaigns have requested equal time. If they do, however, NBC will likely need to find time for them, given the FCC rules. SNL creator Lorne Michaels previously cited the rules in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter as a reason why the show hadn’t had Trump or Harris on during this cycle.
Harris appeared on SNL in a “cold open” sketch alongside Maya Rudolph, who portrays the vice president for the late night comedy show. The sketch saw Rudolph’s Harris seeking a pep talk from the real Harris, with the pair ending the bit by saying “Keep Kamala and carry on-ala.”
However the sketch drew a rebuke from FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, who is seen as a potential FCC chair if President Trump is re-elected. Carr wrote that the sketch was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” because it came just two days before election day, within the seven-day window the FCC gives campaigns to request equal time.
I suppose none of these folks know that economists worldwide have indicated that it’s Trump’s stated economic policies that would immediately throw the US and the world into a recession. This is an Op-Ed in the Business Standard from a few weeks ago. “US elections: 23 Nobel laureates can’t be wrong about Donald Trump. Economists, from Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Daron Acemoglu, released a letter endorsing Kamala Harris for US president.”4
Economists mostly shun politics in favour of policy. We prefer to be aloof soothsayers giving voice to data and research rather than our own beliefs. A luminary in the profession once told me that “the only political party economists support is whichever is willing to be smart,” before adding, “and a smart economist would never join a political party.” And yet, in a stunning turn — at least for us in the profession — 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists, from Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Daron Acemoglu, released a letter endorsing Kamala Harris for US president.
“Simply put, Harris’s policies will result in a stronger economic performance, with economic growth that is more robust, more sustainable, and more equitable,” the Nobel laureates wrote in the letter. Donald Trump’s policies, they added, would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.” As for Ms Harris, they wrote that she “has emphasised policies that strengthen the middle class, enhance competition, and promote entrepreneurship.
Individuals can struggle to sort out the nuance of their own economic experience over the past eight years in weighing Ms Harris versus Mr Trump, but professional economists of all stripes have little to be torn about.It’s not a toss-up:Mr Trump’s policy agenda gives much for economists to condemn. Any one of these policies on their own would be enough to disqualify a candidate, but that Mr Trump has proposed them all is a clear enough indicator of just how much the economy would be at risk if he were reelected.
The latest Biden/Harris economy accolades have come from the U.K.’s The Economist.
The American economy
The envy of the world
Special reports –
The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust. Expect that to continue, argue Simon Rabinovitch and Henry Curr
Now, compare that to what Trump said yesterday. “It’s gonna be so much fun. It’ll be nasty… at the beginning in particular… You’re gonna see things that you’re not gonna believe.” Does that sound like Happy Days are here again? This is from Maddow Blog at MSNBC. “Trump warns voters that his second term would get ‘nasty’ at times. According to Donald Trump and his allies, his second term would be “nasty,” “bloody,” and filled with “hardships” for much of the population.” Steven Benen reports on this gloom and doom rally.
When Donald Trump uses the word “nasty,” he tends to target those who have the audacity to criticize him or stand in his way. In 2016, for example, the Republican referred to Hillary Clinton as a “nasty woman.” Eight years later, the former president whined about Michelle Obama’s campaign appearances, complaining that the former first lady became “nasty.”
Last year, during a town hall event on CNN, Trump described moderator Kaitlan Collins as a “nasty person.” About a year later, he accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of having a “nasty” mouth. (If you’re noticing the gender similarity here, it’s not your imagination.)
But once in a while, the GOP candidate uses the word in a very different kind of context. NBC News reported:
After a meandering and at times hostile speech [Sunday] morning in Pennsylvania, Trump delivered a more subdued and on-prompter speech to a Georgia crowd at his third and final rally today. As he depicted a second-term Trump administration, he said: “We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. … It’ll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning in particular.”
The report added, “He didn’t elaborate on what would be ‘nasty.’”
At face value, this isn’t the kind of rhetoric American voters generally hear from presidential candidates. On the contrary, White House hopefuls tend to tell the public that if they’re elected, the country will be vastly safer, stronger, more prosperous, and more secure.
But Trump wants voters to prepare for something qualitatively different: a country where conditions will get “nasty.”
This comes roughly two months after the Republican nominee also told an audience that he and his team intend to pursue a mass deportation policy, and the process of removing immigrants already in the United States “will be a bloody story.”
It also comes a week after conspiratorial billionaire Elon Musk, a prominent Trump surrogate and megadonor, said during a virtual town hall event that Americans will need to endure “temporary hardship” if Trump wins a second term. As the world’s wealthiest man explained, much of the public will feel a real pinch as GOP officials work on “tackling the nation’s debt,” but those who suffer should take comfort in the hopes that the country will eventually enjoy “long-term prosperity.”
How is any person voting for this? WTF is wrong with these people. That’s a Drink the Koolaide message if I ever saw one!
You might know that I spent most of my young years in Iowa. It was not the same then as it later turned into when Pat Robertson rolled through an Iowa Primary and awakened the Beasts within. The Des Moines Register has always been an award-winning paper. It was the paper of choice back then. The October Surprise might have come from the paper’s well-respected pollster who gets the pulse of the Iowa electorate fight with admirable accuracy. Her name is Ann Selzer. This one must’ve hit a nerve because now the Orange Koolaide Vendor is attacking her. Her poll results caught a surprise shift! This is from The Daily Beast. “Pollster Behind Shock Iowa Poll Hits Back at Trump’s Attacks. The former president called J. Ann Selzer one of his “enemies” after results showed him falling behind Harris in the state.” Dan Ladden-Hall has the analysis.
Revered Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer on Monday responded to the attacks Donald Trump made against her after her bombshell poll showed him trailing in the state.
The Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll conducted by Selzer and published Saturday showed Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points—47 percent to 44 percent—in Iowa, a state he won comfortably in 2016 and 2020. Although the result differed from that of other Iowa polls, the figures were potentially concerning for Trump given Selzer’s track record of accurately forecasting results in the Hawkeye State.
Trump was sufficiently concerned by the poll to post about it on Truth Social, claiming that all polls “except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater” showed him in the lead. “I’m 10 points up in Iowa,” he said during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Sunday. “One of my enemies just puts out a poll—I’m three down.”
“They just announced a fake poll,” he went on. “Hey, think of it—right before the election—that I’m three points down. I’m not down in Iowa.” Trump’s campaign separately released a memo calling Selzer’s poll “a clear outlier” and pointed to Emerson College polling released the same day that gave Trump a 10-point lead over Harris.
During an appearance Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Selzer acknowledged that the result of her poll was a “shock.”
“I’ve been shocked since Tuesday morning last week,” Selzer said. “So I’ve had the time for this to sink in because no one, including me, would’ve thought that Iowa could go for Kamala Harris.”
Co-host Willie Geist specifically asked Selzer about Trump’s criticisms, inviting her to respond to the claim that her poll is just an outlier.
“I give credit to my method for my track record,” Selzer said. “I call my method ‘polling forward.’ So I want to be in a place where my data can show me what’s likely to happen with the future electorate. So I just try to get out of the way of my data saying this is what’s going to happen.”
“A lot of other polls, and I’ll count Emerson among them, are including in the way that they manipulate the data after it comes in, things that have happened in the past,” she continued. “So they’re taking into account exit polls, they’re taking into account what turnout was in past elections. I don’t make any assumptions like that. So it’s in my way of thinking, it’s a cleaner way to forecast a future electorate, which nobody knows what that’s going to be. But we do know that our electorates change in terms of how many people are showing up and what the composition is.”
Notice the role women are playing in this election season? The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last recognizes it. “The Valkyries of Democracy. In praise of three extraordinary women. Trigger warning: Emo JVL is here. I’ve got a lot of feelings and I’m going to share all of them with you. Sorry. But that’s where I’m at.” There certainly are a lot of men who are getting all wet-eyed and emotional during this election.
By the time you read this Sarah will have concluded moderating a conversation between Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney. If you missed it, you can watch it here. And in a few minutes, I’m going to sit down with Sarah and have her unload on what this moment was like. It’ll be on the site the minute she’s able to get on camera.
Before that, though, I want to say a personal word about these three extraordinary women.
On Liz Cheney: I was wrong. I can’t say this often enough. When Cheney broke with Donald Trump after January 6, I was dismissive. I didn’t understand why it took her so long, or how she could have stayed on-side during COVID and the 2020 campaign.
But as she methodically blew up her own career in order to defend our democracy, I realized I’d underestimated her. This was a woman of real conviction, who was willing to put it all on the line.
Liz Cheney has been a workhorse. She’s been willing to do as much as anyone, and more than most, in the service of elevating country over party.
On Kamala Harris: I am not in the Yass Queen camp. My view is that Kamala is a standard-issue, ambitious politician and that she might be a good president, or a bad president, or a middling president. There’s no real way to know ahead of time. I do not have any illusions about her being a savior.
But I also do not believe that any sane person would want to be the Democratic presidential nominee in the Year of Our Lord 2024.
The stakes are too high; the pressure too great.
I believe that for all her political ambition, Kamala Harris is carrying this burden for us. She’s not Barack Obama, basking in the warmth of a cultural moment en route to becoming a cultural icon. She’s more like Frodo Baggins, walking toward Mordor while carrying a millstone around her neck, in an attempt to save all of Middle Earth from a dark fate.
Here are two things I truly believe: (1) Kamala Harris has wanted to be president for a long time; and (2) Kamala Harris never wanted to run for president with the fate of democracy on the line.
When Howard Stern interviewed Harris, he asked her about the pressure and she answered that she literally loses sleep over it. That she goes to bed every night wondering, “Is there anything else I could have done?”
I cannot imagine that burden. And I am grateful—in my heart—to her for bearing it.
Finally, there’s Sarah Longwell.
I cannot properly convey the depth of my affection and admiration for her. I would run through walls for Sarah. I’d take a bullet for her.
When the Harris campaign called and asked Sarah to come to Pennsylvania today and sit down with Harris and Cheney, I kvelled.
Knowing that other people see the same things in Sarah that we see? Absolutely bursting with pride.
But it’s not just pride.
It’s relief. Look: None of us wants to be living in this moment.
But history chose us. It is our burden and the burden is, itself, a form of privilege.
And there is no group of people I would rather fight through this moment with than those three women: Liz, Kamala, and Sarah.
As Coach D’Amato once said, the inches we need are all around us. And when I look at these women, I see people who will go that inch with us. Who have been willing to sacrifice for that inch. Who are going to fight for every inch.
And I’m ride or die with them. I hope you will be, too.r
So, my birthday is today. I just turned 69, and there’s a party at the bar on the corner, so we can have some fun, make silly references to my age, and ignore things for a bit. Tomorrow, I will walk down the street to the Rec Center and greet my Poll Workers! I will vote. I’m counting on women and a few good men to do the right thing.
This may not be over quickly, but we must keep Calmala and Carry-on-ala. This is from The Hill‘s Alexander Bolten. “GOP primed to back Trump if he contests election.” All the court cases to date have been big losers. You can always follow them on Democracy Docket. This fight described below in Bolten’s piece may finally end the Republican Party once and for all.
The Republican Party is now more primed to back former President Trump if he contests the results of the 2024 election than it was four years ago, when his efforts to overturn President Biden’s victory fell flat in courts and Congress.
Trump’s unwavering claims about the nation’s election system being “rigged” have steadily gained more acceptance among rank-and-file Republicans voters over the past four years, and his biggest Republican critics in Congress have either retired, will retire soon or have lost sway.
Additionally, Trump allies around the country have worked to gain more influence over state and local election boards, which will be in charge of tallying votes and certifying the results.
Republicans are feeling increasingly optimistic Trump will win the election, but they are girding for an intense battle if Vice President Harris is declared the winner.
“The strength of the cult of Trump amongst voters is strong so members are reflecting what their constituents want them to do,” said a Republican strategist and former Senate leadership aide.
“The other angle is there are a lot of concerns about how elections are being conducted and the power of social media and our partisan news,” the strategist said. “Republicans watch a lot of Twitter and Fox News, and they see voting irregularities,” they continued, pointing out a recent Detroit News report that a Chinese citizen attending the University of Michigan voted illegally by absentee ballot, and election officials weren’t able to retrieve it.
Four years ago, Trump’s claims that Biden and his allies “stole” the election struck many Republicans in Washington as outlandish, though most of them extended the 45th president the courtesy of letting him pursue his claims in court, where they failed.
So we are all in this together. Just keep telling people to go vote and make sure you vote. You can always ask for a provisional ballot as is your right if anything goes wrong. It’s important we do this!
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Tokuriki Tomikichiro, Black Cat Three-Kittens Butterfly
Good Afternoon!!
There are just 3 more days to go until E-Day. I just hope what’s left of our democracy survives the election and whatever horrors the Trump people have in store if he loses. And I think he is going to lose; he certainly seems to be preparing for that outcome.
Things are looking good for Harris at the moment. The polls are definitely moving in her direction, and some experts are questioning whether the race is as close as the media wants to make it.
Kamala Harris is on track to become America’s first female president by a narrow margin thanks to the Democratic vote holding up in the rust belt of old industrial states, according to the final Times poll before the US election.
Of the seven swing states that will decide the White House, Harris is forecast to win three battlegrounds in the north known as the “blue wall”, as well as Nevada in the west, while Donald Trump is favoured to claim back Georgia and hold North Carolina, YouGov found. The two rivals are level-pegging in Arizona….
Of the rust belt states, Harris is four points ahead among likely voters in Wisconsin, and three points ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania. She is one point ahead in Nevada. Likely voters are evenly split in Arizona, and Trump is one point ahead in both Georgia and North Carolina.
The Times surveyed the seven swing states because the outcome in the other 43 states is far more predictable….
If the results after election day on Tuesday turn out like the YouGov poll, Harris would win the Oval Office by a margin of 276 electoral college votes to 262. This would make it the closest finish since the 2000 election, which was decided by 271 to 266 after a month of legal wrangling about Florida’s result was resolved by the Supreme Court.
Read more and see the data at the link.
The presidential race could very well be decided by women. I still believe that abortion is the number 1 issue in this election.
When Alex Cooper, the popular podcaster behind “Call Her Daddy,” released her widely discussed interview with Democrat Kamala Harris last month, she revealed she had invited the vice president’s Republican opponent, Donald Trump, to appear on her show as well.
“If he also wants to have a meaningful and in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he is welcome on ‘Call Her Daddy’ anytime,” Cooper told her millions of listeners, most of them women.
Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi, What is for dinner?
Trump’s campaign had received an offer to join the show, according to sources close to the former president, but ultimately decided to pass. Instead, Trump doubled down on a strategy of speaking directly to America’s young men through appearances on right-leaning, male-dominated online shows. He will end his campaign Tuesday having largely avoided podcasts, YouTube channels and daytime TV shows tailored toward female audiences.
And if Trump’s third White House bid falls short, his approach to courting women – who narrowly outnumber men and are more reliable voters – may be among his campaign’s most scrutinized strategies. Trump advisers and allies had argued throughout the late summer and early fall that his appeal among men would make up for the lack of support from female voters, but in recent weeks the widening gender gap has caused alarm for some Republicans.
“We’ve seen a women problem for all Republicans, up and down the ballot,” one Trump-aligned GOP operative told CNN. “It starts at the top.”
Let’s face it. Trump never had much chance to win over very many women who aren’t evangelicals.
Trump’s uncertainty about how to appeal to women has been evident even in the final days of his campaign, leading to public disagreements with his staff over his messaging. At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, he recounted advice from aides urging him to drop his repeated promise to be women’s “protector” because they saw it as inappropriate.
“‘Sir, please don’t say that,’” he said he was advised. “Why? I’m president. I want to protect the women of our country. Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them,” Trump told the crowd….
Behind the scenes and on the phone with close allies, Trump will ask why women don’t like him, three sources familiar with the conversations said.
“He thinks women want someone who will keep them safe. Keep their children safe,” one of the sources said.
…[B]eyond his rallies, women do not appear to be responding to the former president’s attempts to reach them. The latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll showed Trump trailing Harris among likely female voters by 14-points – a margin that far outpaces his 6-point lead among men.
Adding to Trump’s challenges is a gender gap in early voting. In the seven most contested battleground states, women have cast 55% of ballots so far, while men account for 45%, according to Catalist, a Democratic-aligned data firm. This 10-point disparity representing nearly 1.4 million ballots, though slightly less than it was four years ago, nevertheless has Trump allies concerned.
Trump is really falling apart in embarrassing and humiliating ways. Last night he appeared to simulate oral sex during his rally in Wisconsin. He also spent about 5 minutes of one of his final chances to reach voters complaining about his microphone and threatening not to pay his audio staff.
Republican nominee Donald Trump faced a fresh controversy on Friday after he suggested former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) should have guns “trained on her face,” escalating his vilification of a prominent critic from within his party, as well as his use of violent imagery….
Cheney said Trump’s intent was to intimidate anyone who challenges him. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) said her office is investigating whether Trump’s comments could have violated state laws involving intimidation of public officials, spokesperson Richie Taylor said.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” Cheney, who lost her position in House Republican leadership for condemning Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and went on to serve as vice chair of the committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol, said Friday on social media. “They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
Relationship by Toshuki Fukuda
It appears that frontal lobe damage from his dementia has left Trump with absolutely no inhibitions or filter on what he will say or do in public.
During his Glendale appearance, Trump suggested his Republican critic should face ‘nine barrels shooting at her.’
Arizona’s top prosecutor tells 12News she is investigating whether Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump violated state law by making a “death threat” against former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney during remarks Thursday night at an event in Glendale.
“I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws,” Attorney General Mayes, a first-term Democrat, said during Friday’s taping of “Sunday Square Off.”
“I’m not prepared now to say whether it was or it wasn’t, but it is not helpful as we prepare for our election and as we try to make sure that we keep the peace at our polling places and in our state.”
We know that Trump will challenge the results if Harris wins, and there very well could be violence. The Harris campaign says they expect Trump to claim victory before all the votes are counted–as he did in 2020.
Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are rolling out a late-stage campaign strategy that borrows heavily from the subversive playbook he used to challenge his loss four years ago.
This time, however, he is counting on reinforcements from outside groups built on the false notion of a stolen election.
With Election Day only three days away, Mr. Trump is already claiming the Democrats are “a bunch of cheats,” as his allies in battleground states spread distorted reports of mishaps at the polls to push a narrative of widespread fraud.
Mr. Trump and his most prominent supporters have pointed to partisan polling and betting markets to claim that he is heading for a “crushing victory,” as his top surrogate Elon Musk recently put it. The expectation helps set the stage for disbelief and outrage among his supporters should he lose.
Black Cat White Cat, by Toshuki Fukuda
And in a direct echo of his failed — and, prosecutors say, illegal — bid to remain in power after the 2020 election, some of his most influential advisers are suggesting he will yet again seek to claim victory before all the votes are counted.
Such a move ushered in his efforts to deny his defeat four years ago and helped set the stage for the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In many respects, though, the effort that led to Jan. 6 never ended.
“It’s been four years of spreading lies about elections and recruiting volunteers to challenge the system, filing litigation,’’ said Joanna Lydgate, the chief executive of States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit group that works with state officials to bolster confidence in their elections. “What we’re seeing today is all of that coming to fruition.” [….]
In a statement, Dana Remus, a top lawyer for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, said, “It isn’t surprising that he is already questioning the results of a still ongoing election” and added, “He failed when he tried this in 2020, and he will fail again.”
The authors note that some things are different though.
For all the similarities, there are important differences between now and 2020, some of which reassure the coalition of civil rights lawyers, Democrats, Republicans and election administrators working to prevent a repeat of 2020:
Congress has passed a new law, the Electoral Count Reform Act, meant to make it harder to stop the final certification of the results by Congress on Jan. 6, as Mr. Trump tried to do four years ago.
Mr. Trump no longer has control of the federal government — which he sought to use to press his 2020 case. In the states, there are fewer like-minded Republicans in key positions of power than there were four years ago.
Some of the loudest clarions for stolen election theories have paid heavily for circulating them, including Fox News, which last year paid Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to settle a lawsuit over the network’s promotion of false theories that Dominion’s machines had switched votes.
And the experience of 2020, along with more recent clashes over voting issues, has taught election administrators lessons about fortifying themselves against a similar effort this year.
“You have the benefit of something having happened once before,” said the Pennsylvania secretary of state, Al Schmidt, a Republican. “You learn from it to guide you moving forward.”
Another story could affect the race, although it may be too late and to complicated–the tapes of Jeffrey Epstein talking about Trump that were just revealed. It’s shocking that many in the media have been sitting on these tapes for a long time.
A New York author and journalist has released audio tapes that appear to detail how Donald Trump had a close social relationship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that he has long denied.
The tapes, released as part of the Fire and Fury podcast series by Michael Wolff, author of three books about Trump’s first term and 2020 bid for a second, and James Truman, former NME journalist and Condé Nast editorial director, include Epstein’s thoughts about the inner workings of the former US president’s inner circle.
Wolff says the recordings were made during a 2017 discussion with Epstein about writing his biography. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges two years later. Despite his crimes, the wealthy financier was at the heart of a social circle of the rich and powerful in the US and overseas that contained many famous names.
Wolff claims the excerpt tape is a mere fraction of some “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his longstanding, deep relationship with Donald Trump”….
By Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi
The Fire and Fury tapes reveal Epstein recalling how then president Trump played his circle off against each other. “His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside,” he says.
The author names Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway as being among the acolytes and officials Trump played off each other like courtiers in a competitive court.
“He will tell 10 people ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kellyanne has a big mouth – what do you think?’
“‘[JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to [financier] Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson.’”
Epstein continues his exposition of Trump’s approach to management: “So Kelly[anne] – even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband – Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard. And then he tells Bannon: ‘You know I really want to keep you but Kellyanne hates you.’”
In response to the podcast, Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said, “Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics” and accused the author of making “outlandish false smears” and engaging in “blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris”.
This could be embarrassing for Trump, but I doubt if most voters be affected by it.
At the end of June, in the afterglow of a debate performance that would ultimately prompt President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection, Donald Trump startled his aides by announcing that he’d come up with a new nickname for his opponent.
“The guy’s a retard. He’s retarded. I think that’s what I’ll start calling him,” Trump declared aboard his campaign plane, en route to a rally that evening, according to three people who heard him make the remarks: “Retarded Joe Biden.”
The staffers present—and, within hours, others who’d heard about the epithet secondhand—pleaded with Trump not to say this publicly. They warned him that it would antagonize the moderate voters who’d been breaking in their direction, while engendering sympathy for a politician who, at that moment, was the subject of widespread ridicule. As Trump demurred, musing that he might debut the nickname at that night’s event, his staffers puzzled over the timing. Biden was on the ropes. Polls showed Trump jumping out to the biggest lead he’d enjoyed in any of his three campaigns for the presidency. Everything was going right for the Republican Party and its nominee. Why would he jeopardize that for the sake of slinging a juvenile insult? (A campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said the nickname “was never discussed and this is materially false.”)
By Toshiuki Fukuda
Over the next several days—as Trump’s aides held their breath, convinced he would debut this latest slur at any moment—they came to realize something about Trump: He was restless, unhappy, and, yes, tired of winning. For the previous 20 months, he’d been hemmed in by a campaign built on the principles of restraint and competence. The former president’s ugliest impulses were regularly curbed by his top advisers; his most obnoxious allies and most outlandish ideas were sidelined. These guardrails had produced a professional campaign—a campaign that was headed for victory. But now, like a predator toying with its wounded catch, Trump had become bored. It reminded some allies of his havoc-making decisions in the White House. Trump never had much use for calm and quiet. He didn’t appreciate normalcy. Above all, he couldn’t stand being babysat.
“People are calling this the most disciplined campaign they’ve ever seen,” Trump remarked to friends at a fundraiser this summer, according to someone who heard the conversation. He smirked at the compliment. “What’s discipline got to do with winning?”
It’s a long, detailed article. If you’re interested in reading the rest, here is a gift link.
With much of the attention on the House gravitating towards the battleground states of New York and California, where Democrats are trying to push back GOP gains from 2022, a handful of races scattered around the country heading into Election Day could ultimately be the difference in which party holds the majority.
Logan Phillips, the founder of Race to the WH, has his eyes on a handful of races that he sees as potential flips, including the race in Maine’s Second District, Washington’s Third District and two swing districts the Pennsylvania, where he thinks might serve a bellwhethers.
In Maine’s Second District, Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, is defending his seat from the Republican challenger Austin Theriault. The race is closely watched because Golden has held onto the seat since defeating the incumbent Republican in 2018, even though former President Donald Trump carried the rural Second District in both 2016 and 2020. In 2022, Golden won by six points. Golden currently leads in FiveThirtyEight’s average by 1.9 points.
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez is in a similar situation in Washington’s Third, as the freshman representative is attempting to hold onto her seat a district that also supported Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Gluesenkamp Pérez won in 2022 by less than a point. In FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, the GOP challenger, Joe Kent, leads by a point.
In general, Phillips gives Democrats a better chance of winning the chamber than other prognosticators. He currently gives Democrats a 70% chance of winning control of the chamber while most forecasters see it as a coin flip. While he cautions that he doesn’t see them as the overwhelming favorite to win, he was also among the most accurate forecasters in 2022, projecting that Republicans would win 223 seats. The GOP ended up winning 222.
“There are plenty of strong incumbents on both sides of the aisle. The reason I view democrats as favored is that Democrats have recruited stronger challengers,” Phillips said. “Democrats are in a stronger position to take on those incumbents.”
Read the rest at Salon.
That’s where things stand today. I guess a lot could happen in 3 days, but I think Harris is going to win. I hope and pray that I’m right.
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It was a dark and drizzly night, not one to make the rounds to all the Halloween parties in the hood. So, I settled into watching a friend from around Flagstaff, Arizona, stream a set of Horror Movies on Discord to a bunch of us who play a Zombie survival game together. It was like a pajama party with the girls, except my girls are all furry, and everyone else was scattered all over the country. I retwisted my ankle last night which was still hurting from a Tuesday mishap and feeling really old. The live Oaks of New Orleans’ Avenues drop acorns that rapidly become a coffee ground-like mess everywhere. That was the trick. I was glad that I stocked up on treats and wine earlier because I just missed the fog and the mist rolling in over the city. A very apt setting for Interview with a Vampire. I was hurting, traumatized by the DonOld Garbage Truck Cosplay spewing from the News Channels, and thought settling down to some movies would be a good break.
I saw a new version of Children of the Corn and was treated to several movies, including two of the “The Hills Have Eyes” franchises. It was hard to believe that the original version by Wes Crave had come out when I was at university. The fact the newest version of Children was centered in Nebraska was not lost on me. The original of that one came out when I was finishing my Masters. Back then, I’d take out the Beta tapes of the old Vincent Price horror movies that I recorded off the few cable channels back then.
The more I watched the Hill films, the more I could see Trump supporters in all the cannibal zombies in the Hills. Seriously, right down to their caps, their messy English, and the way they treated the two women in that National Guard Unit, I could swear I was watching a MAGA ambush. The creepy preacher in Children of the Corn and his implied “sin” against the little girl Eden was like the perfect metaphor for all those white Christian nationalist men whose arrest mug shots for crimes against children keep popping up on my X feed.
I had watched the news earlier and the meltdown that MAGA husbands are having at the idea their wives might get in the voting booth and vote their conscience instead of the will of their Patriarchal captor. One dude on Fox likened it to committing adultery, at which point the women on the panel laughed, and then he looked straight at the camera and told his chattel Emma that it would be finished if he found she’d done that. I thought she should get a lawyer to get her share, then Run Emma, RUN!! That and go have some fun with some young men that know what they’re doing! Just don’t bring them home or marry them.
This is from Vanity Fair. The analysis is provided by Bess Levin. “Fox News Host Says He’d Divorce His Wife for Voting for Kamala Harris. “If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair.” If you’d like, I can reference the part from the Hill movie where the mutant grabs a woman National Guard soldier, starts grabbing and raping her, and says, “You make nice babies!” Who among us can’t see DonOld in his prime doing that same thing?
How much respect do Donald Trump’s male supporters have for women? So much that at least one of them has said he’d end his marriage if his wife exercised her constitutional right to vote for Kamala Harris.
On an episode of The Five this week, Fox News host Jesse Watterstold fellow panelists that if he learned his wife, Emma, cast her ballot for the vice president, after letting him think she was voting for Trump, he would consider it a betrayal on par with having an extramarital affair and it would be “over.”
“If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” Watters said. “That, to me, violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What else has she been lying about?” Asked by cohost Jeanine Pirro, “Why would she lie to you? Have you threatened her?” Watters responded, “Why would she do that and then vote Harris? Why would she say she was voting…. And I caught her and then she said, ‘I lied to you for the last four years—’”
“So you admit you intimidate people,” Pirro interjected. “It’s over, Emma!” Watters said. “That would be D-Day!”
Watters and co. were discussing an ad put out in support of the Harris campaign that reminds women, “You can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know.” Which is apparently a necessary point to make to women who are married to extremely fragile Trump-supporting men.
I know that once they think they’ve got you, they show their true colors, but seriously, who could stand to live like that? Salonhas this great article up with an even more wonderful headline. “”It is so disastrous”: MAGA men are freaking out that wives may be secretly voting for Kamala Harris, “That’s the same thing as having an affair,” Fox News host argues as women fuel early vote in key states.” The entire concept of Control Freak is not hyped enough for these guys. Charles R Davis takes them on.
When you’re a star, Donald Trump has said more than once, women will let you do whatever you want to them. As president, that meant putting three right-wing justices on the Supreme Court and stripping half the country of a constitutional right, enabling people like him — their self-proclaimed “protector” — to have the final word on what any woman does with her body.
“I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,” the former president asserted at a campaign stop on Wednesday. “I am going to protect them.”
Women, it turns out, do not care for this — a large majority of them, at least. While millions will still vote for the Republican candidate, perhaps hating immigrants more than they love reproductive rights, the only certainty at this point is that many millions more will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll, the Democrat enjoyed a 14% advantage with women over Trump; among women with a college degree, that number rose to 23%; among women voters under 40, it rocketed to 34%.
According to the Brookings Institution, Harris’ strength among women angered by the 2022 Dobbs decision could explain why Democrats, for the first time in forever, are polling better with older voters than Republicans. The think tank’s Michael Hais and Morley Winograd noted that, per the ABC News/Ipsos survey, there has been a 10-point swing to Harris among voters over the age of 65 compared to 2020.
“Some observers think this shift is driven by the ‘revenge of Boomer feminists’ among the women of that famous generation, all of whom are now over 65 but who cut their political teeth in the battle for equality when they were much younger,” Hais and Winograd wrote. Younger voters may be angry over losing a right they had never lived without, but older people have seen hard-fought progress rolled back. They are also the most reliable group of voters — and they tend to vote early.
In battleground states, that appears to be exactly what’s happening. According to an analysis of early-voting tallies by Politico, women account for 55% of all ballots cast thus far in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
That, in turn, is causing some MAGA commentators to break from their usual posture of feigned confidence to outright panic.
“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA and helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort, posted on social media. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.” (Kirk, seeking to motivate these voters, offered Orwellian misogyny: “If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever.”)
Donald Trump’s two strongest personality traits each had a moment on the campaign trail yesterday.
At a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the buffoon: “I’m here for one very simple reason. I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic and Latino community.”
And later, on stage with Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, the menace. Here he was on former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
U.S. News has this headline. “Trump Says Liz Cheney Might Not Be Such a ‘War Hawk’ if She Had Rifles Shooting at Her. Donald Trump is calling former Rep. Liz Cheney, who’s one of his most prominent Republican critics, a “war hawk” and he’s suggesting she might not be as willing to send troops to fight if she had guns shooting at her.”
Donald Trump is suggesting that former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should have rifles “shooting at her” to see how she feels about sending troops to fight. It was his latest suggestion that his rivals should be targeted with violence.
Cheney responded by branding the GOP presidential nominee a “cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
The Republican presidential candidate has been using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of “enemies from within” undermining the country. Some of his former senior aides and Vice President Kamala Harris have labeled him a fascist in response.
At an event late Thursday in Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked whether it was strange to see Cheney campaign against him. The former Wyoming congresswoman has vocally opposed Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris, joining the vice president at recent stops as they try to win over Republicans disaffected with Trump.
Trump called Cheney “a deranged person” and added, “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries.”
The former president continued: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.
The results of Donald Trump’s first reign of Terror are killing women. The Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have the blood of innocents on their hands. ProPublicahas once again followed the trail of deaths left in Texas by the hypocrites who scream they are “pro-life.” “A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms. It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.”
Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.
Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.
The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.
Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.
By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.
Hours later, she was dead.
Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.
But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.
“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.
Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.
In states with abortion bans, such patients are sometimes bounced between hospitals like “hot potatoes,” with health care providers reluctant to participate in treatment that could attract a prosecutor, doctors told ProPublica. In some cases, medical teams are wasting precious time debating legalities and creating documentation, preparing for the possibility that they’ll need to explain their actions to a jury and judge.
Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, said patients are left wondering: “Am I being sent home because I really am OK? Or am I being sent home because they’re afraid that the solution to what’s going on with my pregnancy would be ending the pregnancy, and they’re not allowed to do that?”
There is a federal law to prevent emergency room doctors from withholding lifesaving care.
Passed nearly four decades ago, it requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients in medical crises. The Biden administration argues this mandate applies even in cases where an abortion might be necessary.
No state has done more to fight this interpretation than Texas, which has warned doctors that its abortion ban supersedes the administration’s guidance on federal law, and that they can face up to 99 years in prison for violating it.
ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain’s medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.
“I am an American woman. I am the daughter of Guadalupe Lupe Rodríguez and David Lopez, a proud daughter and son of Puerto Rico. I am Puerto Rican,” Lopez said, restating the final point in Spanish. “And yes, I was born here. And we are Americans.”
In his much-maligned comedy routine at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” His comments, Lopez said, should offend “anyone of decent character.”
“It’s about us, all of us, no matter what we look like, who we love, who we worship, or where we’re from,” Lopez said. “[Harris’s] opponent, on the other hand, doesn’t see it that way. He has consistently worked to divide us. At Madison Square Garden, he reminded us who he really is and how he really feels.”
Trump‘s rally featured a parade of extremist speakers, though it was Hinchcliffe’s act that really dominated headlines. In it, he claimed Latinos “love making babies,” a riff whose anti-immigrant punchline fell flat, and threw in some racist stereotypes about Black people as well.
Trump’s enablers cannot stop him from his hate-filled speeches and comments.
“It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans who were offended that day,” Lopez added. “It was every Latino in this country, it was humanity.”
J.Lo went on to say that, “with an understanding of our past, and a faith in our future,” she‘s proud to vote for Harris. “You can’t even spell American without Rican,” she said. “This is our country, too, and we must exercise our right to vote.”
Towards the end of her speech, Lopez appeared to fight back tears. “I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional,” she told the audience. “But you know what? We should be emotional. We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged, we should. Our pain matters. We matter. You matter. Your voice and your vote matters.”
“This election is about your life,” J.Lo continued. “It‘s about you, and me, and my kids, and your kids. Don‘t make it easy; make them pay attention to you. That’s your power. Your vote is your power.”
“Your vote is your power” is the line I want everyone to remember today. Another one is a quote from the late Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota. Five Days until we get the opportunity to never hear that man or his zombie cultists again.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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I’ve been having computer problems, so I’m even later than usual in getting started today. It might be nighttime before a finish this post.
I’m so stressed out about the election! I just hope I make it until next Tuesday.
I keep telling myself that Kamala Harris will win, and I do think she will; but then we’ll have to deal with the Trumpers who won’t accept the results. Even if we get by that crisis, the Supreme Could could step in. She has to win by 4 or 5 points so they can’t justify handing the presidency to Trump.
Fortunately, Trump hasn’t exactly helped his case over the past week.
Two full days have passed since Donald Trump presided over a Madison Square Garden rally meant to illuminate the high notes of his presidential campaign. In that regard, it was extraordinarily successful.
After all, the torrent of bigotry, hostility, upheaval, misogyny, lunacy, fratboy antics, propaganda, dread and racism that flowed out of the gathering have been Trump’s animating themes ever since he vaulted onto the political stage more than nine years ago.
Anyone watching the bonfire in the Garden got a visceral understanding of Trump’s worldview. So, mission accomplished. Educating and recruiting new voters, and reminding those already committed why they’ve climbed aboard, is a primary goal of any campaign. Sunday’s rally was a handy primer about what Trump is fighting for — and the former president and his fellow speakers were transparent about what they’re up to. Three cheers for honesty.
Bedlam, fascism and racism aren’t attractive calling cards for every voter, however, and Republican strategists who have tried putting Trump on a less frightening path certainly didn’t want the Garden’s narrative to define their candidate with Election Day fast approaching. Limited government, America first, tax cuts, deregulation, patriotism, prosperity and other varieties of spinach were on their preferred menu.
I like to think that most people would be horrified by the prospect of being publicly savaged for fomenting racism and chaos — and for hosting a Garden lineup that included shock-jock Tucker Carlson wrapping Kamala Harris in a shroud of plantation bigotry and a C-list “comedian” quipping that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.” Trump rolls without regret, however. He has had multiple opportunities to change course, disavow or apologize for the bile on display at the Garden, but he hasn’t done so — including on Tuesday during a nationally broadcast press conference in Palm Beach, Florida, and at a rally later in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Read the rest at Bloomberg. I didn’t encounter a paywall on this one.
PALM BEACH, Florida — Donald Trump during remarks on Tuesday didn’t acknowledge that there was any backlash over a comedian who made disparaging comments about Puerto Rico at a recent rally in New York City.
“The love in that room, it was breathtaking — and you could have filled it many many times with the people that were unable to get in,” he said of his Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden.
Trump told ABC News’ Rachel Scott before the press conference that he wasn’t familiar with the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” he told ABC News.
His speech on Tuesday before an audience of hundreds of supporters in South Florida largely appeared to be geared toward counter-messaging the campaign rally Vice President Kamala Harris had set for Tuesday evening. The vice president is expected to deliver the closing message of her campaign on the Ellipse just off the National Mall in D.C.
Since Trump’s rally Sunday — when Hinchcliffe and other speakers at the event made racist and vulgar comments — Puerto Ricans, Democrats and Republicans have condemned the speakers and defended the island. Trump has not publicly condemned the comments, while Puerto Ricans, including the archbishop of San Juan and the Republican chair of the island, have called on the former president to apologize though he has not done so.
People of Puerto Rican descent in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, who number more than 450,000, have also denounced the comedian’s comments and some are planning to protest Trump’s rally Tuesday night in Allentown, which has one of the largest populations of Puerto Ricans in the state.
Trump called Harris’ political operation a “campaign of hate” and said President Joe Biden had been “out of it for a long time.” He did not take any questions from the media after speaking for about an hour and tore into some Democrats who’d compared his rally to Nazi Germany.
Urged by some allies to apologize for racist comments made by speakers at his weekend rally, Donald Trump took the opposite approach on Tuesday, saying it was an “honor to be involved” in such an event and calling the scene a “lovefest” — the same term he has used to describe the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump gathered supporters and reporters to his Mar-a-Lago resort two days after a massive rally at Madison Square Garden featured a number of crude remarks by various speakers, including a set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” Some of Trump’s top Republican allies have condemned the remarks, and his campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke, though not the other comments.
But given the opportunity to apologize at multiple events and in interviews Tuesday, Trump instead leaned in. Speaking at his Florida resort, he said that “there’s never been an event so beautiful” as his Sunday rally in his hometown of New York.
“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest. And it was my honor to be involved.”
On Tuesday night, he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he knows nothing about Hinchcliffe but said, “I can’t imagine it’s a big deal.” He later agreed, though, that “probably he shouldn’t have been there.”
“America, we know what Donald Trump has in mind. More chaos. More division. And policies that help those at the very top and hurt everyone else. I offer a different path. And I ask for your vote,” Harris told the crowd.
“And here is my pledge to you: I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better,” she added. “I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress.”
The message could not be more different than Trump’s speech at the site, where he made false claims about the election and railed against Republicans who would not go along with his plan to halt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 win.
Though Trump told supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard, the Republican also used the speech to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to suspend the certification and called on MAGA fans to “fight like hell” to preserve their country.
Vice President Harris delivered a speech Tuesday on the White House Ellipse in Washington, D.C. — the very site at which former President Trump gave remarks to a crowd that later incited a riot at the Capitol.
Harris spoke to a fired-up audience that numbered in the tens of thousands, invoking many of the same warnings she’s made on the campaign trail about Trump in her speech —that he is a threat to democracy and is consumed by his grievances and desire for retribution.
She encouraged the crowd and voters to move on from the Trump political era — and rounded out her speech by calling him a “petty tyrant.”
“We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation in America, and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America,” Harris said.
Harris was flanked for her speech by large blue USA signs on either side of her with the White House lit up in the background. The Harris campaign estimated 75,000 people were on the National Mall just before she arrived.
Harris later in her speech said that patriots throughout history “did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives, only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms, only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.”
“The United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised,” the vice president said.
In the days since Donald Trump‘s hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, what’s striking is the pettiness of the stakes MAGA defenders have laid out. In the final days of a dead-heat contest for the most powerful office in the world, Republicans argued we must elect a textbook fascist to protect the sacrosanct right of a white man to be rude without being criticized for it.
Trump, however, dispensed with the fiction that we are debating the subjective quality of humor. At a Tuesday press conference, he simply reified the true MAGA belief at stake: that Trump and his allies get to say what they want, and everyone else must shut up about it. This mostly came in the form of griping that Michelle Obama was allowed to criticize him: “Obama, his wife was very nasty to me. That was not nice.” [….]
Vance did not ask Trump to “stop getting so offended.” [….]
One would hope that it’s self-evident that “revenge on liberals for not liking me” is both a pathetic and short-sighted justification for voting for a wannabe dictator with a criminal rap sheet the size of a Russian novel. But with the polls so tight, that’s apparently not the case. So Harris made her closing argument Tuesday night from an evocative location that underscored the actual stakes of the election: The Ellipse in Washington D.C. where Trump incited the January 6 insurrection.
MAGA spite might right now manifest mainly as racist trolling or bottomless bellyaching, she warned, but there’s real danger in putting a man “consumed with grievance” into the White House. “He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election,” she began. She noted that Trump has threatened “to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him” and “put them in jail.” For those who might scoff that Trump actually means these things, the location spoke for itself. It was less than four years ago that Trump stood at that same spot and sent a murderous mob after members of Congress and his vice president as punishment for not stealing an election for him.
Read the rest at Salon.
Unfortunately, Joe Biden made one of his trademarked gaffes yesterday, and the media are breathlessly reporting that he called Trump’s supporters “garbage.” The clip that Trumpers are circulating was edited though. The Guardian reports: Biden says ‘garbage’ remark was aimed at comedian, not Trump supporters.
Joe Biden put out a statement that he had “meant to say” earlier on Tuesday that a pro-Trump comedian’s “hateful rhetoric” about Puerto Rico was “garbage”. But in a video clip edited to a shorter version and already widely circulating on social media Tuesday evening, a phrase that came out of Biden’s mouth was “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters”.
Republican politicians and rightwing media outlets quickly picked up the clip to argue that Biden had called Trump’s supporters garbage, comparing his remarks to Hillary Clinton’s labeling of half of Trump supporters as belonging in “a basket of deplorables” in 2016, a comment that is widely seen as undermining her campaign.
Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The…
Biden’s full comments on Tuesday are somewhat garbled, and some journalists transcribing the remarks argued that Biden really did seem to be trying to refer to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks, not all of Trump’s supporters, while others reported that the president had indeed suggested that Trump supporters themselves were garbage.
Biden’s comment came during a Zoom call with Voto Latino, in which Biden referred to Hinchcliffe’s comments and said the Puerto Ricans he knows are “good, decent, honorable, people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of things is unconscionable, and it’s un-American, and it’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done.” But it wasn’t entirely clear whether he had said the singular “supporter’s” or the plural “supporters”, describing Trump’s base more broadly.
In the official transcript of Biden’s remarks released on Tuesday night by the White House press office, the comment has an apostrophe: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”Nevertheless, Harris addressed the firestorm.
Vice President Kamala Harris says she “strongly” disagrees with “any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” after President Biden on Tuesday made remarks in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage” on a video call with Latino activists. Republicans seized on the comment, while the White House offered a different explanation of what Mr. Biden had said, and the president tweeted a clarification of his comment.
“Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” Harris told reporters Wednesday morning, when she was asked about Mr. Biden’s “garbage” comment. “You heard my speech last night and continuously throughout my career: I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not. And as president of the United States, I will be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.”
I’ll close by recommending two other important articles, one on the abortion issue, and the other on what could happen if Trump wins.
Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.
The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.
But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.
Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.
Barnica is one of at least two Texas women who ProPublica found lost their lives after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, which fall into a gray area under the state’s strict abortion laws that prohibit doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus.
Neither had wanted an abortion, but that didn’t matter. Though proponents insist that the laws protect both the life of the fetus and the person carrying it, in practice, doctors have hesitated to provide care under threat of prosecution, prison time and professional ruin.
ProPublica is telling these women’s stories this week, starting with Barnica’s. Her death was “preventable,” according to more than a dozen medical experts who reviewed a summary of her hospital and autopsy records at ProPublica’s request; they called her case “horrific,” “astounding” and “egregious.”
What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs?
Or if the uniforms are not police uniforms, and there is not even a knock?
What if the knock is for your daughter, and they’re coming for her because of a pill that she took? Will you open the door?
Or if your teenage granddaughter, alone and afraid, calls you and begs you to drive her to a state where abortion is legal? Your governor has signed a bill making such “abortion trafficking” illegal, stipulating a penalty of 15 years.
What will you do if you’re called to serve on the jury hearing the grandmother’s case? She is guilty beyond a hint of a reasonable doubt; no way around that. Do you vote to convict her, or do you hold out against 11 of your peers?
LET’S SAY YOU ARE AN ATTORNEY in North Carolina, working out of your home. You sometimes serve as a court-appointed lawyer. Mysterious figures from something called “Gov Ops” appear at your door and claim power to rifle through your files without a warrant or any deference to attorney-client privilege.
They do not say what they are looking for. It could be public records proving government malfeasance, or private medical records of a client seeking an abortion, or communications involving legislative redistricting, or anything else they want to take. This is all because of a provision snuck into the state budget by the Republican legislative leadership that authorizes this new secret police force to seize “any document or system of record” from anyone who does work for the state. You are also advised that if you say anything about this raid to anyone, you will be breaking the law.
What if you work in the North Carolina legislature, and your boss hands you a document to shred? It shows him to have broken the law. Given that the same budget provision lets any legislator unilaterally decide whether to “retain, destroy, sell, loan, or otherwise dispose of” any public record, what is your choice? [….]
What if you are a law enforcement officer ordered to arrest more Black people by a city administration that fears federal intervention should the police fall below a certain quota of minority arrests? After all, Project 2025 recommends that local officials face “legal action” if they “deny American citizens the ‘equal protection of the laws’ by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions,” and refuse to arrest “those who … actually commit crimes.”
What will you do if you are a federal prison guard shipped from Texas to police a protest in some faraway city, and are ordered not to identify yourself, nor wear any identifying badge? [….]
DONALD TRUMP SAID, BEFORE A JEWISH AUDIENCE this past September 19, that “the Jewish people would have a lot to do” with his loss, if he loses. Let’s say Donald Trump loses. You are a rabbi leading a congregation with prominent Trump supporters among its members. Now, for the Sabbath after the election, you have a sermon to write, which some of those members will be present to hear. Meanwhile, strange, scary men have been seen lurking about the grounds.
What do you say?
There’s much more, and it’s terrifying; but I think it’s important to read the whole thing.
That’s all I have for you today. Take care everyone and vote!
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“The End Times are nigh. The Prodigal Son returns to Madison Square Garden.” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I was lucky that working with students last night interfered with any attempt to turn on the Fascist Rally at the World’s Most Famous Arena. This wasn’t exactly Ali against Frazier or Holyfield vs Lewis. This was more like #DonOld vs the Majority of the country. The opening bouts were lame.
My short take on this is it was basically a Crazy Old Cult Leader warming his brood up for the Ultimate Kool-Aid moment. Unfortunately, we previewed that on January 6, so I hope that law enforcement agencies are prepared. The Ultimate Chaos Agent is making his play for a coup
This brings me to this dangerous conspiracy theory making the rounds. To think, I was simply walking the dog around the block! I got told a conspiracy theory by a short-order cook at a local bar who has said crazy things before, so I thought I’d look into it to prove him wrong. His favorite spiel is that the right wing and the left wing are the same, and the government is corrupt. Which is partially correct. Look at Jill Stein and Robert Kennedy hooked up with the Fascists and Putin. If you take populism to its furthest corners of the right and the left, they eventually bump butts with each other. However, the left wing and the right in the United States do not wield the same power, and they are not of equal size. There’s no real leftist power in this country. The billionaire class has been funding the extreme right-wing for decades now, and it shows. Polls on issues show that most Americans agree on the major things. The problem is that the political system does not play towards consensus.
This guy insisted the DOD is sneaking a policy to Congress to approve the use of military force on civilians. Now, if DJT was in power, I believe he’d try that, although it would take a lot more than a policy of the DOD or an act of Congress to amend the Constitution. Even when I came back to show him the actual act to show him it says nothing of the kind, he insisted he’d read it, and that’s what he said. But when I invested it, I thought, wow, that looks like the will of the Ultimate Chaos Agent!
Just as former president Donald Trump told Fox News last week that he wanted to use the U.S. military to “handle” what he called the “enemy from within” on Election Day, an obscure military policy was beginning to make the rounds on social media platforms favored by the far right.
The 22-page document governs military intelligence activities and is among more than a thousand different policies that outline Defense Department procedures.
The Pentagon updated it at the end of September. Although military policies are routinely updated and reissued, the timing of this one—just six weeks before the election and the same day Hurricane Helene slammed into the Southeast—struck right-wing misinformation merchants as suspicious.
They latched onto a new reference in the updated directive—“lethal force”—and soon were falsely claiming that the change means Kamala Harris had authorized the military to kill civilians if there is unrest after the election.
That’s flat-out not true, the Pentagon and experts on military policy told The War Horse.
“The provisions in [the directive] are not new, and do not authorize the Secretary of Defense to use lethal force against U.S. citizens, contrary to rumors and rhetoric circulating on social media,” Sue Gough, a Department of Defense spokesperson, said Wednesday night.
But as Trump doubles down on his “enemy from within” rhetoric, DOD Directive 5240.01 continues to gain traction among his supporters as ostensible proof that Harris, not Trump, wants to use the military against American citizens.
By early last week, “5240.01” began to spike on alt-tech platforms such as Rumble, 4chan, and Telegram, as well as on more mainstream platforms like X, according to an analysis by The War Horse and UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center.
On Ron Paul’s Liberty Report, a YouTube show, the former Texas congressman told viewers that the policy meant that the country is now a “police state.” Republican Maryland congressman Andy Harris told Newsmax host Chris Salcedo last Wednesday that he was concerned the Defense Department was pushing through policies without congressional oversight.
“This is exactly what the Democrats said Trump would do. And they’re doing it,” he said. “This means that after an election, they could declare national emergency and literally call out the Army in the United States.”
“Republican election fraud season is in full swing.” John Buss, @repeat1968
I really see this as a way to ensure their well-armed militia shows up at the local courthouse or state house well-armed when the vote count starts meaningfully leaning towards a Harris/Walz Administration. The ACLU has had this policy firmly in its FOIA grip since 1982. The documents are out there with no commentary or urgent lawsuits filed. You would think they’d be interested.
The Center for Informed Policy at the University of Washington is more interested in those conspiracy theories. “Rumors rapidly spreading about reissued Department of Defense Directive 5240.01” explains the right wing’s angst on this one in its 2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG.
Key Takeaways
Early last week, rumors started to spread between multiple social media platforms and across political communities online about a recently reissued Department of Defense Directive 5240.01 that documents procedures when there is a potential use of lethal force.
Some online communities have speculated that the directive’s changes are timed with the upcoming election, with some suggesting without evidence that the intent behind the change is that the government is planning to use force against Americans.
The viral spread could be exploiting a data void – a situation where there is no reliable information about a topic in search results — given there are no published fact-checks or traditional journalist coverage of the directive’s changes.
Just Securitycalls it “Much Ado About Nothing.” Oddly enough, this was an article my neighborhood weirdo was about to show me when he read the title and then suddenly closed it, and just as I said oh, Just Security is a reliable source. They conclude with this, which is similar to a thought in The War Horse. That’s the real danger is the Insurrection Act that Trump used to go after George Floyd Protestors with the National Guard. His stated goal was to support local law enforcement in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., on May 30, 2020. You probably will remember this culminating with the upside-down bible event. The ACLU is very interested in that event.
To be sure, there are good reasons to be concerned about the federal government’s power to use the armed forces domestically against Americans, but the new language in Directive 5240.01 is not one of them. The Insurrection Act represents a far greater danger. It gives the president broad discretion to use the military as a domestic police force and contains virtually no safeguards to prevent abuse. The Brennan Center for Justice, where we work, has put forward a comprehensive proposal for reforming the Insurrection Act, and a bipartisan group of former national security officials convened by the American Law Institute has similarly called for Insurrection Act reform. Those who are currently sounding the alarm about Directive 5240.01 would do well to refocus their energies on that critical task.
I just messaged it off to one of the MSNBC Anchors I chat with on occasion, so I’m about to see if I can get someone serious journalism on it with the hope of getting rid of the data void.
So, before I tackle the main event, I have one more nerdy article to suggest. This is about the odds makers. This is from Good Authority. The analysis is provided by Josh Clinton. “Poll results depend on pollster choices as much as voters’ decisions. Simple changes in how to weight a single poll can move the Harris-Trump margin 8 points.”
There is no end of scrutiny of the 2024 election polls – who is ahead, who is behind, how much the polls will miss the election outcome, etc., etc. These questions have become even more pressing because the presidential race seems to be a toss-up. Every percentage point for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump matters.
But here’s the big problem that no one talks about very much: Simple and defensible decisions by pollsters can drastically change the reported margin between Harris and Trump. I’ll show that the margin can change by as much as eight points. Reasonable decisions produce a margin that ranges from Harris +0.9% to Harris +8%.
This reality highlights that we ask far too much of polls. Ultimately, it’s hard to know how much poll numbers reflect the decisions of voters – or the decisions of pollsters.
The 4 key questions for pollsters
After poll data are collected, pollsters must assess whether they need to adjust or “weight” the data to address the very real possibility that the people who took the poll differ from those who did not. This involves answering four questions:
1. Do respondents match the electorate demographically in terms of sex, age, education, race, etc.? (This was a problem in 2016.)
2. Do respondents match the electoratepolitically after the sample is adjusted by demographic factors? (This was the problem in 2020.)
3. Which respondents will vote?
4. Should the pollster trust the data?
To show how the answers to these questions can affect poll results, I use a national survey conducted from October 7 – 14, 2024. The sample included 1,924 self-reported registered voters drawn from an online, high-quality panel commonly used in academic and commercial work.
After dropping the respondents who said they were not sure who they would vote for (3.2%) and those with missing demographics, the unweighted data give Harris a 6 percentage point lead – 51.6 % to 45.5% – among the remaining 1,718 respondents.
You may read more details about those factors at the link. I try not to put my students to sleep during statistics lectures, so I certainly won’t do it to you. The reporting and clips on the Madison Square Garden Rally kept me up most of the night. I felt like the child in grade school watching the teacher thread the film through those blue projectors only to see things my Dad didn’t want to remember about World War 2. I don’t know about you, but my school district did not hold back on the World War 2 experience. One of my high school teachers wrote a book on his experience as a prisoner taken during the Battle of the Bulge. I was surrounded by friends’ parents and my parents’ friends who were Veterans. We watched the films of the 1936 Olympics and heroes like Jesse Owens and, of course, all the Hitler and Mussolini public speeches. If you were like little me, I couldn’t understand who could fall for any of that.
I also saw films of the United States turning away Jewish people in ships fleeing Europe and films of the internment of Japanese-Americans. All of these seemed surreal to me at the ripe old age of 11.
Now, I know more. Now I can identify people that just love to goosestep with whom I would not share the location of any modern day Anne Frank.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
CNN Analyst Stephen Collinson has this analysis. “Trump unveils the most extreme closing argument in modern presidential history.” The MAGA movement is about hating and eliminating everyone who isn’t like them.
Donald Trump anchored his bid to win a second White House term next week on searing anti-migrant fear at a rally at Madison Square Garden, doubling down on his promise for a massive deportation program on Day 1 to reverse an “immigrant invasion.”
As the ex-president’s allies defend him against Democratic claims he is a “fascist” and an authoritarian in waiting, based in part on warnings by his ex-chief of staff John Kelly, Trump on Sunday delivered a screed that may augur the most extreme presidency in modern history if he beats Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on November 5.
“The United States is an occupied country,” Trump said, as Democrats projected messages on the exterior of the storied New York City arena, reading “Trump is Unhinged” and “Trump praised Hitler.”
The huge rally was billed as the launch of the final stage of Trump’s bid to pull off one of the greatest comebacks in American political history after trying to overturn the result of the last election and leaving office in disgrace in 2021. Before he spoke, some of the ex-president’s top supporters flung race-based and vulgar rhetoric. Former congressional candidate David Rem called Harris the “antichrist” and “the devil,” while others lashed out at Hillary Clinton, “illegals” and homeless people. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
This is from Politico. The analysis is by Andrew Howard. “Fallout spreads from racist rhetoric at Trump’s MSG rally. “What you saw last night is a divisive America. That’s race-baiting. It’s all the things that we were doing in the ‘30s and ‘40s,” former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Monday.”
Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday evening was supposed to provide his closing argument against Kamala Harris. Instead, Trump and his supporters are being forced to answer for hateful and racist rhetoric delivered from the podium Sunday night with just eight days left in the campaign.
The comments, while reminiscent of many made by Trump in the campaign’s final weeks, were made by a comedian early in the night’s schedule and were supposed to be jokes. Now, they are dominating the news cycle and putting Trump’s campaign on the backfoot with just under a week until the election.
Longtime Trump adviser Peter Navarro is calling the comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, “the biggest, stupidest asshole that ever came down the comedy pike” after he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of hot garbage” during his often-vulgar opening set.
And Trump’s opponents are using the rally as proof of the former president’s divisiveness, going as far as likening the rhetoric from Sunday’s rally to the sinister 1939 Nazi rally that took place in the same venue.
“My reaction is that was a combination of 1933 Germany, 1939 Madison Square Garden last night,” former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday morning. “What you saw last night is a divisive America. That’s race baiting. It’s all the things that we were doing in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.), called Sunday night’s event a “hate rally.”
“This was not just a presidential rally, this was not just a campaign rally. I think it’s important for people to understand these are mini January 6 rallies, these are mini Stop the Steal rallies,” she said on “Morning Joe.”
Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds blamed the media for the backlash surrounding Sunday’s rally during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, saying the media is too focused on “fear-mongering” and not “the facts and the substance.”
“So to the New York Daily News, is it a racist rally if you have a Black man from Florida who’s originally from New York speaking at the rally? I don’t think so,” Donalds said. Still, Donalds distanced himself from Hinchcliffe’s comments.
“I didn’t agree with what the comedian said. None of us did,” Donalds said. “When it came out, we were all like, ‘Wait what? Who? Did that get out? No, no, no.’ Nobody agreed with that. Nobody.”
Last night, Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott, up for reelection this year in a state heavily populated with Puerto Ricans, wrote on social media that the “joke bombed for a reason,” and “Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans!”
Yet another Floridian, GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar, was also quick to condemn the comedian. “This rhetoric does not reflect GOP values,” she wrote in a post on X Sunday evening.
Early Monday morning, the Harris campaign was quick to jump in, highlighting headlines in 17 newspapers, eight clips from TV shows, and 29 other statements from politicians, celebrities and journalists.
Famous Puerto Ricans rushed to bolster Harris, including pop-phenom Bad Bunny, along with Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin.
Hinchcliffe’s backlash-inducing comments were not limited to Puerto Rico. The comedian also made a crude remark about “carving watermelons” after seeing a Black man in the audience. Another opener, businessman Grant Cardone, likened Harris’ advisers to “pimp handlers.”
And Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who has shaped many of Trump’s immigration policies, said Americans are having their jobs “looted and stolen from them” and sent to foreign countries.
I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.
It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight.
There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.
Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.
Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024.
On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump.
Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.
We could see the signs that he knew he probably wouldn’t win the minute Biden backed out. We could taste the panic in the air. We know his campaign is already spending more time in the Court trying to fuck with elections than with the ground game he delegated to Musk, who is out there basically running a personal game show with a million-dollar giveaway for attention.
Marc Elias and his team have been in court for the Harris/Walz campaign, which has been fighting Trump’s legal team that is “flooding the zone” with lawsuits and election tricks. #DonOld is clearly not physically or mentally capable of carrying on a campaign that requires giving cogent speeches and long hours. The only thing he excels at is creating chaos. “Marc Elias, Voting Rights Attorney, joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with a look at the work that Trump allies and attorneys are doing ahead of the 2024 Election in order to create doubt and confusion which will enable Donald Trump to deny the results of the 2024 Election should he lose again. ”
Here are the arguments for the Ultimate Chaos Agent in the Wallace/Elias interview.
The question is, will creating chaos be enough to bring the Republic and the voting and judicial systems to their knees? Can he knock out the Constitution, or will We the People knock him out on November 5th. We need the KO. These things keep me awake at night with my stomach churning and jumping like a kid about to take his ACTs.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Some signs show things moving in the right direction, even though the big pollsters call this race a toss-up. It’s why we can’t afford to sit this one out. This NPR report has me breathing easier. “Meet the conservative women who are keeping their votes for Kamala Harris a secret. It played on 
There was some sad news today. Quincy Jones has gone home to the elders at the age of 91. His influence on my life as a musician cannot be overstated. He was the “it” man. An interview with the great man in 2018 on DonOld and his family is something I pass along because you’ll see how strongly he was disgusted by the man. This is from 
Jones had six daughters and publicly stated he was proud of every one of them. I’ve always voted in honor of my grandmothers, who could not vote until they were well into middle age. Tomorrow, I will vote for my daughters and granddaughters and every woman in the country who needs autonomy to make decisions about her life. I will vote for me, my sister, and all the other adult women who deserve their own moral authority. None of us are chattel, nor should we be under the law or the decision of a bunch of weird old men on the Supreme Court. And with that, I will shame Nikki Haley, who wrote this in the 
I suppose none of these folks know that
The latest Biden/Harris economy accolades have come from the U.K.’s 
Now, compare that to what Trump said yesterday. “It’s gonna be so much fun. It’ll be nasty… at the beginning in particular… You’re gonna see things that you’re not gonna believe.” Does that sound like Happy Days are here again? This is from Maddow Blog at MSNBC. “Trump warns voters that his second term would get ‘nasty’ at times. 
How is any person voting for this? WTF is wrong with these people. That’s a Drink the Koolaide message if I ever saw one!
Notice the role women are playing in this election season? The
So, my birthday is today. I just turned 69, and there’s a party at the bar on the corner, so we can have some fun, make silly references to my age, and ignore things for a bit. Tomorrow, I will walk down the street to the Rec Center and greet my Poll Workers! I will vote. I’m counting on women and a few good men to do the right thing.
I had watched the news earlier and the meltdown that MAGA husbands are having at the idea their wives might get in the voting booth and vote their conscience instead of the will of their Patriarchal captor. One dude on Fox likened it to committing adultery, at which point the women on the panel laughed, and then he looked straight at the camera and told his chattel Emma that it would be finished if he found she’d done that. I thought she should get a lawyer to get her share, then Run Emma, RUN!! That and go have some fun with some young men that know what they’re doing! Just don’t bring them home or marry them.
I know that once they think they’ve got you, they show their true colors, but seriously, who could stand to live like that? 
I feel seen for once, hopefully, not by the Children of the Garbage Bags and AR-15s. DonOld really has gone over the edge. During his rally in New Mexico, he made a loosely veiled threat at former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. This is from 
The results of Donald Trump’s first reign of Terror are killing women. The Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have the blood of innocents on their hands. 
Puerto Rican Americans continue to speak out about the horrible racist slurs spoken by #DonOld about their Island home and their presence on the mainland. Does he understand that Puerto Ricans are Americans and that they live everywhere in this country? This is from The Daily Beast. 
Trump’s enablers cannot stop him from his hate-filled speeches and comments.
Trump told ABC News’ Rachel Scott before the press conference that he wasn’t familiar with the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
Most of the racist diatribes at Trump’s New York City rally were not jokes. But the comments getting the most media attention — 
Nevertheless, Harris addressed the tempest in a teapot. CBS News: 
So, before I tackle the main event, I have one more nerdy article to suggest. This is about the odds makers. 
You may read more details about those factors at the link. I try not to put my students to sleep during statistics lectures, so I certainly won’t do it to you. The reporting and clips on the Madison Square Garden Rally kept me up most of the night. I felt like the child in grade school watching the teacher thread the film through those blue projectors only to see things my Dad didn’t want to remember about World War 2. I don’t know about you, but my school district did not hold back on the World War 2 experience. One of my high school teachers wrote a book on his experience as a prisoner taken during the Battle of the Bulge. I was surrounded by friends’ parents and my parents’ friends who were Veterans. We watched the films of the 1936 Olympics and heroes like Jesse Owens and, of course, all the Hitler and Mussolini public speeches. If you were like little me, I couldn’t understand who could fall for any of that.
We could see the signs that he knew he probably wouldn’t win the minute Biden backed out. We could taste the panic in the air. We know his campaign is already spending more time in the Court trying to fuck with elections than with the ground game he delegated to Musk, who is out there basically running a personal game show with a million-dollar giveaway for attention.
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